seaside towns day 7 (so that's all right then)

oof. a moment of night-time panic when horsemouth and his brother realised they hadn't heard from their mother since friday (probably since 1430 friday when horsemouth's brother's eldest got on the train). however (one phonecall answered later) equilibrium has been restored. (so that's all right then)

instead of dashing back to herefordshire through a railstrike today horsemouth will be making his way back to herefordshire in a leisurely fashion tomorrow (through the aftermath of a railstrike). 

victory to the striking railway workers.  

all of this forms part of an experiment to see how independently his mother can live. horsemouth suspects she will be fine (but first he and his brother have to go through the fires of guilt and anxiety). in many ways it would suit horsemouth to still be down in london on the 10th - but it wasn't what he agreed when he left. 

horsemouth (as a result of an unsettled night's sleep) is grumpy and out of sorts. 

yesterday a very pleasant wander round south west london in search of the heathwall river in battersea with max and the crew.  they took the route suggested in reverse order (going east to west rather than west to east) and didn't meet up with their local informant (nick) until at least a third of the way in. at journey's end in clapham they hid in a spoons for a snack and a journey's end pint (or two). by accident horsemouth has wandered off with max's guidebook (jon newman's the heathwall: battersea's buried river).

horsemouth had done a little preparatory reading (but not much). 

in a bit horsemouth goes off to bank a cheque (using the newly re-opened (he hopes) cross london expressway). 

that worked (overground, 1 mile walk down from highbury and islington, four mile walk back along the canal and up broadway market).  

sadly while horsemouth was in the new branch there was a near altercation in the queue - two elderly gentlemen (who horsemouth had taken to be homeless men sheltering from the winter cold) informed him there was a queue (but it was a sitting down queue). but there didn't seem to be any movement. there was then a discussion about why horsemouth seemed to think he could violate queue etiquette, at which point horsemouth remarked that it didn't look like a queue to him because people were sitting down, with the best grace they could muster the two elderly gentlemen stood up. 

and lo and behold the queue started to work like a queue. 

more people arrived. a woman sat down with a laptop joked that is wasn't a Q it was an R. 

horsemouth had of course by this point made an enemy for life but he reasoned that within ten minutes they would never see each other again (and so it proved).