In which The Author reverts to Plan A

In the course of this blog I've mentioned James Burke's landmark 1978 BBC TV documentary series Connections a number of times. For the last couple of weeks I've been thinking of something from the very first instalment, as it seems to sum up what's been happening to the country of late.

In 'The Trigger Effect', Mr Burke talks about the possible effects of a prolonged electricity blackout on an advanced, economically developed industrial First World country. (The clip comes and goes from YouTube, but here it is for the time being.)

Probably because the series was a co-production with Time-Life, Mr Burke chose the USA to illustrate his example. Some four decades later, I think the UK probably comes close enough for jazz to his requirements. The remarkable thing is, even that with abundant electricity to power our civilisation, a reasonable standard of secondary education for the majority and advanced technology at most people's fingertips, (to borrow Mr Burke's phrase) everything doesn't work.

I've been thinking about this for a very long time, but the rot really set in at the start of Lockdown, when it seemed the entire country was in a panic-buying hysteria over toilet paper. Apparently the thinking behind it went something like this: toilet paper comes from China; China is in lockdown; therefore we won't be able to get any toilet paper. A couple of people posted this reasoned argument on Facebook and human stupidity did the rest. When Italy went into lockdown, pasta vanished from the shelves as well. I'm fairly sure that the majority of pasta on our supermarket shelves isn't actually made in Italy (for all that the packets bear red, green and white logos and evocative names), for the same reason that most frozen pizzas aren't. Probably the best known brand of 'Italian' pasta sauce – Dolmio – doesn't go anywhere near Italy during its time in the jar. But online idiocy spreads more quickly than a pandemic, and can't be tracked and traced electronically.

It turns out that we didn't need a technological breakdown for the average British consumer to be thrown into a tailspin. By chance, I was asked to copy-edit the debut novel by Susannah Wise, This Fragile Earth, at around the time everyone started working from home. It's a grim near-future tale of England after the internet stops functioning – and without the internet, nothing else can function either. I was reading the panic-buying scenes with horrid fascination, wondering how on earth Ms Wise had been able to predict the future so accurately. I'd like to see Mr Burke update his series to take account of the Wired World, and to see how long it takes his worst-case scenario to come about in the light of current technology.

For over ten years now, my brother has been asking anyone who'll listen, 'Why is nothing straightforward any more?' At first I thought he was exaggerating. He doesn't use the internet, or have a smartphone, so by opting out of the Scissors Age (see Stone, Paper, Scissors), I thought he'd just made a rod for his own back. However, I'm fairly well tuned in to the digital world, and I've seen it slowly start to break down over the last few years. But the internet is only one factor at play in the chaos of modern life. Our old friend Human Stupidity seems to underpin much of the rest of the story.

This particular story starts on the afternoon of the Saturday after Xmas. I was reading the paper over a pint in the National Tap, and I came across an interview with Prof. Richard Dawkins. His new book had been published shortly before. If I'd still been in the bookshop, I'd have known about it ages before that. I'd probably have bought my own copy for Xmas. (Back in the good old days, I might have been able to bag a sample copy from the trade sales rep. When publishers still had trade sales reps, that is.) I also knew that Gollancz had published a collection of Christopher Priest's short stories. With the Dawkins book at half-price on Amazon that weekend, it seemed a good excuse to buy both and get the free delivery. That was the easy bit. I logged on to Amazon on my phone, added the books to my basket, and went to the checkout page.

End of easy bit.

I knew there was a good chance I wouldn't be at home when the postman came. With the extended break reducing the opening hours at the sorting office (not the easiest place to get to), I decided to have the books sent to a 'Local Hub'. I used to do that anyway, and have them delivered to one of the newsagents in Aberdare. As I'm in town most days, it was no hardship for me to call in and pick up my parcel when I was passing. The problem was that they seemed to have given up being an Amazon Local Hub. The nearest alternative I could find listed was in Hirwaun – the little supermarket opposite the Lamb Inn. It's a bus ride away, but the services were frequent and I had my Stagecoach weekly ticket, so I didn't mind the prospect of a little excursion. I amended the details, processed the payment through PayPal, and a few minutes later the confirmation email arrived. Needless to say, the delivery address was my house.

I had thirty minutes in which to amend my order – but not on the app. If I could have logged in on a computer, I could have sorted it out fairly easily. But that option didn't seem to be available on a phone. I resigned myself to a missed delivery and went back to the crossword.

On the Monday afternoon I had an email from Amazon, telling me that my parcels (plural) had been delivered to a neighbour. As soon as I saw the name and address my heart sank, because this had happened once before.

The old boy living opposite is a real gentleman, but I think he must suffer with dementia. Last time Ken took a parcel in for me, a couple of years ago, he vaguely remembered it but neither of us could find it. The following day my friend Gail, two doors away, messaged me to say my parcel was in her house. Ken must have dropped it into her house when the kids were there, and they hadn't thought anything of it. When I saw Ken's name in the email, I had a horrible feeling history was going to repeat itself.

It kinda did.

I didn't get home until very late on the Monday, so I left it until Tuesday morning (New Year's Eve) to knock Ken's door. Not surprisingly, he didn't remember taking in a delivery the previous day. In fact, he didn't remember anyone coming to his door – not even his carer, who calls every lunchtime. Together we hunted for some time, while I explained at least four times what the books were and what the parcel would probably look like. Eventually I had to leave him to it. I gave him my number and asked him to ring me when the parcel turned up, so I could arrange to collect it later. Then I went into town, caught up with some friends, and got home before the buses stopped running.

I was heading to the party in the Welsh Harp when another neighbour spotted me leaving the house and called over to me.

'Did you get your Amazon stuff?' he asked.

He told me he'd been rushing off to work earlier in the day and had spotted a parcel on my windowsill. He hadn't had time to pick it up and take it in, and assumed that I'd seen it myself. I hadn't, of course, but someone else obviously had. I half-hoped it was one of the junkies on their way back from getting their methadone fix in the pharmacy at the end of my street. The thief probably thought the parcel was something s/he could sell for drug money. Well, I can only hope the early stories of Christopher Priest have fried her/his brain, as they did with mine back in the day.

I contacted Amazon Customer Service on 2 January, and after a while I got to speak to a real live human being. I explained the situation, and she raised a new order for me. Just like that. The previous two books – combined value over £30 – were presumably written off by Amazon as just another glitch in the supply chain. This time I checked that they'd be delivered to the Local Hub in Hirwaun (which seemed to tax the woman on the phone for a while) before confirming the replacement order.

When my books did finally arrive (having been dispatched from the same warehouse at the same time), they were in two individual padded bags. In an attempt to swim against the tide, Amazon had stopped using their recyclable cardboard packets and switched to plastic instead. And they hadn't sent them to the Local Hub at all. I ended up collecting them from Hirwaun Post Office, in the main street. Not even the guy behind the counter knew what they were doing there. I gave Amazon quite a low rating in the questionnaire which arrived on my phone before I'd even got on the bus back to Aberdare.

I didn't order any physical books for a while after that. With lockdown in effect I didn't know how couriers would be faring. (I found out when it came to the desk.) But three weeks ago I decided to order two books from Amazon, which were on offer and selling in large numbers. This time I placed the order on the laptop, making sure all the 'local collect' details were correct. At the time, one of the titles (I'll call it Book A) was out of stock, but they confirmed that Book B had been dispatched to my Local Hub the same day and would arrive within two days.

Three days later I had an email informing me that Book A was ready for collection. Not Book B – Book A. It was a very pleasant day, so I walked to Hirwaun along the Cynon Trail and called to the shop around lunchtime. I had to show the lady behind the counter the barcode Amazon had sent to my phone, and show her my ID, before she handed the book over. (I can understand why the shopkeeper would ask to see ID, of course – which is why the subsequent developments made me so angry.) There was still no sign of Book B, so I joked that I'd be back up to collect it the following day.

That didn't happen.

Five days after allegedly sending it, Amazon admitted that it had got lost in transit and offered to send a replacement copy at no extra cost. It was the Xmas debacle all over again – except that this parcel should have been tracked from portal to portal, and not left with some random bloke who happened to be at home when the courier called. I agreed to have a replacement, and a couple of days later you'd have found me on the Cynon Trail again. The woman in the shop laughed when I told her what had happened, and didn't ask to see my ID this time. She scanned the barcode from my phone and I finally went home with Book B.

Once bitten, you'd think – but no …

I decided to try my luck a third time, and this time things got seriously fucked up.

Amazon had a single copy in stock of Investigating Alias: Secrets and Spies, a fairly academic treatment of the surreal TV show I mentioned last time. As the book was published fifteen years ago by a specialist British house, I decided to grab it without further delay. To an ex-bookseller, it was the sort of scenario that spells 'Out of print' in big letters on one's mental stock control system.

Did I say 'without further delay'? Well, that's a fucking joke!

I ordered it on Saturday 20 June. At 5.34 p.m. on Sunday I had an email saying it had been dispatched for 'next day delivery' to the Local Hub. At 10.34 a.m. on Monday, Amazon emailed me to tell me the book would be delivered 'today'. On the Monday afternoon, at about 4.00, I had a message via the app to tell me my parcel was 'eight stops away'.

And that was the last Amazon knew of it.

I wasn't going to head to Hirwaun in the evening on the off-chance (especially with the restricted buses running at the moment). I decided to wait until my collection email arrived before going up on Tuesday. And no collection email arrived.

Early on Tuesday morning, I accessed the Customer Service part of their website and had a long text chat with the woman who'd dealt with my problem over the Xmas holidays. (I assume it was her, anyway. Her name is so unusual I doubt there can be two people with it in the same call centre.) She was apologetic (of course) but not very helpful.

She told me I could go to the shop and show my ID and the dispatch email, and that would be enough to allow me to collect the parcel.

I told her I wasn't prepared to walk for over half an hour on a fool's errand, and I didn't want to have a stand-up argument with the shopkeeper in front of a queue of customers.

