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Showing posts from August, 2014

A kind of homecoming

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Destination. As a kid I would visit London once a year.   Leaving in the dark of a Friday evening and returning in the similar gloom of Sunday afternoon.   Always in the winter, always in a coach packed to the brim with bags and boy scouts.   We would sleep in loose friendship groups on the floor of a large hall and eat at long shared tables.   On Saturday afternoon, most of the other kids when to watch a game – Arsenal, Spurs, maybe even Chelsea.   In those days Division One was the highest league, and most games were still played on a Saturday. Later we would play five-a-side deep into the evening in a building, which for want of money had a roof, but no walls, and as a result was called The Lid.    I joined in under a kind of resigned sufferance. Given the chance I played solitaire.   Card after card.   Hand after hand.   Today, such behaviour would be labelled odd, and intervention or diagnosis would follow.   But I did not go to London for the company, the prospe