I crossed the M25 — you wouldn't believe what happened next
Visiting the Rough Trade Books HQ in Buckinghamshire
City walls
Much to the irritation of my extra moenia friends I avoid crossing the M251 with the same tenacity with which poets avoid full-time work. For one thing, transport outside London is appalling. But more importantly, I’m not interested in Albion. I’m sorry if my sincerity comes across as London-centric; but I moved to London, not England, or Great Britain, or Northern Europe, or whatever you want to call the barren land that lies beyond the M25. My propensity for fascination isn’t limitless and has been monopolised by the Smoke. I’m sure there are great places out there — I can take your word that they exist but I don’t need to see them. I can’t afford to travel to them either.
For these reasons I’ve been putting off visiting Rough Trade Book’s HQ in Wendover, Buckinghamshire, for a while. If you don’t know Rough Trade Books you have been missing one of the most exciting contemporary indie publishers. I don’t say this (only) because they’ve published me — go check the names in their long catalogue and see for yourself that my statement isn’t hyperbole. Why did I need to visit their office in these days of WFH fundamentalism, you might wonder. Just to sign some copies of my recent pamphlet and to record an interview for their Patreon. Obviously, the day I chose to cross the M25 for the first time this year2 coincided with a rail strike.
This is something I realised as I was getting ready to travel across London, from my home in Hackney3 to Marylebone, the London terminal where the trains to Wendover depart from, when they actually run. I would be lying by omission if I didn’t confess that learning there was a strike was a moment both of disappointment and relief. Disappointment, because I wouldn’t see my friends Nina and Will, the rough traders; relief for I wasn’t going to leave my safe haven today either. Luckily or regrettably, Nina or Will (I never know who replies to my texts) offered to pick me up either from Chesham or Amersham, since both stations are served by the Metropolitan line4, and both are located not that far from their office. When I read those names — Amersham, Chesham — the first thing that came to my mind was Arthurian lore — a great history of cuckolding, if there was ever one5. I could see myself traveling by horse, clad in armour, dreaming of Queen Guinevere, heading to these exotically-named enclaves. So this got me in a good mood and I set out to reach them, my final destination determined by whichever Metropolitan line train arrived first at Liverpool Street Station.
Melancholia
But every time I travel away from London I’m overwhelmed by a crippling melancholy. The oppressive nature of the British transport system — with its overabundance of posters politely barking orders at you — in conjunction with the ennui of fellow commuters, and the unavoidable sight of paper cups in which many have the temerity to conceal milky coffees, always conspire against my mood. There’s this public announcement on tube and trains in London: “If you see something that doens’t look right, report it to a member of staff, or text the British Transport Police on 61016. See it, Say it, Sorted.” The British people love tripartite messages — “Get Brexit done”; “Hands, face, space”; “Build, build, build”; “Stop the boats”; and so on — but no tripartite statement would ever manage to distract me from a question that returns to me every time I hear this nagging public service announcement: “What if nothing looks right? Who should I report it to?” Sadly this is a rhetorical question since I know quite well there’s no authority or department one can resort to in order to complain against melancholy. The Powers That Be are either unable to combat it or are intent on perpetuating it for their own advantage, whatever their ultimate plan might be.
These are the thoughts that preoccupied me while my train was reaching Liverpool Street Station, the first stop in my travels. If you’ve never visited this temple of arrivals and departures, may you not get acquainted with it during a rail strike. No sensitive or sensible person should have to deal with the desperate crowds one encounters there on strike days. No knightly armour is strong enough to protect one from these commuting demons. If I was Sir Lancelot when I boarded my overground train, by the time I was walking across the overcrowded concourse at Liverpool Street Station I was cutting the figure of a sad Don Quijote — a sad clown beaten by the British transport system and its windmills, here known as “turnstiles”.
Scars on the land
I turns out my chariot was going to be the semi-fast train to Amersham. And it turns out my carriage was eerily empty and my melancholia soon gave way to boredom.
I dedicated my one hour four minutes journey to finishing reading an essay by capillary-challenged Michel Foucault6, and later hypothesising on my notebook about a possible novel that takes place during a single night, in real time, with a main character who can’t sleep and spends his time listening to the noises in the house — how much of this would be too much for the reader? I thought for a while about Georges Perec and Norah Lange, the kind of people who’d write this kind of book. How did they ever manage to get their books published? How many copies did they actually sell? The only thing my mind retained beyond these literary divagations is a fellow commuter wearing sandals and displaying overgrown toenails, and a place called Chorleywood, which apparently is real. Soon my train stopped in Amersham, the final stop, where I got off.
I had advised Nina or Will or whoever runs the Rough Trade Books mobile phone operation that I was going to arrive in Amersham at 11:54 or some equally capricious time. Nina arrived some ten or fifteen minutes later, apologising for the slight delay, blaming roadworks “you’re going to see on our way to Wendover”. And here a convoluted drive full of roundabouts ensued.