She asked me if I could give them '24-48 hours' to sort it out and contact them again if I hadn't heard anything by then.

I reluctantly agreed. I had a book to work on anyway, so I didn't want to waste time walking to Hirwaun and coming back empty-handed.

On Thursday morning, pretty much 48 hours to the minute since I'd ended the previous online chat, I was back on to Customer Service. Luckily for me, the previous exchange was still in the window, so I gave the guy a few minutes to get up to speed before I started on him in earnest.

There was still no trace of my parcel on their system, so they couldn't issue me with a barcode to collect it.

I asked him what had happened after 8.27 p.m. on Monday evening (the last they saw of it, when presumably it was delivered to Hirwaun).

He didn't know. He offered to order a replacement copy. I vetoed that on the grounds that I didn't expect them to receive any more stock of that title. He offered to credit my account with £5 for the inconvenience. I kept arguing with him, and eventually the bid went up to £15. Then he asked me if I'd prefer a refund instead. I asked him to wait for a while and I'd get back to him.

So I set off for Hirwaun, armed with my ID and the dispatch email, as well as a screenshot of the earlier conversation telling me that I'd be able to show them to the shopkeeper. I also had a screenshot of my statement that I didn't want to argue in front of a shop full of customers.

Well, that's exactly what happened!

I walked to Hirwaun by lunchtime and made my way to the shop. The woman behind the counter smiled when she saw me and held up not one but two Amazon parcels with my name on them. But when I explained what had happened, and the fuck-up with their Customer Service people, that was as far as things went. No barcode, no collection: computer says no.

I argued with her for a few minutes and showed her the communication with Amazon, but apparently unless her little machine agrees, she can't do anything. So I got straight on to Amazon again while I was in the shop, text-chatting an increasingly angry exchange to a supervisor (by now the issue had been 'escalated'). The Amazon system didn't know where the parcel was, and so she couldn't issue a barcode for its collection, I told her the fucking parcel was about three feet away from me – I could see the fucking thing. It had my fucking name on the outside. I had my ID and my dispatch email with the parcel reference number. The woman behind the counter fucking knows me! Computer says no.

No go. She couldn't issue me with a collection barcode either, because the refund had already been processed. As far as Amazon were concerned, the matter was at an end.

I told her to re-charge the original price of the book to my PayPal account, send me the barcode, and I'd take it there and then. Couldn't be done. Computer says no.

I told her to think of something before the next bus to Aberdare arrived, because once I set foot on it the matter would be at an end. She asked me to hold while she spoke to a colleague. She came back and asked if I could give them '72 hours' to look into it. I told her they'd already had 72 hours to sort things out, and that I didn't care what she said after this. I was going to go to the media instead. (Which I did, incidentally. I spent quite a while on Thursday afternoon tracking down contact details for print and broadcast consumer journalists and emailing each one with a cooked-down version of the story.)

She offered me more compensation for the wasted time, raising the stakes to £35 by the end of the argument. I told her that the credit would sit in my account until the end of time, because I had no intention of buying any physical items from Amazon again. Then the bus came, and anything she said after that was irrelevant. I was already deciding on the wording of my email to the press while she was messaging me on the way home.

Anyway, that night I had a look on eBay and found a second-hand copy of the book for £5.99, including postage. (That's half the price Amazon wanted. It's not in perfect condition, but who would be after fifteen years?) It arrived in the post on Wednesday.

The great British SF/fantasy novelist M. John Harrison has a new book out this month. I toyed with ordering it online, but I'm through with Amazon and their broken promises. I could have ordered Mr Harrison's book from Waterstones and got it in a couple of days, as well as earning points on my loyalty card. But Waterstones are big enough to look after themselves in the present crisis.

I ordered a copy this morning, from Storysmith in Bristol. They're a relatively new independent shop in Bedminster, and hosted the Ben Aaronovitch signing during which I unexpectedly changed gender last summer. They're nice people, and small bookshops need to try and get through the next few months by any means necessary. At the moment, Amazon seem to be doing their best to drive customers back to the independents, so I'm more than happy to join the exodus.

As for the other parcel in Hirwaun with my name on it …

I can only assume it's the original copy of Book B – the one that got lost in transit. Or possibly it's the replacement copy. It doesn't matter, because it'll sit behind the counter, next to Investigating Alias, for ever. The most surreal aspect of the entire story is that I know exactly where they are, and the shopkeeper knows exactly whose they are. And there's no way in the world that we can reconcile these two facts.

Everything doesn't work …

Spatial Unwareness

In which The Author finally has an office

I told you last time about the Problem of the Time-travelling Parcel. It eventually turned up on the Saturday morning, more by luck than judgement. I had a notification from DPD that it would be delivered 'between 9.30 and 10.30'. That gave me time to nip to the shop before the courier was due. At about 10.10 I heard someone knocking my neighbours' door. Thinking it might be the courier dropping off something there first, I waited for a minute. Then my phone rang. It was the courier, wondering if I was at home. He claimed to have knocked my door and had no answer. Now, if I could hear him knocking two doors down, why didn't I hear him knocking my own door?

He couldn't bring the desk in, of course, because nobody is allowed to go near anyone else at the moment. I couldn't even sign his manifest. Instead, he photographed the parcel in my doorway as proof of delivery. It didn't matter. Even with his help, I probably wouldn't have been able to get it around the awkward angles at the top of the stairs. Instead I opened the packaging in situ and carried the pieces upstairs a bit at a time.

Then I had to assemble it.

As I've noted in a previous entry, words are going out of fashion as well these days. The clock has turned full circle and we've reverted to the dawn of civilisation, using little pictures to communicate. To show you what I mean, here's a page from the 'instruction manual' for the desk. No, it's not from Ikea, but I think it might be from another Scandinavian manufacturer – possibly part of their best-selling Bølux range of office furniture.

I'm glad I spent so much time building Lego, Meccano and Airfix kits when I was young, as this is pretty much meaningless unless you're familiar with their assembly diagrams. I'm also fairly used to assembling flatpack furniture. The manufacturers recommend two people to put it together. (How the fuck can you do that when you're not allowed visitors?) At that point it turned into a question from an old maths exam: if it takes two people one hour to build a desk, how long does it take one person?

The answer is: about three and a half hours.

Admittedly, I wasn't working on it to the exclusion of all else. To begin with, there was the disappointing Tom Clancy reboot The Hunt for Red Screwdriver. After that, there were several breaks to study the instructions again, a couple of reassessments of progress hitherto, a few glasses of squash, several posts on Twitter charting my adventures with the bloody thing, and much swearing. Have you ever come across the type of fixings labelled A and B in the diagram before? I don't know what their proper name is, should you ever feel the urge to buy some from a DIY shop. However, 'bastard fitting' seems to work well – as in 'How the fuck do these bastard fittings work?'

At one point I posted on Twitter:

The desk is half completed. If you're a fan of the bizarre SF/martial arts/espionage/occult TV show Alias you'll know all about Project Christmas. Well, now I know why the CIA didn't recruit me straight from university: no bloody spatial problem solving ability whatsoever.

A little while later, I made another reference to the same mind-bending TV drama:

Also in Alias, the main villain kidnaps an expert in Knot Theory to help him assemble 47 artefacts into an extremely complex machine. It's given me an idea.
If a top-flight mathematician goes missing in the next few days, try my house first. He'll be building a desk.

Anyway, with the evening approaching I completed the desk and vowed never to undertake something like that again without help, or at least a shoulder to cry on. I moved the majority of my style guides and reference books to the desk. The following day I moved my history books as well, and they're now conveniently to hand if I need to check something in a novel. That involved dismantling a bookcase, taking it upstairs in dribs and drabs, and reassembling it in its new home. After this weekend-long flatpack frenzy, you can imagine how I laughed when I watched an episode of the aforementioned Alias a couple of days later, which ends on this touching father-and-daughter bonding moment:

 

And speaking of Alias – my recent adventure with online suppliers and useless couriers continues in the next entry. (You've gotta love a good cliffhanger …

This Book is Dedicated to ... Oops! Bugger!

I had my second encounter with the popular (and eccentric) Urban Fantasy author Ben Aaronovitch yesterday. He was signing copies of his new novella The October Man at a new independent bookshop called Storysmith, a short distance from the centre of Bristol. I copy-edited the manuscript last year, so I was quite excited to learn that he was touring the UK to promote this one. On the bizarre grounds that it's cheaper and – slightly – more convenient to go to an event in a different country than it is to get to Wales's second city, I decided to pop along and say hello.

Bear in mind that I'd had a nice chat with Ben at his signing in Swansea last year. I'd also had a good chat with Stevie Finegan, Gollancz's publicist, while we were queueing to meet the man himself. Since then Stevie and I have often chatted on Twitter – mainly about her prodigious healthy appetite and her strange taste in ornaments.

More by luck than judgement (First Great Western made me feel quite nostalgic for Arriva Trains Fails), I was able to get to the bookshop a few minutes before Ben and Stevie did. She recognised me when I said hello, but Ben looked a bit vague until she jogged his memory. Stevie told me afterwards that he's quite forgetful anyway, but that was just a taster of the fun to follow.

The bookshop was packed for a lunchtime signing, including a lady who was at the Swansea signing and whose travel arrangements had also been buggered up by First Great Western. It turned out that we'd arrived at Temple Meads at the same time; if only we'd seen each other on the platform, we could have shared a taxi to Bedminster.

Ben gave very entertaining answers to some great questions, and then sat down at the front of the shop to sign everyone's books. To speed things up a bit, Stevie was writing everyone's names on Post-it Notes, which she then stuck to the front of the books before we got to the signing table. This is what she wrote on mine:

When I got to the table, I could tell that Ben's relentless criss-crossing of the mainland was starting to take its toll. He wrote a name in the book, and I looked at Stevie.

'He's dedicated it to you,' I said.

