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

Do behave, Andrew. We don't want a repeat of that awful brouhaha in Leipzig, do we?

Cheddar

We can return to London using the closed lines rule and then on the Great Western mainline on one of those new trains, hoping they do not leak. Expect no marmalade sandwiches though.

Paddington

I do feel that there has been rather too much use of the closed line rule of late which if I say so myself, is not quite the thing. I remember when Great Aunt Mavis got into such difficulty in the Little Peover preliminary rounds for this very reason.
I am however sure that a direct trip to Kemble will make us all feel much better.

Saints dear, I'm not so sure what you have got against marmalade sandwiches. In my opinion, they are far superior to most food offered on trains these days, even in First Class. Though they are a little sticky I grant you!

Sorry, all. Those who need to to know will know the nature of the emergency which has kept me off-thread - everybody else, be warned and stock up with cucumbers while the going is good.

I will have you know, Maud, that what you call "that awful brouhaha in Leipzig" is well remembered there as my and the city's finest hour. I am not to blame for the Dean's wife having a vivid imagination and no self-control.

Time for something a little recherché so we are all going to Milford Haven. Last one in the municipal swimming pool is a cissy.

Milford Haven, you say? A place that has one day of sun a year, and even then it can't be guaranteed. I feel the need for glamour, elegance, sophistication and somewhere where Arti's Great Aunt Mavis has not been declared persona non grata for yet another instance of flouting both the rules of MC and common decency. That, of course, leaves us with very little choice but I think we will find what we seek at

Macclesfield

Isn't Great Aunt Mavis a cousin of Mummy Pingu? I hope so; they deserve each other and I mean that in the nicest possible sense. It's people like that who make life entertaining.

Which is more than I can say for the place you have just mentioned. Taken as a whole it is. If we must go to places so supremely awful and dead as that, well, all right, we must, and all aboard the MC special to Wrexham it is!

There is still a municipal swimming pool in Milford Haven? I cannot recall the last time I went to one in the UK. All these privately run ones since the sports minister of the early 1990s refused to classify darts as a sport are no patch on them. I am doubtful that any government official played MC in the 1990s at all.

Leaving the principality to the last place I ever saw a coracle, Shrewsbury

The failure of central and local government to recognise the importance of MC is indeed a serious national emergency. When a promising player in my county won the under-14 quarterfinals with a stunning Blake’s Backward to Bradford not one member of the council was present. Apparently they were all watching something called “cricket”.

Hay-on-Wye.

educatingarti I love marmalade sandwiches, just know you cannot get them on a train. All this porridge nonsense for breakfast.

The closed lines rule has to be played again, taking us to Hereford

And onwards to

Harold Hill

The triple H rule then take us to Harlow.

We are back in Hereford as there have been two non-stations played. But let us go back to London anyway and Harold Wood. There may be a cafe there that could provide us with a bacon sandwich if it is too late in the day for toast and marmalade.

Though the east of Greater London is not a place I expect Maud or Mummy Pingu frequent, after the argument at the Romford MC tournament in 1983.

Oh dear, if only YouTube had been around in 1983, although I don't suppose they have it in Romford to this day - or the wheel either.

As far as I am concerned Harold definitely wouldn't, and he is not going to - not until he redeems himself from, well, let's not remind the senior or tell the junior Crescenters. Suffice it to say that that is not what tartare sauce is for.

Godalming.

Ah dear. It was the traumatic recollection of that dreadful altercation in Romford (Mama Pingu is such a liability when she's been on the [non-tartare] sauce) that caused a moment of lightheadedness in which I wrongly named Harold Wood as Harold Hill. My apologies.

Frimley

Ah, the joys of Southern trains. Which apparently run nowadays. There used to be a world championship of darts somewhere near Frimley if I recall correctly. Long before people from the Netherlands and Germany and other non-Commonwealth countries started playing the game and winning. I have often wondered if there is a pseudo-version of MC played in these countries. I'd think the French would pay homage to Claude Monet and call it Gare St Lazare, perhaps.

It's not too far to Redhill where even though you are outside the capital, apparently you can still use an Oyster card.

Dear God. I leave you for five minutes and you end up in Frimley, which has nothing better to recommend it than a first class hospital and the birthplace of one kick-happy Wilkinson. (jolly good show.)

I wasn't going to do this. But the '87 Inclement Statute leaves me no choice.

Sevenoaks as was

My, FastWindow, you're harsh. We try to be a little more relaxed in this game, for fear of triggering one of the Permanent Secretary's relapses. She's been a little fragile ever since that contretemps in Venice, just before the European u21 qualifiers in '92. But we don't want to dwell on that on a Sunday morning, so

St Paul's

I think we can start the move back to the capital from here, even though we cannot use an Oyster Card. Bat and Ball

Well we could have done had we not done so already and so a Rogers reverse takes us back to St Paul's and then via the Post Office Railway rule to Farringdon

A repeat move to a three word station requires a four move sojourn out of London so - with regret - Chichester it is.

The Squadron Leader’s tame badger is at it again. Will whoever is feeding it turpentine please stop now before we have a repetition of the business in King’s Lynn?

So, using the Toy Railway rule

Sheringham

Fortunately for you, Maud, I respect the rule that what goes on on the Toy Railways stays on the Toy Railways. I will therefore draw the veil over the whole sorry and sordid saga of the hedgehog, the Mars Bar, and the pot of yellow paint and suggest you all join me in Dymchurch. The pubs are open.

Perfect! I do long to see Derek Jarman's garden at

Dungeness

I think that we should continue on the loop on the narrow gauge railway (as I call it) and return to New Romney.

For you, Saints: Hythe