Afternoon music

Our animal friends

Dystopian London, on the island of strangers

Just look at that. Near-Central London. A citizen is attacked by an untermensch from God-knows-where. No station staff are around, no passers-by try to help much, or at all. The “island of strangers”, as Starmer-stein recently called it (and he ought to know— after all, he helped to bring it to birth…).

Eventually, the police do arrive, and arrest the untermensch, who struggles violently. At least that’s one detained, but how many more tens of thousands (or more) are still out there? What, anyway, will happen to that one? A suspended sentence for attempted robbery? Only a wall, and a squad, will eliminate that sort.

I know that underground station, the District/Circle Line station at Earl’s Court. In bygone days, mid-1970s and up to mid-1980s, I would go there from time to time, then walk to the now-defunct and disappeared Kensingston Rifle and Pistol Club, then located in a hidden place (unseen from the street) behind a caravan sales place at the junction of Warwick Road and Cromwell Road. The site is now yet another Tesco “superstore”.

I used to enjoy going there. Good company. Just me and my Browning. Actually, the other members were OK, if hardly the life and soul of the party. Mostly middle-aged civil servants and unspecified professionals, plus a policeman or two (I remember one policeman whose ambition it was to be on the training team for the police; as I recall, Met. Police, but the training zone was outside London, in Essex; he wanted to get paid for doing his hobby, in effect). The actor, Peter Wyngarde, was there too.

At the clubhouse bar, I used to drink rum and pineapple, mostly, but the secretary had bought a job lot of old Carlsberg Special Brew, and sold it half-price, so sometimes that as well or instead of.

Blair’s and Major’s kneejerk anti-gun laws killed off pistol and rifle clubs like that, but at least we no longer have gun crime! Oh, no, wait…

In the American phrase, “what a cuck!“… Tice really is.

If that Nigerian waste of space props up Starmer-stein, then she will be left with three MPs and a dog next time round; she will be gone anyway by then, though.