We all laughed, and Ben made a hasty correction. Sort of …

'That's the third one I've buggered up this week,' he replied.

As a result, I have a unique signed copy dedicated to my female alter ego, Stevie. As I said on Twitter in the evening, it was an easy mistake to make. After all, Ms Finegan and I have much the same measurements (distributed rather differently, of course).

A Grant-aided Trip to Swansea

In which The Author meets a proper author

Back in the summer of 2015, I was coming home from a hospital appointment and reading Ben Aaronovitch's latest novel, Foxglove Summer, on the bus.

Actually, I've jumped the gun slightly. Let me start again ...

In about 2013, I was browsing in The Works in Aberdare when I found a book in the history section called Rivers of London. Thinking it was going to be about the actual rivers – the Fleet, Tyburn, Westbourne, and so forth – that lie beneath the streets of the modern city, I picked it up and started reading the jacket.

As soon as I saw the Gollancz colophon (that's a posh word for a publisher's logo, in case you're wondering) I knew the book was in the wrong place. Gollancz has long been regarded as one of the leading UK publishers of science fiction and fantasy. This was turning into a promising discovery.

It turned out to be a contemporary crime novel about a young Metropolitan Police constable named Peter Grant. He's out on patrol in Covent Garden one weekend and discovers a headless corpse in the portico of St Paul's Church. The body is very recent. And the only eyewitness to the brutal murder has been dead for two hundred years. That leads Peter to a secret department of the Metropolitan Police who investigate supernatural and paranormal happenings.

That was enough to spark my interest. I took it to the counter and mentioned to Stacey that it had been misplaced. She laughed, and we compared notes on the 'frequent flyers' you come across when you work in a bookshop. Then Stacey told me that it was in their offer, along with the next two books in the series (Moon Over Soho and Whispers Underground).

I bought all three and proceeded to enjoy them thoroughly over the next few weeks. It took me a while to track down the fourth one, though. Eventually Neil R. bought me Broken Homes as a Xmas present. He knew I was a big fan of the books and I couldn't afford to go hunting it down myself. By now I was using Twitter, and occasionally put a message up saying how much I'd enjoyed reading a particular book. One of the authors I was following was Ben Aaronovitch, needless to say. I always liked reading his day word count, his queries aimed at his small army of Tech Support experts, and his random thoughts on everyday life.

That brings us to the summer of 2015, and my hospital appointment. On the way there I called into Waterstones in Putney and bought Foxglove Summer to read in the waiting room. It had only come out in paperback a week or so earlier, and I made a beeline for Waterstones as soon as I arrived in the vicinity of the hospital.

By then I'd signed up for the Gollancz newsletter, which gives subscribers advance warning of new publications. I'd also looked at the Gollancz website, to see if they ever wanted proofreaders. Virtually the first thing it said was that they 'currently have all the freelance help they need'.

It therefore came as something of a surprise to find a number of production errors in a finished book. I was about halfway through it when I arrived home, and it was like reading one of the uncorrected bound proofs which the trade reps would drop off in the shop. (By chance, one of the reps who generously kept me supplied with practice material was Graham Ireland from Orion.) Some were very minor things – missing punctuation, simple typos like from instead of form, that sort of thing – but some were more like the sort of thing that shouldn't really have made it to proof stage. One officer was promoted from Detective Constable to Detective Sergeant in just a few pages. The spelling of one character's name changed from time to time. Another character's surname changed without explanation.

Pretty much the first thing I did when I got to the library the following day was log into Twitter. I tweeted that I was thoroughly enjoying Foxglove Summer, but added that Orion (Gollancz's parent company) really didn't have all the freelance proofreading help they needed.

About quarter of an hour later I had a notification that someone had replied to my post. I checked, and found a message from someone named Gillian Redfearn. She asked if I was reading the hardback, and added that they'd had the text 'redone since for obvious reasons'.

I didn't know who Ms Redfearn was, but a quick click revealed that she was Deputy Publishing Director at Orion.

Now here was an interesting situation. Should I reply in earnest? Or should I just laugh it off?

I decided to go for Plan A. I replied that it was a paperback, bought the previous day. A short period of time elapsed before Ms Redfearn responded. She invited me ('in that case', as she said) to send in anything I found.

Now, imagine my dilemma. I hadn't done any paper proofreading since leaving university, and I was a bit rusty on the BS symbols. Also, I was reluctant to mark up a brand new paperback and post it back to London without knowing when I'd be able to get my hands on a replacement copy. In the event I decided to go old-school on the book. Luckily for me the weather was glorious that weekend. I took my trusty Chambers Dictionary, my notebook, a couple of pens, a ruler, and Foxglove Summer itself, to Aberdare Park on the Saturday morning. I found a fairly quiet spot to sit in the sunshine and started working my way through the text, line by line, noting anything that seemed not to ring true. I even found myself googling a real church in Herefordshire, to see whether it has a tower or a spire.

But I enjoy doing that sort of thing. It wasn't work, it was a pleasant way to spend a weekend without spending any money. I spent two full days beside the lake, reading the book for the second time, but in microscopic detail. Back at home, I typed up my findings and wrote a nice covering letter explaining a bit about my background. I put everything in the post and sat back to see what transpired.

It was the start of the summer holidays. Probably not the best time to expect a rapid response to a job application, never mind a cheeky 'side door' approach to a large company. Consequently a few weeks went by until an email pinged into my inbox from a chap named Craig Leyenaar. Headed Foxglove Summer - Proofreader, this is what it said:

Dear Steve, Gillian Redfearn passed your notes on Foxglove Summer to me. The close reading was impressive and you caught many errors that we will be correcting. Thanks for that. We are happy to consider this your 'proofreading test', but before we are able to pass on any jobs could you give us some more details? Are you happy to do both proofreading and copy-editing on screen? How long did it take you to proofread Foxglove Summer? What is your hourly rate? After we've received this information and we can all agree on terms we'll put together a contract and move on from there.

Well, that was the foot in the door I'd been hoping for. I sent Craig the extra bits and pieces, and I was away. Sort of …

It didn't take long until my first assignment arrived in the post. It was the final part of a trilogy by Gavin G. Smith: a very strange SF novel called The Beauty of Destruction. Craig also sent me PDFs of the first two books, so I could check for any continuity errors that might have sneaked into the mix. And I'm not lying when I say that this huge pile of paper sat on my desk for two whole days while I pondered what to do next.

You see, from just reading the first few chapters I could see that I had an uphill struggle ahead of me. As well as a great many typos, missing punctuation, dubious hyphenation (especially of Welsh words), and the usual typesetting glitches I was used to from the bound proofs, there were numerous inconsistent spellings, changes of name, incorrect spellings of real places, real companies and so forth … In short, it was a bloody mess. I was afraid to touch it without seeking some advice first. If I fucked it up, I'd never hear from Orion again and I'd be back to square one.

I emailed Rob H., an old friend who's been proofreading for close to twenty years. His advice was simple, practical and sensible – just what I needed to hear, in fact. He reminded me that I was being paid to find mistakes in the text. That's exactly what I should do. Mark everything up, he said, and send it back. He added that he'd come across books where the copy-editor seemed to have 'fallen asleep at the wheel', and pointed out that that's why publishers use proofreaders as the final line of defence. So that's exactly what I did.

In the event I typed out about eighty separate queries, as well as correcting factual errors like the names of various armaments manufacturers. (I was almost expecting to find the library on lockdown, with snipers on the roof of the Jokecentre, because Echelon had picked up my google searches and decided that a major terrorist cell was based in Aberdare.) I marked up the proof with so much red ink that it looked like a crime scene, posted it back to Orion, and emailed all my paperwork to Craig. The die was cast.

I was prepared for an email thanking me for my work on The Beauty of Destruction and paying me off, never to darken Orion's door again. Instead, once he'd had chance to go through everything, I had a very positive email from Craig. This sentence in particular gave me a great boost: 'After going through it, I think I'd be happy to send you some copy-editing work as well as proof reading.'

Craig was as good as his word, fair play. The next assignment I had from Gollancz was the typescript of Rig by Jon Wallace, for copy-edit. This was a bit of a curveball, because that was also the final part of a trilogy. That meant that I was slightly confined by stylistic choices made by the previous copy-editor. (In fact I was rather surprised that the three books weren't assigned to the same person.) It was a bit of a learning curve, because I had to use features of LibreOffice I hadn't come across before. But it's all good grist to the mill. I enjoy new challenges, and I've always enjoyed researching things in books and via the Internet. It seemed as though I'd finally landed the job Rowland and my other friends had told me I should have been doing years earlier.

My reputation for thoroughness and attention to detail was starting to pay off. In fairly short order Craig asked me to work on the 'definitive' texts of William Gibson's 'Sprawl' novels, an anthology of his short stories, and the 'authors' preferred text' of Good Omens by the late Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. These are far from being newcomers to the scene, after all. To have names like those on my CV was quite an achievement, considering that I'd been officially freelance for only six months or so.

It wasn't long until my name started to circulate within Orion. In my first departure from Science Fiction, Craig's colleague Tom Monson asked me if I fancied copy-editing a historical novel by Christian Cameron. Set during the fag-end of the Peloponnesian War, Rage of Ares was the final instalment of the Long War saga. I think I must have been off school ill for the morning we covered Ancient Greece, because I knew bugger all about the period. Furthermore, my grasp of Classical Greek is limited to a few epigrams from Homer I've picked up from crosswords over the years. But I did my best with the typescript, flagging up marginal queries and compiling a fuller list of Notes and Queries (something that soon became my signature). I must have done an okay job, because Christian was very kind in addressing some of my more obvious questions. It didn't take long before one of Tom's colleagues (another Craig) offered me another of Christian's books – this time, set during the Hundred Years War.

