EXTRACT: I clung on in my rickshaw as we navigated our way across Chandni Chowk, eventually arriving onto a flowing, but still precarious, boulevard that approached New Delhi. At regular intervals, there were advertising hoardings that hailed the coming week as ‘Delhi’s Police Safety Week’. ‘We want you safe’, the posters proclaimed. Although, like that columnist, who dreamed of a return to Eden, surely this was just a pipe dream. Also, why from my own point of view, couldn’t that very week be Safety Week, goddammit? Why should I have to wait until I was no longer in the country?
I returned to old blighty in the early days of 2000. Completely unexpectedly, in the space of five months, I moved house across the English Midlands, putting roots down in the market town of Shrewsbury. I bought an 18th Century Georgian house in the town centre, in the shadow of the looming spire of Saint Aulkmund’s church, which dominated the skyline. The house was a grade II listed building; A desirable bachelor’s pad, on four levels and physically attached to a pub.
A series of deeds to the house, including expansive indentures on thick parchment paper from 1739, were handed over, reminding me that history, from the Civil War onwards, was all around me, not just within this sturdy set of indentures, but a brief jaunt away from my front door. It was not all laudable history by any means, but nether-the-less, history that I wanted to follow up on.
A short drive from my new abode examples of Robert Clive’s lavish booty were on display at one of his former properties, Powys Castle, now managed by the National Trust – but that could wait.
More immediately, after three days of unpacking, I opened my front door, and without touching the pavement, swung my legs around, and entered the Loggerheads pub. Such proximity was to certainly get in the way of my writing over the coming years, but equally, I am sure there were occasions when the beer give it added focus.
I sat in the oak panelled snug with its uneven red quarry tiled floor. Until it became illegal at the start of 1976, this was a gentlemen’s only room. I started to dream of one day having my own serving hatch built into our shared wall.
I left the pub, with more 18th Century history in my sights, walked down the very narrow steep winding stretch, that is Grope Lane. This decanted me onto the start of the Old Market Square. Looking down on me, standing on a rather high plinth, was a well-polished statue, devoid of all pigeon mess, whose size made me feel rather insignificant. This important looking gentleman, you would think had earned his right to have occupied his place at the entrance to the square. He had after all bought his way into the highest civic positions in the town, being both its former Mayor and Member of Parliament. Well, hello Clive, I said and what brings a gangster like you to our Welsh Border’s town. In fact, how come you get treated with such reverence here – reverence being defined as just being allowed to occupy this prime position; although in truth, for most of the people who walk past him, Clive is just the ‘Man on the Square’……. (Continued)
