Smokingboot

An old poem about Westminster

2026-06-03T08:11:34Z

Seems like a good time to resuscitate it, given the binfires all over the UK right now.

https://open.substack.com/pub/smokingboot/p/thorney-isle?r=1r9jj7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

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PLOOF! /Too Much Information

2026-05-29T13:11:35Z

I mean it, beware!

It's about certain swimsuits.

( Too Much Information )

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Clarke and Osborne

2026-05-29T10:33:53Z

Finished Piranesi, an easy lyrical read. Led to a strange dream.

Nuclear man and his wife were so close by. We were all diving into the water, and I tried not to turn my head because he was there, right there! I pretended not to see, didn't turn my head right or left, jumped in, saw a mysterious dark brown/grey cat with a very elegant silhouette like a Siamese, sitting under water. It was perfectly comfortable, nonchalantly swatting at the surface from beneath. I wondered if it was clamping its nostrils shut like a seal would.

Maybe the lustrous visions of Piranesi seeped into my head and pulled me through to some waterlogged world. Hadn't been expecting much from this because I never got into Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell way back, perhaps it's time to try again. I bought Piranesi in a charity shop in North Berwick, crisp and clean as new, unopened. Someone didn't even try before passing it on. By contrast, I also bought Orton's play for Olivier, The Entertainer,. Why? I don't even like Olivier! Now I can't stand Osborne either. This had a badly torn cover over the little hardback,and there on the inside were the old prices for it, 10s 6d knocked down to 8 shillings and 5 pence in pencil. I may just have bought myself a shim. God, this play does not date well, the opening stage directions have defeated me twice. The only chance I have of getting through it is by finding some interesting point in the middle then reading it back and forth from there. If I can be bothered. Because right now, I'm beset with stuff I am either not very good at or just don't want to do, and that's tedious. But not as tedious as John Osborne.

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My beautiful day

2026-05-27T07:26:10Z

It was like this... https://www.facebook.com/reel/928999656842222?locale=en_GB
(cos I don't know how to put videos here)
What I forgot to add was that I was sitting in the garden reading Piranesi. The whole day was enchanting.

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A Cure

2026-05-25T07:44:32Z

It was our first time on the water at North Berwick, and the weather was perfect for it, warm and breezy. Out we went in the little boat to see birds on the nearby islets, puffins, guillemots, gannets, eider ducks, shags, cormorants, gulls, all yelling at each other while nesting/fishing/free-wheeling. A few seals genially waved to us from the Bass Rock caves. Apparently the tunnels cross from side to side and swimmers attempt to go through, though it's hard to navigate.The unforgettable aroma of guano and fishbits alone might daunt some humans including this one, but kudos to those who try.

Then we came ashore for ice cream and forays into interesting shops. It's been a while since we saw these friends, and life has had its ups and downs. But the weekend wouldn't let us keep such things, even the worthy ones. We travelled light as birds while the wind blew our troubles away, far across the North Sea.

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Helluva Week

2026-05-22T11:31:26Z

And yet effective. I achieved some dull but necessary stuff.

The Dad business has affected me for sure. Right now, the question of his dishonesty appears to only be a matter of degree. It is looking increasingly likely that he misrepresented an ill and vulnerable person in order to erase her rights and steal her property.

My own challenges on this matter are considerable. The worst will be explaining to Mother exactly what has happened if it transpires that we are correct. This could have a serious effect on her extremely fragile mental state but she wants to know. Ugh, my hope is that something constructive can be done.

For me personally, there's that sickening sense of being taken for a mug. That my father was a man of questionable principle I knew. I remember him drunkenly telling me that he had done some bad things and without knowing what they were I tried to reassure him, cheer him up. I had no idea his lamentation, performed right in front of me, was about cheating our family, myself included. What a sad silly try-too-hard Pollyanna!

That's just a drag though, a pull down of my mood. It does harm, so I have to not let it become some East of Eden style epic of bad blood in my head. Tonight our mates are turning up, tomorrow we go out on the sea to find seals and puffins. My mother needs defending, I will do the best I can for her, try to seek some justice. For myself all I need to do is move past this latest shock, accept that rather than being a bit of a cnt, he was a total cnt, and forget him.

