Seeking a nest in Forest Gate ...

We'd just seen the flat in Forest Gate - Natalie from Foxons had shown us round - I'd heard cautionary stories about Foxons from Jay, over brimmers of Rioja, but Natalie seemed straight forward and pleasant enough - she spoke courteously to the Polish tenants - she'd answered Anne's searching questions as best as she was able - she'd arrived early in her sleek European car - 

Forest Gate, said Paul, was coming up - Cross Rail was on its way - artisan bread was for sale in the shops near the tube station - Anne had read somewhere that Forest Gate would be the new Hoxton - 

We called in for tonics at The Forest Tavern - I felt immediately at home inside this calm space, with its distressed walls and dream pop on the juke box - I glanced at the menu - perhaps one day I would try the Game Terrine - 

We sat, with our tonics, our minds fizzing with plans - I thought of the post cards from Lublin I'd seen in the flat, the words of the Polish wife - so, you seek to make a nest for your daughter -

The night cafe on the way to Trafalgar Square on New Years Eve ...

On our way to Trafalgar Square on New Years Eve, we stopped for a cappuccino - the cafe shone with a feverish light -every surface sparkled - mirrors reflected a hyperreal interior - everything I saw pulsed with meaning - 

Two young couples sat next to us - they were speaking Italian - the girls had dark hair and bold, shapely, bodies - their boys were lean, with slim brown wrists - 

Behind the counter, a man cut slivers from a cylinder of glistening meat - there were photographs of celebrities upon the walls - a platinum blonde looked over her shoulder - a young god smouldered - 

We'd been let through crowd barriers to enter this world - I thought of paintings of night cafés I'd seen - 

What would Hopper, or Van Gogh, make of this place, I wondered - 

I could see the haunting image, even then - the strange light, the figures picked out against the darkness - 

Dreams of Limehouse ...

I had often wanted to visit Limehouse - it has featured in some of my more unsettling dreams - 

There, in those moonlit dreamscapes, I see the dripping walls of Thameside warehouses - gas jets flare in blind alleys - Nayland Smith is being stalked by Dacoits - Sherlock Holmes, disguised as a lascar, slips into an opium den - a cursed Elizabethan sailor broods within a slave ship - I hear soul stirring shanties in candle lit dens - one of Walsingham's agents takes a wherry for Deptford - 

But before we walked down Narrow Street, we had cappuccinos and croissants in Cafe Vesuvio - young mothers sat with their children - they'd just come from the gym, with their swim wear and badminton rackets - they were sinewy glossy sirens - their beautiful apartments overlooked the river - their husbands hunted numbers in glass towers -

Looking upstream, from Victoria Wharf, I saw Sci Fi ziggurats, glinting in the January sun - I vowed to ascend The Shard - a Thames Clipper churned the turbulent river - 

Yet Narrow Street still reminded me of my dreams - there were the warehouses, with their mysterious facades - there was the sad shell of a Victorian tavern - above me the vapour trail of a jet marked the sky - there, flickering in the air, whispering or singing to me, were all the ghosts who'd filled my Limehouse dreams -

The Senior Railcards and the diving board ...

I sometimes tell Richard that he is becoming a loveable curmudgeon - he relishes his role as a wary gaffer - he'll sip a taster in The Hole in the Wall with narrowed eyes - he'll take to task the manager of the Albert Road Tesco for his poor stock control -  

I wonder if I, too, am assuming the mantle of a silvery haired gaffer - I sigh over newspapers, I linger over carrot cake - I'm one of the crocks in the gym - I am familiar with the word concession - 

Recently I acquired a senior railcard - Don didn't ask me for proof of age - I'll trust you he said -

I noticed that there was a small library in the ticket hall - you could skim through a foxed Wilbur Smith whilst you waited for your train -

On our way to see Sophie, we had to show our senior railcards to the crisp guard - Richard was with us - our railcards were fanned out on the table between the seats - 

I remembered my dad saying that getting older was like going up the steps of a high diving board, by the side of a swimming pool - you watch other chaps going up the steps - and then it's your turn to jump off - 

New Years Eve,Trafalgar Square, 2013

I always feel uneasy about New Years Eve - it seems to be such a significant festival, worthy of wild feasts or austere ceremony - I think of shaggy haired shamans, standing motionless within stone circles, of cathedrals filled with candlelight -

Too often, though, I have cowered before Jools Holland's Hootenanny - I spent the Millennium, skulking on the sofa, laid low by a bad cold -

This year, we went to Trafalgar Square - we went the year before - the year before that, Jay invited us to Percy Agget's house - there was music - musicians from King Toadfish and the All-Weather Riders played bold songs - Jay was on keyboards - I met Frances - she writes spare beautiful poetry - later, she sent me her book of poems, Myne -

We caught the Number 8 bus to Holborn, glorying in our top deck seats - two black girls whooped and drew hearts on the steamed up windows - two young men in multi coloured suits got off at Shoreditch with their chic gang -

Our route took us through The City, past glass towers, through the dark canyons between sombre banks - I heard the hissing of reptiles as I passed - I looked out and saw St Pauls - the splendid floodlit dome caught my eye -

We walked under brilliant electric stars in Convent Garden - cycle rickshaws carried tipsy girls - as we approached Trafalgar Square, we heard the noise of an immense crowd - Metropolitan Police in high vis jackets lined the steps of St Martins in the Fields -

As midnight approached, the crowd swelled in size like a vast stirring animal - it started to rain - fat icy raindrops fell upon our rugs - we spoke to a man from Toronto - have you heard of our wife beating, coke sniffing, mayor?

