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

Cricket and the game of games have something in common. They both have no rules. In the case of cricket the structure of the game is made by laws of the game.

It is but a short journey from South Kensington to Gloucester Road

And thus, if we must refer to that ludicrous game whose season has just ended, to

St John's Wood

We have been there already Maud but I will rescue you from the perils of Nidd by playing Walthamstow - I am as you know all heart.

The Chief Petty Officer sends her regards - she hopes to be discharged from the Institution before Christmas.

I am shocked that Saints seems to believe that this most majestic of games has no rules. Does the Michaelmas Sunday treble northern blind back shunt mean nothing to you? And playing it takes us to Salford Crescent.

Andrew, I am surprised you are still in contact with the Chief Petty Officer after that unfortunate incident in the fountain at the 1993 Harrogate Convention. We all thought she had gone a little too far and thus it was later proved.

We say to others that there are no rules, which seems to confuse many who have never played the game of games. To talk about rules of the game of games is similar to talking about the rules of a club in a 1999 film with Brad Pitt, in that the first rule is not to talk about the rules.

The rescuing from Nidd on a Sunday morning which is a grand and noble gesture that the Chief Petty Office would never have done was accompanied by a faux pas of an incomplete station name. This takes us back to the previous station which as it was invalid too, takes us back one move further.

Thankfully we can be rescued by the rail replacement bus rule and avoid the notorious triangle near Earl's Court, so from Gloucester Road we can go to Notting Hill Gate

Harrogate '93 is forgiven and forgotten - unlike Detroit in 1991, and if you are lurking, Alderman, I still want my stereotropic cordwangler back. Undamaged.

I'm going to get us out of the quagmire by playing Northallerton - so there

In games as protracted as ours, there has to be some relaxation of the rule against going back; the MC Council agreed that stance in Worksop in 2003, at the culmination of a game that had been running for 96 hours without a pause and in which at least two of the players lost their house, their life savings and their marbles.

Anyway, I will once again drag us back to the metropolis

Prince Regent

Oh Maud, please. A game of MC is not protracted until - at the minimum it has seen two American elections and one juicy trial at the Old Bailey come and go.

In memory of the Royal Personage just mentioned Waterlooville.

And thence, in hommage to that oblique reference to the greatest popular beat combo of all time:

Malmö Hyllie

What?? Within 48 hours of the close of polling in an EU country?

I think you had better write out Rule 356(12)(iv) a hundred times. On the train to Frankfurt an der Oder.

Oh, Andrew, don't be such a stick in the mud. Everybody knows that that particular rule is now only observed by the most niggardly and pedantic of MC players and surely you don't count yourself among their number?

Rotterdam Centraal

I have always found the mud to be a good place to be a stick in. It's the old rules, however pedantic, that keep MC great and raise it above the level of such mindless pursuits as c-h-e-s-s.

Delft

From there, a high speed train to Den Haag is in order I would have thought!

I hope you two have stopped bickering long enough to see the clear possibilities this opens up!

Maud and I stopped bickering after that business in Oslo with the raw haddock. We now just disagree vocally.

Dern Haag? Very old hat. A Donkins' Diversion to Zwolle.

Oh dear- incomplete station name again. We are in danger of having more than in the game in 1994 which caused such uproar.

So we are back in Delft, fine place it is. Time to move a little nearer to the UK and Mechelen Nekkerspoel

Vlissingen Souburg

And don't pretend you don't know why.

Right - enough of the Low Countries - Hauptbahnhof Aachen it is. And the bar on Bahnsteig 12 is open. Prosit!

Time to move on. Liege Guillemins

Sorry about the delay. The Secretary General insisted that the Synod needed me at once and when I heard what the Bishop had done this time - someone really must take peppered cucumber off the Episcopal diet - I dropped everything; not of course in the same sense as the Bishop and not in my local KFC either. I have warned all concerned that next time I will not be able to keep it out of the papers. In the event only the North Uist Pigbreeders' Gazette and Bricklayers' Advertiser picked it up and fortunately the September issue had already gone to press; so there is ample time for the Editor to get his MBE before the March edition. The nation is saved again.

In honour of which: Fort William

Ah, Andrew, the king of the superinjunction (after all, he's been subject to several).

Fort William is always so draughty, so on to

Milton Keynes Central

All the superinjunctions were set aside after I circulated that photo of the judge (now in retirement in a country with no extradition) and the chimpanzee - I was never sure which was enjoying it more!

Exeter St David's

Lots of use of the closed lines rule I see. I think I saw someone on the London Underground the other day who is the subject of a super injunction, though of course I cannot say whom it is. Not a former footballer though. As for judges, the last one I met was Jules.

I understand there is a choice of ways back to the capital from Exeter, and I will go via Salisbury and Woking, via Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction.

I know who it was you saw, and my lips are sealed although of course the name is all over the press in Mongolia.

You missed a trick going to Willesden Junction instead of White City, didn't you?

Interesting use of the nearby interchanges rule to get us to the Central line. Whence I go to Queensway

Like hell you do, Saints, and don't come the innocent with any of us here - you know why not.

You've caused a Bradshaw's Boing out of the metropolis and we find ourselves in the town which is always helping the police with their enquiries: namely Brighton. The spirit of George III, for whom MC was his only consolation during his last mad years, lingers there forever.