Old Nonsense Found Down The Back Of The Computer #2: A welcome to Hangover Square and an awakening of the lost feeling of finding your own way through (you're like an old friend).

This article first appeared in Chris Dixons one off 'zine "Well, I Guess This Is Growing Up." I wrote it a few months after moving to London permanently so probably some time in summer 2011.

Last summer I received a phone call from an ex work colleague asking if I was in work at the moment, I had to concede that no, I wasn't. Since being made redundant a couple of months before  I'd decided to take a break and was pottering about Leeds, tending to my allotment, reading books and wasting my time and redundancy money drinking early morning pints in a Wetherspoons pub just because I could. But my ex work colleague was about to make me an offer that would change my life pretty significantly. Like most things in life the significance would take a while to take hold and the prettiness was not overtly apparent but the wheels were set in motion.

 

“Do you want a job for three months working for our old company in Enfield?”

“Enfield!?”

“Yeah, they'll pay for a hotel,  your travel to and from Leeds for the weekends, and all evening meals”

“Erm, I'll come back to you. I've got to think about it.”

 

I didn't have to think about it, I just thought I could get a pay rise on my previous pay if I made him sweat a bit, I got a bit too excited though after posting the question on Facebook whether I should take a job in Enfield and received replies from some of my London friends outlining the apparent ease of commuting between Camden, where most of them resided and Enfield and phoned back in five minutes telling him I'd take it. And I still got a bit of a pay rise.

 

And so started the Alan Partridge period of my life. By the week I lived in a hotel in Chalk Farm that most people thought was a haven for prostitutes and ne'er do wells and on most weekends I'd get the train or a lift back to my flat in Leeds. I spent all my redundancy money exploring London, in which I mean I took in the various public houses that I found in a book called 'The Rough Pub Guide to Britain', pubs I knew from novels by Patrick Hamilton  and partook in various Nicholsons' pub chain pub trails where you get a free t-shirt for drinking five pints in five different pubs (I still maintain this is the best way of seeing most of central London’s historical landmarks in a fun and informative way). My wardrobe got heftier, my belly bigger, my work worse; there wasn't a day I worked in Enfield that I wasn't hungover to some degree.

 

Three months became six but then my company didn't win a contract they were expecting to and I was out of a job again. Before leaving I decided I'd go for an interview with the company for another job that would be on offer in a few months time based in Croydon. I could always turn it down when it came to it, it would mean moving down to London; no free hotel (with or without big plates), no free food, no free travel, no Leeds, but I had to admit my head was already being turned by my capital city. I was still an outsider, I only stayed one weekend a month at most. Though I'd experienced bits of London there was still much more to see, there was a different life to live. I'd have to sleep on it for a couple of months so I went back to Leeds and spent my time tending my allotment, reading books and wasting my time and dole money on early morning pints in a Wetherspoons pub just because I could.

 

Then I got the phone call.

 

Then I made the decision.

 

Two months later I was moving my possessions into a studio flat in New Cross which cost almost twice as much as the one bed flat I rented in one of Leeds' more affluent suburbs. I'm still not sure if the decision was made because I was running away from something or someone or if I was running toward something or someone. I do know I was struggling to find work in Leeds and a decision had to be made one way or the other, the little big things that certainly tipped the balance were factored in but I left my home city with a heavy heart. I love Leeds, I always will, and I hope to return one day soon but my life was stagnating, a change was needed. The confusion in my head of running away from something or someone certainly abated and turned into a former clarity which lasted all but a few weeks when I realised the someone or something I was running towards would confuse me even more. There's so many people in London and that at times, makes it seem the loneliest place I've ever been, even when surrounded by friends in the pub or at a gig.

how the garden was

It turned out when I went to start work that my company hadn't yet built the new offices that I would be working from so I would be getting paid for 'working' from home, fully paid, for the first month or so of my contract. Working consisted of staying out of the way and letting the managers get on with whatever it was they were trying to do so I had the best part of two months to myself. One of the main things I knew I'd miss about leaving Leeds was leaving my allotment; a place where I could be by myself, grow vast quantities of fruit and vegetables and think about everything life outside the confines of that silly wooden fence that surrounded the Roundhay allotment grounds would throw at me next. With an amazing stroke of luck that I put down to karma for being a generally okay person (at least when sober) when I was viewing flats in New Cross I came across a flat which overlooked a back yard that could easily be described as waste land. Tangled in the sea of five foot high weeds were various discarded garments and litter strewn from god knows where. There was a double bed deposited by the next door neighbours and an old washing machine stuck into one corner of the 'garden'. Most people would have thought 'shit-hole', I thought 'heaven'. I even offered to pay extra. So I spent the next month or so turning the shit-hole into something that may represent heaven (at least to me) if such a place existed.

