Friday 1 July 2016

A brewery and its aftermath, voting at Australia House and an emergency at St Paul's Cathedral


Back in London again, now with the chequered flag of my personal satnav well in view.  I will be back in Sydney in less than a week. For slightly absurd reasons I am staying with my sister Sarah and Grant is staying with my nephew Francis and Jo his wife, a ten minute car ride away. G and I feel a bit odd after all this time in each others’ pockets but it’s nice for me and Sarah to be sisters on our own.  Like an aged and tubby Romeo and Juliet, Grant and I greet each other fondly when we meet.  Sarah and Grant have an long standing enmity which, bless them, they are trying to remedy with olive branches of one sort and another.  Grant invited Sarah to join us for a curry in the famous Brick Lane.   “But I don’t like curry.”  Her ploy was more cunning and successful “I want to shout you a tour of the local brewery just round the corner.”  Grant of course could not resist and that was how we all three set out like cats in a bag on a rather fascinating tour of the family brewery that makes umpteen million pints of beer a week which are drunk all over the world.  We crumbled hops in our fingers and went up and down staircases and saw amazing tanks and a machine that spewed spent barley.  We were the only three in the group and our guide was a gruff ex-school teacher who believed in discipline.  Sarah being a local knew a bit already.  “That is the oldest wisteria in England” she said.  “Older even than the one in Kew” And it was a remarkable creeper, smothering one side of the brewery.  Our guide grudgingly acknowledged that perhaps that was the case but when she also mentioned that the withies in the river were still picked by people for their Christmas wreaths he stifled his annoyance. The next opportunity he had he said snarkily “Our local friend will probably know this ….” Sarah didn’t and so he was on a bit of a winner and told us about the OH and S rules for our tour. “It can all be summed up like this “Don’t be an arse”, hoping for a frisson of shock from us two ladies with our posh accents.  I said musingly “We don’t have that word in Australia.”  He explained and I said “Ah you mean fuckwit”.  He recovered after a moment and joked with a barrel man who joked back.  “Lots of banter in this place.  We are like family here.” He boasted “What’s ‘banter’ in Australian?” “Bullshit” I said sweetly and he hastily led us up yet another steep staircase.  It was at this point he noticed that Grant was wearing sandals. “Sorry” he said. “You have to be wearing covered shoes” and dispatched the 17 year old work experience lad to fetch some plimsols for him.  Grant doesn’t ever like being told what to wear and has avoided visiting temples for years on account of having to take off his shoes but what choice did he have deep in the heart of this brewery with sinister vats of bubbling stuff all around.  He protested that his feet were too big for any normal human shoe but the guide won that round.

He’d slightly offensively hinted all the way that we were only here for the beer tasting at the end and we were to remind him when it got near to twelve o’clock, our allocated tasting time.  Sarah happened to look at her watch around ten to twelve “Ah, not long now.  The bar’s soon”  “Actually I was thinking about the parking meter” Sarah replied coldly. Yes, I thought, one to us.  In fact I think party West/McCall got the last laugh as the guide kept glancing at his watch while Grant insisted on tasting this beer and that and asking arcane questions.  His desperation mounted as Grant said “I won’t try that one because we can get it anywhere (scornful emphasis) in Australia but that one called 90.  I have to taste that.  We knew that was a special beer for the queen’s 90th birthday and Grant despises the monarchy. It would be like drinking her blood. It was a perfect chance for a lecture from our guide but he despairingly let it go, time having marched into the timeslot of the next tour.

I was sort of relieved to be out in the street after all that even though it was raining.

Next on the agenda for Grant and me was voting in the Australian election as we would be in the air on Saturday when it was to happen in Oz.  Amazingly it seemed we could just rock up to Australia House and vote, even without ID, which was just as well as I discovered I’d left all mine in a safe place at home being so prone to losing it.

