Blackberry picking in Whitewebbs is good therapy. North Enfield is usually good for a cricket match and a pint. The away team is a motley bunch. They are drinking pints, smoking weed, and complaining, with some justification, about dubious LBW decisions. Turns out they are from the East End, representing The Camel on Globe Road. A Victorian pub, on a not insignificant road, that I used to cross every day going to work, even before I did the Knowledge. Never heard of it.

Had to look up LBW; sounds like a great gamesmanship ploy. Just don’t get caught; like a pitcher scuffing up the ball in American Baseball. Perfectly OK in my book.

If I ever make it back to London; the East End will be my hideout.

The LBW law is so complicated that most amateur teams like the one I used to play for, and the one charlie watched, play a highly simplified version of it with the benefit of the doubt (and other benefits) given to the batter.

You had to be totally plumb in front of middle stump to be given out LBW in our games; the umpires were always from the batting side.

if you ever see me in england it will be my doppelganger

I do like the Lord Mayor’s Show. Lots of waving, smiling, military bands, horses, beadles, floats, medieval costumes, rifles, muskets, cannons, carriages, and commercial and charitable organizations represented. All branches of the establishment are on parade. And the military youth bands; it’s good to see the children learning discipline, tradition, and common decency. This is cheering me up. You can get a pint, and there’s not too many people about jostling you and trying to convert you. It’s something that people always mean to go to, but don’t. Then, about halfway through, Extinction Rebellion show up, marching in the opposite direction to the parade, trying to block the Lord Mayor’s coach. I’d seen a few of them on the tube earlier, with their organic flags and placards, and their smug, passive aggressive demeanours. They don’t manage to cause much disruption. The City of London has its own police force, presumably somewhat independent and self-governing, like the rest of its administration, and which I trust is able to invoke its own arcane treason laws, and swiftly transport any real dissenters to some modern-day equivalent of Newgate. I preferred the Baader-Meinhof Gang. WTF happened to killing and kidnapping people, taking hostages, and getting Hollywood to make a movie about it? If the planet is at stake and all.

I visit Glastonbury, the New Age capital of the cosmos. Crystals, magnets, healing. Joseph of Arimathea buried the Holy Grail somewhere near Glastonbury Tor, and I have an appointment at the Egg Stone with the White Lady, and she shall guide me to it. All of this was foretold to me in a dream. The view from the top is magnificent, but nobody I ask has heard of the Egg Stone, let alone knows where it is, and they’ve been coming here for years, and maybe I should try the Chalice Well healing waters instead of that can of gin and tonic I’m sipping at. WTF? Every other shop in town is chock-full of all kinds of New Age garbage imaginable, but nobody has even heard of the Egg Stone, and I’m the mad one? Finally, I encounter a kindly couple, one of whom vaguely recalls it from distant memory, and thinks it may be somewhere off to the left of the path. The White Lady duly appears, in the form of Psilocybin mushrooms, hundreds of them. There they are, man. This **** is real...

You should have purchased one of the crystals and gazed into it and the Egg Stone would have appeared and told you where to find it.

Silly you. You took the wrong path.

Glastonbury sounds like a fun place, similar to Sedona, Arizona; the crystal and mystic capital of the USA. Many go there to channel their cosmic self. For a Fee, of course.

Go to wherever the cow paddies are. Starting to sound a lot like Glastonbury.

I don’t think they could have been Psilocybins, after all. They had the nipple, but now I seem to recall, from a long time ago, something about the stems being crooked rather than straight. No matter, as the real purpose of my trip was to see Wells Cathedral one time. One of the great English cathedrals, and it didn’t disappoint. Somebody described it as poetic. The atheists don’t want to knock it down and turn it into a multi-storey car park, do they?

What’s good with you

This atheist does not. I’ve visited many of the great cathedrals in Europe and always enjoy the experience. Before I die and I’m sent to Hell, I want to complete a tour of all the great cathedrals in Europe. I’ve been lucky so far and have already visited some great ones; the magnificent one in Cologne and that wonder of wonders in Barcelona for example.

