The Tory poster campaign for the 2005 General Election was hardly subtle:
Wherever you went across the country, two months before the expected (and eventually declared) date, these posters appeared. All with the same “closed question”: Are you thinking what we’re thinking? Fortunately Michael Howard’s attempt at mood-management didn’t work. The Tories had bought in Lynton Crosbie, who had been the political strategist for John Howard’s four election victories in Australia. Britain was thus introduced to the dubious benefits of “dog-whistle politics”.
In 2013 the Tories are just as desperate — and even more blatant. There’s a short, bottom-of-the-page piece by Marie Woolf in the Sunday Times. Well, they had to squeeze it in somewhere: much of the rest of the issue is devoted to “Maggie Thatcher still dead! Official!” Here it comes:
Poor countries should be paid to process asylum seekers who are trying to get to Britain to stop them “disappearing” onto our streets, says a plan published by a group of influential right-wingers within the Conservative party.
Now Malcolm reckons he’s read that opener at least three time — and still doesn’t “get it”. Why the “disappearing” bit? If people immigrate, and then are indistinguishable within the whole population, have they not assimilated successfully?
The rest of the pieces is very much “tell me the same old story” — all the predictable terms are there: the Tory fret over a surge in support for the UK Independence party, the need for harsh immigration controls; deportees should appeal only after they being deported …
There has to be a Wizard behind the mask of this Oz nonsense. Step forward the plan’s begetter:
Julian Brazier MP for Canterbury [who] claims that housing, schooling, the welfare state and even the sewerage system are creaking under the strain of immigration.
Excuses! Excuses!
Gids Osborne has been baling the failure of his economics of the previous government (until that one was laughed down), the weather, snow, floods, drought, the royal wedding, the Olympics and anything else that came to mind. That set the pattern:
Now the housing crisis in the South-East (and it is mainly in the South-East and where the bourgeoisie buy their second and holiday homes) is the fault of immigrants! Not, as most realists thought, because the privatising of social housing has been a disaster.
The schools crisis is not because Gove pulled the plug on the previous government’s plans — no, no! it’s all down to immigrants who don’t speak English.
The social security system is also stretched because of the number of immigrants who are unemployed … three of the top five nationalities for settling in Britain — Bangladeshis, Nigerians and Pakistanis — “have well above average unemployment rates”. Actually, as other statistics show that’s more a function of social class than ethnic origin. And what are the determinants of class — and so employability? Education, perchance, for one?
The blockage in the pipes
Sitting on the 299 bus, en route to a liquid lunch at Ye Olde Cherry Tree in Southgate, it was the Lady in Malcolm’s Life who spotted the killer: the creaking of the sewerage system.
Before Malcolm finishes with Kent (see the two previous posts) he would take a Sandwich.
To be absolutely correct, it was a chilli con carne and a couple of pints of Doom Bar (the Abbot had run out as Malcolm arrived). And it was at the Crispin: an excellent joint, even on a chilly (no pun intended) day.
The town
Sandwich is where the Kentish Stour reaches the sea. Well, it did once upon a time, when this one one of the Cinque Ports — now there’s a couple of miles of marshes before the sea proper. It is, though, one of those places where the yachties sport their plastic navies.
Something that wikipedia seems not to know
Sandwich somehow ended up with three parish churches: St Clement’s, St Mary’s and St Peter’s. By 1948 this was an unaffordable excess, so the three parishes were amalgamated, and — in due course — two of the churches went out of regular use. The one that interests Malcolm here is St Peter’s.
When the plague hit Sandwich in the Elizabethan period, St Peter’s was designated as the strangers’ church. The “strangers” were Dutch Huguenots, and that they were segregated suggests that English xenophobia was then as now. Anyway, that explains (allegedly) the odd Lowlands cap atop the tower (which fell down in 1661, taking with it the original south aisle — and leaving the eccentric plan we have today).
