Trail of the Lion King

I was back in England for the weekend for some university stuff and so, as we’ve been doing of late, Jen and I stayed in London. This time we went for an Airbnb in Soho on the basis that we might as well be in the centre of whatever is going on.

It was certainly busy, although with it being an international rugby weekend, that might have been expected. The Rupert Street revelry went on until around 5.30am every morning, with a brief intermission before the workmen who were digging up the paving below our fourth floor flat fired up their pneumatic drills.

At the end of our street was the Paul Raymond Revue Bar with its neon sign outside. Elsewhere on the street were massage parlours, sex shops and places selling adult DVDs. This last one confused me a little, in the same way that newsagents still selling porn magazines do. Is there really anyone left that consumes porn from a top shelf? Surely with every conceivable interest (as well as some inconceivable ones) available on your phone, who would buy a DVD or a magazine in 2025?

Staying in one of the less gentrified parts of Soho took me back to my days as a student forty years ago. My friend Craig came down to the capital for a visit and we made a beeline for that very area. Our first stop was a peepshow where we descended the stairs to the basement to find a row of cubicles. We picked one each and went inside. There was a box on the wall where insertion of a fifty pence piece caused a flap to spring open and which enabled us to peer into a room that had similar viewing points around all four walls.

Sat in the corner of the room and reading a newspaper was a women aged about thirty. She wasn’t wearing any clothes. When she heard the flaps flick upwards, she glanced in our direction, put down her reading matter and pressed ‘Play’ on the portable cassette player by her feet. She danced awkwardly, similar to the way that you might have seen Donald Trump do recently. Thirty seconds later, the timer closed the flap, and she went back to checking her share prices whilst Craig and I made our way up to the street to find better ways to spend a ten-bob bit.

This time, there weren’t any peepshows and so instead Jen and I went to a War of the Worlds Immersive experience. It was a little too immersive for me with us having to scurry between rooms, climb through a window and even drop down a floor via a slide that I’d probably have enjoyed more as a small child. It was ok, but I’d have been just as happy sitting quietly and listening to the album.

Football-wise, the best option of the weekend was a third-tier women’s game at the Cherry Red Stadium in Wimbledon. I always think of Wimbledon as being quite posh but that’s probably just because of the tennis. As I walked from Tooting Broadway station, I was struck by how much of a shithole the place was. I had a glance in an estate agents window and the first house I saw was up for sale at a million quid. The next one was three million. It’s seemed that they just priced them in seven figure increments. If I had owned either property, I’d be selling up and buying a castle in Scotland.

Once again, my mind wandered back forty years. This time to an away game at Plough Lane, just two hundred yards from the new home of the current Wimbledon incarnation. I’d hitch-hiked down from Teesside the day before and was due to get a lift back from some mates who had driven down on the day of the game.

Apparently, they reached north London around lunchtime but in those pre-sat-nav days didn’t arrive at the ground until everyone was leaving at full-time. They didn’t wait for me, and I had to get a lift back in a coach that Ingle had put on. There weren’t any spare seats and so he put someone he didn’t know as well as me in the luggage compartment.

The fact that the Cherry Red Stadium also hosts the Wimbledon men’s team meant that I was ticking off one of the ‘92’ grounds. Bonus. I’ve not really made much of an effort to get around them all yet, but I suspect that it is something that I’ll embrace before long.

It was seven quid in. I also bought a programme that appeared to have been recycled from an earlier date and a Bombay potato pie. There was beer on sale that you could take to your seat. Only one stand was officially open, although a few people had strayed into the area behind the goal to my left. Most of the crowd were families and the majority of the kids present were girls, many of them in groups that might well have been junior teams.

With Wimbledon mid-table and Plymouth in the relegation zone, those around me seemed confident of a home win. Wimbledon took the lead midway through the first half when they beat the offside trap, allowing their runner to outpace the defender and steer it home. Plymouth hit back before the break with a shot that the keeper did well to parry, but was unable to prevent the ball looping skywards before dropping just under the bar.

As the game drew to a close it looked as if it would finish all-square. Wimbledon then had a defender sent off in added time for, I think, something that she said to the ref. With ninety-eight minutes gone a shot through a crowded box clinched the points for Plymouth. Some of their bench ran across the pitch from the opposite touchline to join the pile-on, incurring a couple more yellow cards for those with bibs on.

I headed back to Soho where, with it drizzling all evening, Jen and I didn’t get any further than the two doors down White Horse. It was the sort of evening that someone might very well have written a song about.