FEAR & LOATHING IN LONDON

T'was aroundabout the summer of 2000, upon my return to N. London - tail well between legs - from 6 years exile in sunny Scotland and a tale of two ladies, one most dear to my heart, both lost to men about as interesting as a Woolworths ironing board. Still, there's no accounting as they say.

And you know what they say about the saint - he benefits all he comes into contact with .

But I digress of course....

Well, parking up for a mo' on zebra crossing zigzags, I dashed into the Estate Agents to finalize the completion details on a flat I'd bought just around the corner. On emerging with some conveyancing paperwork in hand after only three minutes or so, I was dismayed at the sight of a dreaded jam buttie parked behind my Golf and a gentleman of the traffic law patiently tapping his manicured fingernails on its roof.

"Here we go" I thought. You know when you're back in England ok, the filth straight on your back at the slightest indiscretion-opportunity.

So after the obligatory lecture by the officer, about kids on bicycles and little old ladies on zebra crossings, the sight of whom I was blocking to oncoming vehicles... etc, I kind of knew I was in for some kind of high jump or other.... until...

... I remembered my old cop-dealing tactics from my previous daze in Fear and Loathing Land.
NEVER put up a fight with the bizzies, ALWAYS admit your guilt right there, on the spot, whilst looking ashamedly down at the ground. There's nothing the pigs like better than to apprehend a "disrespectful" and argumentative driver after he/she has committed an infringement.

So I acted the part of the remorseful and repentant motorist.... " yes I know officer"... " I should have known better" etc etc.

I did note however, during his lecture on the life-threatening consequences of parking on zig zags, that the uniformed chap on my case was some young Irish whippersnapper fresh out of Hendon, the Old Bill recruitment college just up the road... the accent was unmistakable.... and he was beginning to tone down his act somewhat at my fake display of submission ( I stood down off the pavement to lower my 6' 2" frame to more his height... oh yes I know all the old tricks... )

Just when I was expecting Irish cop to reach for his booking book, he paused, drew a breath, looked away and appeared to speak to the sky....

" Tell you what, I MIGHT consider letting you off with a caution, IF you can give me two good reasons why I should."

My brain shifted into overdrive, as it does in such situations...he continued..

" ONE of which must be funny."

I blinked at the guy's sudden role-reversal - from traffic cop to comedian....how about that !

Jeesus H. Christ pogo-sticking in the outside lane of the M25 in rush hour, I thought. What have we here. Like a cash till calculator performing a sum, the "two good reasons, one of them funny" spewed from mind to tongue like the machine grating out its paper chit total.

" Ahem, well first of all I was only in the Estate Agents for three minutes... and secondly, as my grandfather on my father's side was Irish and was badly injured in the war... and you seeming to be Irish yourself... maybe just maybe you might consider letting me off just this once if I promise never to park on zigzags again?"

Christ almighty, I felt like a Nazi at Nuremberg creeping to the judge to dodge the drop.

"Right e ho", he said quite matter of factly... "very good!". My young Irish persecutor snapped shut his booking book and walked away with the token finger-wag warning about the "never again" bit.

Lost for words but overjoyed at having escaped an automatic £80 fine & licence points added, I drove cheerfully away, safe in the already established knowledge that it isn't what you know but who you know that counts.

Especially in that rotten old town.

M St.M

Transcribed from Tobias Smollett's " Humphry Clinker " - a hilarious 18th C account of life in the grand metropolis.

***

With the sharp sensitivity of " a man without skin" Tobias Smollett humorously attacked the frivolity and foibles of eighteenth-century England. Humphrey Clinker is his mirthful tale of a tour by coach and four through cities and countryside. as misadventure follows misadventure, each character reveals his true self by giving his own conflicting view of the incidents, places, and people encountered along the way. The result is an entertaining and realistic picture of that wonderful age when gentlemen duelled, ladies swooned, and servants rose from rags to riches.

...continued from Pt 4 (previous page).

... if you pick up a diverting original by accident, it may be dangerous to amuse yourself with his oddities - He is generally a tartar at bottom; a sharper, a spy, or a lunatic.
Every person you deal with endeavours to over-reach you in the way of business; you are preyed upon by idle medicants, who beg in the phrase of borrowing, and live upon the spoils of the stranger - Your tradesmen are without conscience, your friends without affection, and your dependents without fidelity. ( hmm .. slightly familair - ed )

My letter would swell into a treatise, were I to particularize every cause of offence that fills up the measure of my aversion to this, and every other crowded city - Thank Heaven! I am not so far sucked into the vortex that I can disengage myself without any great effort of philosophy - From this wild uproar of knavery, folly, and impertinence, I shall fly with double relish to the serenity of retirement, the cordial effusions of unreserved friendship, the hospitality and protection of the rural gods; in a word, the jucunda oblivia vitoe, which Horace himself had not taste enough to enjoy. -

London, June 8.

***
That's it for the London mention from the book, which in itself is truly an education on the full read.

Hope the account met with your amusement,

M St.M

Transcribed from Tobias Smollett's " Humphry Clinker " - a hilarious 18th C account of life in the grand metropolis.