What wikipedia fails to note is that St Peter’s was where, on 27 September 1759, the corset-maker Tom Paine married Mary Lambert. Paine’s corset-shop went bust the following year, and the Paines moved to Margate, where Mary promptly took sick and died. Paine forwent his corset-manufacturing and adopted the line-of-business of Mary’s family — collecting taxes and excise. That was, at first, a more successful venture: he ended up as exciseman in Lewes, in Sussex; and became the equivalent of a shop-steward for his fellow excisemen, writing pamphlets in their interest. A further business failure, a failed second marriage, and Paine was off to America and fame.
St Peter’s has a nice graphic of the history of the church, and includes the marriage (as right).
A family history
In the nave (that’s the southern of the two remaining colonnades) we find the organ — apparently St Peter’s was very forward in gutting such an appliance of science. Close by is one of those delightful memorial tablets which tells quite a tale. The text reads:
In a VAULT on the outside of this Wall are deposited the
remains of KATHERINE HARVEY, youngest Daughter
of SAMUEL HARVEY Esq. and KATHERINE his Wife,
who on the eve of her intended Marriage was suddenly
attacked with the alarming symptoms of a rapid decline
which closed her prospects of earthly felicity, separated
her from all family and endearing connexions and
terminated her existence in this World by removing
her to a better on the 28th day of May, 1807, aged 23 years.
Likewise were removed into the same Vault the remains of ANN ISABELLA the wife of Lieut Col: HARVEY only Son of SAMUEL and KATHERINE HARVEY and Daughter of WILLIAM PINDER Esq of the Island of Barbadoes, who also died of a decline on the 4th day of Feb 1807, in the 28th Year of her age, leaving issue one son.
Let the young and the cheerful learn from hence,
that sublunary happiness is vain and uncertain,
And that only beyond the Grave true toys are to be found.
ALSO to the Memory of the above Willm. Maundy Harvey Esq. Lieut. Colonel of the 79th Regiment of Foot, Colonel in the British Army, Brigadier General in the Portuguese Service and a Knight Commander of the Portuguese Order of the Tower and Sword. He died at Sea on his passage home from Lisbon on the 10th of June, 1813, aged 38 years, and was buried in the Atlantic Ocean in Lat 45.37, Long 9.42.
It’s one of the many obscene puns that Bill Shakespeare … err … slipped in. It’s there at the end of Love’s Labours Lost:
Adriano de Armado:I do adore thy sweet grace’s slipper. Boyet [Aside to Dumain]:Loves her by the foot, — Dumain:He may not by the yard.
You don’t get it? Well, try the Wycliff Bible version of Genesis XVII.11:
Ȝe shulen circumside the flehs of the ferthermore parti of ȝoure ȝeerde.
That Ȝ is the letter ‘yogh’ (read the letter as a ‘jhuh’) and solved the problem implicit in the modern ‘y’ — either a consonant or a vowel, with two very different pronunciations.
If you’re still at a loss, the OED gives the eleventh meaning of “yard” as “the virile member”.
That’s the groundwork done.
So consider why Malcolm was amused by this one:
As seen in the Thomas Becket, 21 Best Lane, Canterbury.
I wish Ed Miliband would drop the phrase “this shower”, and replace it with “this lot”. “Shower” makes him sound like a wartime Spitfire pilot.
Brian Lewis
Pontefract, West Yorkshire
And what precisely is amiss with a sounding like a wartime Spitfire pilot, Mr Lewis? Since the rest of Miliband’s speech was invoking the ghosts of the past in the cause of national unity, of One Nation Labour, it seems fair game.
Yet, Malcolm sees Mr Lewis’s etymological point, which is the authorised version, as endorsed by the Oxford English Dictionary:
shower, n.1
f. A group or crowd (of people). Usu. derogatory, a pitiful collection or rabble. slang.
And gives the earliest citation as:
1942 G. Kersh Nine Lives Bill Nelson ii. 13 I’ve seen him with some of the lousiest showers of rooks you ever saw in your life.