and what I did with it

 

I won't bore you with the details but now, three months on I have a small herb garden flourishing, flowers doing what they do, carrots, peas, beetroot, radishes, spring onions, purple sprouting broccoli and various lettuces all in the ground or on my plate and some white roses planted to remind me of home. It's my own little bit of my kind of Yorkshire in a back yard in New Cross.

the white roses of Yorkshire and some other crap

 

As I spent most of my Alan Partridge days in London in and out of various public houses and only seeing central and a bit of north London when I first moved down permanently I wanted to understand exactly how big London was and needed to know there was a beauty akin to what you'd find in the Yorkshire countryside so I hatched a plan to walk the whole of the Thames within the London boundary; from Hampton Court Palace to Erith Marshes. I walked around 70 miles on four Saturdays and found exactly what I'd hoped to find; a place so diverse in its various stages of prettiness and ugliness that I could hardly get bored of the place. I know I'll get sick of it, but at least I'll never be bored.

a bit of London on one of my walks

 

I'm quite settled now; work's started properly and is keeping me out of too much alcohol related trouble, I'm weeding the garden constantly and enjoying some of the fruits of my labour, I plan on starting the 80 mile capital ring walk soon, I’ve found a local non league football team to support (it warms me that I’ll always be able to find the banality of going to the football enjoyable and inclusive wherever I go, except if I go to a Premiership ground) and though I do still wish that Rancid's Tim Armstrong would be the voice heard on London buses instead of that electronic woman's voice (why I always imagine an American with a faux London accent whilst strumming a guitar and singing out London street names on London buses will always make me smile and make little sense to me(especially as it doesn't seem to fit on tubes)) I can't really complain about that much. The solitude of London living has enamoured me to her, I won't be staying forever but I'm certainly going to enjoy it whilst I do.

super Dulwich Hamlet

Free Places To Drink Cans In London Without Feeling Like A Tramp #1: Lords

 This is the first in an occasional series where I attempt to find places in London where you can drink cans of beer for free and not feel like an outcast from society or a bench hugging homeless person. Everyone knows London is an expensive place to live and drink and I believe if I find nice ways round this (so not sitting at home, alone, watching films and drinking cans of cooking lager like a one Man Behaving Badly) it is my duty to share my findings with the two readers of this blog. I'll receive your thanks in the guise of a four pack of London's Pride, it's really not a problem though, someone's got to do it. It may as well be me.

Yorkshire taking on the dodo

It's a little known fact (as no-one cares) that during County Championship cricket matches (that's the four day stuff which if you believed the papers are only attended by three OAP's and a dog. Which is patently untrue, especially when Yorkshire come to town; there are three OAP's, a dog and me.*) after the tea break they open up the gates for any riff raff to come in and watch the last session for free. That's basically £5.33 of cricket that you get for free at Lords. (A days ticket is £16 for the mathematically challenged.)

Cherie Blairs Mouth

It is Middlesex County Cricket Club who play their home games at The Home Of Cricket (that's what Lords calls itself, the pompous twat) but it isn't actually a county, it isn't actually anything so I feel they're cheating a bit. Middlesex the county was abolished on April 1st 1965 so not only do they not exist any more, they seem to have been a victim of an Aprils fools joke that went horribly wrong as people actually believed it resulting in bureaucrats actually wiping the county off the register. How unfortunate. They really must have a major complex about this and constantly question who they are all the time (easy answer: they are no-one) and to combat this identity crisis they seem to have developed a player called Adam London to give them some sense of belonging somewhere. If the grounds in London and they have a player called London surely that's where they belong right? Me thinks they're trying a tad too hard. They should just give up and realise they don't exist, it's obvious, it says so on Wikipedia. Bearing this in mind my home county of Yorkshire, (who were playing Middlesex at Lords hence my attendance and this blog) the biggest and best county in the whole land, couldn't possibly lose to somewhere which basically isn't real. The match wasn't really Davis versus Goliath, it was Goliath versus the dodo. Those dodo's do look like menacing fuckers though, I've seen one in the Horniman museum. A lot was at stake.**

The Champagne Bar didn't open when Yorkshire came to town. Wonder why.

