birthdays of their children. I’ll have to think about that. Or maybe it’s better to do it on impulse. I don’t know how it works, at all. I don’t even know how many numbers there are on a ticket, or what a ticket costs. Will I dare to ask? My heart beats faster at the prospect, even as I sit here alone in my tower, and I cannot tell whether it beats faster with pleasure or with fear.
She thinks of the new things in her life
I’ve done so many things for the first time in the last year or two. Like eating a vegetable samosa in the street on the way back from the Tube station. We were taught that eating in the street was a crime. We weren’t warned specifically against eating vegetable samosas, because they hadn’t been introduced into England at that date, but we were warned against street eating. And I broke the rules.
I have also been into a pub on my own. I suppose I have been into
country pubs on my own, in the past, but always to meet somebody, or to use the Ladies’ Room, or to buy a sandwich. London pubs are very different from those Suffolk village pubs with pink walls and thatched roofs and hanging baskets of flowers and Meals of the Day and Pensioners’ Lunches. Ladbroke Grove pubs are not at all the same. I don’t know why I went in – to test myself, perhaps? Ostensibly, I went in for shelter, after getting off the bus. This was a year or so ago, now. It was pouring with rain, and I hadn’t got an umbrella. It seemed stupid to walk home getting soaked to the skin. So I went into this pub, on the corner. It’s called the Frog and Firkin, God knows why. It was horrible. The smell, the murk, and the people. A desolate conglomeration of desperate folk. I was one of them. This pub was more like a place of refuge than a place of refreshment. Aimless young men with small thin beards, a person of indeterminate sex wearing a baseball cap, a couple of old drunks, a crazed fat girl with a loud laugh. Jelly beans in a plastic container. A message saying
Have a Firkin Good Day
. Cigarette smoke. A man standing by himself at one end of the bar, talking to himself, and occasionally jerking his arm upwards in a meaningless gesture.
I smelt of wet wool. I ordered myself a tomato juice and boldly asked for some Worcester Sauce. I was offered ice. I declined it.
If I’d risked another hundred yards or two in the downpour I could have reached my Health Club and civilization. They do a good coffee in the Health Club. They know who I am in my Health Club, or at least they pretend to know who I am. They read my name off my swipe card and then wish me a good evening. It’s a world away from the Frog and Firkin. I wonder if there are any Health Club members who also frequent the Frog and Firkin?
She thinks of the many peoples of the earth
I realize now that all my life I’ve been an unthinking racist, and that I am one still. I simply cannot get used to all these foreigners in London pubs and on London streets. I don’t expect to see black people buying mineral water in supermarkets, or pints of beer in a public house. (Actually, there was only one black man in the Frog and Firkin – I think the black men drink in the pub on the opposite corner – but
you know what I mean.) Where do they get the money from? They don’t look as though they’ve got jobs. But then I haven’t got a job myself, have I? I’ve never had any money of my own, or I didn’t have until Andrew bought me off. Come to think of it (and I don’t know why I’ve never thought of this before) I never got paid when I stood in or sat in to take classes for members of staff who were off sick. It was just assumed that I would help out. I wasn’t really qualified to do anything but teach fairly basic French, but I used to fill in for Religious Knowledge sometimes, and I often used to invigilate for examinations or superintend evening prep. I even took a PE class once, and I umpired a hockey match or two. But I was never paid. I was like an
She thinks of the new things in her life
I’ve done so many things for the first time in the last year or two. Like eating a vegetable samosa in the street on the way back from the Tube station. We were taught that eating in the street was a crime. We weren’t warned specifically against eating vegetable samosas, because they hadn’t been introduced into England at that date, but we were warned against street eating. And I broke the rules.
I have also been into a pub on my own. I suppose I have been into
country pubs on my own, in the past, but always to meet somebody, or to use the Ladies’ Room, or to buy a sandwich. London pubs are very different from those Suffolk village pubs with pink walls and thatched roofs and hanging baskets of flowers and Meals of the Day and Pensioners’ Lunches. Ladbroke Grove pubs are not at all the same. I don’t know why I went in – to test myself, perhaps? Ostensibly, I went in for shelter, after getting off the bus. This was a year or so ago, now. It was pouring with rain, and I hadn’t got an umbrella. It seemed stupid to walk home getting soaked to the skin. So I went into this pub, on the corner. It’s called the Frog and Firkin, God knows why. It was horrible. The smell, the murk, and the people. A desolate conglomeration of desperate folk. I was one of them. This pub was more like a place of refuge than a place of refreshment. Aimless young men with small thin beards, a person of indeterminate sex wearing a baseball cap, a couple of old drunks, a crazed fat girl with a loud laugh. Jelly beans in a plastic container. A message saying
Have a Firkin Good Day
. Cigarette smoke. A man standing by himself at one end of the bar, talking to himself, and occasionally jerking his arm upwards in a meaningless gesture.
I smelt of wet wool. I ordered myself a tomato juice and boldly asked for some Worcester Sauce. I was offered ice. I declined it.
If I’d risked another hundred yards or two in the downpour I could have reached my Health Club and civilization. They do a good coffee in the Health Club. They know who I am in my Health Club, or at least they pretend to know who I am. They read my name off my swipe card and then wish me a good evening. It’s a world away from the Frog and Firkin. I wonder if there are any Health Club members who also frequent the Frog and Firkin?
She thinks of the many peoples of the earth
I realize now that all my life I’ve been an unthinking racist, and that I am one still. I simply cannot get used to all these foreigners in London pubs and on London streets. I don’t expect to see black people buying mineral water in supermarkets, or pints of beer in a public house. (Actually, there was only one black man in the Frog and Firkin – I think the black men drink in the pub on the opposite corner – but
you know what I mean.) Where do they get the money from? They don’t look as though they’ve got jobs. But then I haven’t got a job myself, have I? I’ve never had any money of my own, or I didn’t have until Andrew bought me off. Come to think of it (and I don’t know why I’ve never thought of this before) I never got paid when I stood in or sat in to take classes for members of staff who were off sick. It was just assumed that I would help out. I wasn’t really qualified to do anything but teach fairly basic French, but I used to fill in for Religious Knowledge sometimes, and I often used to invigilate for examinations or superintend evening prep. I even took a PE class once, and I umpired a hockey match or two. But I was never paid. I was like an
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