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Bluebells

2026-05-19T13:39:37Z

Yesterday I went out and got some necessary dull stuff done. The clouds came rolling in, it had already rained and was going to rain some more. Then from the old railway bank came a scent I haven't smelled in years; bluebells, sweet and delicate, yet somehow pungent, spilling out everywhere into the grey wet.

Many decades ago, there was a guy. He was a challenging young man, artistic and intelligent, not handsome but charismatic enough. We could never be a thing because he knew I was utterly ridiculous and for me he was a simple nope/no way on the physical level. He became the long term squeeze of a friend of mine, and she had to have the patience of a saint to deal with him. But one fantastic gift he had was this: you never had to make conversation. Voluble though he was, he was also totally at ease with silence, no awkwardness about it. Once he was driving me home and we were enjoying one of those easy quiets. Then he just stopped the car apropos of nothing, next to a wood. He leapt out and disappeared among the trees, and I carried on dreaming as I had been, of the king of the wood or some Cernunnos/Herne the Hunter type vision. In my head I heard the words Think of me when you see bluebells. Time passed. Guy returned with arms full of bluebells, which he promptly dumped on top of me.

I told him he shouldn't have done it, that these flowers are protected.

'The woods are full,' he said, 'they can spare you a few bluebells.'

I went home in a fragrant trance.

I don't know what happened to my friends, they moved to Scotland, we met up a few times, and then life carried us all away from each other. But I smelled that beautiful scent again yesterday, saw the bluebells trailing down the bank under the trees. And remembered that voice in my head long ago.

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Picture of a House

2026-05-18T13:40:38Z

I used ire to get things done today.

I was sharp, angry enough to order my dishwasher and my internet connection to get on with it. In fact the one who needed to get on with it was me, and it turns out I haven't done badly.

Yesterday I tried to watch The Green Knight, and stopped, impatient with it being slow and far too dark. It would make more sense if King Arthur's court was necromantic, vampires trying to accept and avoid the day streaming in through arrow-slit windows while they conjure legends of chivalry. Point of order, how many pronunciations of Gawain's name do we need? Garwin who? Dev Patel can't save this. Also, I am allergic to Barry Keoghan.

Instead I watched Traitors India because I am in love with the palace and everything there is interesting and/or pretty. Right now I need pretty.

I painted a picture, a childish little picture of how our lives could have been had dad ever attempted to be happy. A world in which he wasn't drunk and angry and powerful, a world in which he didn't squander people like coins in a penny arcade. Silly little world, eh? I won't break my heart over the house with its happy open door and washing line, its crazy wisteria and cat in the window, the tor in the background, white cliffs and windfall apples. No. Wish it had been different, stings a bit today, but I am going to be all right.

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Shock

2026-05-17T17:07:42Z

Today, I have learned some news so shocking, I am honestly beside myself.

When I try to write it here, my hands automatically remove it. So no more, nothing to speak of until I know more, facts are everything. Maybe this is nothing.

No more, not now. I will not stay in this headspace. This is a note to myself in case the day becomes important.

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Off, with dreams

2026-05-15T09:35:09Z

I discovered a prior mistake of mine yesterday, and while it's better caught now than later, I was annoyed enough to stay down all day. Met friends in the evening, including one whose spark always engages me, but even surrounded by great historians and fab mates, I was lacklustre. I have been up since 7, it is 8.45 as I write this, and I want to go back to sleep. Something must be wrong. If this is about the letrozole, my body is not acclimatising, in fact this is getting worse. But I see nothing to be done, except give up letrozole, or maybe have my thyroid tested. I presume they've done this latter a few times, but honestly I have had so many tests I don't recall what they were all for. Maybe they're just collecting my blood, cc by cc, for artistic purposes.

Speaking of which, my dreams were weird. DT and I were being pursued by two white faced dolly vampire creatures. We lured them through a front door into a small vestibule which crucially served as a lift, and had doors on two sides. We let them in as we stepped out, and locked both doors. There they were, trapped. I made my way upstairs, but DT stayed behind and, out of what I presumed was misplaced mercy, unlocked one of the doors. Meanwhile in an upper room, I found many people playing at being vampires and monsters in a some kind of gothic casino/circus set up. They weren't all vampires, but of course some might be. And away I drifted, away...