This was a bizarre coincidence. The day I finished working on Rage of Ares and emailed it to Orion, I was in London. (See The Oyster is Your World.) I somehow found myself at the Priory of St John of Jerusalem, in Clerkenwell. I took a few photos, wrote a blog about my discoveries in town, and thought no more of it. When The Green Count arrived, I was amazed to find that Sir William Gold, the protagonist of the series, was raised at the Priory of St John of Jerusalem. (This was the original priory, of course, sacked during the Peasants' Revolt.) I sent the link to Christian via Twitter, and he was kind enough to leave a comment on my blog.

Since then I've worked on another four of Christian's books (two historical fiction, two fantasy), and we've pencilled in a couple of pints when he's in the UK next year. (He's based in Toronto.) We work via Twitter and/or email to iron out any problems in the text, and always have fun discussing obscure points of fictional (but real-ish) grammar. He's been generous enough to mention me in the acknowledgments to his books, and to endorse me online. It's going to be great to sit down and talk to him face to face, rather than via cyberspace.

Last October I had an email from an unfamiliar name, sent from a publisher called Bonnier Zaffre. They had a new crime novel for proofreading, and apparently someone in the office had suggested that I was the man for the job. It turned out that one of Orion's editors had moved to a different company and taken her contacts book with her. I knew then that I was moving in the right circles. Since then I've done a number of jobs for them, most recently proofreading the new novels by Lynda La Plante and Wilbur Smith. Yes – the Wilbur Smith.

All of which brings us back to Ben Aaronovitch. At the start of April, Craig emailed me out of the blue:

And so we come full circle . . . the new Ben Aaronovitch is coming up for copy-edit in a fortnight. Would you be available to do it?

Needless to say, I said yes.

It was Lies Sleeping, the latest instalment in the adventures of Peter Grant. I had to refer back to my well-thumbed copies of the earlier books while I was working on the typescript. Ben and I got to discuss some points via Twitter when I sent the edited typescript back, and I think we got each other's sense of humour. And then came the best news of all. A couple of months ago Gollancz announced that Ben would be touring the country, giving talks and signing Lies Sleeping. Best of all, he was coming to Cardiff and Swansea.

Wales tends to get overlooked when it comes to author signings. If they get as far as Cardiff we can count ourselves lucky. Swansea is pretty much terra incognita for mainstream UK publishers. Unfortunately, it's also pretty much inaccessible from Aberdare by public transport.

Cardiff was a more realistic prospect – a Thursday lunchtime signing in an independent shop in the Bay – but by the time Rhian and I got round to booking the tickets, it was sold out. (Rhian's also a big fan of the books, so I made sure she had the day off before proceeding any further.) I commented on Twitter, saying how disappointed we were to have missed out. Luckily Craig spotted it, and said that he could put us on the guest list if needs be.

It turned out that social media came to the rescue again. My old friend John works in the centre of Swansea, and offered us a lift there and back again after the event. I told Craig that we'd be heading for Swansea instead, and he said he thought it would be a better event anyway. Instead of just a signing, Ben would be giving a talk as well. We booked our tickets straight away.

Rhian, Liam (a big fan of Doctor Who, for which Ben wrote a couple of scripts back in the Classic era), and I set off in John's car at 8.00 on a hazy Thursday morning two weeks ago, and were in town just after 9.00. We decided to have breakfast in Thereisnospoon (as good as anywhere), and then jumped on a bus to Limeslade. We had the day to ourselves, and for £4.50 we could kill a couple of hours and get some sea air. We got to the beach at high tide, by which time the clouds had burned off and the sun was well and truly out. We walked the cliff path to Langland Bay, stopped off in Langland's Brasserie (a couple of converted beach huts) for second breakfast, and then walked to Caswell village to get the bus back into town.

We killed some more time at the Waterfront Museum, which wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped it might be, then made our way to the No Sign Bar for something to eat. It's not far from there to Waterstones, and we had time to browse before the event started. I picked up The Gradual, a 2016 novel by Christopher Priest that sneaked into the bookshops while my back was turned. (I finished it on the way back from London on Tuesday, and very good it is too.) Obviously I needed to buy Lies Sleeping. And I needed a new copy of Rivers of London, the first book in the sequence, because mine is currently circulating among the bar staff in Thereisnospoon in Aberdare. I had a nice chat with the Waterstones people while I was updating my loyalty card. I had the rest of Ben's backlist in my bag, after checking with the management that he'd be happy to sign those as well. John joined us when he finished work, and we all headed to the top of the building for the event itself.

The talk was entertaining, informative, and light-hearted. Ben has a rather warped sense of humour (which comes across in his books), and he's very down to earth about his writing, his family, and his writing process. It was good to be with so many people who clearly love the books as much as I do. He was even kind enough to ask if his copy-editor was there. We had a bit of banter about publisher's house style, public transport in Wales (Ben was travelling by train), and assorted odds and ends.

We queued for the signing (towards the end of the queue, because I had half a dozen books as well as Lies Sleeping) and we had a chat with the PR lady from Gollancz while we were waiting. (I can't remember her name, alas, but she was very pleasant.) It was nice to know that we were expected, as she called us 'the Aberdare contingent' when she came over to talk to us. Ben and I had a good chat while he signed my books, and I explained how the paperback of Foxglove Summer had opened the door to what I'm doing now. It was really lovely to tie everything up in a big loop, face to face with the author himself.

Afterwards the PR lady told me that Christian Cameron will be on the Gollancz Authors events list next year. (I knew that already from the horse's mouth, so to speak.) It seems that my name is quite well known in the offices. I asked her to pass on my thanks to Craig, for arranging for us to come to the event. I also emailed him the following day to tell him how the day had panned out and thanking him for having faith in me back in the summer of 2015.

John dropped us off in Aberdare and Rhian and I repaired to Jacs for a pint. It was only then that I realised Ben had given me a namecheck in Lies Sleeping, for my 'meticulous' copy-editing. That's as big a vote of confidence that I could have hoped for. All in all it's been a long, strange trip, and meeting the man who indirectly started the whole thing off was the perfect way to end a very busy, educational, entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable year of freelance work.

Get on Your Boots

In which The Author is planning a sponsored walk

I can't believe it's been nearly four months since I last posted anything. There are a couple of reasons for that, and neither of them are any cause for concern.

Primarily, I've been copy-editing and/or proofreading pretty much non-stop since the middle of November. The first half of the year saw me go from book to book with hardly a break, and things only slowed down because it was the start of everyone's holidays. They're obviously over, because in the past month I've proofread two historical novels, copy-edited a novella by Ben Aaronovitch, and I've just sent Peter Higgins' new fantasy novel back to Gollancz.

The other reason is that I've become more involved with Jacs Music Venue here in Aberdare. Between helping with the publicity side of things, writing content for their new website, and researching the history of Bryngolwg House in my rare periods of down time, it's become my second home at weekends.

The Blowout boys (Mitch and Connor) have done us proud in the last few months, bringing the lunacy of John Otway and the brilliance of Space to our little town. We've got Electric Six – an actual American touring band – headlining next Friday night. (Don't bother looking for the ticket link; it sold out within a couple of days.) In October, the wonderful Neil Innes is paying us a visit. I'm selling tickets for that one, if anyone is interested.

As well as the Blowout gigs, we're going from strength to strength in our own right. Despite my best efforts I wasn't able to persuade Caravan to take a punt on a Welsh gig, unfortunately. On the other hand, Fairport Convention are definitely interested. So is Mike Peters, the driving force behind the Welsh post-punk legends the Alarm. And the blue-eyed boys of Scottish soul, Hue and Cry, are visiting us in February. (That isn't one of mine, but I'll plug it anyway.)

My own Anthony Nolan fundraising gig at Jacs fell foul of double-bookings, festivals, and – the bane of every rock promoter – general Aberdare apathy. However, the comedy writers Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall very generously signed a brand new copy of their novel The Quanderhorn Xperimentations, which we raffled during the gig. That, along with donations on the night and in the ensuing couple of days, took our total to £142. Many thanks to Lazarus Moon, Windshake, Adelade, Black Aurora and Chris Noir for coming along and showcasing their fine music – even if it was pretty much to each other. We'll be doing another next year, and this time it'll all go according to plan.

We had a very successful gig last Saturday, when Steve Ignorant's Slice of Life headlined an evening of post-punk political music. Steve's previous visit to Aberdare (11 July 1984) was the last time the full Crass line-up shared a stage, at a miners' benefit gig in the Coliseum. He'd gone on record a while back saying that he'd love to return to the town where Crass ended their days as a performing outfit. A few of us cast the bait in his direction, and after a flurry of emails, he and I we able to sort out a date.

It was a pretty emotional evening for us all, but nobody more so than the man himself. We had a chat over a pint before the rest of the band arrived, and he was really thrilled to be playing here after all that time. In fact, he's asked if he can come back next year. Well, we're hardly likely to say no, are we?

I also managed to cast the bait out to Doctor and the Medics a couple of months ago, when I messaged the Doctor himself on Twitter. They're coming here in October, as part of our pre-Halloween fancy dress extravaganza. I've got a couple more irons in the fire as well, but more on that story later.

The sad news is that the Arthur Linton Challenge isn't going ahead this year, in spite of all my planning. The construction of the new road in Mountain Ash is causing so much disruption that it seems hardly worth trying to pin down a route. But in the absence of a cycling marathon (a velothon, in fact) some of us are planning a rather more sedate way to explore the valley.

September is Walking Together month for Anthony Nolan. As a result of exploring pretty much every footpath in the Cynon Valley while drawing up the Arthur Linton Challenge, I've been able to come up with the perfect way to get from Penderyn to Abercynon and fall a whisker short of 25 km. For the most part we're going to utilise the Cynon Trail, route 478 of the National Cycle Network. Because it's largely made up of disused railway lines and dedicated traffic-free rights of way, we'll be on the level for most of the distance. It'll cost each of us £5.20 for a Day Rider ticket on Stagecoach, which will get us to Penderyn for the start, and back from Abercynon at the end. If anyone feels that they can't manage the whole distance, the same ticket will get them safely home again. It sounds like a decent plan, doesn't it?

