Back from the counsellor by the usual circuitous route. Well an unusual circuitous route as I managed to get lost in Hornsey. But as I always get lost you could call it usual. "Lost in Hornsey" - the romance of it! Well not for much longer.
The counselling session was the usual hour long philibuster. I was surprised as the depression has kicked in quite badly with Kelly's absense and I had been suffering from a keen bluntness to my faculties. But I rambled on like Robert Plant in a pack-a-mac. There's theatre there of course. I'm such a hollow and unnatural creature that even telling the truth I can't do it truthfully. Two more of these sessions to go and then nothing. Got a few more laughs out of the counsellor again today. Why am I trying to charm and impress my counsellor? What's wrong with me? What's you major malfunction, numbnuts?
As usual the words don't stop tumbling on the journey home. I am a mad rambling, in both senses of the word, figure striding over the hills of North London on the way out of Hell House. It's taken me over two hours and I'm not home yet. Which means that I have been talking out loud, to myself or someone else, for three hours. If I could write that much a day I ...well I would have a lot more written. Doesnt mean I'd get anything published though.
Today's route took me past the site of Andrew Marvell's cottage near Waterlow Park ("Andrew Marvell, what a marvel! I'd rather have written that than flown through Hitler's legs") past Betjeman and Houseman's houses in Highgate (next to each other" Like a literary "Never the Twain"!). Slightly down the road and towards East Finchley is a house, next to the Wrestler's pub where Charles Dickens "stayed". The plaque was about five times the size of poor old Andy Marvell's; a bit flash seeing as how he didn't even pay rent. On towards Muswell Hill and the last plaque of the day is the house Peter Sellers grew up in, not far from where my parents lived in the sixties. I avoid Muswell Hill and take the "Parkland Walk" to Alexandra Palace and then down towards Hornsey. The only plaques here are on park benches, donated by rich dead ladies from Highgate for poor people to wait on buses in splintered-arsed comfort.
Finally I rock up to Crouch End to check out the The Queens Hotel as a possible venue for Kelly's leaving do, come fortieth birthday party. It's lovely with a proper Victorian horse-shoe bar, molded stucco ceilings and stained-glass windows. It would make a brilliant party venue than Litro, Kelly's own choice, which has rebranded itself as a restaurant and is difficult to negotiate even if nobody is in it, given its size and abundance of trestle tables. Though if it's what she wants I'll move heaven and earth to see that she gets it.
Though I hope it doesn't come to that; it's almost impossible to get any sort of traction on the heavens and I'm rubbish with a shovel. With my back? I should bleedin' cocoa.
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