This reminds me of a dream I had earlier, which made me happy so I should keep it. There was my beautiful Surya, sitting in her prim position but she was a much bigger cat and her fur was thicker. She was very pleased to see me, and made nice faces at me. Then R was beside me and her face lit up, and she made welcoming sounds. I spotted an old black cat still sleeping. Guess Ralik is snoozing even yet in the dream lands. Let's face it, nearly 100 years of life is enough for any cat. He deserves some astral relaxation.

To add a moment of drama to the morning, the door to R's office room jammed thoroughly. Fortunately a neighbour helped out and he's no longer trapped in there, but internally the mechanism is crumbling. I know how it feels.

Wake up wake up wake up!

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Doors and Twins and River and Ruin

2026-05-10T23:06:04Z

I will never have time to write this in the day. It has many different parts and I will probably fail to connect them. But.

In Buda Castle, there's this room:

Yes, it's just full of doors standing there. Each blue door represents one of the ten chapters of The Admonitions written by Saint King Stephen in 1015 to his son Emeric. These are a new installation; St Stephen's Hall, like much of the castle was destroyed in WWII.

Now say you are standing in front of those doors; and say you are at once yourself split into twins light and dark, somehow always together but each twin goes through a different door and sees a different...something. The light twin goes through a door and finds themself beside the Danube, a place of happy people dancing, lights on the water, shores twinkling pretty as the twilight rolls in and the music plays.

The dark twin goes through another door and finds themself facing 60 pairs of sculpted shoes on a silent far from twinkling shore. These are a memorial to some 23,000 people - around 20,000 of whom were Jewish - who were stood there and told to step out of their shoes by members of the fanatical fascist Arrow Cross Party, government of Hungary from 1944-45.

They shot all those people, whose bodies then tumbled into the Danube. The dark twin felt it, a struggling last breath, a clutching of the chest, the deep blue closing overhead.The light twin will not have this because she is determined to live in the real world. She pulls the dark twin out of the water, fighting upwards.

The light and dark twin together know the river is beautiful and entirely innocent. They can share a drink there, smile, dance to the music, hold both visions of the Danube, understand both are true. This sounds like a paradox and is; I don't think it is something achieved by trying, indeed I don't know how it is done, only that it is done.

Through another door, and suddenly the twins are at Zsimpla Kert, first and most famous ruin bar in Budapest.

After WWII, the Jewish Ghetto was unsurprisingly empty; the Soviets had come to Hungary with no intention of leaving. They crushed the Arrow Cross party, hunted down and hanged its leaders and, in a poetic echo of Hungarian collaborative deportations - something like 440,000 gone to places like Auschwitz - sent many of that party's members to gulag forced-labour camps. Sometimes even the light twin hear karma's cold laughter.

Understandably the Jewish folk who managed to get out were not inclined to return. The buildings became dilapidated because the Soviets were not interested or didn't have the money to look after them. Time passed, and in the late 1990s/early 2000s drinking rooms began to rise in the ruined buildings, graffitti scrawled, adorned with tat and random art. Now everybody loves them. This is a thing you can do as the twins; You can walk through at least two realities at exactly the same time, and it's fabulous albeit occasionally distressing/weird. Up at Buda Castle there's a room with many doors and no doorways. At Zsimpla Kert there are many doorways and no doors.

I don't know what it means, only that there is something there. The doors know, the twins know, the river doesn't know and the ruin doesn't care. I have no answer and know this to be an unsatisfactory incomplete telling. But it is true.

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Budapest!

2026-05-10T09:38:22Z

An easy city to enjoy. It's my first sight of the Danube. Live music sounded every night on the shores, people dancing/drinking/having a good time while lit up ships sailed into the night of East and West. One might have expected it to be raucous, overwhelming even, but it wasn't. Quiet could be found if you wanted it. The city was clean and alive with astonishing architecture; Baroque, Art Nouveau, Gothic, Neo-Classic, all sorts blending together,rooftops unlike any I have seen elsewhere, some looking almost beaded, others domes of polished metal. Here's a little of it all, though these barely scratch the surface.

After 5 serious incidents with choking food, uncountable less serious ones, several ambulances, a lot of embarrassment, and poor demi-uncle Antonio's fatal example, I had to start looking at dental surgery. This is prohibitively expensive in the UK*. Actually it's quite expensive in Hungary but the clinic has a very good reputation. We are looking at a lot of work over a fair amount of time. I don't really want to spend the money, but the truth is if one of these incidents occur when I'm alone, there's a strong chance of my meeting Antonio's fate. I have to just accept the privilege of being in a position to do this.