Kersh
That would be Gerald Kersh, one of the more extreme characters on the fringes of British literary life from the 1930s. The novel cited there is The Nine Lives of Bill Nelson, written when Kersh was — or wasn’t — working for the Army Film Unit.
His best-known (even most notorious) novel was Night and the City from 1938, which pioneered a particular kind of anti-hero. Harry Fabian is a Soho (that’s London’s Soho) wide-boy, who operates any rackets he can, poses as an American song-writer (with, alas, an unconvincing accent and scanty knowledge of his topic or his artists), and eventually sells off his girl-friend into prostitution. That would make it mere sexploitation, except that Kersh has an eye for squalor and strikes a totally-different tone to the glitz and pseudo-glamour of the American pulp:
Bagrag’s Cellar is a dragnet through which the undercurrent of night-life continually filters. It is choked with low organisms, pallid and distorted, unknown to the light of day, and not to be tolerated in healthy society. It is on the bottom of life; it is the penultimate resting place of the inevitably damned. Its members comprehend addicts to all known crimes and vices …
Kersh sold the film-rights of Night and the Cityfor $40,000, and Jules Dassin directed Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney in a London setting. Since Dassin was on the McCarthyite black-list, the film had numerous difficulties. Even so, it has risen from obscurity, is widely recognised as a prime example of English noir, and IMDb rates it as 8/10. The Finns didn’t like it, and it was banned for fifteen years.
Irwin Winkler’s 1992 remake, translated to New York, with Robert de Niro and Jessica Lang, is late-night TV movie fodder, and nowhere in the same league.
Partridge
Although a devoted admirer of all-things OED, Malcolm knows that for vocabulary dredged from the lower depths Eric Partridge is your only man, and the editions of his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English the authority. Here we find illumination:
5. In what a shower!: army c[atch].p[hrase]. directed at members of another unit: since 1919. ‘Some of the lousiest showers of rooks you ever saw’ (Gerald Kersh, Bill Nelson, 1942). L[aurie]. A[tkinson]. notes the phrase’s prob. origin in shower of shit from Shropshire: Londoners’ early C.20. Reinforcement by alliteration. What a shower!, or the derive. it’s showery!, was in the RAF, ca. 1930-50, a c.p. ‘addressed to one who has just made a bad mistake’ (Partridge, 1945).
Malcolm therefore disagrees with Mr Lewis. Knowing the full Salopian version of the term adds extra spice.
A speculation
If the expression has military origins (which seems likely), and was — hypothetically, like much else — imported and borrowed from military service, then there is another possible approach.
It amounts to Oswestry.
In 1915 the Army took over Park Hall, just outside the town of Oswestry (which itself is close to falling out of Shropshire and into Wales). It became one of the main initial training depots for the infantry. The soldiery, especially if they were away from the big cities for the first time, were none too chuffed about Oswestry: it was a long way from home, rural if not rustic, isolated, lacked what they saw as basic amenities (booze and … female company), and it rained a lot.
By one of those mysteries that might not be too hard to explain, a conflagration destroyed Oswestry Camp soon after Armistice Day, 1918. Only when the Second Unpleasantness came along was the site re-occupied.
Even after that, the dreaded “call-up” papers might arrive, summoning callow youths to Oswestry. Not that this was a far worse option than, say, Catterick or Aldershot, but the odour prevailed. The precipitation of Shropshire might not, therefore, be merely Reinforcement by alliteration — the Londoner using the term might well know of what he spoke.
One last problem, though
A couple of recent times, when the Lady in his Life and Malcolm were frequenting London “gastro-pubs”, there appeared on the menu “a half-Shropshire chicken”. What is never explained the other half of its ancestry.
Today the Lady in Malcolm’s Life and the Pert Young Piece headed off to risk their credit cards against London’s mercantile finest. This is what gets called “retail therapy”.