***

With the sharp sensitivity of " a man without skin" Tobias Smollett humorously attacked the frivolity and foibles of eighteenth-century England. Humphrey Clinker is his mirthful tale of a tour by coach and four through cities and countryside. as misadventure follows misadventure, each character reveals his true self by giving his own conflicting view of the incidents, places, and people encountered along the way. The result is an entertaining and realistic picture of that wonderful age when gentlemen duelled, ladies swooned, and servants rose from rags to riches.

... continued from the previous page..

... the vermin that drops from the rags of the nasty drab that vends this precious mixture, under the respectable denomination of milk-maid.

All the people I see, are too much engrossed by schemes of self-interest or ambition, to have any room left for sentiment or friendship ( hmm, not much changed there either then - ed ) - Even in some of my old acquaintance, those schemes and pursuits have obliterated all traces of our former connexion - Conversation is reduced to party disputes and illiberal altercation - Social commerce, to formal visits and to card-playing ( read television - ed ) - If you pick up a diverting original by accident, it may be dangerous to amuse yourself with his oddities - He is generally a tartar at bottom; a sharper, a spy, or a lunatic...... ( oh lordy, these echos! - ed).....

Final part next up so tune back soone, ye bloggers...

M St.M

Transcribed from Tobias Smollett's " Humphry Clinker " - a hilarious 18th C account of life in the grand metropolis.

***

With the sharp sensitivity of " a man without skin" Tobias Smollett humorously attacked the frivolity and foibles of eighteenth-century England. Humphrey Clinker is his mirthful tale of a tour by coach and four through cities and countryside. as misadventure follows misadventure, each character reveals his true self by giving his own conflicting view of the incidents, places, and people encountered along the way. The result is an entertaining and realistic picture of that wonderful age when gentlemen duelled, ladies swooned, and servants rose from rags to riches.

**

...continued from part 2, below...

... a circumstance sufficient to turn a Dutchman's stomach, even if his nose was not saluted in every alley with the sweet flavour of "fresh" mackarel, selling by retail - This is not the season for oysters; nevertheless, it may not be amiss to mention, that the right Colchester are kept in slime pits, occasionally overflowed by the sea; and that the green colour, so much admired by the voluptuaries of this metropolis, is occasioned by the vitriolic scum, which rises on the surface of the stagnant and stinking water - Our rabbits are bred and fed in the poulterer's cellar, where they have neither air nor exercise, consequently they must be firm in flesh, and delicious in flavour; and there is no game to be had for love or money.

It must be owned, the Covent-garden affords some good fruit; which, however, is always engrossed by a few individuals of over-grown fortune, at an exorbitant price ( nothing changed there then - ed ), so that nothing else than the refuse of the market falls to the share of the community; and that is distributed by such filthy hands, as I cannot look at it without loathing. It was but yesterday that I saw a dirty barrow-bunter in the street, cleaning her dusty fruit with her own spittle; and, who knows but some fine lady of St. Jame's parish might admit into her delicate mouth those very cherries, which had been rolled and moistened between the filthy, and perhaps ulcerated chops of a St. Giles huckster - I need not dwell upon the palid, contaminated mash, which they call strawberries; soiled and tossed by greasy paws through twenty baskets crusted with dirt; and then presented with the worst milk; thickened with the worst flour, into a bad likeness of cream; but the milk itself should not pass unanalysed, the produce of faded cabbage leaves and sour draff, lowered with hot water, frothed with bruised snails, carried through the streets in open pails, exposed to foul rinsings discharged from doors and windows, spittle, snot, and tobacco quids from foot passengers, over-flowings from mud carts, spatterings from coach wheels, dirt and trash chucked into it by rogeish boys for the joke's sake, the spewings of infants, who have slabbered in the tin measure, which is thrown back in that condition among the milk for the benefit of the next customer; and finally, the vermin that drops from the rags of the nasty drab that vends this precious mixture, under the respectable denomination of Milk Maid.....

TBC in Part Three - do tune back ye bloggers for yet more niceties of olde London town.

Transcribed from Tobias Smollett's " Humphry Clinker " - a hilarious 18th C account of life in the grand metropolis.

Some things ne'r change.

***

With the sharp sensitivity of " a man without skin" Tobias Smollett humorously attacked the frivolity and foibles of eighteenth-century England. Humphrey Clinker is his mirthful tale of a tour by coach and four through cities and countryside. as misadventure follows misadventure, each character reveals his true self by giving his own conflicting view of the incidents, places, and people encountered along the way. The result is an entertaining and realistic picture of that wonderful age when gentlemen duelled, ladies swooned, and servants rose from rags to riches.

**

....continued from the previous post;

... This is the agreeable potion, extolled by the Londoners, as the finest water in the universe - As to the intoxication potion, sold for wine, it is a vile, unpalatable and pernicious sophistication, balderdashed with cyder, corn spirit and the juice of sloves. In an action at law, laid against a carman for having staved a cask of port, it appeared from the evidence of the cooper, that there were not above five gallons of real wine in the whole pipe, which held above a hundred, and even that had been brewed and adulterated by the merchant at Orporto.

**

TBC in Part 3 - tune back soon ye bloggers!