Starting from the Lamb Hotel at the southern edge of the Brecon Beacons, we'll take the old Mineral Line (a disused freight railway) into Hirwaun. From there we'll pick up the old tramway, which runs more or less alongside the river Cynon. After passing the historic iron bridge in Trecynon, we'll cross into Robertstown. I think there might be a refreshment stop at the Gadlys Arms, but that'll depend on how everyone's feeling.

We'll pick up the Cynon Trail on the other side of the river, and continue along the river to the new college. From there we'll cut across into the Ynys, and walk around the playing fields before arriving at the remaining stretch of the Aberdare Canal. This takes us to the A4059 at Cwmbach, where we'll leave the Cynon Trail for a little while.

The Cynon Trail proper follows the A4059 past Ysbyty Cwm Cynon, Mountain Ash School and the indoor bowls centre before reaching Mountain Ash itself. It's a horrible stretch of fast road, with heavy traffic, nothing exciting to see, and at best it's a necessary evil on a bike. We'll be on foot. It's no fun at all on foot.

While I was scoping out alternatives to this section for the Arthur Linton Challenge, I came up with a cunning plan. And that, slightly altered and reversed, is where we are going to go next.

From the Ynyscynon Inn (another possible refreshment stop) we'll head into the village of Cwmbach. It's a steady gentle ascent to the post office, where we'll veer off into Cefnpennar Road. Then the fun really starts.

I wasn't sure if the eastern section of Cefnpennar Road even was a right of way until I consulted some old friends. Geoff told me that he used to walk that footpath regularly when he was younger, but he hadn't been there for a long time. Luckily Mark W. lives in Cwmbach and spends a lot of time walking the hillsides around the village. He told me that it was possible to go over the top into Cefnpennar, but it wasn't a journey for the faint-hearted. On 1 September last year I caught a bus to Cwmbach, jumped off by the post office, and went on what councillors call a 'site visit'.

Have a look and tell me what you think of this right of way.

Intriguing, isn't it?

Anyway, that's the start of the ascent from Cwmbach to Cefnpennar. It's what you'll find if you continue past the Cottage Homes and the pedestrian lane into Bryn Hir. It's actually got a name (Cefnpennar Road), and it's marked on the Ordnance Survey maps and the Philip's Street Atlas as a right of way. As you can see from the sign, it isn't open to traffic. It's probably a good thing.

Who on earth would want to drive along here?

I came to this point and wondered if Mark had been pulling my leg. There was no sign of life, no 'right of way' markers, and the upward path seemed fairly rudimentary. But I started walking, wondering if anyone would be crazy enough to risk cycling this way. At least they'd be going downhill, if my plan went ahead. But would you want to cycle on terrain like this?

That's about as good as it gets, in fact. Further up it was like a river bed on an incline, with quite a bit of water running downhill. I'd been wondering if I really was going the right way when I saw a lady with two dogs coming towards me. She told me that the path levels out a little further on, and then cuts across a field to emerge at the top of Cefnpennar. I carried on for another couple of minutes, found the gate to the field, and then knew that the whole mission had been worthwhile. Look at the view from the top.

Aberdare Community School is more or less in the centre

Looking back towards Cwmbach and Aberdare

Looking across towards Mountain Ash

It's well worth making the effort, isn't it?

My friend Lee J. lived in Bryn Hir when we were in school, and he often used to tell me how he and his pals would go exploring by 'the mast' in Cwmbach. It's clearly visible from the northern half of the valley, but I was surprised to learn that Cefnpennar Road skirts right past it.

From here, it's a fairly steady descent into Cefnpennar itself. It was surprisingly mild for the time of year, and I fancied a pint when I arrived at the centre of the village. No such luck; the pub was closed, and there was no sign of its being open during the evenings either. But it did provide me with yet another photo for my collection of the old Aberdare Local Board of Health street name plates. I'd always assumed that Cefnpennar would have been in Mountain Ash, but apparently not.

The main street itself feels as though it belongs in the Yorkshire Dales, rather than above a former mining valley in South Wales. It's a rather odd little settlement, all told.

I walked to Cwmpennar, a little further down the hill, and then a bus came along. I decided to jump on, and we went on a magical mystery tour of Caegarw and Newtown before eventually arriving in Mountain Ash itself.

We'll be on foot, of course. If the Cefnpennar Inn isn't open we can walk down into Caegarw and have a cheeky livener at the indoor bowls centre. The Cynon Trail goes off-road again opposite the centre, so it's the ideal place to rejoin the path.

It passes underneath Mountain Ash Bridge, skirts the river as far as the George Hotel (another possible refreshment stop), and then weaves its way between the A4059 and the river Cynon as far as Pontcynon Industrial Estate. We'll be back on the road briefly, as far as the Quarter Mile Bridge, then the path drops past Abercynon Sports Centre and follows the railway line south, emerging at the end of River Row. It's a short walk from there to the Navigation Inn, and the end of our journey.

I've used the plural pronoun throughout because it's called 'Walking Together' for a reason. The whole idea behind the fundraising project is to get people out in groups, so I've been putting some feelers out. So far I've managed to recruit Rhian, Geraint and Jonathan from Dapper FM, Clint and Ros (our resident gig photographers), Gavin and Kate from Jacs, and Jude, Andrew and Liam, who are all keen walkers as a family. Jason W. said he was interested, depending on the date; Rebecca and Lee might come if they haven't got a gig; Alexis and Kevin are checking their diaries as well.

The last weekend in September is Cwmfest, so that's out for starters. We've got a big charity gig in Jacs on 1 September, so we can rule that out as well. It looks as though the optimum date for everyone is 22 September. We'll be looking for sponsors in the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper, but we're also doing the high-tech alternative via JustGiving. We'll each have our own page linked to the Walking Together event. Here's mine, if you fancy chipping for a very worthwhile cause.

If you live too far afield to join us on the day, why not round up some friends and organise something similar in your own area? Go to the Anthony Nolan website and you can sign up for a fundraising pack. It's going to be a great way to get some exercise and fresh air, make new friends, and explore your community in more detail. Go on, you know you want to!

Lucky for Some

In which Friday the thirteenth passes without any major incident

Pretty much before I recovered from my last trip to London, I found myself planning the next one. I bumped into Becky S. in Thereisnospoon on the Friday afternoon. While we chatted by the bar she mentioned that she'd never been to London. I asked her when she was free to join me. She suggested that a Friday might be best for her. I looked at the calendar for October, and suggested Friday the thirteenth, always assuming she wasn't superstitious. It turned out that she isn't, so I booked two coach tickets straight away. However, the weekend before she told me that she couldn't make it after all. I told her not to worry, and gave Rhian first option on the spare ticket. Luckily she had the day off, so we were good to go.

We set off early from Aberdare and arrived in Cardiff before 8.00. It gave us time to get some odds and ends in Sainsbury's before walking up to the coach stop opposite Cathays station. It was a bit of a damp morning, but the BBC had given a better forecast for the other side of the country. We sheltered in a doorway until the coach arrived, and were just about the last two to board. Once again, unfortunately, we found the basic flaw in National Express's online system. Even though I'd booked two tickets in one transaction, it appears that Britain's biggest coach operator can't yet arrange to reserve two individual seats to correspond with the booking. About a quarter of the 'empty' seats were occupied by luggage (which theoretically should have gone in the overhead racks), so Rhian ended up sitting behind me. We made good time to Chepstow, and passengers boarding there had more difficulty finding adjacent seats. We hadn't even crossed the Severn Bridge before I Tweeted National Express. I pointed out how unfair this was, and asked if, in the year 2017, they really couldn't find a viable solution to the problem. So far, no reply.

We got to the Earls Court set-down point just after 1130. The weather was a lot more pleasant, and although it was quite windy at times there was no sign of rain moving across in our tracks. We called into Tesco and spotted a couple of new books we fancied. I suggested that they'd probably be on offer in Waterstones, and as we were heading to Trafalgar Square anyway we could have a look when we got there. We walked to West Kensington station, Rhian topped up her Oyster card, and we caught the Tube into the centre. At Victoria, I pointed out the time and reminded Rhian that if we'd stayed on the coach, we'd still have been the best part of ten minutes away from the platform.

We jumped off at Embankment station and walked up Villiers Street towards Charing Cross. Angela and I had a very strange experience in the Princess of Wales some years ago, but that's a story in itself. We decided not to call in for a pint, but headed to Trafalgar Square to have a look in Waterstones. We hummed and haahed over the new Dan Brown novel, but as it's only in hardback we decided to wait a while. We did the same with Ben Aaronovitch's new book, as a hardback would break the nice sequence of books on my shelf at home. Rhian picked up a couple of thrillers (both of which I'm going to borrow when she's finished them). I found the second volume of Prof. David Kynaston's social history of Britain since 1945, which I've been looking forward to reading for ages.

We could have spent a lot more between us, but we didn't want to carry heavy bags of books with us all afternoon. We both commented on how great it is to browse in a well-stocked bookshop, and on the irony of having to travel two hundred miles just to have that pleasure.

Back in Trafalgar Square, Rhian was a bit disappointed to see that the main features – Nelson's Column, Landseer's Lions, and the fountains – were cordoned off for some sort of special occasion. With nothing particular in mind except a late lunch in Ye Old London Tavern (our semi-local pub, just downhill from St Paul's Cathedral), we decided to go exploring. We walked towards Admiralty Arch, and saw the first sign of the new security precautions which have been installed after the recent wave of terrorist attacks. Large steel barriers will stop vehicles veering off the approach road to Trafalgar Square – or the approach road to Buckingham Palace, depending on your point of view. We walked into The Mall, and stopped to admire some of the many statues which line this historic route through the heart of the British establishment. Through an opening to our right, Rhian spotted a very tall column bearing a statue. I didn't recognise it, so we decided to investigate it.

