Once more unto the breach, dear friends: more Mornington Crescent

[MyNightWithMaud]

Now we have had a little pause, in which to mull over the highs and lows of the last game and possibly rethink our strategies, might it be nice to start again?

I've been reflecting on what the vice-consul said in Ouagadougou in '67. She was quite right, after all, and so I shall disregard the naysayers and offer you a Musgrave's Collateral to

Oxford Circus

You mean of course Manchester Piccadilly because Bakerloo after Victoria in October means disaster.

Your military friend made a better recover than you know, dementedma and now plays non-league MC in Namibia - except when Venus is in Orion and they are getting the wrong sort of snow in Kampala, then he is relegated to Monopoly in Malagasy. He gets by.

Oh Andrew how lovely to have news of the dear Brigadier.He always was resilient and it gladdens my heart to hear he still plays, even if non-league. Such a raconteur after a few ports..his tale of the Archbishop, the pangolin and the avocado still makes me chuckle. I do believe though Andrew that you neglected to play a station in your last move. A deduction of 5 snargles and a
cross buttock penalty for you, my last,and be grateful you escaped Nidd!

Ma Any penalty from you can only be a pleasure but you err: I played Manchester Piccadilly - you, alas, did not make a play, but of course your are forgiven.

Did the pangolin every get its mojo back, do you know? I hope so: he was such a friendly sort and played quite good amateur MC - which is more than I can say for the Archbishop whose idea of play was to move to the next station on the same line - believe it or not, I saw him do it.

I now play Robertson's Red-Hot Reverse and that can only mean Keighley.

I wonder what the Bronte sisters would have made of MC had it been around in their day. I expect they would have enjoyed many an evening after a day's writing enjoying a game of MC in the drawing room. Probably their husbands might have objected and argued over the rules, and hopefully a repeat of the 1933 Great Portland Street Argument or a precursor would have been avoided.

So with this in mind and playing the heritage railways rule I move to Haworth

I'm not sure the Bronte sisters would have had time for MC, what with all that time tramping across the moors, catching consumption and other afflictions. Bramwell, I suspect, would have been a devious player when in his cups - not above playing Regent Street on a Wednesday, if he thought it was to his advantage. For me

Elephant and Castle

Another move designed to make it difficult- we now have most of the existing Bakerloo line out of bounds so the Brontes and Bramwell would have missed most of the sights of London.

The extension rule comes into play and so it is off to Camberwell, minus any carrots of course.

Saints You cannot seriously be unaware that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an anagram which can be decoded by an intelligent twelve-year-old in twenty minutes (or by an array of supercomputers in a day and a half) into a game of MC so brilliant in its subtlety (or possibly so subtle in its brilliance, there are three schools of thought about that) that it was deleted by MC over a century before MC even existed.

Camberwell be damned or even Camberbadly. The only wat is Essex and specifically Shoeburyness.

I fear, Andrew, that you are becoming fixated on the ::gasps:: provinces. This is not the time to be faffing about in the hinterlands and we must return to the vibrant and bustling metropolis forthwith. Our capital needs us, so with that in mind, I shall replay one of the most thrilling moves from the Nanking semi-finals of '77 (I'm sure you remember the fuss when the orang-utan broke loose and won the tie-breaker against the papal nuncio):

A treble Winstanley with a lateral lunge to

Pinner

Goodness, I haven't seen a treble Winstanley played with such vigour in many a year! (I missed the finals of '77 due to that nonsense with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the payment to a seedy dive owned by the Earl of Bletchely. SUCH a fuss over mere thousands and a missing call girl!)
From Pinner to Warren Street. Permissible while Venus is in thrunge and the starlings in murmuration.

Good news my fine fellows! I return in person to the Metropolis as the restraining order has been lifted very soon. This where the mighty game comes into its own, being able to negotiate all the no go areas without wearing out one's Oyster card. In celebration a simple yet elegant Morrison's back step to Bank.

