At Neal Street

After arriving from Heathrow airport, I immediately made my way on the Piccadilly Line to Covent Garden Station, to meet my contact and to visit Freemasons Hall, where, after the annual Freemason's dinner, a private meeting was to take place regarding my unexpected return to London. Although privately I was also hoping to procure money from some old friends as I had only fifteen pence on my person after sparing the money for the travel card.

I wanted to re - acquaint myself with one of the places I loved: a restaurant in Neal Street, the place where I went out on my first date with Willomena.

At Covent Garden Station, upon walking into the street, I was met by florescent, multi - colored bags, coats, and shop entrances, trainers, trousers, ripping into my eyes and scarring my brain; each one of these offending images like a casual physical assault. I was keen to re - visit Covent Garden Market, a place my father would take me as a small boy to buy our groceries. The grocers have been replaced by stalls selling second rate tat including greetings cards and handmade ornaments alongside street illustrators drawing bad spoof portraits of the public.

I made my way to Neal Street to look for the restaurant, being intermittently shoved on my way there. Instinctively, I longed for austerity, a sense of identity of place, some connection with the genteel city in which I grew up. Instead I found myself in a replica of what seems to be every other street in London – heaving, loud, brash, intrusive, shabby, vacuous, soulless and empty; dominated by brand shops and chain shops… the disappointment becomes unbearable. I was hoping that London would be spared this: the replication of the indentikit, characterless high street. Part of me wishes that I had never returned: This is Neal Street in Covent Garden. The old restaurant I once knew, now gone, replaced by a place where a man can get plastic footwear from a place called ‘Footlocker’ for about fifty pounds… some of which are colored bright bloody orange.

I began feeling dizzy. Turning into a side street I found myself being violently sick, my walking stick just about managing to prop me up. People watched me, a man in his late fifties being sick… nobody presumed to ask after my health; nobody cared, nobody stopped to help.

I wanted to go back to the airport, but I needed to carry on trying to find Willomena, she would never forgive me if I gave up on her so easily and indeed I would never be able to forgive myself.

What did I want to find in London, apart from Willomena? I suppose it was hope: hope that London would be a good place with respectful, polite people; the London of my childhood, instead of the mass of tacky, aggressive, superficial and rude people that I have found myself drowning amongst this afternoon.

I don’t know what I expected despite having been away for so long. I suppose it must be difficult to understand why a man of my worldly experience would be so naïve as to think any other way about London; that it could avoid mass commercial globalization. I knew that there were parts of London lost to time which still existed and made it my mission to find them parallel to my mission to find Willomena.

I then made my way towards my contact point to find Rupert.