London Sccchhhmmmundon

Would you Adam and Eve it, all the way to London and here I am still stuck in my office. I can’t understand it. How come I wasn’t discovered by some of the big film producers like Sean Connery was or at least by one of the big name modelling agencies? There must be a market for middle aged, slightly overweight chic, as oppose to pre pubescent heroin chic. I want to be the face of something too! Andy Warhol promised!

And another thing there’s not a cockanee to be seen! I thought at least I might have bumped into Ray Winstone or Bob Hoskins. . But nothing, not even Barbara Windsor and I know she’s in the City because she’s been on every TV show and Radio programme in the country touting some keep fit video for old biddies. They’ve all moved out, vanished, the cockanees. I think they’re all living on the Costa De Sol on the profits of some blag or selling ice creams at £5 a cone to the Americans or all gone out to Australia. Australia is the traditional destination of the cockanees and has been since about the 16th Century when all you need to do to get a ticket was steal a loaf of bread or worry some sheep.

No, London is devoid of cockanees which makes it difficult when you try to buy a cup of Rosie. The place is chock a block full of foreigners, and I’m not just talking Americans here. (At least they speak some form of English!) No, to get a cup of tea in London you need to speak at least one of the 142 languages spoken in the City at the moment (most of them behind the counter of your favourite fast food purveyor). Luckily I had my electronic translator with me (well I do have to communicate some how with the wife!) and was able to communicate our needs quite well, however, what I’m going to do with the 15 kilos of sun dried camel I managed to purchase is beyond me.

We visited all the famous places and battled with the Japanese for the best photography spots. They give way quite easily due to their short stature and they’re easy to knock over, but I am always a bit worried that some of them may be Ninja’s on holiday, I mean how could you tell if they haven’t got their black kit on? (Another thing is, why don’t the Japanese fill their Olympic team full of Ninja’s surely they would win all the gold medals!)

I was also a bit put out that we weren’t invited in for Tea either at the Palace or Number 10. You would think with the amount of money we pay in Taxes to keep Liz and her bunch of in breeds in the life they have come to expect to lead, the least we commoners could expect on a trip up to the Capital is a quick cuppa, a biscuit and a bit of a sit down to give our aching plates a rest. She was in as well as the flag was flying over the Palace. But she seemed to have surrounded herself and the Palace with big policemen with submachine guns; do you think she knows something we don’t? Perhaps if she wasn't as tight with the Typhoo and the Bourbons she could rest a little easier in her bed, without that recurring dream about Charles 1st and Louis 16th comparing cuts happening everynight.

If buying a swift cuppa and a burger from some guy who swam ashore last Wednesday and speaks Amharic wasn’t bad enough have you tried to buy a cup of coffee in the City? My electronic interpreter couldn’t keep up. It's all in some strange Italian dialect - ‘mocha choca skinny caffe latté grande, barista, ee con panna de caf‘ and all I wanted was a cup of decaf Nescafe and a sit down.

My wife was pleased though as we managed to find the Russian speaking section of London - Bayswater! We found a Russian food shop and she was in raptures over various bits of food that she hasn’t seen for the last year or so. Various bits of smelly, smoked blackened, fish found their way into our bags, unfortunately for pounds and not roubles – O how they have embraced Capitalism! And this fish looked a bit suspicious as it was probably an ornamental carp swimming around quite happily in some municipal park pond outside of the Capital just last week. So loaded down as we were with sun dried camel, cabbage and beetroot I was starting to lose my temper.

My vision of London was fast fading before my eyes. Gone were the pearly kings and queens, the boozers and the gangsters, gone was the romance of the chimney sweep and the cries of Olde London, gone was the Plague and the Black Death. I know life moves on but I was a little disappointed. As you know I had high hopes for this trip to the Smoke. Like Dick Whittington I thought that the streets were paved with gold and I would make my fame and fortune. Well they’re not; the streets of London are paved with paving stones like anywhere else. How our dreams shatter in the cold light of day. And unlike Dick I didn’t even have a little pussy to keep me happy!