Malcolm was left, bereft, solitary, and told to have a meal ready by seven p.m.
What’s to do?
Well, down to Highbury and Islington, catch the “Overground” to Wapping, and investigate a couple of boozers in Ratcliff(e) Highway. Wapping station, incidentally, is one of the most likely locations of Execution Dock, where we shall look in shortly
Malcolm’s emotional tie here is his Dear Old Dad, who was a Thames Division copper only a year or two before the picture below. That’s the River Thames police, the oldest official police force in the world. Therefore Wapping Police Station is also the oldest in the world. It’s also another possible site for Execution Dock.
In these degenerate days, it’s merely the Marine Support Unit.
Shiver me timbers, matey!
A couple of doors short of Wapping police station is the Captain Kidd.
Now, don’t get carried away here. Curb your romantic propensities. It’s a bit of contrivance. Despite its venerable appearance — and it was carved out of another of those warehouses and counting houses, the pub dates back all of a couple of decades.
It’s hardly prepossessing from the street: you even have to look for the hanging sign to locate it. You enter by an alley-way, and all is revealed. Which is worth waiting for.
For once the pub interior decorators worked with what they’ve got. The result is more than passable. Banquettes around the wall under non-memorabililia of the eponymous Kidd fore-and-aft. Other tables in the space of the room. A peninsular bar. Those fine windows and the magnificent view of the Upper Pool of London. Slip out the side doors, to the terrace, and it’s even better. It’s a Sam Smith’s house, so Old Brewery Bitter at well-below-London prices. There’s the standard pub menu, too (and, it is rumoured, a restaurant upstairs). All plus points.
The really instructive point is the mixed clientèle. Wapping hasn’t forsaken its working-class roots. The river side of the Highway has the seven-figure apartments with full river views. A bit back are the Peabody Buildings and and the local-authority flats. Both sides of the community seem comfortable here.
A very political pirate
The story of William Kidd is well known: the son of the Greenock manse who went abroad to make his fortune, served King (Billy, since you ask) and country
and Governor Codrington against the French in the Caribbean
and Richard Coote — the earl of Bellomont and newly designated governor of New York and the Massachusetts Bay — against the Dutch in the New York colony.
He had already made some powerful political friends (and, the obverse of that coin, similarly enemies) when he fell in with another conniving Scot, Robert Livingstone, who owned lands and businesses in New York. Livingstone and Kidd and Coote cooked up a scheme, to get London merchant interests to finance a scheme to clean up the piracy of the Indian Ocean, and turn a pretty profit. So Livingstone, Kidd and Coote had their their names on the prospectus, but behind them covertly were the Whig grandees: the earls of Shrewsbury, Orford, and Romney and John Lord Somers.
In April 1696 Kidd left London, kitted out with the potent Adventure Galley. He sailed first to New York, where he recruited some ninety hardened pirates, and then set sail for Madagascar, which was HQ for Indian Ocean pirates. Rather than take on the pirates, Kidd then went north and raided the pilgrims in the Red Sea. he found the pilgrim convoy protected by an Indiaman, and so his scheme was flushed out into the open. Kidd then took his Adventure Galley to prey along the Indian coast. Those pirates in Kidd’s crew were less than satisfied with the results, so far, of their efforts; and Kidd seems to have been threatened with mutiny. Somehow he laid out and killed a gunner, William Moore, with a metal-banded barrel. This would have consequences.
Back in Madagascar Kidd was in full league with the local pirates. He had a bit of luck taking half a dozen ships — though only two were French, and so covered by his privateering licence. By now the East India Company, under pressure from the Mughals, wanted Kidd’s head. Influence was peddled back in London, and Kidd was an outlaw. Coote, in New York, was told to lay hands on Kidd when he showed up.
