Yes Essex!

Calliope sitting on me as I lay in bed, started craning her head up like a meerkat. The sound of feet on the roof, but instead of a gull, I saw a rat through the velux windows. Lorraine and I lay in bed shuddering and vowing never to open the windows again.

Another fit of poetry, and I am simply giving into it. Lorraine shopping, after one of her pals had called by in the morning. Some of what Lorraine is shopping for is birthday presents for me, an endevour only to be encouraged.

Off to wildest Essex this evening listening to the new album by Lorraine-favourites Mumford and Sons as she drove. Through the Dartford tunnel (a long deep tunnel under the Thames full of hurtling metal cars - what's not to love?) to Lorraine's pals Leslie and Jeremy, who were having a party for Leslie's birthday. Both play in a brass band, and they have musical children too, with their son being an accomplished trombonist.

Once in Essex (which I barely know other than it is the world capital of dancing round handbags in white stilettos) we headed down some surprisingly twisty country lanes. One was called Wigley Bush Lane. Saw a fox and another rat running across a road.  Reaching Ongar, we drove down an unmade road, with dark fields at the end where Lorraine had lived.  Surprisingly bright stars in the sky.

We drove to Leslie's house the other side of the fields. The party fine. L and I chatting with two interesting guys, Ethan and Dale who are on the cusp of moving to Australia. Ethan told me three ideas for books, one of which was rather good. Dale is a head teacher. Home late, Lorraine zooming us home along the motorways.

Essex always reminds me of being in The Real Inspector Hound, when I was at school. A voice on the radio, which of course miraculously turns itself on, talks about criminals escaping in Essex -- at which our cast reeled in horror and said 'Essex?' and the radio said, 'Yes, Essex!' in a cartoonish way. Funny at the time. I played Birdboot, a critic. To give me grey hair (which was then black) they put vaseline in my hair and dusted it with talc. My school friend Claire had to slap my face at one point, and a cloud of talc rose from my head to great, if unintentional, comic effect.

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