Anyway as I say they open up the gates usually a bit after tea which usually ends at about 4pm and you can get in most areas of the ground (if you've got a tie, jacket and a members card for any county you can get into all areas except the corporate boxes) and the stewards don't treat you like a piece of white dog shit that you don't see any more because our great nations street cleaners are so efficient, so you can actually talk to them like human beings and if in the unlikely event they do question you just say you want a look around. They even called me 'Sir' on all four days I was there. The main up shot of the stewards being okay and treating their patrons as normal people is they don't check your bags so even though the County Championship rules say you can only bring in four cans of beer per person you can actually bring in as many as your bag can carry. I recommend going down to Millets and buying an 80 litre hiking rucksack.

A Bowler

If you do decide to go to Lords for a final session to have some cans you must adhere to certain cricket etiquette; don't stand up or walk around in the middle of an over, turn your mobile phone to silent, don't smoke in the stands, clap when you can (I'm not getting into the intricacies of clapping etiquette here, it'll take my whole life) and be kind to all follow watchers of the real beautiful game. But one of the main things is to keep your ears ready to overhear old people imparting wisdom to each other, they're very wise, have lived at least two thirds of their lives and know their shit, they will teach you a thing or two. On this occasion I've heard a woman wax lyrical about how obituaries are the only bit of the paper she reads and a man in his sixties banging on about banging whores in Thailand. We live in a truly wondrous world.

The Full Toss Bar. Add your own amusing caption.

The other main thing, the most important aspect about going to the cricket that you must understand is the lunch box. Believe me, the non assuming packed lunch hasn't been this important since you went to Lightwater Valley or Alton Towers on a school trip. The cricket lunch box can be a wonderful thing and if you take it seriously there are a few rules you should follow. First of all being out in the open air all day means you'll feel constantly hungry and in need of snacks throughout the day so pack enough. I usually take two full lunches, a breakfast and then various pork based nibbles for a full day but if you're only going for the two hours after tea one lunch and some nibbles should be sufficient enough for you.

You should have staples of your lunch box; some fruit, a sandwich, crisps, a Gold Bar, (your chocolate based confectionery should always be a Gold Bar, cricket has delusions of grandeur; so should you) and the aforementioned pork based snacks. Once you have your staples it's time to have your fun and turn a run of the mill packed lunch into a cricket themed packed lunch. Here's what you need to do; first, think about your teams opposition, this will determine the rest of your lunch box or indeed what flavour/ fillings your staples will be. You must base your food from the county your team is playing, for example if you're playing Leicestershire you'll need a Melton Mowbray pork pie, if it's Gloucestershire you are up against your sarnie should contain Gloucester cheese, if your county is playing Somerset you should have a cider (or ten) in your box (or your new 80 litre bag from Millets). Once you've got that out of the way check the team sheet of the opposition; if they have an Indian international playing include a Bhaji, if they have a West Indian include rice and peas and so on. The possibilities are almost endless.

Lords Toilets; luxury

For me this match threw up Middlesex, a place which I hope I firmly established earlier doesn't exist and as the dodo in the Horniman museum is obviously only a model reproduction of what one may have looked like I couldn't steal it and use it's centuries old meat for a sandwich so I focused on Yorkshire. I made a few Wensleydale cheese sandwiches, packed some ham from a Yorkshire pig, sweated some Harrogate sausages with red onion and wrapped them in Yorkshire puddings and brought some Gold Bars. Always the Gold Bars. I also bought a bottle of Magnum*** as Middlesex had West Indian Corey Collymore playing for them. Please, please, please take the cricket lunch box seriously.

Even if you can't be bothered packing your own lunch box I recommend going to Lords for some cans at the end of the day.**** It'll be the nicest, most majestic, elegant place you can drink cans for free without feeling like a tramp. The toilets are worth it on their own, trust me.

Note for Yorkshire fans: Yorkshire won by 10 wickets, this is the best and most confident Yorkshire team I've seen in the eight or so years I've been watching Championship cricket regularly and weather permitting, I think we'll win the title this year.

*Not actually true, County Championship matches are quite well attended and you get less twonks who only go to matches where they can decipher the opposition (so they can shout abuse at them) by the colour of the shirt they're wearing.

**Actually hardly anything was; it was a cricket match.

***Not really, cricket is no place for insanity in a bottle.

****I actually recommend going for the full day, or more specifically for all four days of a County Championship game so that you can appreciate the ebb and flow of a proper cricket match. £16 (or £5 for the final day) for seven hours entertainment isn't much at all and it is worth it.