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

And thence to Potsdam itself.

As I have just seen Andrew spouting Latin on another thread, and his gerundives clearly need a lot of work, I think we should hurry to

Genoa Piazza Principe

I think we may need to use the Orient Express to help us get back to London in time for tomorrow. So on the ship across the Channel we are to get to Dover Priory.

Sorry, that ticket is not valid on this train. Back to Calais Maritime with you. Get the drinks in. You know my poison.

Gerundiva mea impeccabilia sunt

If you say so, Andrew, if you say so.

Gare de Nîmes

Now that brings back memories. Was it '73 or was it '75 and was it Mummy Pingu's third or her seventh - or were they the same person?

Anyway, that novice nun has never really recovered and has been on the Advokaat and tomato juice more or less none stop ever since.

Troisvierges.

I think we should at least be near to the front given we did not make it back to London for the 11th. Namur is a step nearer.

Yes, but do you remember what Mme le Maire there said to Maud last time the MC circus was in town? I knew Belgian French could be vigorous but really! And I don’t suppose much of it was even true, especially the bit about the tortoise which she couldn’t have known about anyway - Maud is too careful. Let’s cross the linguistic border, pay our respects at the Menin Gate, and proceed to Zeebrugge.

Mme le Maire was most supportive of my efforts to help her maintain law and order. It was a pleasure to assist and I stilll wear the Légion d'Honneur with pride. Andrew should have known that tortoises are a protected species and his attempt at smuggling two through customs, disguised as a banjo and a pith helmet, was doomed to failure, despite these being his usual accoutrements when travelling.

Folkestone Harbour

I am not sure a banjo would go down well on a journey in Kent. It seems to me more a place for a ukulele.

Via the stopping train we wend our way to London Bridge.

It wasn’t a pith helmet. It was the dress-uniform cap of a Brigadier General in the Army of Ruritania. The error is easily made by the untrained eye.

Sudden emergency and the train has been diverted to Heckmondwike - inconvenient, but when the Secretary General of the UN rings and says his train has been cancelled because of the wrong sort of snow on their boots and there’s a forty minute queue for a minicab what can anyone do?

Well, do they have Uber in the West Riding, or is that an instruction?

In which case, horses replace trains (better than buses, but harder on the crown jewels, the Duke tells me) and Forth Eorlingas to Liverpool James Street

A short journey to Heswall as we have not visited the Wirral in this game. Accompanied by music from the finest beat combo from the area, Half Man Half Biscuit. Probably men who have played the game of games given the references in some of their songs.

Uber has an affiliate in the West Riding called Ecky Thump.

Kelsall

Kensal Rise

The Bakerloo line has its moments, but not as many as some other lines. It is not long enough for a complete game of games to be played on one journey, even the imposter speed version tried out in 1981.

Uber are not liked by the London Mayor, so it is no surprise that they have branched out into the western part of God's Own Country. I think we should stay in the capital though, and move to Edgware Road (Bakerloo). Where the lift warning sounds like a traffic light pedestrian phase.

Oh no you don't, Saints - I wasn't born yesterday. I can see through you like an X-ray machine.

Wash your mouth out with soap and join me in Shoeburyness.

We are one year on, well this is actually the second game of games in a year.

The coast of the champion county will be quite cold this time of year. A hostelry or a train journey back to London may help. Reversing the use of the old District line rule (they used to run trains to Southend) takes us to Upminster

A year? Perhaps we should have some to celebrate? I dare not offer for fear there'll be a repeat of that excruciating episode in Tbilisi when Andrew and MamaPingu were drinking gin from a watering van with Baileys and Curacao chasers.

For a touch of Hollywood glamour, it has to be

Paddington

Gin? What a libellous suggestion. It was vodka and you know it.

And your hearing is at fault. Not Paddingon. Addington

But they haven't made a film about Addington (although it's surely only a matter of time)

New Cross Gate

Well, not one with a certificate from the BBFC, I grant you, but if you know where to look and have a strong enough stomach . . . no, Andrew, desist. This is not the moment for by-elections to the General Synod.

Gateshead

The Leamside line has come to our rescue as has the closed railway lines rule, enabling us to join the north end of the Metropolitan line and stop at Moor Park. Which I do not recall our former Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman mentioning in his seminal tv programme Metroland. I am sure he enjoyed the game of games from time to time, given his appreciation of the London Underground.

Wasn't Betjeman at the Walthamstow Conference in '49, the one where they controversially ruled that a Laureate's Lateral could not be played on the Bakerloo line at weekends unless there had been a counter-bifurcation through Watford Junction within the last three moves? I remember the brouhaha that caused.

Norbiton

Betjeman was one of the finest Crescenters of his era - among my acquaintances only poor dear Albert Schweitzer and of course the late King of the Belgians had more flare - and I fear that there are now only two of us left who can decode the MC references in his poems and the other is still in Styal.

In his honour: Dublin (North Wall).