Thursday 12 January 2012

Danny Boy

I heard the news this morning that a headless body has been found in the garden of a psychiatric hospital. According to police, the death is  "not being treated as suspicious." Why on earth not?' Do they think the head simply fell off?

I have covered astonishingly large distances today. I ran five kilometres in the early afternoon and then walked for mile after mile in central London. We were in Carnaby Street, and then we were in Covent Garden and before we knew it, we'd snaked our way down to the south bank and returned to Soho via St Paul's Cathedral. That's got to be a good ten miles, surely?

My companions for this epic walk were Nathan, my dear mate Dan and his American friend, Charlie. Charlie is a girl.



Dan and I have known each other since we worked on Boy George's Taboo a full ten years ago. I actually gave him his first West End job and we've been firm friends ever since.

Like Fiona, he has a serious wanderlust, and spent the last two years exploring Australia and the Far East whilst living life to the max. He's not emerged unscathed from the experience and proudly showed us some astonishing scars on his thigh, which were caused by a bollock-clenching accident involving a quad bike and a barbed-wire fence.

As we walked and talked and talked and walked, I realised how much I'd missed him and that my world would be considerably less fun without him popping up from time to time to make me laugh like a drain. I laughed so much at one point that I induced a little whoop!

350 years ago, and Pepys was also ramping up the London miles, heading from the City to Whitehall, where he called in on a very sick Jane Turner and her equally sick (yet precocious) daughter, Theophile, before returning to his house on Seething Lane. Elizabeth Pepys was arguing with the servants again. Poor little Nell. There were but three references to her in Pepys' diaries in the six months she worked in the household. 15th December 1661; "a simple slut," January 12th, 1662 "a lazy slut." And we never learn her surname. She shall henceforth be known simply as "Nell Slut."

1 comment:

  1. Sad to be remembered as "a simple slut" - but perhaps better than not to be remembered at all.
    Was our Blewbury visit to "Taboo" really ten years ago! I enjoyed reading about your stroll through London. A thing I occasionally do.
    Coral

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