The Good Ship

I've spent the last 36 hours laid up in bed feeling terrible. Drifting in and out of consciousness a ridiculous amount of times. I think it's work making me feel like this.

Went for a big ol' walk on Sunday through a nicely quiet city of London in to the lively market at Middlesex Street which I hadn't been down in about 16 years, it hasn't changed much. I walked through the underpass to get to Whitechapel Road but the exit was shut and I ended up walking down Commercial Road then through an estate to Mile End Road I walked past streets that made me feel like there was some kind of community spirit even though they were empty. I thought of what it must've been like during the war, all the kids in the street playing, all the doors unlocked, number 12 a pile of rubble.

I said it sounds romantic, life during the war, and there was an audible gasp of incredulousness and shock from someone because they didn't hear all of what I was saying and took it out of context, twats, they started moaning about the atrociousness of war and losing relatives. I was thinking about the sense of people coming together as a community and looking out for eachother, people still carrying on even though they have lost everything, the spirit and passion, strength and courage, land of hope and glory indeed.

I don't feel English but I love Englishness. Or at least what I deem to be English or more specificaly London. Three bar electric fires in east end council flats, a Nan in a hat from a cracker at christmas watching the Queen's speech on telly. Music blasting from those big houses converted in to flats along the Westbourne Terrace. Fruit squashed underfoot and plastic wrapping blowing across the street after the market has closed. Old British Rail slam door trains to exotic coasts in Essex, Sussex and Kent. The South bank of the Thames between Westminster and London Bridges. Smokey, pokey pubs with tiny pool tables and bent cues. The songs of Peter and Carlos' Albion, the words of Graham Swift's London and Kent in Last Orders.

That's my England, the England of my memories and dreams. Romantic, nostalgic, that warm feeling inside like brandy.

I ended up walking past the Valance Road thinking of the song and on to Brick Lane where they were selling furniture like we had when I was a child and went in to a reverie about the flat I lived in behind the Old Kent Road even though I barley remember it.

I ended up back in Brick Lane later that night after drinking in the Griffin and the Old Blue Last to get salt beef on rye and a steaming cup of tea on which I burnt my tongue.

I walked for over 3 hours that day and when I finally got home sleep was a most welcome friend who I had been fighting stupidly for the previous few nights.