I've always wanted to a European cathedral ever since reading David Macaulay's picture book -- just to look at the engineering of it. I'd rather find one where I could wander around rather than one where everything was roped off.

Go to Lincoln, that's my favourite.

Progress! I have found the correct way of looking at the Conjecture! The higher dimensions do not affect the lower ones. Finding the pattern is now merely a matter of technique. This is the foundations of logic and geometry I’m talking about. Stay tuned.

Scrap that. It’s well-behaved because it doesn’t have enough structure. Back to square one.

The Red Lion on Duke of York Street is surely one of the most beautiful bars in London. According to Ian Nairn, “If I could keep only one pub out of the whole London galaxy, this would be my choice… It is the spirit exactly of Manet’s Bar at the Folies Bergere.” I had been there only once before. Seek it out and it will be closed or overcrowded or somehow alien to trainspotters. But if you so happen to be passing at just the right time… I have been in the Red Lion on Kingly Street intermittently, and am fond of it. I like Sam Smith’s pubs.

Manet’s painting is wonderful and complex at the same time, on many levels. A favorite of mine.

Somebody bilked me today. When I got my badge, we were advised that it is rare, and to let it go and not get into a fight. I let it go, and as if by some karmic justice, nice people get in the cab consecutively for the rest of the day and throw money at me. But I feel yellow.

Bilked as in ran out of the cab without paying? Sorry to hear that. At least the rest of the day was pleasant.

Why yellow?

Yes, except for some reason he didn't run, and a confrontation took place in the street, in a quiet corner of the West End, during which he probably realized I wasn't going to touch him, or follow him and leave the cab there.

He was maybe some sick, deluded guy, carrying a shoe box around and telling me during the journey how he owned three shoe shops and was delivering an expensive pair to a wealthy client.

Thanks, man. Go Cheeseheads!

Being bilked in London is as normal as ordering fish and chips and a pint of bitters.

By the way sweetheart being bilked in London is the most normal experience we will ever have

Every black cab driver has a number, and the lower it is, the longer you’ve been qualified. I like my number, it factorizes in unexpected ways. Some numbers are insanely low, possessed only by someone who has been going for about the past fifty years. Returning to work after lockdown is like waking up from a coma, to find a discontinuous jump in the number of cyclists, Deliveroo riders, 20mph roads and speed traps, and cab drivers with a higher number than mine. Which is cool. Some noob driver, or butterboy as it’s called, starts jabbering at me while we’re waiting. “Good rank up by Portobello Road… no way I’m doing Croydon… dead mileage… going till 3 o’clock last night… should be busy today…“ Yeah, I know mate. I’m trying to slow it all down a little. Museums at weekends, I think. Let the hyperactive consumers alone, and work only with those with an interest in history and culture. Now I’m getting smart.

“Now I’m getting smart”.

How many years did it take? I know from experience that it’s a long, slow slog.

Just some line I got off American TV. Think I’ll adopt it as my motto. Think I’ll write the word LOVE all over the cab, in luminous paint, and dress as Sherlock Holmes, staring directly ahead impassively. Some influencer is bound to latch on, sooner or later. Broke down on the King’s Road today, in the middle of the busy rank in front of the Saatchi Gallery, and various fashionable shops and cafes. Stuck there inconveniencing everyone for over an hour, until help arrived. Starter motor. The cab has been wheezing and spluttering around for the past three weeks, until finally it gave up. The garage thought it was just the battery when I took it in last week, as well as to notify them that a front tyre was flat and the horn didn’t work. I don’t mind going there so much now that they’ve started to recognize me. Have a load of beat-up cabs and a load of mechanics seems to be the business model of cab rental, no doubt a necessary one. It amazes me that wealthy people choose to travel in them. Three hours out of a Friday afternoon, but when one is getting smart, one learns to take the long view.

Do they still manufacture new cabs? Checker went out of business in the States long ago.