– dark, crisp and sugary but not much to them, so that you couldn’t help taking another and another and another until there was nothing but a dusting of the fine rusty-coloured sugar on the pretty plate and sometimes, as we left, I would run my finger through that. So nice were they that I could almost taste them as we alighted from the train each time at St Pancras.
My sister and I enjoyed our London trips and looking back I think they were quite educational. We took detours to important places such as Madame Tussaud’s before going on to collect the pills from Devonshire Place. Collecting the pills became a minor little thing at the end of a day out. We became good at hailing a taxi as we walked along pavements and took turns walking backwards at busy times. And we learned not to panic if it seemed we were running late, because you didn’t have to wait at a taxi rank, you could hail one almost anywhere (unlike a bus or a train). We (eventually) realized we were expected to give the taxi driver approximately 10 per cent more than the fare, money-wise.
My sister asked a nice-seeming driver what we might be doing to make previous cabbies swear at us when they set usdown. The nice-seeming driver was appalled that we didn’t know about tipping and explained the whole system. We tipped him and he said, ‘Take care, gels’ in the London style, which was a bit different from the driver before who’d called us a pair of fucking bitches. The rule was: 10 per cent unless you have loads of luggage, then 15 per cent, or 20 per cent if you’re foreign. Which I have always adhered to since.
One time we approached Dr Gilbey’s office on Devonshire Place on foot and from a different direction, having been to see the Wallace Collection nearby, which we’d heard about from our mother who described it as ‘a most romantic and sensual collection’. My sister and I hadn’t realized it was going to be a picture gallery and were expecting a small zoo.
On this day we were after a bowl of soup before calling for the pills. We were hungry and running early for once (the Wallace Collection being quicker to look at than the two hours we’d allowed) and we found a small café with high stools along a window-ledge and went inside. The menu was quite unusual to our eyes. My sister said it must be Spanish because of all the unusual things chalked up on a blackboard, including osso buco and a sandwich with pimientos. That and the shiny black hair of the waiters. But they did have cheese on toast and they did have soup (oxtail), so we had one of each. And shared and wished we’d just had two soups, the cheese on toast being like nothing we’d ever seen before – except candle wax – and the bread hardly toasted at all. We learned that Heinz soup is a safe bet in a strange café.
In other words, we learned bits about London (taxis = tipping), about art and culture (Wallace Collection = picture gallery) and about life in general (Heinz soup = safe).
One time, on the outward journey, we were stopped by a nosy and bored policeman before we’d even got on the train atLeicester station and we told a white lie to get rid of him quickly. And that turned out to be the wrong thing to do, though not as wrong as telling the truth would have been. It would have been better to have told darker lies (such as we were meeting someone off the train) or not to have been in the situation in the first place. We told him we were going to London to see our father (which was half untrue). My sister had hidden the pill and zoo money down her sock just in case we got searched.
The policeman didn’t like our attitude, not that we’d been rude but my sister had told him not to worry about us and that had made him worry (it’s always the way), and he asked us to accompany him into an office just off the platform where he made us answer a whole lot of questions about who we were, the purpose of our visit, how old we were, what we were up to. The policeman
My sister and I enjoyed our London trips and looking back I think they were quite educational. We took detours to important places such as Madame Tussaud’s before going on to collect the pills from Devonshire Place. Collecting the pills became a minor little thing at the end of a day out. We became good at hailing a taxi as we walked along pavements and took turns walking backwards at busy times. And we learned not to panic if it seemed we were running late, because you didn’t have to wait at a taxi rank, you could hail one almost anywhere (unlike a bus or a train). We (eventually) realized we were expected to give the taxi driver approximately 10 per cent more than the fare, money-wise.
My sister asked a nice-seeming driver what we might be doing to make previous cabbies swear at us when they set usdown. The nice-seeming driver was appalled that we didn’t know about tipping and explained the whole system. We tipped him and he said, ‘Take care, gels’ in the London style, which was a bit different from the driver before who’d called us a pair of fucking bitches. The rule was: 10 per cent unless you have loads of luggage, then 15 per cent, or 20 per cent if you’re foreign. Which I have always adhered to since.
One time we approached Dr Gilbey’s office on Devonshire Place on foot and from a different direction, having been to see the Wallace Collection nearby, which we’d heard about from our mother who described it as ‘a most romantic and sensual collection’. My sister and I hadn’t realized it was going to be a picture gallery and were expecting a small zoo.
On this day we were after a bowl of soup before calling for the pills. We were hungry and running early for once (the Wallace Collection being quicker to look at than the two hours we’d allowed) and we found a small café with high stools along a window-ledge and went inside. The menu was quite unusual to our eyes. My sister said it must be Spanish because of all the unusual things chalked up on a blackboard, including osso buco and a sandwich with pimientos. That and the shiny black hair of the waiters. But they did have cheese on toast and they did have soup (oxtail), so we had one of each. And shared and wished we’d just had two soups, the cheese on toast being like nothing we’d ever seen before – except candle wax – and the bread hardly toasted at all. We learned that Heinz soup is a safe bet in a strange café.
In other words, we learned bits about London (taxis = tipping), about art and culture (Wallace Collection = picture gallery) and about life in general (Heinz soup = safe).
One time, on the outward journey, we were stopped by a nosy and bored policeman before we’d even got on the train atLeicester station and we told a white lie to get rid of him quickly. And that turned out to be the wrong thing to do, though not as wrong as telling the truth would have been. It would have been better to have told darker lies (such as we were meeting someone off the train) or not to have been in the situation in the first place. We told him we were going to London to see our father (which was half untrue). My sister had hidden the pill and zoo money down her sock just in case we got searched.
The policeman didn’t like our attitude, not that we’d been rude but my sister had told him not to worry about us and that had made him worry (it’s always the way), and he asked us to accompany him into an office just off the platform where he made us answer a whole lot of questions about who we were, the purpose of our visit, how old we were, what we were up to. The policeman
Similar Books
