Being the Summer Solstice ...

Here we are in midsummer, 21st June ... really?
Why is the Sun is not shining?

There is a philosophical saying which runs thus ...

• There are no such things as problems.
• These are simply golden opportunities for change!



"Oh, Bottom ... Thou art changed!"


I think I might prefer problems!

Saint Anley remembers Mrs. G ...

After 1 year as an undergraduate, St. Anley was expelled from this comfortable university accommodation ...

Now, be assured, this expulsion was not the result of any unspecified misdemeanour that he recalls.
Apparently the university authorities unwisely considered that St. Anley possessed the experience and maturity to survive in the independent accommodation sector.
It was all downhill from there.

A North London suburb, early 1970s …

This was not the most salubrious accommodation: an unheated, drafty, ground-floor bed-sit, a single-element ‘Belling’ hob, a cracked kitchen sink, a few sticks of furniture and an apology for a bed.

The room cost St. Anley only £3.50 per week.
The price for using this shared bathing facility was 20p.

Mrs. G. lived in a room upstairs.
Mrs. G. liked St. Anley.
I think he became just a little fond of her.

Regularly she would interrupt St. A’s evening studies by knocking on his door.
“Come and keep me company,” she used to say.
Now, Mrs. G. was fortunate: she had a television set!
“Of course!” would be the enthusiastic response.

Mrs. G. was a mature lady.
Well, she was just a little older than St. Anley, and clearly experienced.
She was a single mum.
She lived with her infant daughter, Bridget.

Mrs. G. wasn’t exactly pretty; 'handsome' is a better word.
She had a pleasing face, a delightful smile, that revealed only one blackened tooth, and an engaging Irish accent.
She was slightly large in all the right places.
Occasionally she would accidentally(?) display her generous cleavage.
Being a sensitive gentleman, St. Anley would politely avert his gaze to watch the television.

Once Bridget was asleep, in a bed that she would later share with her mother, Mrs. G. would ply St. Anley with coins from her meagre welfare benefit.
“Off you go to the off-licence,” she would say.
“Get some beer.”

Obediently, off he went to the alcohol-retailer on Green Lane.
That was only a mile-and-a-half away.
On his return, an hour later, they drank the beer.
(Does anyone else remember 7-pint cans of Watney's Red Barrel?)

Mrs. G. would fall asleep in her armchair.
(St. Anley didn't have an armchair!)
St. Anley would then quietly withdraw to his own room, bearing inexplicable feelings of guilt in his soul.

Nothing else ever happened ...

          ... except that St. Anley failed his first academic exam!

I miss Mrs. G.