Woke up at 6.06AM. Listened for a while to the radio station LBC (Londons Best Conversations). A commercial radio. Compared by a man who could literally talk under water. Very competent. Commenting on the daily papers and television gossip. Not frightened to make disparaging comments. In fact pretty well all his comments were disparaging. But funny and to the point. Very English. How different to the shock jocks of Australia. Listening promotes much regret and nostalgia about what could have been.
I now maybe regret that I didn't come back to London earlier. This is in hindsight of course. For one thing I would have been able to walk further. There have been changes for the bad but some good things are still intact. There is still evidence of the essential English character being alive. Maybe if I had come back earlier I would have felt too regretful about leaving. Maybe if I had stayed I would have hated all the changes and would have found it hard to cope. There was Mrs Thatcher to contend with. Not only her but the millions who supported her. I was fortunate to have lived in London during the last stages of Atleeism. This was a more secure age for the lower classes. Big Unions and Big State owned Corporations offered a comfortable life for people like me. People were poor but government was good intentioned. People were poor but I thought life was fair. The Government did have a sense of egalitarianism. Everybody was more or less in the same boat. Everybody could get a job. There was full employment and I mean full employment - not someone working 3 hours a week and therefore not considered to be unemployed. People were poor but the intellectual life was rich. People were poor but life had a serious feel to it. And the rich were respectful of the poor. They were wary of showing themselves up. They were fearful of flaunting their wealth. It went without saying they all had philanthropic intentions. Or at least pretended they did. For all of the 20th Century Britain had been edging towards Socialism. A lot of people considered it inevitable. I had hoped it might happen and I wanted it to happen. I liked living in a country that was trying to make it happen. It's all been swept away now. We have people begging in the streets. We have people living on the streets. We have an economic system which guarantees permanent unemployment of between 10% and 20% of the population. We are starting to have generations of people who,live on welfare from cradle to grave. We have people who can never get a job. The proud working class has disappeared. It no longer exists. No doubt our present system is more efficient than Socialism. Mrs Thatcher believed that Socialism was unfair and unjust. She hated it. Her millions of supporters must have thought the same way. Blood Pressure 127/73 Pulse 70 We left the house at approx 10.00AM. Light cloud covering the sky. Still not cold enough for my liking. Took the bus to Wembley Central. Went into stores to try on shoes and trousers. Jenny bought something in Primark. Could not find any shoes that gave instant relief. Could not find trousers to fit. Very hot inside the store. I am so angry about being conned with my shoes that I am determined to suffer for my stupidity. I am not going to buy a new pair of shoes. Unless we can find my special Nike Air of course. Wembley is a very mixed ethnic area. We then took the 82 bus from Wembley to Euston. Long journey. Shops along the way have a Middle Eastern look about them. Until we come closer to London where it has been gentrified. Forty Five years ago there would not have been any businesses or very few and now almost every house has been converted into a small shop. People come here and when they cannot get a job they are forced to try and make a living by setting up small businesses. We are staying quite a way from Central London. Could not walk there in an emergency. I once walked to work from Earls Court when there was a rail strike. Took me one and a half hours. The walk into London from here would take several hours. We had to change buses because the driver had to stop for lunch and there was no relieving driver waiting for him at a certain spot. Everyone had to get off the bus. After 5 minutes another 3 buses came along and a young person who didn't speak very good english gave us a voucher to show the driver on the new bus because we had been forced off the previous bus. Finally arrived at Euston where we had lunch in a Pret A Manger. I had Korean Pork thick soup. Jenny had Tomato. We sat and looked out the window at the people walking in the street. A man was mowing a small lawn nearby. Jenny considered herself much better at mowing than he was at mowing. We then took another bus to Piccadilly Circus because Jenny wanted to buy some souvenirs. I sat next to a person who was studying both a bus map and a tube map. I asked him where he was from and he said Germany. Turned out very friendly and personable. He was only in London for a few days and only had daily bus tickets. Didn't know how to get to Trafalgar Square. He had driven here from Frankfurt. He was staying close to Trafalgar Square and he needed to get back there. We were able to help him. He spoke very good English and I complimented him on this. Turned out he was actually Rumanian and he started learning English in grade 1. He lives in Germany but says he mostly speaks English in his job as a Medical Scanner technician in a large Hospital. We all got off at Piccadilly Circus. Our friend even made a joke about animals and circuses. We showed him how to get to Trafalgar Square. Jenny bought her souvenirs. I thought they were pretty tacky and too expensive. Shop was crowded. Had to queue to pay. Piccadilly Circus is not as good as it was 45 years ago. There is no fence around the circus. Cars go close to the people. There are some interesting historic momentoes below ground. They haven't managed to completely refurbish it. Interesting notices still on the walls. Old signs still intact. One little shop is still there that was there 45 years ago. He has a newspaper article stuck on his wall. The headline is "The Man who Refuses to Move" We then came home changing from the Bakerloo Line to the Metropolitan line at Baker Street. Bought some Afghan bread from one of the many ethnic shops in Preston Road. We are eating leftovers tonight. Watched some TV. University Challenge exactly the same as it was 45 years ago. York University against Penleigh Cambridge. The Four York University participants all had that hang dog apologetic working class look about them. Three out of Four Cambridge participants gave excellent impressions of being competitors in the Upper Class Twit of the Year award. The fourth was a beautiful young girl who held the ship afloat. Why do some intellectual woman have to be so good looking? Of course Cambridge won. Some questions very hard. Lots of answers wrong. We are both in better shape today that we were yesterday. To bed at about 8.30. Slept well.
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