It turns out the roadworks weren’t roadworks but a monument dedicated to managerial failure, also known as the HS2 project. Carving up the countryside for a railway track that went madly over budget, for a project that is running madly late, that will have a terrible impact on the ecosystem, and that might never get finished, is daft even by Tory standards. Especially if we consider the fact that the most likely to be affected by the inconvenience of this gash in the bucolic landscape are rural tories, who’ll end up voting Tory Light (Labour) out of spite. Luckily our conversation quickly moved to more interesting topics, such as someone in the scene getting cancelled after joining the Culture War on Facebook7 and how poorly most books sell. As you know, both are topics that greatly fascinate me, although they matter little to most decent people. It’s a testament to a host’s quality as a host when they let their guests direct the conversation wherever they want. When they let the guest talk about pointless things, their quality as a host can only be classed as irreproachable.
Three minutes cities
Soon we arrived in Wendover and the very Englishly named the King and Queen — the drinking establishment where my interview was due to take place. We went to a room at the back, where I met my dear friend Will, who was waiting for me with a little table and two chairs. Two pints soon made their way to our table and without even noticing it we were suddenly talking while Nina filmed. And even sooner the interview was over — killed in one take, as the conversation among friends it was. I wish it had lasted longer because I was enjoying the literary name-dropping with Will. Regrettably we had a busy schedule ahead, so I’ve left the name dropping for this piece.
Next stop was a photo opportunity at Real Magic Books, round the corner from the King and Queen. After this — with Will now gone — came my long-delayed visit to Rough Trade Books’ HQ, just opposite the bookshop. I made a comment about the proximity between locations in Wendover, and Nina remarked that it was indeed nice to live within three minutes of everything. I don’t often feel envious regarding a comment about dwelling that doesn’t involve London but I did feel envious here. In London it takes me fifteen minutes to reach the nearest off-licence. I guess the price to pay for living in the world’s most remarkable city is surrendering one’s time8.
Now, I don’t know if you ever signed hundreds of books or pamphlets or any such thing but this is much harder than it sounds. I can’t say exactly when it happened but after several dozen autographs I had a moment of panic when I realised I had forgotten my signature, just from repeating it over and over. After some difficult minutes my signature returned and an hour later I was done with the books and we headed out, so that I could get a lift back to Amersham, a place I wanted to explore properly (I wanted to have a drink in a pub). On the way back to the parking lot where we had left the car, I spotted a tapas restaurant called Tres Corazones. “Where there are tapas there’s hope,” I remarked to Nina, taking with me a very positive impression of the tiny but thriving parish of Wendover.
Amersham: land of giants and common-sense
Soon I was being dropped in old Amersham. Nina recommended I visit the Kings Arms (sic), since Four Weddings and a Funeral was partly shot there. I ended up ignoring this kind recommendation for three reasons. One, I’ve never liked Hugh Grant, and unlike many Twitter liberals I think he’d be a terrible Prime Minister. Two, I felt aggrieved by the lack of an apostrophe in the sign that announced its name (an error repeated online and everywhere — an error that pretends not to be one, out of obstinacy). Three, on my way to the Kings Arms (sic) I had walked past a pub called the Elephant and Castle. By now, after being out of London for almost three hours, I was terribly homesick and I couldn’t resist the temptation to visit this place, which sounded so much like home9. Here I ordered a local golden ale (4.2% ABV — beer golden ratio if you ask me) and a steak sandwich. I opened my copy of Private Eye and proceeded to read an article about this or that topic that didn’t interest much but one does not leave Private Eye unfinished, just like one does not open the London Review of Books.
While I waited for my food I flicked through the satire section, which I find incredibly unfunny and borderline embarrassing most of the time, occasionally lifting my head from the page to marvel at two lads so tall their heads reached the ceiling. Yes, the Elephant and Castle is an pub and people were shorter in years bygone but these lads were nothing short of giants10, and therefore — as someone who stands at the mediocre height of 1.79 centimetres — they gained my admiration. I contemplated for a while whether I should initiate a conversation with them, asking “what’s the temperature up there lads?” but I decided to stick to my magazine. And in any case my steak sandwich was soon landing on the table.
“Only place where there’s still a bit of truth,” said the middle-aged garçon as he handed me a knife and fork wrapped in a paper napkin, nodding with his head at my magazine.
“You can said that again, Sir!” I replied. And he did, he did say it again, cementing in my heart the impression that aside from giants Amersham is home to people of remarkable common-sense. Then I ate my food, drank my beer and made my way back to London, filled with joy about a day well-spent, questioning my own prejudices about the exotic lands beyond the M25.
They say life is a learning. Sometimes they are right. And not only in Amersham.
If you don’t know what the M25 is, it’s basically a circular motorway that marks the limits of Greater London.
Not counting one visit to the airport to fly out of Blighty.
Where else?
The tube wasn’t on strike.
When “researching” for this post I ended up coming across a book titled Guinevere and Lancelot: A Genderswap Cuckold Femdom Dubcon Fantasy, by a so-called Wicked Wendy. I couldn’t not share this find with you. The fact that this book has received zero reviews on Goodreads tells you everything you need to know about the sorrowful state of contemporary literature.
Teatrum Philosophicum, in which he discusses The Logic of Sense and Difference and Repetition, by Gilles Deleuze.
On Facebook, of all places! As my twelve year old said: “Facebook is only for aunties and uncles”.
And disposable income, and lungs, and year of life, among other things.
Admittedly, this is the wrong side of River Thames.
Has there even been a better use of “nothing short of”? I doubt it.