At midnight, there was a roar from the crowd - fireworks blazed across the sky - the streets echoed with the sound of the joyous explosions - 

I felt, all around me, the barely constrained power of the crowd - I imagined it rising up, like a noble tide, sweeping away all hideous injustices - 

The sofa in the Regent's Canal ...

On the second day of the New Year, we walked to Limehouse, along the Regent's Canal, from Roman Road to the Thames - we were staying with Sophie and Paul - Kenzo had flown in from Tokyo the day before - 

When we left the canalside apartment block, we paused for a moment on the pavement, just before the bridge - I could just glimpse the leafless trees of Victoria Park - 

A young creative jumped onto his racing bike - the bike was like a sleek insect - a Bangladeshi grandad waited for the lights  to change - a bus went by with its pale cargo - 

As we made our way along the tow path, I stared shamelessly into the tiny windows of the narrow boats - I imagined myself living on board one of these louche craft, living a careless, disordered, life -

I'd listen to my friends telling stories of videoke bars in Cagayan de Oro, or of fell walking in Cumbria - I'd throw empty beer bottles into the water - a girl with a bronze bracelet around her wrist might play a guitar - 

Then we saw a sofa, floating almost submerged in the dark canal - there it was, drifting very slowly towards a lock - I wondered who'd thrown it in, and why - 

Perhaps it was the man we'd seen urinating and cursing at the same time into his fiery mobile - I need my money - now - I'm 59 years old - I'm not a fucking immigrant - he'd loped away, towards The Palm -

Or perhaps, like in Susan Hill's terrifying novella, we were inside a painting, but one painted by a surrealist, not a black magician - 

Vivid fruits would fall from strange trees - orchids would flower on the tower cranes - we would soon see a lounge lizard, lolling on the sofa, drinking green cocktails, bright fish darting around his pointy shoes - 

The Good Neighbour of Lavender Hill ...

Sophie invited us to the Battersea Arts Centre on New Years Eve - she'd produced the Christmas Show, The Good Neighbour - we would stay in the flat overlooking the Regents Canal, dwellers for a while in one of London's many worlds -

We got off the train at Clapham Junction - I thought of all times I'd gone past this station, glimpsed it at night, say, from a silent carriage, lost in some sad reverie, or early in the morning, on my way to a shiny conference - 

We emerged from a teeming passage into Battersea - a slim black girl guarded the changing rooms in Debenhams - I was awestruck by the wonderful lingerie - 

Leaving the store, we walked up Lavender Hill - soon we were inside the splendid marble halls of the Arts Centre - I saw Pete, who looks like the executioner in Game of Thrones - 

Sophie joined us for lunch in the cafe - all around us sat charming infants with their elegant glossy parents - they were there for the matinee performance of The Good Neighbour - 

Soon after two o'clock, we assembled in the old Council Chamber to be divided up into groups - we were in group number six - this was promenade theatre Sophie told us - 

We met George Neighbour, perched, trembling, on top of a tall step ladder - a gorgeous siren tempted him down the ladder, to tell us his story - 

George only knew that he was afraid of windows, ladders and heights - all the rest was a scary blank, a void he wanted us to help him fill - 

So, we set off, up broad stone staircases, along narrow twisting corridors, led by our guide, a slender dark haired woman - she led us into a series of rooms, each one surreal and beautiful - before the door of each room, she would pause, smiling her watchful yet dazzling smile, inviting one of us to lock gently upon the door - 

I loved the Momentarium - in a dimly lit space, hundreds of glass jars were filled with water, some full, some half or a third full, some empty - water dripped into the jars from above our heads - a gentle man in a long brown coat explained that each jar was a life, each drop of water a memory, a precious experience -

Jerky poignant home movies played on the surface of the cloth from which the drops of water fell - you saw dads with 1970's haircuts, toddlers on trikes, paddling pools in tiny gardens - my heart ached when I saw such artless scenes - 

Another room, containing a smooth grey tree, was filled with smoke - stringed instruments played sad music - boxes full of secrets were piled up against cob webbed walls - 

We were given a slip of paper, on which to write something precious we had lost - Anne drew a little doll - I drew a little heart - 

Later, we entered a room full of talking light bulbs - crackling voices warned us of the dangers of electricity -

The humming of bees led us inside a beehive - we sat, cross legged, next to a Japanese woman who was dressed as a bee - we heard her story, how she'd sacrificed herself for the good of the hive - 

We met up with our fellow voyagers in the Council Chamber - we shared our thoughts about George from the clues we had uncovered in different dreams - 

The story was a haunting one - George Neighbour had been a chef, working in Arding and Hobbs, an Edwardian department store, now the Debenhams we'd visited, worlds ago - 

There'd been a fire, which swept through the building, consuming bowler hats and corsets - passersby had seen George appear at an upper window, with two shopgirls -

George had guided the girls to a long ladder, helped them onto it, and waited until they were safe on the pavement - but then the fire had eaten away the floor, and he was taken by the flames - 

Your'e a ghost - the children cried out - I know who I am cried George - my eyes brimmed with tears -