Mornington Crescent?!

[Eggsbutnobacon]

Will somebody please please explain to me what this is all about?

So alcoholism sociability runs in the family, dementedma?

I've recently been rereading Cholmondeley-Featherstonehaugh's 1934 Treatise on MC: The Nuances of the Advanced Game. Its sn excellent book. How she managed to combine being the leading MC critic of the day with running the Treasury, I shall never know. Anyway, she makes some very salient points; not least, that Baker Street always creates a risk of parallax and a Lutterworth Shunt on a weekday is more likely than not to plunge everyone into stebbings. So, with those warnings in mind, I shall push the proverbial envelope - do we have any other management consultants here, perchance? - with a Lyttelton's Memorial Overdrive to

Uxbridge

What a genius she was; especially as she was also (under a very convincing disguise) Archbishop of Armagh. In fact both Archbishops of Armagh; the tale is still told of how she was once seen by a High Court Judge changing from Mass- to Communion-gear in a store-room at Woolworths which had not even been built!

OK, we're cooking with gas here. Beverley - and to hell with Dr Beeching.

Pingu: good luck with the lawyers. Tell them your garnishee is FINAL and take no shit about it. As for you, Irene, are you as think as I drunk you are?

Actually, Andrew, I haven't touched a drop all day! Now that the sun is over the yardarm, however, it's definitely time for a small snifter.

A trip up West today for professional cough reasons supplied some exciting new possibilities. Admirable though a deep understanding of the theory is, I do feel that one needs to get out there on the ground to grasp the full implications offered by the modern MC game.

So, an anti-clockwise gavotte (pace Throckmorton) to Kensington Olympia (Overground).

Now I really do deserve a sherry!

Irene, I'm shocked! it's White Wine Wednesday, I thought you were a purist in all matters. Sherry is simply poor form on such an occasion.

That gavotte is a thing of beauty, though, so I'll forgive you, as long as you send immediate word that you're raiding the cellar for a DECENT Chablis - not that awful stuff you brought to the last MC All Stars pot-luck supper. I heard the Foreign Secretary's Diary Manager say she'd only had worse when the Greek Ambassador decanted a rough retsina into a good bottle and tried to pass it off as the Real McCoy!

If we're in Kensington then I should be able to pull off a spliced Sylvanian Pritchard to

Canada Water

It was certainly unfortunate that in my haste to leave the house on time I accidentally grabbed the £2.99 Bulgarian Chardonnay I was planning to take to my least favourite cousin's divorce party, rather than the delicious white Burgundy I had earmarked for the MC do. Still, I didn't notice the Foreign Secretary objecting at the time; quite the reverse, in fact.

At the convent they always swore that fino was acceptable on Wednesdays. I suppose, in retrospect, that the nuns were simply shielding us impressionable young things from a full understanding of Abbess Ethelreda's unspeakable habits :(

Dear me, this thread is as good as a therapy session. On which note, a Freudian slip to

Hampstead

Oh my lord, the Abbess. I only saw her once in the rather abundant flesh - that was in court when the stipe said that bail was out of the question and apologised to the other residents of Holloway for sending her there. How long did she get at the Bailey, does anyone know?

Her brother, the surgeon, presented the prizes at my nephew's school once and without actually naming names regaled all present with her full history (apart from the business in Beijing, the panda was still living at the time as was the bus-conductor) and didn't the little darlings love it?

That Bulgarian Chardonnay is good stuff; it's cheaper than most drain-cleaners and far more effective. But I had no idea anybody drank it - that's insane.

Hampstead is good but I am old-fashioned enough to prefer the Overground so come with me on a journey to Hampstead Heath.

A Top Tip-if you have a blocked drain do not under any circumstance use the "Chardonnay"to dislodge cheap hair removing cream that you have mistakenly used down the plug hole. The bomb squad were less than amused.
Well as we are back in the capital (avec false nose and moustache, far too much cctv) I'm doing a quick Farrington double shuffle to Regents Park.

Well, yes, with hair-removing cream you need cooking sherry from South Africa and plenty of it,

Slinky If you want to hide from the cctv you need to put the nose the right way up and the moustache must be the right colour and properly waxed. There is a woman in the control room pissing herself laughing at you.

Rogers' Reversing Round Robin to Bromley-by-Bow - and until the next time it rains in Southend the Circle Line is subject to Rule 97 and is also in Saggings. A dangerous trap for the unwary there!

Good luck wrestling the cooking sherry from Maud, Slinky. You know she's hoarding most of the supplies of the Southern Hemisphere? By my reckoning it might last her til a weeek next Tuesday, assuming she doesn't throw a party.

