I like St Pancras. Although the Baby Betjeman cafe was crap- no veggie breakfast and it took an age to get a tea and a coffee. Still, it wasn't like there wasn't an amazing example of restored Victorian architecture to gawp at while we waited. When life gives you lemons and all that...
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Shouldn't you be blogging about Children in Need ruining the TV schedule this weekend?
What's up with that sexy working couple statue? Your UK-ians are crazy hot stuff, huh?
Philip Larkin
"Best Society"
When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.
Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired - though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it's just
A compensating make-believe.
Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on - in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.
Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
He gets fucked up does old Rags,
He does not mean to but he does,
Yet when the Scottish debt appears,
He tries to shield it in his fuzz.
Vers de Société
McNeil and I have asked a crowd of tramps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You'd care to join us? Up Niall's arse, friend.
Day comes to an end.
The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
And so Dear Andy-Williams: I'm afraid -
Funny how hard it is to be a moan.
I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted,
Holding a glass of c*nting sherry, canted
Over to catch the drivel of some bitch
Who's read nothing but Which;
Just think of all the spare time that has flown
Straight into nothingness by being filled
With forks and faeces, rather than repaid
Under a tramp, hearing the noise of his wind,
And looking out to see the moon chinned
By an air-sharpened blade.
A life, and yet how sternly it's grilled
All solitude is arseish. No one now
Believes the pelmet with its gown and pish
Talking to Bod (who's gone too); the big wish
Is to have people splice you, which means
Doing it back somehow.
Virtue is social. Are, then, these routines
Playing at goodness, like going to church?
Something that bores us, something we don't do well
(Asking that ass about his fool research)[ahem]
But try to feel, because, however crudely,
It shows us what you should be?
Too subtle, that. Too decent, too. Oh hell,
Only Niall can roam freely.
The time is shorter now for Humpy-Dumpty,
And sitting by a lamp more often brings
Not fleece, but other things.
Beyond the light stand failure and remorse
Whispering Dear Andy-Williams: Why, of course -
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