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

But he will be pleased if we depart for

Portsmouth

It may be a pleasant Sunday so it's back to Surbiton for the first time ever in a game of MC I think. People enjoy the Good Life here- hope I can buy some veggies for my Sunday lunch.

Maud You are right about it being a first visit to . . the place you mention - and there are good reasons for that, as some of us know. If I say Saskatoon '83 and remind you of the tin of pilchards and the Chief Rabbi of Belgium I am sure you will see my point.

In any event, a first-mention in the fist fourteen days of an even-numbered month triggers the Seventh Exception to the Eleventh Protocol to Article 18 of Rule 242(xxiii) and I am not the one to miss the opportunity - well, you know me. So Kidwelly it is!

Oh dear, Andrew, you've forgotten your medication again, haven't you? The confusion has returned. This is an odd-numbered month and has been for a week now, so do get Nurse to check that you're taking your pills.

We seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time outside the metropolis, so I think it's time to play the Brokeback Manoueuvre to

Gants Hill

Maud If you are not yet initiated into the mysteries of the MC calendar it's not my place - at least not alone - to rectify that. You stay with the Gregorian calendar until you learn better.

Hayes and Harlington

In honour of Fuckery Minor returning to academe (and no longer eating me out of house and home) I present Manchester Oxford Road.

Oh indeed. It's splendid that he got temporary release for the festive season. And in honour of Maud minimus returning to his seat of learning, we'll move to

Windsor and Eton

He's such a gifted boy, doncha know.

Dear Aloysius! How well I remember his visit here a few years ago, and the startling effects he wrought on my neighbours' topiary.

With the tube strike under way we switch into Scargill mode - which means I can play a direct videlicet to

St James' Park

Irene Yes, I've seen the photos of the hedge. On the Dark Net. What a bloody unhealthy vivid imagination.

Unfortunately you have triggered a Robinson's Ricochet to the identically named St James Place, Newcastle-upon-Tyne but I am sure someone will find a way out.

Yes, Aloysius has displayed a gift for the arts ever since he was a toddler and used a Sharpie pen to add some very amusing flourishes to the family Caravaggio. Oh how we laughed! His talent continues to grow and he is currently making a life-size sculpture of the late Queen Mother by welding together old car parts. So original!

But we must move on, so from Newcastle to

Tower Hill

The strike today prevents some stations being in the game i think, unless the rail replacement rule or some variant deployed in 1956 is used. Anyway, the DLR is within limits, and so it is to Cyprus that I now go. The one near London City Airport, not the one where the Major is alleged to have disgraced the platoon in 1974.

You really ought not to bring up that sort of evil gossip. It was all a misunderstanding - the Greek for good morning, and have you heard how Spurs played yesterday ought not to sound quite so like the Turkish for two eggs on toast and a weak tea, please, now should it?

As you cannot but know, when Leicester Square is closed the DLR - even if open - is in jamming. I am therefore constrained to play Bat and Ball.

You appear to be in a sporting frame of mind, old chap, and so I will move us on a Johnners' Jink for the cricket ground at

St John's Wood

Cricket isn't a sport, it's a form of perversion. And not even an enjoyable one. The only sports which is not beneath contempt is croquet.

The nearest match to that is Croxford and that's where we are going.

Well, it wouldn't be right for me to suggest that you're an expert on perversion, would it, Andrew?

Croxford reminds me that I was recently checking Crockford's Clerical Directory to confirm whether you know who lost his bishopric after that unfortunate misunderstanding with the proprietor of the whelk stall in Whitstable. He did.

Barnstaple

My expertise is wide but purely professional. That's what I always tell the rozzers. And as long as those photographs of Amsterdam '12 remain safe in the vaults of the Bank in Geneva, they are not going to argue with me. The look on that chap's face when he heard about what his husband had been up to with the Dresden shepherdess and the plain chocolate will live with me.

And you are quite wrong. It was Margate, not Whitstable.

In commemoration whereof Hythe.

I hope this is Hythe in Hampshire as the Kent one was played earlier in the game, i think on the way to Dungeness.

This train strike is really spoiling the game. Any chance of a reunion with my lost hat in Brighton is impossible, and there are no buses as replacements during the ASLEF tantrum.

So I have to invoke the heritage line rule and the closed lines rule and am off to Alresford

I picked up your hat Saints. It met with a slight accident while at a party on a houseboat with our friends from the Vegan Society. if you will adorn your headgear with mung beans rather than the more tradition flowers, you rather have to expect such things. They've woven over the hole with some lentils. It's quite fetching.

Brighton line is running tomorrow. In preparation for such excitement I'll take us to Bedford.

Pingu Was it the hat she wore at Vegas in '11? The one that would have got her arrested if she and the chaplain of the State legislature hadn't . . . well, let's leave it there, shall we?

In any event, Pingu, did you ever find those shoes? I can see why you did not make a song and dance about them at the time but the woman concerned is safely back in the Institution now.

Sandy.

I think that we should leave singing and dancing to others. There are films and television programmes for such pursuits, and doing this on a train especially a tube train is just not done. It would be a slippery slope to that heinous action of speaking to another person when it is not an emergency.

These bus links have come in handy but I think we should make as little use as possible. Off to Southgate it is then.

Singing of films? That will be those new talkie things, I won't have anything to do with them. As for television - wireless sets, radios as I believe the Americans call them, do not need pictures. The idea i absurd and it won't catch on.

The trouble with what you suggest is that you have invoked the Gate Rule - so it has to be Forest Gate. Ghastly, I know, but rules are rules.

Allow me o raise the tone

Highgate

Of course, that only raises the tone if one is to overlook the antics of the Mother Superior, the Head Boy from Eton, Mummy Pingu's 3rd husband and the 5 gallons of Beaujolais back in 07. I feel I'm ready to move past it, but I understand Maud still bears the scars.

How kind of you to remember, Pingu dear. '07 was a difficult year for all sorts of reasons and the lock-in at the speakeasy with husband number 3 (and of course his Jungian analyst, who was never far away) et al is one I'd prefer to forget. Thankfully, the scars are only mental (although of course things were different in '12, when husband number 6 was careless with the toasting fork at Mama Pingu's legendary claret and crumpets party).

New Cross Gate

Maud in her kindness invoked the London Overground rule which on a strike day was an act of mercy. Today being the non-strike weekday of this week suggests the Beaujolais should be brought out in celebration, even at this early hour. Not for me though after the incident in 2003 with the visiting Americans.

So whilst still able and before the snow arrives, it is off to Norwood Junction for breakfast at the cafe by the clock.

What? That greasy spoon? I'm all for being adventurous - see my next move - but there are limits. In the immortal words of Woody Allen, never trust a restaurant whose speciality is the Heimlich Manoeuvre.

Clock House

Ta dah!