Mornington Crescent....

[BratFarrarsPony]

Well as I won the last game fairly and squarely despite not being as quick as the old lags....I will start another game.

Gants Hill

You may be right, Andrew, but it behoves us to reach out the hand of friendship towards newcomers and novices. After all, we were all beginners once and all made our own faux pas (I still cringe at the recollection of that lateral Mackenzie to Hatch End at the '57 prelims).

Salisbury is good and enables me to dust off the Cathedral Concordance from '89. I dare say you're expecting me to play Winchester, but that would be far too obvious, and so I'll opt for

Worcester

Oh dear, forgetting that there are two stations in Worcester. For a novice that is excusable, but Foregate Street or Shrub Hill should be known to anyone who partook in the long game of MC in 1976 during that hot summer. There are three choirs in the annual festival, but that is not a feature of MC, though one day someone may bravely attempt to write MC the Musical, or No Rules, to give it another title.

So the rule that brings us back to start at the point of the previous move comes into play, followed by the pre-Beeching rule to avoid a longer journey than necessary. Without eating any pies I move to Sutton.

You called Andrew?
I love a good Cathedral Concordance. Though we were discouraged by mater from such fripperies. I put it down to one too many viewings of The Bells of St Mary's at Mrs Rose's School for Independently Minded Young Gels. So in a spirit of daughterly rebellion I'm going for Lincoln. Yes, you heard right, Lincoln. What about it?

There is only one answer to that and is a Fotheringa's Fictional to my beloved Barchester

I play the back to the previous move rule to overcome the Fotheringa's Fictional. Lincoln and Sutton are of course linked in the mind of those who follow Association Football, or who have jumped on the bandwagon after the performances of teams from the said places. This move to Lincoln causes some difficulty in deciding where to move next, in a bid to return to the metropolis.

So a step in the direction of the metropolis and keeping up the Cathedral Concordance is to move to Ely (the one that used to be an Isle, not the one in the Principality).

By the Principality you mean the Reservoir Part of Which is Still Waiting to be Drowned?

St Asaph!

A multiplicity of rules to be played allows me to return to the metropolis and Drayton Green

Oh Saints - we can always rely on you for a move which combines the obviously subtle with the subtly obvious, can't we?

First Friday in the month so Parsons Green it is.

Crossing bravely south of the river to Southfields, which is a lot quieter than when Andy Murray visits in June.

As I scroll through chapter XX1 ( Master class MC 1845) Para 25. Clause 25567. Subset. 67.

High Barnet.

I'm so sorry to have been absent for so long. Elton and David were so insistent that I shouldn't leave the houseparty in the Caribbean - they're both quite adept at MC, by the way - that I had to stay another week. Beyonce sends her love, by the way, but asks whether somebody could please send her a fresh copy of the 1952 Consolidation of the Rules with Appendices, as she's lost hers.

Anyway, you don't want to hear me wittering on about my pals.

Chichester, convenient for West Wittering

Sorry Maud, but Elton has just told me that everyone was longing for you to go - nothing personal, but they could not cope with your MC skills. It's a bit unfair for professionals to play with amateurs, as I told Liz and Phil on a cold damp day in August in Balmoral after the former got snurgled on the Waterloo and City and the latter used language which would have realised eyebrows in a Royal Navy wardroom in the Fifties.

I've sent Beyonce a copy as requested - I could only find the translation into Classical Sanksrit but I know she's at home with that. I just hope she does not notice the joke hidden as an acrostic in Rule 265(xxiii) because while it might have been considered acceptable in 1925 times have changed and it would not do now at all.

Royal Tunbridge Wells.

Using the heritage railways rule I move to East Grinstead.

Heritage is good; let's indulge it. Dymchurch.

Oh, and what has happened to the Vice-Admiral? I have her rather ornate hip-flask, which she left in church at the christening. Empty, of coruse, which it wasn't when she sat down!

I think we may have done the heritage bit before, though a rule can be revived. So assuming the closed railways line and then the use of the High Speed link, we can get to Stratford International and then via the DLR to ^Abbey Road*. It's not the one with the famous zebra crossing unfortunately, which I cannot imagine Maud having visited as the Beatles are far too avant-garde for her, i expect.

Saints you have (no doubt inadvertently) activated para 12 of the Third Appendix to the second proviso to Rule 187(a)(iv): the next destination msut therefore begin with the same four letters as . . . that place . . . but canot be in England so it's heigh ho for Abbeville.

Oh and watch out, some fool has bailed the Dean out. Again. Count the spoons and lock up your daughters. And the sheep.

Really, Saints, you're maligning my musical taste? After that incident with the Adjutant General, the mezzo-soprano and the principal violinist's resin, I would have expected you to avoid all matters musical. Anyway, as I am sure you remember, when John, Paul, George and Ringo went off to commune with the maharishi, I accompanied them and persuaded them to ditch the mahjong board in favour of MC. I am the walrus, indeed.

Park Royal

Maud It's time that story died the death. Principal violinist's resin indeed? Everyone knows it was the second double-bassist. And the revenge she took with her bow and the box of reeds she borrowed from that oboist from Mongolia (or was it Hartlepool? - somewhere exotic anyway) will live in the memory.

Royal is good but not good enough. Imperial College or more precisely South Kensington

Ah, so it's about seats of learning, is it? Next stop Bloomsbury for a spot of intellectualising with one's fellow aesthetes. Lytton was such a dear.

Russell Square

Lytton was a good fellow except when he had that damned albino weasel with him. Anyone remember the time the beast got out during the Queen's Speech and gave the Second Lord in Waiting that painful bite on . . . no, let's spare his blushes.

Another of the same: Sloane Square

Lord, are you all still here? I have been on SUCH a spree... undercover to Moscow (for obvious reasons) then the Trans-Siberian to Vladivostok. What a happy week, gazing out at the snow-covered birch trees and living off illegally distilled vodka and roll-ups with my splendid new friends Boris, Igor and Vladimir. Things got a bit sticky the other end but fortunately I'd smuggled my old diplomatic passport along just in case so the FCO had no option but to rescue me, though they were terribly arsey about it.

Now back to London, and my tag won't let me go any further than

Shoreditch High Street

Irene - was that red-headed attendant on your train to Vladivostok? You know, the one with the pink borzoi and the bifocals? I hope she (or he in the even-numbered months) told you the tale about the Distrirt Commissar, the white rhino, and the box of Oolong. It's all true - I was watching.

I know a chap who can get that tag fixed for you then you can join us in Hunstanton.

Ah, sunny Hunny, where it's forever 1952.

King's Lynn

Don't listen to dear Andrew, when I had my errr, "hardware" adjusted by his friend all it did was set off all the alarms in Fortnums. Just give the chief constable a bell and say the immortal words "custard creams" - all your problems melt away.
So we are in the flatlands? No, no, no, won't do at all for this Yorkshire lass, so off we go to Meadowhall.

You did not cross my pal's palm with enough silver, fuckery, his price is his price. Next time don't try to haggle him down. He will have his little joke if you do. What were you trying to nick from Fortnums this time, hey?

Keighley.