Chris Lockie Archives - Randomly London

Hill Street Blues By Chris Lockie

This is the third post from Chris Lockie who writes things for fun and money on his website: http://www.cidlockie.com. It was originally posted there, but he’s agreed to share it with all of you. You can also read about his walk to Paddington and getting lost in Barnsbury.

londonwalk-hill-street

11.55am on a Tuesday only-just morning and I emerge blinking from the cocoon of a grimly-lit Knightsbridge office. I have just been begging a woman twice my age for a job half my brain wants and half my brain wants to drink and drink to forget about, which is handy as I’m now due a mile or two to the north for a liquid lunch that may (does) last the rest of the day.

Sloane Square was my original starting point, a square so fraught with difficulty for the left-wing man screaming to get out of my middle class body I wonder what heinous crimes have occurred to land me an interview here, but certain aspects of my financial existence demand rectification and I am the beggar who must not choose. The interview has apparently gone well enough; no names were called, no objects thrown, and it’s clear lessons have been learned from that incident at the Wetherspoons head office some weeks ago.

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The Barnsbury Vortex By Chris Lockie

This post is another from Chris Lockie who writes things for fun and money on his website: http://www.cidlockie.com. It was originally posted there, but he’s agreed to share it with all of you. You can also read his earlier post here

londonwalk-barnsbury

There is no single part of London that I can get lost in as easily as Barnsbury.

Clearly I’m talking about the London north of the river. I can get off the tube at any station south of the water, walk for 500 metres in any direction and be more oblivious to my location than a senile old dog, twitching as it defecates in the corner of the room yet again to the chagrin of its luckless owner.

Thankfully only a senile old dog would voluntarily go south of the river anyway.

And don’t let me give you the impression that I happily get lost in Barnsbury, in some wistful Narnia-style adventure in the lovingly tended pastures of a tree-lined London suburb. Certainly not. I mean lost in the traditional sense of “Just around this corner there’s a…right so it’s the next corner and there’ll be a…a…wait, is that the sea?”

I think I’ve worked out what the issue is. The area between Highbury & Islington and Caledonian Road lacks the one true staple of a London suburb – the humble public house, which for a man such as myself is the only sure-fire way of navigating the twisting, swirling street’s of this brutally confusing city. There are so few pubs in and around Barnsbury that I once walked through here desperate for a leak and started eyeing up trees longingly, like that same dog before the mind went blank.

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Perplexed In Paddington By Chris Lockie

This post comes from Chris Lockie who writes things for fun and money on his website: http://www.cidlockie.com. It was originally posted there, but he’s agreed to share it with all of you.

This is why leaving London is always a terrible idea.

One fine Tuesday lunchtime in February, with the late winter sun stressing the eyeballs and the Arctic wind whistling up the trouser leg, I set off for the Prince Regent, a pub on the Marylebone High Street, to meet a friend for lunch.

I have disembarked the tube at Warren Street, as it’s the nearest I can get to my destination without having to change lines, and the weather’s pleasant enough to warrant a stroll. Though my inclination is to eschew the main thoroughfares of London in favour of curious back-streets, I’m a little pushed for minutes on this occasion and head off down a busy Euston Road. Or at least I think I’m pushed; I have of course fouled up my timings and accidentally end up at the pub precisely fifteen minutes early, where I duly sit by myself at noon with a pint of some half British, half American ale, looking like the first lonely act in a play that won’t end well.

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