"He leaped the fence and saw all nature was a garden."
There’s an intensely golden half-moon tilted over the city tonight.
I am very tired - woke up at pointless o’clock and then had a bad panic attack later in the morning. Fortunately fade_2_black was on hand for a liquid lunch. By the time she arrived at The Wellington, a pint of “Postman’s Knock” (dark ruby ale, smells like coffee) and a few pages of Uglow had mellowed me. We chatted for an hour, interrupted occasionally by a very polite if random old chap who assured us that a Dutch nurse had saved him from a life of priesthood. After that we went across the road to the new-look Bennetts.
It’s called The Lost & Found now; I’ll use the old name, though. It is (was?) one of my favourite bars in the city, the writers’ group hangout - deep-red colour scheme, faux-Egyptian statues, wrought iron, and a mural on the wall you might have seen in the “louche-Satan” photos. It’s had a big makeover: what Fade called “Botanical Kitsch”. Trompe l’oeil bookcases (no,no, no!), white walls, huge amounts of fake greenery “grafted” into real bark (which resulted in an innuendo I honestly didn’t mean to utter): inverted plant pots and bell jars. I quite liked the ivy-draped antique typewriter, which reminded me of the cover to Shriek: An Afterword, and the paintings of faces in trees. Not so sure about the lighting in the Gents, housed in bisected bowler hats (cheapass Magritte). I’m sure I amused the staff by wandering around peering at the décor and muttering “Do I like this? I think I do.” A cautious thumbs-up, maybe, but the beer selection is crap.
The Uglow book is wonderful, though - I’ve reached the eighteenth century now. Apparently topiary was once described as “curious greens”; isn’t that brilliant? The ornamental hermits are dealt with in passing, which is a shame: I’d have loved to read more about the one who went on strike after three weeks.