Because the opportunity rose quickly, I had no chance to arrange a postal vote, and have therefore missed the entire debacle of Scotland's GE and the rest of the UK's local elections. I know very well that Nigel Farage is a grifter, with less personal knowledge I am aware that Zak Polanski is also a grifter. They are reflections of demographics who feel rather than think. It's useful for their voters to see them in local government, because from what I can see, the only things they know how to run are their mouths.

*I could get angry thinking of how people in the UK suffer on account of extraordinary pricing for dental work. To get the non-cosmetic, potentially life saving work of the kind I need would cost an average of £18,000 per jaw. You could argue that if you look after your teeth and you don't have any extraordinary circumstances/hereditary conditions that harm them, it's not a problem. But if you do? Suck it up. Literally.

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Diversions

2026-05-05T12:42:19Z

https://www.souschef.co.uk/products/the-crab-luxury-safety-matches
"The Crab luxury safety matches look like a page straight out of a Victorian illustrated wildlife guide."
I think not. This crab is in a pomegranate tree, well known as an optimal environment for coastal crustaceans. The crab is either levitating or sliding down the bark to catastrophe, I know which I believe.

I am hypnotised by the Souschef site, and have been ever since the dubious jug. https://www.souschef.co.uk/products/ceramic-red-onion-jug

Then there was this curious candle carrying cat.
https://www.souschef.co.uk/products/missy-cat-candle-holder
Why the bird? Why the roses, the stripes, why any of it? I am puzzled but in no danger of buying. This on the other hand (https://www.souschef.co.uk/products/codia-fish-votive-candle-holder) would be irresistible if it was a mug.

And yes, I have stupid amounts to do. Got lots finished this morning, but still, the next few days are busy busy.
The cherry trees are past their best now, the wind whipping blooms across the lawn and down the street. Right now a storm of petals is battering against the window. Beautiful.

No, eyelids, don't you dare close #getonwithit

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Zzzzzzzz

2026-05-03T06:02:39Z

I'd feel a damn sight less weary all the time if I didn't keep waking up at 5.30 am. Lots to do next week, including much editing. If I leave things until I feel sharp enough to do them well, nothing will ever happen. I just need to get on with it and things will become easier.

*Falls asleep*

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Easy/not easy. Also May Eve

2026-04-30T13:48:35Z

Delivering programme leaflets for the local festival this year. First trip out, easy. Second, tired out fast. There was about 20 minutes rest between the two trips, and that's me wiped.

It is frustrating. How can I be weaker, more easily clapped out, than when I actually had the cancer? Ridiculous.

Anyway, here comes May Eve. Leave milk out for the fairies tonight! And yes, some say that's for May 1st, but I play it safe, do it both nights.

I am too tired to work on a poem of my own for today. But here's one from perhaps the greatest fairy poet of all time, W.B. Yeats. It's about how, once touched by the realm, it never lets go of you. My brother and I somehow ended up sharing it through the years, like a family story. We recited it together.

https://open.substack.com/pub/smokingboot/p/may-eve-the-man-who-dreamed-of-faeryland?r=1r9jj7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Poem in the comments for those who don't want to use substack.

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Not Quite Walpurgis Night

2026-04-29T05:15:22Z

How strange and pale this morning is! Up at 5.20, hard to work out if the sun had risen yet. Outside had all the looks of those nights drained by light pollution and a mist that's just now leaving. The house was bitter cold. Awake for ages yet somehow I had missed the dawn chorus. It was a peculiar vibe, not at all comfortable.

Then I notice a message from a friend in India, who has sent me photos of khotto iblis she made. It looks delicious, and I'm cheered to remember that while I seem locked in the enchantment of Dyfed, across the world people are making/eating/sharing delectables!

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Picture this... Or don't.

2026-04-27T13:38:17Z

Back in 16th century Scotland, if you were staying at a friend's house, it was considered courteous to regale your host with stories, songs, and poems. Here's one attributed to Iseabail Ní Mheic Cailéin, Countess of Argyll, recounted during her stay at the house of James MacGregor in Perthshire, 1510. I write the Gaelic version here because I love the look of the words, and I place the English version behind the cut as it's naughty.

