Low Winter Sun

12/02/2006

Layers of sleep peel away, I find myself stirring in The Great Bed of Trollaigh after ten nights in London. For the first time in months, I am not too sure where I am, however joy of joys I am home at last after nights spent in Highbury. The glare of the new mega Emirates Stadium no longer blazes through the curtains; no longer do the wailing sirens of N1 disturb my slumbers. An attack of hedonism leaves me stretched between the sheets until daylight fills the room and dearest Dottie brings a mug of my favourite Jackson’s green tea. As I bathe and shave I mentally revise the long list of tasks needed to catch up with more than a month’s absence from The Tower of Glen Trollaigh. However long the list, it is such a relief to have left my obligation to the WRI behind, along with London smog, radioactivity, Tubes, streets bulging with dangerous eccentrics, New Bond Street prices and the bally congestion charging, which many of you will know, has been specially designed to trick old fools like me into popping in and out of it, three times (£24) along Pentonville Road, whilst searching for the King’s Cross Station pick-up point.

Mind you, some time spent with the girls is always a pleasure. There was time for a party or three, several visits to their local café/restaurant “The Stringray” at Highbury Barn, still turning out good wholesome tuck after all these years, although I suggest avoiding the house red, which is decidedly dodgy anti-freeze from Eastern Europe served in a chipped jug. I silently cursed the new Arsenal 70,000 seat stadium as I arrived on a match night, taking two hours by motor from The Archway to Highbury Terrace, and then having to avoid the wardens until 8.30 pm. The solution was a car park at £30 a day. We country bumpkins sometimes do not know how lucky we are! The recreational highlight was using the girl’s tearful entreaties with a good dollop of name-dropping to blag last minute tickets for “Sound of Music” at the London Palladium. Despite sitting with my knees under my chin for two and a half hours, this new Lloyd-Webber production is highly recommended, a real belter with the audience 100% behind the enthusiastic cast. We almost did not make the show, turning up at Victoria from lobbying at Westminster, to find the Tube shut, due to some blasted fault. Dearest Dottie somehow secured a cab from under the noses of a huge milling crowd and the Cabby came up trumps, slaloming through a grid locked Shepherd’s Market, packed with Dorchester deliveries and Oxford Street shoppers, to get us to the stage door. Mind you, I think that waving a good wodge of wonga when entering the cab still helps. 

In Glen Trollaigh, the weather remains decidedly mixed with torrential rain, floods, gales, and peaceful, mild low winter sunshine all on tap in any twenty-four hour period. What a huge relief and great pleasure to be back. If I had to pick one of the many unmissable moments of the past month as a winner, it must be the second trip to Westminster. When I was privileged to hear some ancient Tory codger, who must have represented his constituency since Cromwell’s time, table an early day motion asking some Secondary Modern educated, power dressed female cabinet minister; whether or not it was now time for Tony Blair to apologise for “King Henry VIII’s appalling treatment of his wives”. It is a sad reflection on modern socialism that the harassed harridan had not a clue about the relevance nor the humour of the question. Hey ho. The cellar is unlocked and a Hendrick’s and Tonic stiffener is at hand, what a lucky chap I am. Yours aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.