Royal Park Hotel, Westbourne Terrace, London, 5th August 1983
By train from Worthing. We unpack quickly, return our key and head out for Hyde Park. Coffee overlooking the Serpentine. A large, and surprisingly agile, woman plays ball with a rainbow group of children to the strains of an officially banned radio. Horses kick up the dust; and a man on a bicycle collects the deck chair charges.
To Harrods: not so much a shop, more a tourist attraction – exclusivity devalued. Then to the Photographers Gallery: ‘O. Winston Link: Night Trick, Photographs of the Norfolk & Western Railway, 1955-60’. Art and technology combined.
We sit in nearby Leicester Square watching the freewheeling world of London go by and indulging in the cheap pastime of criticising others. I say, ‘Let’s do our own thing’. N gives me a jaundiced look and says, ‘I haven’t got an “own thing” to do, thank God.’ Mime artists perform under the critical eye of Charlie Chaplin.
Supper at Vino II – good Hock at £1 a glass. An evening walk back to the hotel – Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street, Oxford Street, Hyde Park Corner, Bayswater Road. Patches of light and lengthening shadows; accented English, French and German. At the hotel, 10.30 is too late to get a cup of coffee. Woe the British hospitality industry.