On the tube to the Strand I started to feel the effects of all the little gulps of this beer and that at the brewery and thought.  Good, we’ll be at Australia House soon, almost like home and they’ll have a loo.  Elaborate arrangements involving cordoned off sections of pavement and frisking stations had been set up at Australia House.  There was one way in and one way out.  My handbag was searched more intrusively than I have ever known it to be.  My private spare knickers pocket was unzipped and felt in.  The French lollies I had bought to get rid of my last Euros were sniffed.  I suppose they could have been teeny weeny packets of gelignite.  I got in and immediately asked a nice Aussie lass “Where’s the toilet?”  She threw up and her hands and said sorry there wasn’t one.  I was outraged.  The meanest MacDonalds has a toilet and Australia House doesn’t?  And I’m Australian too and not the pommy I sound like, as if that made a difference.  I thought of abandoning voting altogether but remembered Brexit and the need to be responsible and deployed mind over matter and picked up my voting papers an went into a little cardboard booth with a pencil on a string just like in Sydney.  I unrolled the endless senate sheet and despair enveloped me.  I only had to find six above the line but which six? I knew who would get my principal vote but after that?  Who wasn’t doing dastardly deals with whom? Whatever happened to just a number one?  And the small green sheet required ten   characters to be ordered,  only one of which I was sure was not dodgy.  I did it all but did not enjoy my democratic right as much as I’d hoped and hastily left the building.  Across the road was a square brick edifice marked Public Convenience.  Thank god, I said to myself but when I looked there were four little lights Vacant. Engaged, Cleaning and Out of Service.  The last shone red.  I hit the building with my fist and turned to go when I heard a voice “Miss!  Miss! and turned and saw an alert but shabby figure sitting on a step at the end of the building.  “There’s a ladies toilet behind that church but you’ll have to pay fifty pee”  “Thanks” I said “And could you help me.  I’m homeless and I’m trying to get seven quid together for a bed for the night”  “Well, you’ve helped me a lot” and I get him a pound coin and hastened to the back of the church.  Sure enough there was an old fashioned  staircase going into the ground with black railings round it so down I went.  I put my 50p in the turnstile and went in noting absently that it smelt horribly of urine and there was a long row of urinals in front of me.  All very unisex in modern London I thought as I went into a cubicle.  Must be the European influence.  And why not?  I came out and a middle aged man gasped as he saw me.  I knew then I had transgressed.  “I think I must be in the wrong place” I said.  “That’s all right love” he replied kindly as he scarpered into a cubicle.  I was panicked now by my inappropriacy and general incompetence and couldn’t see the way out.  Without a scrap of dignity I crawled under the turnstile that I had fed my 50p into.  I felt all right once out in the street, relieved in more ways than one.  It was only later when Sarah told me that the particular loo I had trespassed upon was a popular cottaging spot that I wondered if I had really been alone and when I had uttered “Praise the Lord” in my cubicle.  Maybe there were couples in the other cubicles who had frozen like Greek statues in shock.  I hope I didn’t cause too much bother anyway. 

Another disconcerting thing happened before the day was out.  We decided to visit St Paul’s, a place where I wrote a nice poem in my twenties which still consoles me.  There was to be a sung eucharist for St Peter at five so we could only wander round the back and see the memorials to brave generals and captains who’d fallen (a vivid word) in battle.  We’d just left when everybody else came pouring out too – lovely little choirboys in robes and black upstanding collars, lots of clergy people including two women rather unexpectedly in scarlet surplices.  A faint alarm bell was sounding in the cathedral and I was surprised at the calm all around me.  No panic here.  Just standing around chatting instead of praying properly inside.  If it had been me (and I suppose in a way it was) I would have been putting some distance between myself and the lovely cathedral.  But maybe it was a fire drill and they knew it.  Perhaps the ladies who had red silken surplices were wardens and wore them to stand out like office people who have red helmets.  I puzzle still about the propriety of a fire drill in the middle of eucharist.   Maybe the lord himself was having a bit of fun setting off the alarm just as his opposite number had directed me to the Gents

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