It turned out to be a monument to Prince Frederick, Duke of York, the second son of George III. Quite by chance, Rhian had found her way into a fascinating corner of Westminster called Waterloo Place. I had to concede defeat and pull out my trusty A-Z to check exactly where we were. I must have found my way there by accident when I was new to London, because the name sounded familiar, but I hadn't set foot in it for over thirty years. The whole square is lined with statues of military figures, and flanked by some quite beautiful buildings. (I'm not an expert on architecture, but I think they must be Georgian.) My eyes were drawn to the decorative friezes on both of them. I tried taking a couple of photos, but without a tripod it's tricky to get in close.

We were both intrigued by this grand building. There's nothing on the front to identify it, but I had a feeling that it might have been a gentlemen's club. (Pall Mall and St James's probably aren't what most people think of when they hear the word 'clubland' these days.) There were a few people coming and going, and Rhian suggested asking at the little enquiry desk just inside the door. I didn't need to get that far, though. A brass plate next to the door announced that it was the Athenaeum Club, founded in 1824. Not bad for a random guess, is it?

We took a few more photos, and I suggested walking down Pall Mall to St James's Park. There are some fantastic buildings along this road, including a very tall, narrow brick building sandwiched between the fine stone buildings on either side. I wondered what it had originally been, and made a mental note to do some research when I got the chance. A little bit further along, I think Rhian was quite surprised to find that the Royal Automobile Club really is a club when we passed their ornate headquarters.

Mother's next-door neighbour kindly gave me three books on London a while ago, and one of them includes a number of walks around the West End and the City of Westminster. There are some intriguing little alleyways throughout St James's, and they are (or were – the books are about twenty years old) lined with quaint shops and businesses that have been there for generations. I'm definitely going to explore this area in more detail when I get the chance.

We cut down between St James's Palace and the Queen's Chapel. I remarked that there's a slice of history waiting around every corner, if only you take the time to look. We spotted a large open space enclosed on three sides, and wondered what it was. Rhian had her next target in mind, so we came out on the Mall and walked down to Buckingham Palace. I know everyone's seen it on TV, but as usual the photos don't do it justice. Even before we reached the palace itself, we were blown away by the sheer size of the Queen Victoria Memorial.

We photographed each other standing in front of the memorial, just to give ourselves a laugh when we saw how small we looked. It's hard to imagine the craftsmanship that went into executing this extraordinary piece of marble.

Needless to say, even in the middle of October, the palace and the memorial are magnets for tourists. I had a brief chat with a young Chinese couple who were taking photographs, and I heard no end of unfamiliar and vaguely familiar accents while we were walking around. (Rhian got quite frustrated trying to take photos. She's so short than people kept blocking her sight lines when she was lining up a shot.)

We took a few more photos of the palace itself, and Rhian spotted a lady in a very smart hat walking towards a limo parked just inside the gates. I expect if we'd bought a copy of The Times, the Court and Social column would have told us exactly who was visiting that day.

We strolled over to St James's Park, one of the most pleasant London parks, and walked along the lake towards the Houses of Parliament. As we were approaching, we could hear church bells in the distance. Yet again, I'd managed to plan a trip without knowing that there was something exciting going on. The following day, pilgrims from across Britain were going to visit the shrine of St Edward 'the Confessor', the founder of Westminster Abbey. His feast day is 13 October, and the abbey was making the occasion with a full peal of bells. Rhian used to be a campanologist, so to hear the bells of London's most historic church in full voice was a real treat for her.

We walked around to the west side to take some photos, but how do you even start trying to fit it all into the frame? The detail on the stone carvings is incredible, and it's hard to imagine the whole thing being executed with just hand tools, nearly a thousand years ago.

We walked across Parliament Square, pausing to look at the statues of David Lloyd George and Sir Winston Churchill on the way, and arrived at the entrance to the Palace of Westminster. There was a heavy police presence, and the Old Bill weren't afraid of showing off their weaponry to the public. It was quite strange to see the clock tower covered in scaffolding, too. It didn't deter hundreds of people from trying to take photos, though.

We walked past the Foreign Office and up into Whitehall. Rhian has always wanted to see the Cenotaph, so we made that our next port of call. Like the Queen Victoria Memorial, it's much bigger in real life than it looks on TV.

It also doesn't look much like the war memorial in Aberdare (see For the Fallen). The basic shape is similar, but the details are quite different. So much for Rhondda Cynon Taf CBC's claim (on the tourist information board near Aberdare station, for instance) that ours is 'an exact replica' of the one in Whitehall. Ours wasn't designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, either.

We walked past the entrance to Downing Street, and Rhian was surprised to find how close it is to the Cenotaph. We were also a bit puzzled when we couldn't see a convenient balcony from which the Royal Family can watch the proceedings on Remembrance Sunday. I'm sure one of my many books on London will contain the answer, though.

We walked up towards the Old Admiralty Buildings and found a couple of Household Cavalry soldiers on guard duty. These are another iconic London sight, of course, and tourists were eagerly taking photos while the soldiers remained impassive and their horses tried not to look interested. It used to be a sign that you were getting older when policemen looked younger than you, but these lads looked barely old enough to shave.

We cut through the courtyard and emerged on Horseguards Parade, facing the Old Admiralty Building. This, is turned out, was the open space we'd spotted earlier on. Rhian has always wanted to see the Changing of the Guard, but it's so early in the day that we'd never get there in time. We've pencilled in an overnight stay for next year, so with any luck we'll be able to take that in. There's a museum devoted to the regiment here as well, so we can visit that afterwards and make a real day of it.

We walked back into Whitehall and returned to Trafalgar Square. Just opposite Charing Cross station, we were able to catch a bus along the Strand and Fleet Street. We went straight to the upper deck to take in the many historic buildings which line the route. We jumped off at Ludgate Circus and made our way to Ye Olde London Tavern for a late-ish lunch. We've eaten there three times now, and I've never been disappointed. It's a bit pricey by Aberdare standards, but London is a treat and we treated ourselves again.

We walked back to Ludgate Circus, and then headed along St Bride's Street, Shoe Lane and St Andrew's Lane to Holborn Circus. I wanted to see if Rhian could rise to the 'Find the Pub' challenge in Hatton Garden. She failed miserably, so I took her through Bleeding Heart Yard and into Ely Place by the concealed entrance. The Leaky Cauldron (from the 'Harry Potter' books) might not exist in real life – although I'm a Muggle, so how can I be sure – but Ye Olde Mitre Tavern is the next best thing.

The first time I tried to find it, it took me about a quarter of an hour of wandering up and down Ely Place (see Life in the Slow Lane). It was midweek, and the place was fairly quiet. This was a Friday afternoon, though, and the hubbub of voices from Ely Court gave the game away as soon as we approached it. The outdoor smoking area was packed, and the pub was almost full as well. We ordered our drinks and found a small table in the corner of the lounge. Rhian liked the place straight away, and decided it was definitely worth making a detour for.

We stayed until about five o'clock, and then headed out to make our way back to Victoria. I'm starting to know my way around the City at long last, and the twin domes of Smithfield Market make a convenient beacon pointing towards Farringdon station. The ongoing Crossrail work makes it a bit tricky to walk to, but we got there in good time to catch the Tube to Kings Cross. We let one train go, in fact. It was the Friday rush hour, and the semi-fast Metropolitan train to Amersham isn't one you'd catch if you had a choice. A few minutes later an Uxbridge train pulled in, which wasn't quite as packed. We changed to the Victoria Line at Kings Cross and shot through to our destination in no time. I know the best route to the coach station as well now, and we were in the queue in good time to get seats together.

I don't know if I'll be able to squeeze in another visit this year, but the more I learn about the world's greatest city, the more I want to explore it. Now that Rhian is single again, we're free to discover its secrets at our own pace. I'm sure we'll be lunching in Ye Olde London Tavern again before too long.

Operation Motorcycle Silencer (Phases 1 & 2)

In which The Author rewrites his July plans

For the second year in a row, I decided a couple of months ago to put Operation Motorcycle Silencer into action.

Living where I do is a bit of a two-edged sword. The good part is that you're a few minutes' walk from one of the loveliest Victorian municipal parks in South Wales. On the other hand, at the end of July everyone in Trecynon, Glandare, most of the Gadlys and – probably – a fair chunk of Cwmdare and Llwydcoed, is subjected to the noise of the Aberdare Park Road Races. These take place on the circuit around the park, and attract professional riders, bikers and motor sport fans from across the world. (I once met a very pleasant couple from Finland in the Carpenters one Saturday night many years ago.)

It's a great boost to the local economy, of course. When Dad was a councillor he was an advocate of reinstating the races. When the bikes finally returned in 1978, it was just for the Saturday. Now, however, it's a weekend event. After moving to Trecynon last year, Rhian and Steff realised that they'd be right on top of the uproar for two whole days – as, of course, am I.

As an alternative, I suggested spending the Saturday in London. We'd leave long before the first of the bikes arrived, and get home hours after the event had finished for the day. They don't start as early on the Sunday (the local chapels objected), so we'd have a break from the usual routine and get away from the noise as well.

Last year's trip wasn't especially successful, because I think it might have been Steff's first time in London. (Actually, I think it might have been her first time outside the Cynon Valley.) Rhian and I had a great time, as always, as I decided to show her some of the parts we'd yet to explore together.

I've been wandering around the City of London during my recent trips, discovering strange buildings and obscure aspects of history that aren't on the tourist maps. We decided to take advantage of the day to explore in more detail, taking in most of the key buildings (with no intention of going into any of them) so Rhian could see how the whole place hangs together. We'd already done the whistle-stop tour of Westminster the first time we were there. She wants to see the Changing of the Guard, though. As that takes place after the first available coach from Cardiff arrives in town, we've pencilled that in for an overnight stay.

After our first visit I suggested that we tackle the place in stages, just so that I can show her where everything is and how easy it is to get from one part to another. The Bike Races weekend was the perfect excuse.