If we're reversing then Bromley-By-Bow must be followed by a station beginning with A. So in honour of the end of the ghastly football season (why oh why do they have so many televised football leagues and not a single MC one? Rampant corruption at the Beeb if you ask me!), let's all go to

Arsenal

Heavens, Pingu, the hypocrisy of you of all people criticising my drinking habits! Just who was it who singlehandedly drank the jereboam of slivovitz at Bangor in '98?

I had heard rumours that the BBC occasionally broadcast a live game of MC, but I might have misheard. Anyway,

Tottenham Hale

If we must dabble in what I understand is called "Association Football" let us at least give the poor who are always with us a turn. Stockport.

The MC league is broadcast but you have to have a special stabilising transponder to watch the restricted channel in question. You can find out how and where to buy it from regular announcements on the MC channel.

The rumours I heard concerned the wireless, Andrew. I don't believe this television thing will ever catch on and so have never bought an apparatus.

Hamilton (Academicals) Central

Alas. Even the wireless is not what it was. I tried to buy a new radiogram recently and was offered a "DAB radio" and a "CD player" - neither of which appears to use valves! My old radiogram can be left on with the volume down and keeps tomato seedlings warm. Why must people change what works perfectly well?

Hoots, mon, and (East) Stirling.

And on to

Heart of Midlothian

Unfortunately dh follows the inferior game (yes, yes it's well known how I married beneath, no need to drag that particular skeleton out of the sideboard) and has suggested Middlesbrough. I believe it is in the north.
Mmmm. Sherry. Not seasonal I know, but it's never to early to start marinating ones sultanas for the Christmas pud. Funny how it never gets made.

Thank goodness for Grand Central and their direct trains from the North East. Royal Blue almost in colour too. I wish the Pullman trains could return

So I return to London and upon arrival at Kings Cross avoid the non-circle Circle line and choose the short journey to Warren Street

Your failure to go Circle has of course ruled out London for six moves and the finest economy of effort will take us to St Albans - even though Thameslink is otherwise in pip until 1 June.

Slinky that skeleton left the cupboard when you appeared at Bow Street . . .

No. Let the veil of charity be drawn. You are after all rehabilitated. And it could be worse. It could be that absurd "game" played in the summer months where you run backward and forward between two lines of white poles set in the soil carrying a sort of wooden implement. What's it called? I know they play it on a big field in St John's Wood which should be turned over to grow vegetables.

Ah, yes, they play it on a big field in Kennington too, although these days it's called the Everest Double Glazing Sanyo Music Centre Field, or something like it. Anyway, enough of that. The mention of vegetables prompts me to play a parallel mangle to

Covent Garden

Vegetables are for wimps. The nearest station to Smithfield is Barbican.

I bumped into the Brigadier outside the Parole Board this morning. He is getting garrulous and told me more than I really wanted to know about the Laotian prison system, but anyway he is home now and tells me he will join the game as soon as his elbow recovers. He was an elegant player - remember Khartoum '62 and the Forward Transverse to Esher? - but be warned; he plays to win. He will probably change his username but he won't fool us!

Smithfield Market will have closed for the day, unless there is a repeat of the curious move made in 1981 one balmy evening that jeopardised the future of MC.

The Elizabeth line rule could come into play at any point, but a short journey to Aldgate East for a curry at Brick Lane seems a good move on a Friday evening.

The Brigadier is a dangerous opponent and a master of disguise. Remember the heavily veiled old lady who won the inter-continentals in Rome, claiming to unveil would be disrespectful to the Holy Father? Well, that wasn't the Holy Father!
Kensington

dementedma Of course it wasn't the Holy bloody Father - he was in the next row in that rather fetching pink-and-darkish-yellow three-quarter-length-skirt outfit he sometimes sports when he's feeling skittish. But it wasn't the Brigadier either - he was elsewhere, that was the year some fool scheduled the intercontinentals in Rome for the same day as the militaries in Mombasa and the Brig. shared the bronze with that peculiar Major from Maryland, the one who would eat nothing but the peanuts she brought with her from the heats in Medicine Hat. Who the "old lady" was I cannot say for definite but I know that Saints wasn't anywhere else - I put it no higher than that.

You don't say which Kensington, and that allows me to play a Varicose Vague to Manchester and not specify further.

Ealing Broadway. Just that . No explanation. Ready to strike forth for MC.

Hmm. I've just had a telegram from Uncle Biffy (the Brigadier to you lot) saying that he's been unexpectedly detained in Panama. Something about some inconsistencies in the papers he filed to set up his offshore management company, shifting counterfeit MC rule books from Afghanistan to Uruguay. He hopes to get bail next Thursday if he can sell the junk bonds by then, and meanwhile recommends a longitudinal Stirrup to

Bounds Green

Ah! The Brigadier, he has been detained. Hmm, therefore I might be able to continue my plan via Mile End. It is a Ffotheringay's classic trampezium move circa 1827.