Éistibh a luchd an tighe-se
re scél na mbod brioghmhar
do shanntaich mo chridhe-sa
cuid dana scéalaibh do sgriobhadh.
Cé líonmhor bod bréagh-bhileach
do bhí san aimsir romhainn
tá aig fear an úird chrábhaidh seo
bod as cho mór righinn.
Bod mo shagairt thuarasdail
cé tá cho fada seasmhach
o tha céin ní chualabhair
an reabh atá ina mhacan.
Atá a riabh ro-reamhar
an sin ’s ní h-é scéal bréagach
nocha chuala cho-reamhar
mhotha bhod arís.
Éistibh!

Which translates as:
( Read more... )

I like that call to attend, it reminds me of the first line of Beowulf ('Hwæt!') 800 years between them, and still the bard yells to get the room's attention. And as Beowulf starts with the glory of spear-Danes, and Iseabail starts with the glory of other kinds of spears, I think we can see who's winning from the off.

Wouldn't be up for bagpipes after this though.

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Happy Sunday

2026-04-26T08:40:51Z

Spent last night out with mates bopping to a Stranglers tribute band. Not bad, actually, though they missed a few key songs: Golden Brown, Strange Little Girl, European Female... having said that, cracking renditions of Walk on By, Peaches, and especially No More Heroes.

Tired though I am, the cherry trees are blooming beautifully and life feels good.

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Leopards

2026-04-25T12:14:27Z

https://open.substack.com/pub/smokingboot/p/leopards?r=1r9jj7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Poems in the comments for those who don't want to go to Substack.

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Bits and Pieces and Panthers

2026-04-25T07:32:20Z

Thursday was pleasantly hot. I went into town, bumped into a friend, and she came back for tea in the garden. The cats were contented, we nattered, everything was just fine. That night I dreamt of Orb Lord, who walked into the room and told me at length all my faults, the ways in which I had let him down. He even had a whiteboard to help illustrate his umbrage.

Friday morning the world had rolled away under thick mist like a spell. Then the sun burned it all away, and left us with this blue sky. I just heaped up a whole load of junk that we need to get rid of, and it tired me. I did some really easy editing and it tired me too. But still, it got done.

Today the morning mist is back and I woke from more strange dreams in which I was looking after a tiny kitten, a valiant little creature. It messed itself and I was cleaning it up, when a couple of fecal drops landed on a shadow under a seat, and as I reached in to clean those too, I was answered by a low answering growl. There lay a large panther, and poo or no poo, it was warning me not to touch it. So I didn't. Sometimes my dream lexicon connects friendly panthers with my maternal grandfather, but this was nothing like that.

I will put my leopard poems up on substack. Feels like the right time.

I wrote a whole piece here on Mary Bennet in the TV adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister, and deleted it, because it felt as ponderous as points in the show. TOBS improves from tiresome trope-laden beginnings and sad distortions of the original text of Pride and Prejudice. The love interest is worthy of canon, the nods to earlier adaptations and even moments of Jane Austen's own life are cute. It gets better, which is more than I can say for Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Yup, I tried again. And failed again. Saw it in the cinema when it first came out, and since then every time I try to watch it, I never make it all the way through. God alone knows how Francis Ford Coppola could quell such talents as Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder into this stiff cartoon Englishness, a thorough waste of the pair. Only Gary Oldman could shine in this, with his strange luminosity that has nothing to do with classic good looks. I don't know what his charisma is based on. He has it even when playing someone like Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses, a series with real quality. He's not beautiful to my eyes, but he has extraordinary presence. That in itself is a puzzle. What is presence, anyway?

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Happy St George's Day!

2026-04-23T07:19:28Z

https://open.substack.com/pub/smokingboot/p/for-st-georges-day?r=1r9jj7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

For any readers who don't want to go to Substack, I'll put the poems (there are two) in the comments below.

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Gorgeous

2026-04-22T13:39:09Z

This feels like Spring proper. The blooms are just beginning to show, and the air holds the here and now of it, fresh but not cold, warming but not still. The season has arrived. So I opened the kitchen door and left it that way; Dervish and her sister went out, enjoyed themselves, lifted their heads to the light and heat, jumped up walls, investigated the greenery. I remember last year when the vet made stern sounds about Biggie's future, and here she is still. So we do what we do and our girl will have her beautiful days. If it's the last Spring, we love every minute, if she makes it to Summer even better. And who knows? We only really have now. Turns out now is gorgeous.

