The Lillie Langtry, which I slagged off a couple of chapters ago, is an FRP in spirit (or rather in alcopop) but it doesn’t really have a roof. It’s got several storeys of flats on top of it. But I suppose flats are flat and so, if your roof is a flat, by definition your roof is flat. It’s a flat roof in two senses.
This FRP on the Belsize Road roundabout – fortunately now closed – was called ‘The Britannia’, which name is typical of the genre in its slight overtones of nationalism. A name like that doesn’t guarantee a racist clientele but it’s surely more likely than in a Grapes or a Queen Charlotte – or even a Saracen’s Head. ‘The Albion’ is another FRP favourite. If anyone knows of an FRP called The Albion where they do organic cheeses, then let me know because that’s a massive outlier on the graph. It’s probably in Malta.
The Britannia is now a Tesco Express, which is much more in keeping with the architecture. Very few supermarkets have pitched roofs – I’ve noticed a few in small Cotswold towns and it looks wrong, like a robot wearing a bobble hat – and I’ve never seen a thatched one. But rather oddly, Tesco has decided to preserve the tall pole in which the Britannia sign was once displayed and replace it with a sort of ‘Tesco Express’ pub sign. I don’t really understand this. Surely that pole can’t be listed? But, if not, wouldn’t Tesco get rid of it?
The fact that Tesco is constantly and rapaciously expanding, choking out local businesses like bindweed smothering roses, isn’t something you’d think it would want to draw attention to. Nevertheless, there the post stands, irrefutable evidence that this was once a pub – another scalp that the vicious supermarket giant has collected, drying in the wind.
Of course I know that the closure of this pub was no loss to civilisation but, in the imagination of a passer-by who doesn’t, the hostelry that Tesco replaced is going to be a veritable ‘Moon Under Water’. (That’s the name George Orwell invented for his ideal London pub – somewhere that never actually existed. It was later adopted by Wetherspoon’s, who have several pubs of that name and many other variants like ‘Moon in a Shopping Centre’ or ‘Moon in the Face of Orwell’s Memory’.) So why has Tesco drawn attention to The Britannia’s ghost? It’s inexplicable.
I’m not good with the low-level unexplained. I worry away at such things. I’m quite relaxed about the great mysteries of the universe; when it comes to the existence of God, for example, I figure that, as with a good episode of Inspector Morse, I’ll find out what’s going on eventually. But also like Morse I do tend to bang on about tiny details that don’t quite make sense. That’s used to signify a sleuth’s maverick brilliance in lots of detective fiction: Columbo, Poirot, Holmes and Miss Marple are forever harping on about what happened to missing cufflinks or why there was no tea in the pot, while those around them try to bring their attention back round to the fact that there’s blood and guts up the wall.
I find their impatience odd. Particularly where Captain Hastings is concerned. Do you know Captain Hastings from the early ITV Poirots? He’s not in them any more, now they’ve got a bit mopier and more cinematic. I rather like that character – it’s a very entertaining turn. And one of the funniest things about it, or most annoying things depending on my mood, is how Hastings, who shows few signs either of great intellect or an inaccurately high estimation of that intellect (basically he’s an idiot and he knows it) keeps moaning on at Poirot for wasting time.
‘What are we doing checking the garden shed, Poirot?’
‘What possible relevance could an unexplained speck of powder have, Poirot?’
‘What are we doing at Somerset House, Poirot? Who cares who’s married who?’
All the time. Now, every day this man, this idiot, watches Poirot brilliantly solve murders on the basis of small clues. And yet the next day he has always forgotten and is basically saying: ‘What the hell do you know, you Belgian twat?’ Never, not once, does he say: ‘Well, personally I can’t see the relevance of the lipstick but, do you know what, it’s your call how we investigate this because on the last two hundred or so cases I’ve come to the conclusion that you know what you’re doing. So you decide. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’
Unless of course the Poirot cases in Christie’s stories are supposed to be the exceptions. Maybe that’s what she’s implying with Hastings’s moaning – that nine times out of ten Poirot is wasting everyone’s time sweating the detail. I think that must be it, because otherwise Hastings would shut up. God knows, in real life, Poirot would be so idolised that no path of inquiry he advocated, however absurd, would be neglected. He’d be the Woody Allen of detective work: given complete creative control long after his gifts had waned.
That’s how I behave about things like this inexplicable pub sign. I can’t let go of them, even though there’s no greater mystery – no murder – for them to be the key to. I might be guilty of the same pattern of thinking that leads people to give money, or even devote their lives, to donkey sanctuaries. People focus on saving donkeys from cruelty because the pit of human pain is too deep to contemplate. Solving donkeys’ problems seems much more achievable and an appropriately humane gesture. Similarly, maybe, I worry away at small mysteries like the Tesco pub sign, and rant about tiny irritations on TV panel shows and online ‘vodcasts’ as a displacement activity – to avoid thinking about things that really matter.
There was an inexplicable thing about my prep school (New College School of the aforementioned non-Stalinist approach to lunches). It was a school rule which stated that: ‘On no account should any boy ever enter Bath Place.’ Bath Place, I should explain, isn’t a weird public school name for a bathroom, or swimming pool, diving hole, or buggery nook. It’s just a small cobbled courtyard off Holywell Street, just round the corner from the school.
There was a mystery surrounding this rule, which gave the picturesque Bath Place an enormous cachet. Some said that a boy from the school was murdered there, others that one of the school’s former headmasters used to frequent the Turf Tavern, an ancient pub which is accessed via Bath Place, and didn’t wish to be observed by his charges while drinking.
It always struck me as odd, however, because boys from the school basically weren’t allowed to go anywhere at all during school hours. So why specify Bath Place? Why did the anti-Bath Place rules overlie the general anti-everywhere-that’s-not-the-school ones? ‘On no account should any boy ever enter Bath Place.’ The implication was, even your parents weren’t allowed to take you there. Bath Place must surely be the best place in the world? I don’t know. I never went.
There were a few occasions when I was allowed out of school without a teacher or parent. This was when I was in a school play, which necessitated remaining at school until the evening performance. On those occasions your parents could write a note permitting you to go into town, in the company of a group of other boys, to have dinner there rather than sharing the boarders’ tea. And who on earth would want anything to do with the boarders’ tea if you could go to McDonald’s?
McDonald’s was a new arrival to Oxford and consequently had a tremendous atmosphere of transatlantic glamour. I yearned to have birthday parties there, but obviously that wasn’t allowed. I had to have horrible birthday teas at home with home-made cake and sandwiches and jelly and sausages on sticks. My parents didn’t seem to realise that I could have tea in the garden in the sunlit innocence of childhood any time, while opportunities to stuff down McDonald’s quarter-pounders under neon lights were fleeting.
My worst birthday tea was when I was eight. It was our last summer in the Staunton Road house – we moved round the corner the following November – and, by this stage, I was too old for party games. I felt like I was practically an adult and so, instead of games, my parents agreed to take my friends and me to see The Wrath of Khan at the cinema.
With such a grown-up outing on the cards, I felt brave enough to invite John Wilkinson. John Wilkinson was the most popular boy in my class – the one who was best at football and cricket, who everyone wanted to be friends with. I desperately wanted to be friends with him, but was also self-aware enough to slightly despise myself for it. Nevertheless,