Is the Morrison's not now a bit passé, Slinky? I tend to feel it's had its moment. But I forgive you the lack of originality as I'm about to play a truly timeless classic myself, with a reflective stop-shires twist to Covent Garden.

No Maud, your memory is at fault. It was not the papal nuncio with whom the orang-utan wrestled so valiantly - it was the papal bull and it came off worse.

And what you call the ::provinces:: or the ::hinterlands:: are now known as the Regions, and MC must move with the times. A new century calls (the nineteenth) and we shall not flag or fail, in Churchill's words or anybody else's.

When the authentic voice of London is heard I shall heed the summons but in the meantime you can like it or lump it: I play a super-Simeonovsk on the vertical (not seen since Lusaka in '83 when the appreciative cheers of the audience could be heard on NASA's mission to the Outer Planets) to Appleby - so yah boo shucks!

Exit only I fear at weekends from Covent Garden and if we are to play the 1975 rule we are indeed at the said time. So I can play the short walk rule and go to the former terminus of the Piccadilly line at Aldwych

Did we cross-post, Saints?

It matters not. From your move or mine we can play a Watkins Whatever to Merhtyr Tydfil.

I despair. If we're leaving the metropolis again, I'm playing Sartre's Conundrum to

Invalides

Jean-Paul Sartre en Jeudi. Sacre-Bleu!

It's more a day for Jean-Paul Gaultier, so Montmartre seems an appropriate move, avoiding any Metro station with both an M and a C in its name.

Ah hah!!

A double vowel will get me on the quick way to . . . the quick way. So I am going to Hauptbahnhof Aachen and the last one on the sleeper to you-know-where is a sissy.

Ah, Andrew - always so keen to escape to farflung climes. Of course, we all know why - it must be terribly hard to be limited to Greater London by the terms of your restraining order. Still, my sources tell me that if you continue to abide by the terms (including of course the mandatory kumquat consumption and regular exposure to Wagner's later operas) then restrictions may be lifted in 2018.

Meanwhile... Tooting Broadway,

The order has an exception for MC - they don't like to stop people engaging in work of vital national importance.

I will meet you some of the way at Louvain.

Andrew is indeed keen to avoid London in this game. Could it be that his arch-enemy and nemesis The Marquis of Marlborough is in town, and he fears a similar thrashing to the one meeted out in '43? The Marquis plays dirty and won the Grand Mastership that year with a footling breech which lured Andrew into a rash gimpslide and thus disqualification. Shocking times!! I play a sedate St Pancreas to erase the memory.

I am not afraid of the Marquis of Marlborough - not least because I have the photos his second wife's sister gave me of his tattoos and he wants to be able to hold up his head in the Carlton Club.

But if you happen to bump into him please remind him to return my alpenstock. It has sentimental value and he knows why, and especially where it has been and what happened to it there.

If I must, I must, and I play a Reluctant Rinaldi to Greenford Junction. I just hope the bloody chocolate machine is working. Last time I was there it took my groat and gave me nothing.

Ah, but then, his second wife's sister is also your sister's second wife, so you are far closer to the marquis than you are willing to admit.

I feel we must repair toot sweet to

Totteridge and Whetstone

I can imagine the Marquis having a property in Totteridge- even with a manager of an association football club rumoured to live there, and one from Alsace-Lorraine to boot.

Playing the closed lines and then closed stations rule brings me to the Metropolitan line and Marlborough Road which I am sure would be acceptable to the noble Lord. If he plays MC of course.

Oh please don't inform my darling spouse that that is where the association football manager lives; he will want to place Maud Towers on the market and relocate there forthwith.

But I digress. I have heard that the best place to go, if you want to meet members of their Lordships' house (incognito, of course) for some challenging and sophisticated MC play, is behind the bins in the Asda car park there, and so we must speed to

Queens Road Peckham

Not seven seas of Rye, but to Peckham Rye we must now go. At least with the Asda car park you can go and get some Marmite, if that is your spread of choice. The Lordship probably prefers pate.