Needless to say, Steff invited herself as soon as she found out about the trip. I presume she was afraid Rhian would meet an amazing girl halfway down Regent Street, fall immediately in love, and kick Steff firmly into touch. (I wouldn't have blamed her if she had, quite frankly.)

I equipped the girls with Oyster cards (after explaining the advantages to Steff about ten times), an Eyewitness pocket guide – courtesy of The Works in Aberdare – and a small A-Z, hopelessly out of date but covering the centre in enough detail to be useful. I roughed out an itinerary on paper, all of which could be covered on foot and by bus, and we agreed to return to the West End before heading back to Victoria Coach Station.

Earlier this week, the Facebook Memories thing popped up my status from 2016:

London on Saturday to avoid a whole day of bike races. Taking two friends, one of whom is really excited about it, and the other of whom is determined to hate the whole thing before we even leave Aberdare. Wondering if I can convince Person B to install a Pokémon thing on her phone and then send her on a wild goose chase – possibly for ever.

Person B was Steff, of course, and nothing we could show her stood a chance of competing with what was happening on her phone.

We caught the Tube straight to Tower Hill, from where we were heading back through the City towards the West End. Steff didn't like the Tube. It's too far underground, apparently. Rhian was freaked out by it the first time we went there together. Once she'd studied the map and realised how it all works, she was quite happy to follow our route. I even suggested that she could navigate for us. (Easy journeys to begin with ‒ just the one line, with no interchanges. Baby steps.)

We emerged above ground and Steff pronounced herself well and truly underwhelmed. I explained that when it was completed, at the end of the eleventh century, the Tower of London would have been the tallest building in Britain. In Steff's eyes it was too small. And that set the tone for the rest of the day, pretty much.

I don't know quite what she was expecting, but Tower Bridge was 'boring'; the sight of the Shard failed to ignite her imagination; the skyline from the middle of Tower Bridge – the magnificent Wren churches defiantly poking their Baroque towers and spires between the plate glass skyscrapers – was lost on her. I lost count of how many times I had to explain why the City of London was so quiet at weekends, and why the one pub I'd have liked to have taken them to – Ye Olde Mitre Tavern (see Life in the Slow Lane) – wasn't open at all.

In fact, the City of London was even quieter than usual. In a masterpiece of bad planning (on the basis of which I'm retained as a freelance consultant to the Welsh Government), we'd managed to go on the day of the Prudential Ride London cycling event. Okay, so they aren't motorised, but there are still bloody bikes everywhere. When I logged into Facebook at lunchtime, I was amused to find that Cerith and Alyson (both keen cyclists) were also in town. A little bit of forethought would have put us in the same place at the same time, so we could have had a pint together.

With major road closures throughout the West End and the City, our plan to see the sights from the top of a bus (why pay £25 when you've got an Oyster card and the TfL bus map?) went out of the window. I was in Unofficial Tourist Guide mode, pointing out interesting buildings and filling in bits of history – which Rhian always enjoys. If Steff could have used her phone to play games throughout, I think she would have.

We headed along boring Watling Street, down to the boring Monument (Steff didn't want to climb it, naturally; Rhian and I did, and that’s a story in itself), past the boring Bank of England and the boring Mansion House, making for the most boring sight in the entire City of London. Unsurprisingly, Steff wasn't at all impressed by 'the big church' (St Paul's Cathedral), and instead found herself irresistibly drawn to the tacky souvenir shop nearby.

These are an interesting phenomenon in themselves. They've been there for ever, of course – I remember them being dotted all along Oxford Street and Regent Street when I was a student. They're full of model Routemaster buses and red K6 phone boxes, keyrings with tiny Big Bens attached to them, Union flag mugs, T-shirts and biscuit tins, jigsaws of Buckingham Palace and the Palace of Westminster, notebooks with the Tube map printed on the cover, postcards of the obvious sights, and all manner of assorted crap (pencil sharpeners, stickers, mobile phone cases …) to prove you've been to the greatest city in the world.

Nowadays it's almost impossible to turn around in one of these places without bumping into Chinese tourists stocking up on the 'authentic London experience'. It must be quite disheartening for them to take a bag full of crap back to their home city, only to discover that it was all made by their cousins working in a factory down the road.

But Steff had promised to take something back for the kids.

She'd already spent half an hour browsing through overpriced tat (and much more besides) at the 'official' Tower of London tourist information centre trap. But this was the 'official' St Paul's Cathedral tourist information centre trap. Same shit, different location. Literally the same shit. Meanwhile, Rhian and I repaired to the nearest pub: Ye Olde London, on Ludgate Hill, with a fine view of the west front of St Paul's from the entrance. We had a very nice lunch, a pint, and a light-hearted chat with the Spanish barmaid before Little Miss Happy rejoined us and put the mockers on the occasion. We walked around the corner to the boring Central Criminal Court, then on to boring Holborn Viaduct.

We were heading towards Holborn Circus when the rain started. As if the day could have got any worse.
The cycling event meant that a bus into the West End was out of the question. We only wanted to get as far as Piccadilly Circus. I let Rhian work out the route again.

I've already told you that Steff hates the Tube. And escalators? Yeah, those too.

We picked up a couple of books in Waterstones in Piccadilly. Steff wanted to go to Soho – which these days really is boring – because someone had told her that there were gay bars there. (It seems to be fine for her to go to a gay bar and eye up the talent, but if Rhian does the same all hell breaks loose.) Fortunately, we were running short of time. We walked to Leicester Square and down Charing Cross Road to boring Trafalgar Square. The bike race had closed most of the roads around there, too, so we had no choice but to get the Tube back to Victoria. Did I mention that Steff hates the Tube?

All of which brings us to July 2017.

As soon as the dates of the Road Races were announced, I hit the National Express website and found out the fares to London. I got in touch with Rhian (she and Steff were still an item at this point) and asked if they fancied a rematch. They did. I booked the tickets weeks ago; Rhian booked time off work; we were ready to rock and roll.

Over a drink on Tuesday evening, we drew up our plans for the day. Steff shocked us both by expressing an interest in something – namely, 'the Cutting Shark' [sic]. I'd last visited Greenwich in December 2014 (see Going Deeper Underground), when I decided to have an adventure I hadn't had since my student days. I grabbed a bit of paper and started drawing out an itinerary. How does this sound to you?

Victoria Station to Blackfriars, so Rhian could see the Millennium Bridge; Ye Olde London (a five minute walk away) for lunch; walk to Bank station and join the Docklands Light Railway. Go past Canary Wharf and through the Isle of Dogs to Island Gardens. Walk through the tunnel under the Thames. Steff could visit the Cutty Sark, I could call to Waterstones, and together we could check out the Old Naval College. After that (time permitting), we could go across to Woolwich, cross the river on the ferry, take the DLR to Stratford (passing the Olympic Stadium), and head to Waterloo via the Jubilee Line. Cross over to Trafalgar Square and catch the number 11 bus to Victoria Coach Station, taking in Whitehall and Parliament Square en route.

Please note that I did all this without any artificial aids, boys and girls – no A-Z, no Google Maps, and no TfL website. It's nowhere near enough 'Knowledge' to get me a London taxi licence, but it’s good enough for jazz and always impresses the ladies. (It's just a shame that they're usually gay.)

On Thursday I checked out the area beyond Greenwich, to make sure we wouldn't stray into Zone 3 and end up paying extra on our Oyster cards. I topped mine up at the same time, knowing I could activate it as soon as we got to Victoria. (Rhian had suggested topping theirs up on Friday evening, but Steff apparently decided it wasn't worth 'wasting' two minutes online.)

Then the Facebook Memories thing popped up with last year's status. I shared it along with the following comment:

The plan for the weekend is exactly the same. Remember, folks, on the Tube you're never more than a judicious elbow nudge from a live rail.

Now for Today's Topical Tip: When you see a taxi firm advertising a '24 Hour Service', remember to ask them how many hours are in a day.

It was absolutely barrelling down on Friday afternoon, so we decided a taxi for the morning would be a good idea. The girls rang half a dozen numbers to try and book ahead. Not a sausage. One guy even told them that they’d be lucky to find anyone to do a run at 6.00 a.m. Thus it was that we walked through Robertstown to the station on Saturday morning.

We were so early that the train driver was able to chat to us for a while. He was a bit shaken, because coming non-stop through Cwmbach on the first run from Cardiff, he'd nearly hit someone. The guy in question was walking along the railway track, and wearing camouflage gear to boot. It's that sort of idiocy alone that makes you wish they’d hurry up with electrification.

We got to Cardiff without any further incident, and called into Sainsbury's to pick up newspapers and a snack for the journey. We walked up to Park Place, where there was already a large queue at the stop. Our seats were bought and paid for, but we knew that we probably wouldn't be able to sit together. As it turned out, a fair number of people were catching the Megabus, which now leaves from Park Place as well. About half of the others were catching the Birmingham coach. Even so, we ended up in separate seats, but not too far apart.

Note to National Express: It's not sufficient to simply sell tickets – you really need to sell the bookings for individual seats, as train companies do.

The selfishness of one family meant that two young boys had single seats. (The seat next to one of them was occupied by a large rucksack, which should have gone into the luggage compartment anyway.) I ended up next to a sulky teenage girl, who'd seemed quite content to stretch out across two seats until I told her she’d have to shift her legs.

Anyway, we made good time out of Cardiff and got to Newport slightly ahead of schedule. While we were waiting for passengers to board, I heard a familiar demanding whine from behind me:

'Why have we stopped?'

Oh yes, Steff was in her accustomed sunny and life-enhancing mood.

She'd had to wear a jacket because it was raining when we left the house. She'd also put a jumper on, because we were out early and would be getting home late. She'd been too hot walking to Aberdare, then too cold on the train when she took her jacket off.
With the scene set for the rest of the day, I buried myself in my book, Rhian read the paper, and together we more or less ignored her.