Nemesis
Kidd retraced his outward voyage, first via the Caribbean, where he discovered he was on the Most Wanted list, then along the east coast of the Americas, down-sizing his crew and depositing his considerable winnings (just where is one of the great treasure-hunting myths and legends). He retained just enough to tempt Coote into a deal. Coote knew which side his bread was buttered: he arrested Kidd, and sent him (and some remaining loot) to London. The rest of Kidd’s wealth (about £6,000) was requisitioned by Coote as “expenses”, and went to buy land in Greenwich Village.
In London Kidd was approached by the Tories, now firmly in power, to peach on his former Whig backers. He refused (presumably because he wasn’t prepared to annoy anyone at this stage). The Whig lords, who stood too close for comfort to charges of treason, quietly let Kidd go to trial. Kidd was found guilty of piracy, and the murder of William Moore. About all that was remarkable about this stitch-up of a trial is that Kidd’s privateering documents had gone missing, and were turned up only in the last century. Those documents wouldn’t have saved Kidd, but their absence goes to show that someone in authority had his card marked.
At Execution Dock on 23 May 1701 Kidd was swung from the gallows. The rope broke. Its replacement worked a treat.
Once upon a time, when the world was young, the Lady in his Life and Malcolm would resort to the Cherry Tree occasionally.
Then it became one of those steak bars where the beer was fizz and the steaks were sliced off a elderly elephant.
Today, after many years and for other reasons, she and he had to pass the door.
Initial impressions were mixed. Clearly the joint has been tidied up. As always, this means a decent pub has the sitting area projected back in time a century or so (this involves furnishings and fittings from a decayed saddlery and/or blacksmith), while the serving area takes note of electronic payments and the need for a basic wine list.
In short, this is now branded as one of Mitchells and Butlers’ Vintage Inns. Since M&B (itself a rebranding of Bass) is one of those notorious PubCo combines, say no more.
And yet …
The initial impression was favourable. Three real ales on pump: London Pride, Mad Goose and a Hawkshead — promising stuff (Malcolm would manage two of the three. He has a thing about “blond beer”).
The Lady needed feeding, so another revelation: a decent (and well-priced) day-time menu. Wash that down with a competent Pinot Grigio from the short, but adequate wine-list, and we are definitely winning.
The Cherry Tree will hardly feature a CAMRA “must-see” recommendation (though, perhaps it should). The beerintheevening crowd will continue to scorn it. Tough. They are missing out on what may yet save the English suburban boozer.
What makes the difference is that someone is making the effort, in food and drink. And even a bit of atmosphere.
By now it was pushing towards evening. Reunion with the Lady in his Life was due, and Malcolm was mellow.
There really were only a few trivialities left to report.
More fodder. More drink
Nothing much to say about that. Islington is stuffed full of eateries and drinkers. Some quite interesting.
You really need to venture out of Islington Green to find the better watering holes (The Bull, in Upper Street, is none too distant and there are several in the Liverpool and Caledonian Roads). If barking dogs (and by this stage, Malcolm’s feet were killing him) dissuade you from extended movement, there’s always the Camden Head in … err … Camden Passage.
This was where, allegedly, the urinal wall first featured the classic graffiti exchange:
— My mother made me a homsexual. — If I gave her the wool, would she do the same for me?
The Camden Head
Malcolm has been coming here, off-and-on, since the later ’60s. It remains an unreconstructed Victorian gin-palace, and is well avoided at crunch times (which means weekends and later evenings). The clientele tends to be young, trendy, affluent and loud. Yet, choose your moment, and all is well.
On this occasion, with just half-an-hour to himself (the Lady in his Life was still to be met on the other side of the Green) Malcolm found space in a corner.
Inevitably, on the pump was Sharp’s Doom Bar, a decent — if unexciting 4% bitter. It’s everything one would expect as a massed produced item (it’s absolutely everywhere!) from the Molsom/Coors stable. It appeals to the Pert Young Piece. Say no more.
One can usually do better; and Malcolm reckons he did.
Still, it started a train of thought.
