Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [54]
From Charing Cross I take the tube to Archway. Soon I am knocking on the door of 31 St John’s Way. A surprise for Mrs Edgington, she doesn’t know I’m coming.
“Oh Spike,” she’s drying her hands. “What are you doing here?”
I tell her I’m doing leave here.
“When are you going back?”
Can I come in first? Tea, would I like some tea. Ah! at last an English cup of tea and a dog biscuit. (JOKE) I explain my accommodation difficulty. What is the difficulty? Accommodation. Yes, I can stay here. “You can sleep in the basement.” Mr Edgington’s not in, he’s gone out to get a paper. Yes, he’s well. Son Doug? He’s been called up. The Army. Did I know Harry was getting married on leave? He’s been caught at the customs with some material he’d bought for Peg’s wedding dress and the bastards have given him detention. Mr Edgington is back. Ah Spike. “When are you going back?” He’s tall, thin, at one-time handsome. An ex-Guards Sergeant from World War One, he was badly gassed in France. He is in receipt of a small war pension. Alas he smokes, it will do for him one day, as it would his youngest son Doug…I dump my gear in the basement. Would I like some lunch? Toad-in-the-hole? Lovely grub. I set myself up in the basement. There’s a coal fire, but remember it’s rationed! Best not light it until the evening.
Leading question. Can Mrs Edgington see to find room for Sergeant Betty Cranky for a day or so? Yes, there’s Doug’s bedroom going spare. I tell her, good, because I’m going spare. I phone Betty: Hello Betty, knickers and boobs, can she get up with knickers and boobs this week knickers and boobs? Yes, she can, knickers and boobs.
“Mrs Edgington, can I have egg and chips for tea?” I light the coal fire. Mrs Edgington has lent me Doug’s ‘wireless’, a little Bakelite Echo set. These were the days of quiet broadcasting — Christopher Stone playing gramophone records in steady measured tones, unlike the plastic arse-screaming hyped-up disc jockeys with crappy jokes, who get housewives so hyped up with fast mindless chatter and ghetto-blasting records that they are all on Valium. I spent the afternoon reading the papers and listening to long-forgotten programmes. Sid Dean and his band are broadcasting live from a tea dance in Brighton. How very very nice. The News! Alvar Liddell, ace broadcaster and Master of Wireless is telling us in profound adenoidal tones that Mr Attlee, the Prime Monster, with all the impact of sponge on marble, is meeting with the Soviet Ambassador, where they are promising each other there will never be another war, and babies are found under bushes. Churchill is at home in Chartwell doing the kitchen. Henry Hall has been in a car crash in the key of E flat. Woman’s Hour: how to knit socks under water, and hints on how to make the best of rationed food (eat it).
I am staring into the glowing coals, sometimes I stare into the glowing wallpaper or the glowing lino. I decide to take my legs for a walk before supper. Do I want the door key? It’s where no burglar can find it, on a string in the letterbox. I’m wearing my red and blue Artillery forage cap. In the London gloom it looks like my head’s on fire. I stroll to the Archway and its grumbling grey traffic. The evening is lit with those ghastly green sodium lights that make the English look like a race of seasick Draculas. Down Holloway Road, remembering that it was down here Edward Lear was born. I stop to see what the shops have to offer. Displays of crappy furniture, boasting that you can see the ‘natural grain of the cardboard’. I go down to the Seven Sisters Road. None of the sisters show up, so I come back. I pass Hercules Street, with not a person in it weighing more than ten stone. Manor Garden, Alexander Road, Landseer Road; the last two would turn in their graves to see what the names had been used for. Giesbach Road? Who chooses them? What grey, dull, mindless idiots sit and debate these improbable street names, streets that should be called Grotty Road, Dog Shit Street, Crappy Avenue, Terrible Building Road, Who-in-their-right-mind-built-these-Mansions.