pumpkinstrokemarrow

So later in the day, disembark at Earlsfield, the best station for Garrett Lane. Gave the quite decent secondhand bookshop a miss - the place from where many moons ago I was able to wow sprog 2 on the cheap with a not too elderly copy of 'Jane's Fighting Ships' - a book which, as it happens, fascinated me at about the same age - on the grounds that the pile of recently acquired unread books must be standing getting on for two feet high now. Then past the parade of shops by the station. One of those all purpose grocers used by young flat dwellers had a bit of salad orientated green grocery - but no savoy cabbage. And that was it for green grocery until I got to the all purpose supermarket by Fountain Road. Very good for booze, large bags of chick peas and sacks of rice. But otherwise much the same story. A bit of Asian orientated green grocery - but no savoy cabbage. Pushed on to Tooting Market to find that it was shut. And in all this time I had not passed a butcher or a baker. Not very keen on sour dough bread so did not push on down to the West Indian baker in Mitcham Lane. Probably shut anyway. But I did push on into the Mr. S. by Tooting Broadway tube station. Interested to see that, like at Vauxhall, the fags and lottery tills have pneumatic tubes to whisk away the money, a smaller version of the wonderful contraptions they used to have in the better department stores. They did have savoy cabbage here but the queues were tremendous. Even for the self service tills - which people in Epsom are still wary of, making them a good option there. So out of Mr. S. and tried the grocery across the road. More Asian orientated green grocery - but no savoy cabbage. So, off to Wetherspoons empty handed.

From all of which we can only deduce that on leaving Savoy, savoy cabbages marched west rather than east.

But the evening was redeemed by finding a copy of 'Edward II' in the library at Wetherspoons, in the same form and from the same publisher (Methuen) as the Arden Shakespeare. My chosen vehicle for swatting up before going to the Globe. I had not realised that back in the thirties, Marlowe was thought worthy of the full treatment, along with his colleague, the immortal bard. Given that I pay my dues at this establishment and that I have deposited more books than I have borrowed, I felt fully entitled to borrow this one to enlighten my journey home. Which it did, as I came across the line 'shall with their goat-feet dance an antic hay', almost certainly the source of the title of Aldous Huxley's second novel, 'Antic Hay'. Methuen explained to me that a hay was a sort of country dance, already a touch old fashioned in Marlowe's day.

This morning to Mr. S. at Epsom to buy my savoy using the self service check out there. That, plus a detour on the way home, made a run about equivalent to one-way to Cheam. Getting there. Next step should perhaps be to try the hump over the railway line at West Ewell.

With that, off to worry about what Mr. G. is doing with my address book. Something frightful according to the Independent of yesterday. This snippet amongst a fair bit of padding, the sort of stuff that I could knock out myself without any regard to what might be going on in the outside world. I suppose they cannot afford many proper journalists.