The meeting with the Lady in his Life was at Brown’s, an attempt at a bistro atmosphere and so very popular with the yummy-mummy and media wannabes of Islington. It’s also an easy place to retire and eat. And, also also, right next door to Waterstone’s bookshop.
One by-product of the Doom Bar phenomenon is that Cornish beers (or, to be more exact, brews branded from Cornwall) have become commonplace in London, and further afield. Some of them are very good stuff. Malcolm goes, happily, for a couple in particular:
St Austell Proper Job
This is a step up from 4.2% Tribute, itself no slouch.
The extra gravity (this one comes in at 4.5%) gives it a bit more “elbow”, and the American hoppiness gives it extra sharpness. Sadly, it doesn’t turn up as often as it should, but the Nicholson’s houses across London seem to have Tribute as a regular.
Which is no bad thing.
Skinner’s
This is a smaller brewery, based in Truro, and its products don’t get the coverage they deserve. Not, one suspects, because of lack of demand: more of supply.
The one to look for is Cornish Knocker, a 4.5% golden ale. Get past the “funny” beer pump clip (these are an omnipresent menace), imbibe slowly, and allow some complex flavours to emerge.
The “quaffing” session-beer from Skinner’s is Betty Stogs. Again, the label is unnecessarily “advanced”: the legend is that Betty was a Cornish trollop, who one morning found the pixies had taken pity on her neglected child, cleaned him up — and so Betty became a reformed character. What we have is a 4% ale, again with that complex flavour. By the look of it, Betty has been given a recent image social upgrade of late (see below).
Finally: home to roost
One of the joys of ending the evening in Islington is the 43 bus runs regularly, and all the way home to Muswell Hill.
Coming up the Archway Road, normally a noxious exhaust-filled chasm, there was a superb autumnal sky, egg-shell blue with radiant shocking-pink con-trails.
Heading towards the City, Smithfield is not the best prospect for a Saturday pub lunch. There are, indeed, some decent joints around here. The Fullers’ house, the Butcher’s Hook and Cleaver, makes an effort. Similarly the Fox and Anchor, which is most definitely for the upwardly mobile. Yesterday, though, the pubs that were open seemed to be hosting wedding parties.
Smithfield itself, the old meat market, is definitely worth including in any stroll of these parts. The whole site has been a running sore between developers and conservationists for many year. Our City Fathers would like nothing better than to clear the site and shove up yet more anonymous multi-stories of office space. It looks, though, as if the conservationists may have won.
The east end of the site is currently a gaping hole for the construction of Crossrail, so we shall probably have a mega-corporative hive imposed there. Only a total philistine (which adequately defines much of the City of London, and all developers) would fail to see the potential of the Grand Avenue:
The old girl is a bit rough for now — this is still a working building. She’d scrub up well. Think what has happened in Covent Garden (now grossly over-populated with rubber-necking tourists and a few genuine shoppers). Glass in either end of the Grand Avenue. Encourage a cafe-culture to develop. Whoopie-doo! Either side, where the carnivore business is done, would be prime for redevelopment of the retail-therapy kind. Just keep the ironwork. And the iconic clock.
Tower Bridge and the Bridge House
After a quick sidestep to Barbican Station, it’s the Circle Line to Tower Hill. Shufty round the corner into Minories and there’s the RV1 bus waiting at its terminus.
Were there a H2G2 award for simply the most useful conveyance around touristic London, the RV1 should qualify for the play-offs.
Start at the back of the Tower. Over Tower Bridge. Right down Tooley Street, past London Bridge Station. Nipping as close as dammit to the Globe Theatre and Tate Modern. Back of the National Theatre, the Royal Festival Hall, and a view of the Great Gerbil Wheel. Waterloo Station. Back over the river on Waterloo Bridge. Somerset House. And so to Covent Garden. Or do the whole thing in reverse.
