Friday 25 September: Croydon, England

I’d been busy writing a draft of my blog when the plan banked and I saw the sea lapping the shore of England, my first glimpse of this island in well over four years. My thoughts were akin to those on 15 May 2005 when I saw Melbourne from the sky on my migratory trip: that I was meant to be feeling something more. I wasn’t empty, but equally not stirred into passion. I was curious about what on Earth has happened to this country and in particular my old employer, Direct Line, part of the RBS group that lost GBP40 billion last year,

My notes are those of a tourist, at least until I got to see my friends in the pub. The train ticketing system is bizarre, but the Thameslink train, which we used to think as being tediously slow, felt like a shinkasen in comparison to my usual fare.

I passed my old office in Lansdowne Road. It was a new office when I worked there, and its bold signage exuded the confidence that the company had. It looked faded now. The hotel next door was new then too. It looked more jaded now. The staff were sans brain, and the corridors smelt like a musty curry. Well, it was only for one night. I turned on the TV to learn that Davina McColl is now considered a beauty worthy of advertising cosmetics.

We walked through the local shopping mall. I felt a certain otherness, a certain detachment, looking at something once so familiar, remembering all those mundane things so quickly forgotten like the name of that bookshop on the corner, the place me and Pat sometimes met for lunch, and so on. The shops floors were more tightly packed with goods, and lots of stores were on sale. We ate in Yo! Sushi – one of our old haunts and enjoyed finally eating Asian food again after a week of croissant, cheese and foie gras.

We agreed to split for the evening. I toured some shops for an hour to kill the time. The gossip magazines were in a hullaballoo about so-called celebrities that I’d never heard of – the B-list of fame has moved on. Somebody called ‘Fiz’ is getting married against all advice. The shelves of wine in the supermarkets had almost no Aussie wine on them. It seems the Poms have tired of the cheap plonk that satisfied them at volume for over a decade.

Waterstones book shop reflected British interests -a very large section on military history. A decent section on politics – mostly British – and some counterculture stuff. For all the political books I did wonder whether British politics was actually producing any ideas that would affect my life. I suspected not. There was a very reasonable poetry section. The shop, in an ordinary outer suburb of London compared very favourably with those in outer Melbourne.

I found myself stopping in the middle of the street to listen to some of the accents, in particular the warm tones of some first generation Afro-Caribbean ladies, and some total geezer standing outside a pub in the market: ‘na wot I mean?’.

I met my friends and former colleagues from Direct Line in the Spreadeagle. I loved working in that place. Everyone was so positive and friendly. Martyn Hammond, one of the people I’ve had the most contact with since leaving was there, looking healthier and more relaxed that I’ve ever seen him.

There stories were much the same, with a despondency about there working lives. “He’s getting VR” (VR = voluntary redundancy), or “He applied for VR and was rejected”. “He’s leaving”, “No contractors are being renewed”. At least many of my friends here had paid off their mortgages. Even with this air of pathos I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. The intervening years did not seem to matter. I wish I had a lot longer to speak to everyone.

Steve Daley whisked a very drunk (about 8 pints of Guinness) me and Martyn to South Croydon for a ruby (i.e. Ruby Murray = Curry). I ate a chicken dhansak. They asked me about my job and I mentioned that the first two years were very difficult for me due to the nature of the area of the bank I worked in, but things were a lot better now. Steve took this and spoke at some length about investment strategies. We gathered he was day trading.

It was 3:15am. I had been in bed for 90 minutes when the prostitute had woken us up by knocking repeatedly on the door. I guess she had the wrong room number. So I went back to sleep for another 3 hours to await the AFL Grand Final.