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Bad News

2026-04-21T05:37:36Z

It was something like a year ago, maybe, that Dervish aka Biggie-cat was diagnosed as having some kind of mass on her liver. We made the decision not to risk her going under the knife at her age. We would monitor and manage the situation, and this most outdoorsy of outdoorsy cats would have her Summer, even if it turned out to be her last. Nothing so grim happened. We have had cuddles and purrs, she had her garden. It's been good.

But she is losing weight now, and the vet says all roads lead to the same place. Chances are Biggie has a benign tumour, very common in elderly cats. These don't cause pain or rampage around the body, but they do eat up calories. She gets the food but the tumour gets the nourishment. The vet is stone cold in judgment if not in manner; 19 is a grand age for a cat, but her days are numbered. It's about quality not quantity, and we need to watch, realise when it's not fun for her anymore, do the right thing.

I hear and understand. But it has destroyed my night's sleep.

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It was acceptable in the 80s...

2026-04-18T09:29:09Z

This just turned up on my feed. And there I was in the dress my mother made for me, with my blonde bob and 80s blusher. Blimey.

Now I look at that girl and find her sweet, for all her serious eyes and bizarre moon* swings. But something tells me that the real fun about being young is not so much living through it as remembering it.

* Yes, should be mood swings. But 'moon swings' genuinely feels more accurate.

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When to leave; also, a man with a gun

2026-04-18T08:14:43Z

Yesterday was full of lessons in leaving.

First, a local Munchausen master; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjw7ey0gj4qo
I know details of this story through a friend of mine being close to the family deceived in the above lady's shenanigans. We talked about the whole thing yesterday over tea and strange folded pizza. The Munchausen lady served about 4 months of her jail time and is now out, wheedling for contact with her traumatised children. My friend revealed the lady's antics had been almost public knowledge, which is to say the neighbours observed all and remarked upon it often.

'Aye,' said my friend, 'she was one of those people who always has something wrong with them, spent as little time in work as she could manage. Everyone knew. They called her Sicknote.' I nearly spluttered tea all over myself.

It was a day of neighbours and locals. My chum and I bumped into her neighbour, a gent of 78 who suddenly has to move house. His landlady, having told him his lease was safe 6 weeks ago, gave him 28 days notice three weeks ago. He and his wife had been paying £1,250 per month. He's OK, having found somewhere at the same price less 50 quid, but of course it's a shock. Personally, I am astonished that rent costs so much around here; not only do I think this rent was crazy but 28 days is very little time for an elderly couple to find a new home. I suppose the landlady must be facing a break-up or emergency to pull such a trick. The good news is that he moves now to a place with a supermarket in line of sight, easier as he doesn't have a car and he's not comfy doing online shopping. So as well as being cheaper the move may well improve his quality of life. But for all that, there's no getting past the cloud moving gently over the landlady's rep.

Meanwhile, my brother phoned me after a contratemps with what we might call a local character. He was walking down the street on his way to a meeting when he heard a voice shouting that they were going to kill someone. Now bro and I both have this habit of wandering deep in thought, to the extent that we don't necessarily notice what is going on around us. Hypervigilance has cured me - perhaps overcured me - bro not so much. Without thinking he told the voice to be quiet because the noise was breaking his concentration.

Then the guy shouting pulled out a gun. And for sure my brother paid attention.

He talked the man down, cajoled and persuaded. Said the yelling would create unnecessary witnesses, acted like some old ex-felon out on the streets, well versed in the way of these things. The guy said the info was useful, put his gun away and wandered on. My brother went to his meeting.

But he phoned me because he found himself processing this and didn't know what to do. Apart from blistering his ears for being so unaware of his environment, I congratulated him for getting out of the situation; but he should have told the police. Even at the rough edges of London, guns are rare and definitely illegal. He confessed that apart from the height and colour of the guy he couldn't remember anything about him. It sounded like the blanking effects of shock. I mentioned there might well be CCTV along the road, so off he went and reported the crime. And I sat there thinking that while he loves London, maybe he should consider selling up and going to live elsewhere.

It's a real gift, knowing when to leave.

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