Meanwhile, boarding back at Minories, a moment of pity for the bewildered tourist wondering if this was the bus for the Tour Breej, wheech (gestures to suggest the lifting bascules). Yes, indeed, just two stops. But turn around; walk a couple of dozen yards that way and you’ll see it. We’ll be taking the scenic route via Aldgate, so walking gets you there there quicker.
Having almost missed the bus in explaining that, three stops later, the Lady in his Life and Malcolm are once again at the Bridge House, the usual resort.
Who are all these people?
The sheer number of sightseers on and around the Bridge yesterday was staggering. Perhaps the whole Olymics thing has extended the tourist season. Perhaps it was just the “back-to-school” Indian summer of this weekend. Whatever … the place was heaving.
The Bridge House remains the great undiscovered treasure of these parts.
Let’s not tell people, huh? They don’t deserve it.
Somewhere in there, it entered the Folk Revival and Skiffle song-books.
Malcolm’s Saturday peregrination
The Lady in his Life and Malcolm betook themselves on a circular tour. The weather was — to be frank — somewhat mixed. So pubs were going to play a large part in the day.
Bruno
For starters, once through Waterloo and onto the Jubilee Line, heading east, Malcolm was pleased to note an Olympics “volunteer” deep into S.J.Parris’s Prophecy, the middle of her three Giordano Bruno frolics (and, in Malcolm’s recollection, arguably, the best). Those three have now completed their voyage from Malcolm’s guilt pile to being shelved in smug satisfaction. In the end, he delighted in a head-long rush to complete the sequence, as far as it goes. There is a glint in Malcolm’s eye whence Stephanie Merritt is heading.
Giordano Bruno was in England for only a short space: April 1583 to October 1585. Merritt/Parris has already mined that for three novels, so time is a-wasting. With Sacrilege we have reached the summer of 1584, which approaches the mid-term of Bruno’s span in England. Either the locale has to be widened, or the sequence self-terminates. At the end of Sacrilege, the femme fatale (and she so nearly was) has debunked to France, taking with her the book of hermetic magic that Bruno craves — and which is now established as the MacGuffin of the sequence. Another thought: to what extent is Merritt/Parris referencing Frances A Yates on this?
By DLR to the Royal Arsenal
Changing from the Jubilee to the Docklands Light Railway was a bit confusing: you have to go down and under to reach Platform 1, and so to the DLR spur past London City Airport, and then under the river to Woolwich.
That brings you to the entrance to Woolwich market. As of now, this is somewhat decayed and downtrodden: we are promised — and there are already signs of — a major regeneration. Whether the pledged £6.6 million is enough seed-money remains to be seen. What would make the difference is the arrival of Crossrail towards the end of the decade. Yet all we have for certain is ambiguous:
Agreement has been reached to build a new ‘station box’ on the Crossrail line through Woolwich, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has announced …
The station box, which could be converted into a complete station in the future, will be privately funded by developer Berkeley Homes under an agreement with the Department for Transport, Transport for London, Crossrail Ltd and Greenwich Council.
Philip Hammond said: “A Crossrail station in Woolwich would make travel to the centre of London quicker and easier and would help bring new investment to the area. I am pleased that we have secured this site for a future station and have reached an agreement to build the ‘box’ for the station at no extra cost to the taxpayer, bringing the benefits of a station in Woolwich a step closer.
We are already one Transport Secretary on from Hammond. A further successor is at least a possibility in the autumn re-shuffle — Justine Greening’s staunch adherence to the ConDem position on the Heathrow third runway could be her coup de grace. There is no honour among Tories in their ambitions and repositionings. We have no firm proposals for Woolwich Crossrail going beyond could be developed and would make travel and would help bring new investment. And Greenwich and Woolwich (Labour majority: 10,153) is not a Tory marginal.
Not to mention that London City Airport (two stops back up the DLR) is coming on nicely for feeder services, that Southend (half an hour in the other direction) has potential for medium-hop and charter services, both — with Crosslink — on direct routes to Heathrow. But who expects an integrated transport policy from this shower?
