We sat back triumphant, but exhausted and overwhelmingly drunk
in a small public bar by Waterloo Station
full of football supporters letting off steam
after their team had lost in the capital again
and part of our collective soul didn’t care,
but the devilish, impish, teasing part thought,
we could wind them up after winning our own battle
with all that sits on the coloured squares and overpriced
bars and a tin of beer outside Holloway Jail.
Our own private Monopoly Board challenge.
February 17th 1996 and the first train up from Salisbury
for four lads determined to beat the hell out of a game
devised to lose a complete day in, was underway.
The tedium of the journey, second class solitude
with nothing to do but talk loudly and with only one
person to annoy, unsuited and unaware of the dangers
we would face and the mystery of trying to fathom
exactly what was free parking in London
and could we drink a beer on it, was lost
to this most unsuitable of railroad companions.
With a breakfast eaten with savage, drooling desire
and the pages we didn’t need of the A to Z of London used to mop
up the spilled shred of tea and scattered sugar,
the intrepid adventurers set off to prove that life may hold a Monopoly
but it doesn’t have to make you bored.
A tin of beer opened with the express permission of the owner,
too early to find a pub on the only square
in South London and far too easy to think
of Roman Legions travelling between Dover and Holyhead
saluting us for our brave heroics to come.
A to Z in hand, the day planned for weeks in advance
but open to change should the need arise to
outrun ourselves at make sure the prize was won.
The spectres that haunt the Whitechapel road
and the Blind Beggar holding out his hat for the chance of change
his Scottie dog pawing at his dog bowl.
The taste of my favourite part of London
greeting me like an old friend out for a day
in which I had roamed trying to solve a riddle
that was not mine to crack.
I mentally raise a toast to Thomas Edison on Northumberland Avenue,
and slightly slur my theories of Sherlock Holmes’ latent drug abuse.
Try to reform in Pall Mall,
a small snifter to a future sat in Cambridge, laughter ensues.
The divided nature of the Euston Road,
Pentonville in the East, A great grandfather several generations
past whose home and his painting only now exist in fragments
in the west.
Running, half cut down Bow Street as time knocked on.
Finding nothing of interest in Vine Street, missed high fives all round.
The impossible nature of Nelson looming down on me
as I think of kismet and writing a Fleet Street Column.
Wishing that instead of Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street
or even Marylebone Railway Stations, how much cooler
to raise my glass to the lost brown bear.
Stranded in the strand as the day wears on
and perhaps the best pint with an Angel in North London.
All things were achieved and realised upon that day,
Never repeated, never again conquered.
A day in which a square became a hero
as a dragon was slain and four weary warriors
headed back to boredom and with desperate thought
of doing the New York board.
With money collected, some with reticence, some amused to Hell
and back, the respite centre in Salisbury was furnished with a cheque
and regaling tales of how we asked permission to
drink freely on the only free-parking space in
London.
Ian D. Hall. 2015