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

There is one obvious move, to Farringdon but I think that will leave future north/south moves open to blocking by open booking? This would be according to the pre-travel zone rules.

No, go for it, Late. Remember the convention in Harrogate last year? Afternoon session on Lord Lemère's Ruling. Covered just this kind of thing.

Of course there were a few predictable voices of dissent –they know who they are – but I think you're on safe ground.

Now look, people - the disregard of Covington's Crackpot Convention has gone too far. Like dear Julian or was it Sandy we must purge ourselves so we are all going to Builth Wells.

Good Lord, here you all are! Why did no one let me know? It's horribly reminiscent of '87 when Andrew told me that the Grand Master Tournament was in Reykjavik. When I reached the alleged venue it was entirely empty except for the skeleton of a small whale and a stand selling toasted seal blubber with blueberry yogurt. Only after considerable ringing around did I discover that the finals were proceeding apace in East Timor

Much of the play so far is frankly worse than embarrassing. I shall have to save the situation by a Papal acta brevis to Southwark, pace Newman's 1876 Emancipation edition.

Ah, but Irene, I know that one! (We did Newman's in AEC recently) and that leaves an opening to a classic four ticket bypass (also called Stermann?) and so to Tottenham Court Road -- and I think we are getting closer!

Oh no! Oh bugger! Irene you played to Southwark and I've messed it up, because a Stermann would have to be Southbury.

Irene I am reliably informed (the Peruvian Ambassador who was running the stand being in my pocket) that you made an impressive pig of yourself on the blubber and yoghurt. And I know about your antics on the flight to Helsinki which followed. Credit where it's due, the chihuahua seemed to enjoy it.

At the risk of stating the obvious: Prudhoe Mill

Before one inch of frost, snow or some other form of weather that arrives each winter in the north and surprises the Major if he returns late from his shooting holiday as per 2009 and the train operators each time, I think we better move back south.

So as the top end of the Northern line seems not to have been visited this game, and indeed with the Night Bus rule played on the way, we end up at Woodside Park. The sun is out so no difficulty commencing that annual event known as Christmas Shopping.

Christmas shopping? Why, my dear, the ladies' maid's undermaid started that weeks ago. One needs to be prepared, although I understand that she might have saved herself a trip to Fortnum and Mason by buying it on the computing device, getting a Black Friday mega deal, whatever that means. Young people these days speak a different language, don't they?

But mention of Fortnum and Mason naturally leads one to

Green Park

Goodness gracious, is anyone still staying in the Northern Hemisphere over the so-called festive season? Not Pygmalion likely.

Hong Kong Harbour.

Not all of us who play the game can jet off to the southern hemisphere over the festive period. One has family traditions and the joys of Boxing Day to endure.

The only harbour I am likely to be near is Chelsea, so off to Sloane Square it is.

But we can have our relations join us on our private jets, can't we?

However: if we must stay in London Bsyswater is bearable.

Exactly Saints. I for one am under royal decree (from mater) that I must be ensconced in the family pile from 24th until the 27th, when she chases all of us out in order to prepare for NYE. (I have no desire to be there then, the Colonel once (only once) posted photos on something called Instagram. I was scarred. He was banned from every extant form of social media.)
Anyway, I have been re reading Neverwhere, so in honour-Blackfriars.

Family Christmas, eh? I will be returning as ever to the family hovel deep in the Fens, where the electrics haven't been rewired since the original electrician perished at the Somme and my only escape from sullen family feuding is a chilly marsh inhabited by 9 million inbred waterfowl.

So, with a heavy heart I take the one weekly train to

Shippea Hill

Oh, what a coincidence. We too have relations who live in a Fenland hovel, perhaps they are neighbours?

To commemorate Dr Beeching's handiwork

Chatteris

How is East Anglia these days? Are they still eating their young?

Civilisation calls. Oxford.

So to a rarely used station in London, returning via the new link:

Sudbury and Harrow Road

Dear old S and HR. It looks good as you leave it.

Now considering (1) the date (2) the FT index (3) the balance of parties in the French National Assembly and (4) the headline in today's Observer it can only be

Left hand down a bit

and we will therefore be going to Nuneaton.

The Major-General has found his left-handed three-speed widget-poacher and it was exactly where Maud said it would be - which just goes to show that there's many a true word spoken in rather coarse and imaginative jest, isn't there?

But widget-poachers are so last century. Everyone's using a nutribullet now. So, in search of our five a day, let's go to

Covent Garden

Dollis Hill (reverse Amblington with a transverse shunt, before anyone starts quibbling about up-shafts).

A transverse shunt? I thought you had gone via Wembley Park and this confirmed it. So I think the depths of Kilburn need to be visited on this cold Tuesday evening. No widgets if you ask for a pint of Liffey water in a hostelry there.

Widget-poachers will be back, you mark my words, like fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. In memory of which let's get as near as we can to Fleet Street by dropping in on Blackfriars.

I understand that the volume of wagers on the result of this thread has crashed the Betfair site. A proud moment for us all.

As it's the first of the month, and I've just opened the first window on my Tiffany Advent calendar - one can never have enough diamonds, after all - I feel an elongated Wickington is in order:

Aldgate

Perivale.

An elongated Wickham? I haven't seen that since done Vladivostok '47 when the Bolivian consul was disqualified after playing it so elegantly to Tipperary Junction - he had of course overlooked the twelfth proviso to the appendix (not now of course in force) to Rule 128(xxiii).