Something in the paper had caught my eye while I was flicking through it, so I logged onto the TfL website to confirm it. For the second year in a row we'd managed to get to London during the Prudential Ride London event. It wouldn't bugger up the first part of the plan – the Tube to Blackfriars – but it buggered the last part totally. Never mind.

We disembarked at Victoria Coach Station and walked to the mainline station, about five minutes away. It was at this point that Rhian told me they hadn't topped up their Oyster cards. The queue to use the machines was three deep, and snaked around to halfway up the steps from the concourse. To make matters worse, last time we were there Steff had failed to 'touch out'. Instead of going online (as I'd told her to at the time) and completing the journey, she'd incurred a penalty charge. I was in London with the only person I've ever met who's managed to go overdrawn on a fucking smartcard! Instead of spending two minutes online, she'd managed to cost us nearly twenty minutes in the Real World.

Still, she wasn't the only useless person on the Tube yesterday. A guy with a massive suitcase and a paper ticket (Do they still make those? — Ed.) was making very heavy weather of the barrier to the Circle Line platforms. After he got through on his fourth attempt, I just glanced at the guy in the next queue and said, 'Bloody Muggles.' He nodded and smiled knowingly. Sufficiently advanced technology and all that jazz.

At Blackfriars we met a pleasant young guy, who I think was Italian. He approached us to see if we could change a pound for the station toilets. Steff was already in there, and Rhian and I were wondering if we could give her the slip before she got back through the turnstile.

'First time in London,' he said when he emerged.

I pointed at Steff and said, 'Second time.' We laughed and wished him a pleasant stay before moving on.

We headed into Queen Victoria Street and immediately encountered a stream of cyclists. We found some interesting nooks and crannies, including the College of Arms, on our way to the Millennium Bridge. (I've shown you photos of this in Life in the Slow Lane already. It's boring.) Then we walked back to 'the big church', where – just as last year – there was an exhibition of stunt cycling in St Paul's Churchyard. History was definitely repeating itself.

We found Ye Olde London without any problems, and managed to sit at the same table as we did last year. While the girls were deciding what to eat, I logged into their WiFi, checked into their location, and updated my status:

Waiting for lunch. According to Facebook I'm 'within 20 metres' of the pub. Good thing about London is you're never more than 20 metres from the pub.

I sent a quick Tweet while we were waiting for our lunch to arrive:

Time for lunch in Ye Olde London. Hope fish and chips is as good as last time. Haven't even lost Chief Muggle on the Tube yet. Still time.

I'm pleased to report that the fish and chips was every bit as good as last time. The staff were very friendly and welcoming, and we had a good laugh while we were ordering. I had no qualms whatsoever about commending the place on Facebook earlier today, when a feedback box popped up. I also started a mini-thread on Twitter, which I'll update as and when the chance arises.

London Advantages (pt 1): Sitting in a pub and nobody putting bloody Stereophonics on the jukebox.

London Advantages (pt 2): Taxi firms that claim to offer a '24 Hour Service' realise that there really are 24 hours in an average day.

London Advantages (pt 3): the Docklands Light Railway. That's it – nothing more needs to be said. #properpublictransport

We finished our lunch rather later than we'd planned, so I knew the extended East London plan was looking rather doubtful. We headed for St Paul's again, because I'd spotted an interesting little street sign as we were passing the first time. Fans of 1960s rock music should recognise this name:

I'd seen it on the street map, of course, but I'd never bothered to walk past this unassuming little spot. Slightly further north we found this remarkable building.

This is the headquarters of one of the many craft guilds which form part of the quasi-medieval structure of the City of London's governance. Some of the larger halls are marked on my A-Z, but this one took me by surprise. There's a great carved frieze running the length of the building, too, but without a tripod (I know, I still haven't replaced mine) it's difficult to get a decent shot. Here's a small section of it to go on with.

I think I've accidentally found a new project – photographing all the halls. I think I've managed to persuade Rhian to join me for the Lord Mayor's Show one year, as well.

We walked around to Cheapside, but the road closures were making it rather tricky to get around. Rather than take ages to get to Bank station, we decided to cut our losses and go one stop on the Central Line.

Did I mention that Steff hates the Tube?

As I reached the platform the train doors closed. Rhian was just a few paces behind me, but Little Miss Happy was still about halfway down the escalator. Pretending to be really pissed off with her, we told her we'd have to wait half an hour for the next one. She was really apologetic, and suggested reverting to the original plan instead. Needless to say, the next train was only three minutes behind – and then the fun really started.

I've only ever used Bank station as an interchange once. It was difficult enough to navigate the place then. Yesterday one of the escalators was out of commission, which really fucked things up. We found our way to the concourse without any problem, but then all the signs seemed deliberately placed to send people in circles.

Even I – a veteran explorer of subterranean London – had to concede defeat and ask the guy at the barrier how to get to the DLR platform. Steff was decidedly unimpressed when we had to go down the escalator, back along the platform we'd just left, up another flight of steps, and Goddess knows where else. We eventually got to the DLR platform in time for the Lewisham train, and set off for the next stage of our adventure.

Rhian was completely blown away by Canary Wharf and the whole Docklands development. I'd already told her it looked more like Tokyo or Shanghai than London, and it didn't disappoint her at all. Fortunately for Steff, she was able to play games on her phone for the entire 'boring' journey. When we got off at Island Gardens, I knew she'd complain about being expected to do the foot tunnel as well.

I told her, 'Get back to the station, catch the first train south, and we'll meet you there.'

I knew she'd be too scared to go off unaccompanied, so she reluctantly joined us for our little stroll under the Thames and up the other side. She cheered up when she saw the Cutting Shark, though. By now it had started to rain, so we took refuge in the Old Naval College for a while.

I hadn't been in there for a good look around last time, and it's worth the visit. I was very impressed by the exhibit showing the locations of all the Wren and Hawksmoor churches. It's pinpointed the last two Hawksmoor churches I need to complete my collection, so I've pencilled them in for my next visit. I hadn't realised that Thomas Tallis is buried at St Alfege's, which I accidentally found at my last visit to Greenwich. Another excuse for a return visit, I think.

I left the girls to explore the ship at thirteen quid a pop. (I don't like sailing ships that much.) I walked around to Waterstones, where I had two books to collect. I'd ordered them via the website on Thursday: the new Ben Aaronovitch paperback, The Hanging Tree, and the paperback of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The plan had been to collect the final stamp on my loyalty card, and then use the resulting ten quid towards The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, which I'd already reserved at Trafalgar Square. Unfortunately, both books were discounted, which meant that they didn't come to a tenner.

Thinking about it afterwards, I should have asked the guy to hang on for a minute while I grabbed something else. Instead, I paid for them and then spotted something else I fancied while I was on the way out. I got my final stamp, but not in the way I'd intended.

It didn't matter, as things turned out. By the time the girls left the ship we'd left it far too late to do the Woolwich – Stratford – Waterloo stretch of the journey anyway. It was pissing down, too, so we decided to cut our losses and head back into town.

I took the girls to the station (once again amazing them by heading straight there). While we were passing Waterstones, I reminded Rhian that she wanted to get a Roald Dahl book for her niece. Needless to say, like nearly other bloody girl in this story (in fact, nearly every bloody girl in this blog), Carys hadn't made her mind up what she wanted. We made our excuses without even entering.

We made our way down about a dozen flights of steps to get to the DLR platform at the snappily named Cutty Sark (for Maritime Greenwich) station. We only had to go one stop to reach Greenwich station – the one which existed when I first explored the area – and pick up the main line back to town. At which point something else happened which improved my day slightly. I'd never used Cannon Street mainline station until yesterday afternoon. Now I can colour in another small section of my Baker's Rail Atlas.

At Cannon Street, we decided to have a pint in Thereisnospoon on the station concourse. We had to leave before 5.30, though. Steff had somehow managed to convince herself that it would take the best part of an hour to get to Victoria from there. Maybe if we'd caught a bus during the rush hour, she'd have been fairly close. But the roads were still closed, so we headed for the Tube. Out of interest, I asked Rhian to time the interval between leaving the platform at Cannon Street and arriving at Victoria (six intervening stops). In the event, it took less than quarter of an hour. We could have had another pint at Cannon Street. Come to that, we could have had a pint in Victoria itself. Maybe two.

We walked to the coach station in the pissing rain. Actually, it's more accurate to say that I walked down Buckingham Palace Road, and Rhian and Steff tagged along quite some distance behind. We had well over half an hour before the coach left. After I found out our departure point, Steff wandered off to find a 'programme' (in other words, a paper timetable) for the coach services. Obviously she's planning another trip. Not on my watch, as the saying goes.

I don't know where she and Rhian went in search of this non-existent leaflet, but I eventually found them smoking outside ten minutes before the coach left. By this time the coach had started boarding, and I told them we'd be lucky to sit together. Once aboard, I found a window seat about six rows behind the driver. The girls grabbed a double seat a few rows in front of me. Rhian looked at me and indicated the seat opposite. I just shrugged. From where I was sitting, I couldn't hear that voice complaining about every fucking thing. It suited me just fine.

We got to Cardiff in good time for the 2141 train to Aberdare. By the time we boarded at Cathays it was standing room only with pissheads. We had toyed with the idea of a last pint in town, but we realised that everyone pouring off the train would have the same idea. The rain was still biblical. We decided to get a taxi home instead.

After quarter of an hour trying vainly to flag down a car at the rank, I decided that I'd get just as wet walking home as I would standing around. I'm too old to fuck around at the taxi rank on a wet Saturday night. Been there, done that. I walked up, toying with the idea of a takeaway. The girls must have got lucky, because their lights were on when I got home.

So, in summary, that's two trips to London under my belt, with one great friend who really enjoys herself every time and one acquaintance who hates the whole thing. You can probably guess what I'll be doing next July – and whom I won't be doing it with.