Yesterday morning at approximately 9:45am I received a call on my mobile phone - it was from Alastair Crowley (you know, he from the South London Board Games League and subsequent strange email conversation ...) Anyway, the upshot was that he'd had to vacate his flat for the day because his housemate had invoked Satan's rage last Thursday and as a result, an emergency exorcism had to take place today. To escape the confines of his zone 4 south London flat (ex-council) he'd bought a zones 1-6 travelcard and thought that I'd like to join him on his epic journey on the Sabbath. Believing there to be nothing better to do and with the notion that I'd soon lose the flat, I agreed.
We met at Lewisham Station. Why you may ask? Well, it's because the majority of the London Termini were closed this weekend because of the extensive engineering work which has been taking place for ages now. I recognised him immediately as I spotted his hat peeping out of the crowd milling around the entrance to the DLR station. He looked slightly thinner, somewhat sinister, but was sporting a huge grin, which was pleasant.
We boarded a train bound for Stratford as he was keen to see the DLR's relatively new extension up there. He took a great number of photographs along the way and was somewhat disconcerted that the front seats of the driverless trains were packed full of children, causing him to exclaim "what is the world coming to?" When we arrived at Stratford I was keen to divert into the Westfield Shopping Centre, but he didn't agree, stating that "Christmas shopping's a bally nightmare." and duly sat on a nearby bench and pulled a battered pack of homemade sandwiches out of his tatty bag. Until now I'd never believed that boiled egg and pickled onion complemented one another in a sandwich and quite frankly, I was right - they stank!
When Alastair had finished his lunch he took out his tube map and suggested that we should journey onto Epping because "there was a particularly interesting species of woodlouse living under the platform." Exciting as that sounded, I declined and pretended to receive a text on my phone from Auntie Barb stating that one her cats had escaped. With that, I made my excuses and left.
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