“This is our part of London…”

(Above) Russell Square looking south.

This is the first weblog entry I have posted on a Saturday!

Yesterday (Friday) I went to an agency in the city that specialises in marketing jobs. It took nearly an hour to "register". My experience of such agencies is not good - usually they put you forward for jobs that are entirely unsuitable, then nag you to go to the interview (which then turns out to be a complete waste of time).

Afterwards I met Helen B for a quick drink. We went to Bloomsbury as she felt we ought to make a gesture.

"What do you mean, a gesture?"

"You know, a gesture. Of solidarity. Show them we're not afraid."

Anyway, we walked nearly a mile, to the Kings Bar at the Hotel Russell in Russell Square. The Hotel Russell is an incredible building, designed by architect Fitzroy Doll (who also worked on the interiors of the Titanic) and opened in 1898. The building is faced in terracotta and is supposed to resemble the Chateau de Madrid which used to stand in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.

"This is our part of London" said Helen as we came in through the south side of Russell Square. In many ways she is right, when you add up all the lectures attended in Bedford Square (at an outpost of our Surrey based college), the hours spent in the British Museum, the books purchased at Dillons, the afternoon-sleeping done at Senate House Library, the coffees drunk at the Tavistock Hotel, the visits to the Courtauld Institute, the Institute of Historical Research, the Institute of Archaeology etc etc.

There were a sprinkling of people around the Kings Bar, most of them tourists I would guess. As always happens when Helen enters a bar, she ordered Brandy Alexanders. As always happens in response, the bar staff didn't have a clue how to make the drink. There was some conferring at the end of the bar by the till and then one of the waitresses went off. We sat down at a table in one of the windows. The waitress returned with a short, elderly, Indian-looking gentleman who came briskly over to us and said, importantly: "I can make it, I can make it." He went behind the bar and, because he was so short, and because the bar was so wide and substantial, he entirely disappeared from view, although we could hear him bustling about among the bottles. Minutes later he came back to our table and explained he couldn't make the drinks because the hotel didn't have any white Creme de Cacao. He looked utterly crestfallen, as if he had waited half a lifetime for someone to ask him to make that particular cocktail.

We ordered cocktails from the commonplace list on the table. The leather chairs were difficult to sit in comfortably (we should have chosen one of the big sofas). Just as we finished our drinks and were preparing to leave Helen asked me if there was any news of Robert Leiper.

"Robert Leiper has moved to California" I said with a finality that effectively closed the subject.