Lloyd Evans

Everyone knows the rules. London invented trains that run underground as well as the protocol that makes the system bearable. A London Tube passenger enjoys the same prerogatives as an evil tyrant in a fairy tale. Do not stare. Do not approach. Do not distract him in any way. Respect the cocoon of solitude that protects him from the surrounding hubbub. But this simple covenant is not universally observed. Since I moved to London in 1973, I have twice been bothered by chatterboxes on the Tube. Twice, yes. It may sound like a minor annoyance to an outsider but residents of London will recognise the agony I have suffered. The first intrusion occurred in 1991 as I sat on the District line at Earl’s Court. A fat drunkard elbowed my arm and asked me where the train was heading.

What is it for? Jogging means being in a hurry to get nowhere in particular as fast as possible. And it qualifies as certifiable behaviour. The madman can see the purpose of his actions but the sane man can’t. City-dwellers are more prone to this mental abnormality than rural folk, who prefer not to go loping through fields of wheat or scampering over the muddied divots of an open moor. In cities, the lunatics are -everywhere, which makes it tricky for the authorities to detain them under the Mental Health Act. Some joggers know that chasing around their neighbourhood like a hamster on a wheel is a little crazy. Hence ‘jogger’s face’, the anguished expression worn by many of the semi-athletes as they galumph along the streets. ‘Why am I doing this?’ they cry inwardly.

A neighbour betrayed me to her 16-year-old son. ‘Lloyd knows about politics,’ she told the youngster. ‘He can help you with your essay.’ I was introduced to a spotty teenager who appraised me suspiciously through a pair of smudged NHS glasses. ‘What’s the essay about?’ I asked. ‘Politics,’ he said. That seemed to leave the field wide open. ‘Contact a few members of the House of Lords and ask them to name their greatest achievement.’ He nodded. ‘Sounds good, thanks,’ he said with an air of finality, like a chef asking a new minion to sweep the floor. I accepted defeat. My plan had been to give him a sagacious ruling from on high. ‘Listen, m’lad. Always do your homework or you’ll end up doing someone else’s.’ But he understood that better than me.

‘Do you like animals?’ asked the woman at the door, collecting for a zoo. ‘No, I hate them, they keep trying to kill me,’ I said. That got rid of her. I feel a little ashamed of my hostility to animals, which I inherited from my mother. She was raised in rural Ireland and she loathed the countryside and all its non-speaking inhabitants. To her, animals were either predators or ingredients, and she particularly despised geese, rats, mice, squirrels and dogs. ‘Vermin,’ was one of her favourite nouns. And she regarded the word ‘pet’ as a self-deluding fantasy. Which seems reasonable. Animals cannot be tamed but their owners can be deceived. Any beast will turn murderous when cornered. Dog-hate entered my soul. It festers there still.

Zack Polanski enjoyed a cosy conversation with Iain Dale at the Edinburgh festival yesterday. They sounded and acted like old friends. Dale began by inviting Polanski to enlarge on his experiences growing up gay in Salford. His parents divorced when he was 11 and his wayward behaviour at school attracted a special monitoring regime, ‘full report,’ which obliged teachers to give a written assessment of his conduct after each lesson. As a teenager he was inspired by the Channel 4 series, ‘Queer As Folk,’ written by Russell T Davies.  ‘I realised I should be unapologetic about who I am. And there’s so much power in that,’ said Polanski. ‘To sum up,’ added Dale, ‘Davies gave you licence to be a slut.

‘Altogether Elsewhere.’ The title page of an unpublished travel book caught my eye during a recent clear-out. The author, Matthew Leeming, was a character who deserved to be famous but somehow never made it. He was imaginative, witty, fearless and greedy – wonderfully greedy. He inherited his father’s ceramics company and ran it for years with great success. He loved being rich. ‘Money,’ he used to say wistfully, ‘eases the pain of being alive.’ To pique women’s interest, he claimed to be off-limits. ‘I’m training for the Catholic priesthood,’ he confided He invented businesses out of thin air.

How does Tower Hamlets spend my council tax? I’ve been shovelling cash at them for 19 years so I strolled along to the new town hall to find out where the money goes. The new town hall cost a packet, clearly. Carved out of the Royal London Hospital, the spacious lobby looks cool, stylish and reassuringly anonymous, like a private bank in Zurich. Glass doors swish apart and I enter the debating chamber where the councillors sit at a curved mono-desk opposite the public gallery. Everything is slick and hyper-modern. The pristine floor glows beneath the recessed lights. I had expected an ordinary meeting but I seem to have stumbled on an important debate.