This may be a mistake
Through Woolwich Market and across the A206 Plumstead Road, into the Royal Arsenal development, and you have crossed a social and cultural divide.
Suddenly there is open space. You have entered mortgaged, aspirant middle-class England. There are enough old structures — some dating back three centuries — to prove antiquity. Vanburgh left his mark here:
So did Hawksmoor:
The development of the Royal Arsenal site has been going since the early last decade. Its completion will be another ten years ahead. At the end it will comprise some 5,000 new homes. The likelihood has to be that this will move the political complexion of the locality — as it is already changing the cultural tilt.
From neglect and ruin (though full of history), an old disused warehouse has been transformed into the wonder and glory that is now the reputed Dial Arch.
Situated in the natural heart of Royal Arsenal Riverside in Woolwich, the original Dial Square building dates from 1720, although an excavation of the site uncovered relics from the time of the Roman occupation! The building itself acted as the gate house for the historic home of British defence and munitions production. Inside, we have a plush and unique style, with exposed brickwork, chandeliers, wooden and stone flooring with fantastically original artwork on the walls.
Oozing charm and rustic character, our picturesque surroundings provide the perfect setting for savouring the hearty, seasonal gastro-pub food on our Menu and the carefully nurtured cask ales and fine hand picked wines gracing our bar.
OK: you’re not convinced, and shouldn’t be.
The Dial Arch is something of a Warren (that, in fact, is its address). There are several “rooms’, all different in style and furnishing. The bar is, for Malcolm’s antediluvian taste, somewhat too glitzy. Service seems (on two experiences) to be excellent. There is a good choice of liquids, including half-a-dozen working beer-engines. Those with exotic tastes seem to be well provided with the fizzy yellow stuff. There is a useful food menu (though whether it is truly “gastro-pub”, Malcolm has no opinion).
Put it like this: the Dial Arch ticks most of Malcolm’s boxes. The Lady in his Life wasn’t displeased, either.
The day that the rains came
Around this time the sky turned inky. There was thunder. There was lightning. There were downpours. Just what a man and his Lady need to extend a stop in a pub.
Eventually, though, it was the stopping train back to London Bridge. Since the storm had taken out the signalling at Cannon Street station, more stopping than usual was involved.
Ignore the carping critics. You can, and will get decent real ale here. The food is at least adequate — though, if you’ve worked through one Nicholson’s menu, you’ve seen them all. The wines list doesn’t flatter, but provides for all except the loftiest palate (to which Malcolm — quantity over quality — has no pretension). It’s the dressed-up basement of an office block. The loos and facilities have been overworked, especially now, towards the end of the tourist season. The service and prices are reasonable, especially so for one of the finest views of the river.
The winter of our discontent
The Lady in his Life and Malcolm were here to meet the Pert Young Piece, who had been to the afternoon matinee of Richard III at the Globe, just along the river-front.
PYP had revelled in the torrential rain: the Globe hasn’t got its drainage right (that’s something of a period feature). Flip-flops are what is needed in a summer cascade, so Pert Young Piece among the groundlings felt she was definitely scoring ankle-deep points against tourists in Manolos.
For the record, Pert Young Piece is becoming an insufferable Bardista, as she happily contrasts Rylance and Kevin Spacey as Dick the Turd. What got her was the Kingdom for a horse! As always, the problem here, as elsewhere in the canon, is getting out from under Olivier: Rylance makes it the regretful lament of a rueful defeated man. In effect: Strewth! I lost life, kingdom … and all because of a horse. Different, but a fair reading.
Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig
Foddered and drenched (internally as externally) we return to base in bourgeois Muswell Hill (No Hawksmoor. No Vanburgh) by the number 43 bus. Humming gently:
My daddy was an engineer, My brother drives a hack, My sister takes in laundry , While the baby balls the jack ; And it don’t look like I’ll ever stop my wandering.
