Surrey - Another World
I’d ridden all morning through sun and early winter squalls, squashing late autumn leaves into the shiny black asphalt of the Surrey roads. Post ride, changed and dry, I stopped at The Running Horses, a famous pub in Mickleham, near Dorking to have some lunch before the drive back into London. And there I met an updated version of Bird and Fortune.
Two men, acquaintances rather than close friends, perch on bar stools, both dressed in blue shirts and light brown slacks. Their accents tell of breeding and money and their white, thinning hair testifies to a life in retirement. Whilst they chat, I sat warmed by the fire and slurp at my spicy cabbage soup and drink a pint of London Pride. I find myself being very entertained by the two men and began to note down their conversation verbatim.
‘Do you have a woman who does?’ the taller of the two asks the shorter. ‘No, not really’, he replied. ‘When we downsized, we said goodbye to the lady that did’.
‘Really? So who does your cleaning then’?
‘Oh Rose does it mostly, although I do clean my office’
‘I’ve never, ever, ever in my life done anything like that. It’s such a drag isn’t it - changing the sheets and putting them into the washing machine...’
‘Well, I’ve got the perfect wife’
‘Yes, it seems you certainly do’.
‘And we are very happy. She looks after me very well. She’s a happy lady.’
‘You know my wife does not allow me to use the downstairs loo?
‘Really?’
‘Yes. She says it’s only for visitors. There’s another loo of course next to the mud room, which I can use, as well as the one upstairs’.
‘The mud room?’
‘Yes, the mud room. All proper houses have a mud room. Surely you have one?’
‘What’s it for?’
‘So you can take off your muddy things and not dirty the house’.
‘I’ve never heard of it, a mud room’.
‘Crickey! - everyone’s house has one. You come home from a shoot...’
‘Once a year - ’
‘Well no - ‘
‘Once a year - ’
There’s a pause. Both men drink.
‘How often do you need a mud room, when you live in Cobham’?
‘Well you go from the garage into the mudroom, then the utility room, then the kitchen and breakfast room before going through a double door into the family room - ‘
‘How many square feet is you house?
‘Eight and half thousand’.
‘So there we are you see, you have a baronial hall’.
‘Well not really. We only have seven bedrooms and a cinema room, but we only use the one bedroom, and the kitchen. And my office’.
The conversation drifts and I finish up my cabbage soup and beer and prepare to leave, when I hear the following;
‘I read today in the Telegraph that there is going to be a postal strike during the election - its a bloody disgrace.
‘Why’s it a disgrace?- you can go down to the polling station and vote.’
‘I can’t do that. I’ll be in America’
‘Ah there’s some snobbery coming out here isn’t there? Labour voters are all flat caps walking around and the Conservatives are all jetting off somewhere and need a postal vote. The election wont happen I suspect.’
‘Of course it will, The Telegraph reported it - Look’, and his eyes glanced to the Pub’s copy lying on a nearby stool.
‘If you want the news you have to read The Times.’
‘Rubbish’
‘Of course it’s not. I suppose you read the Daily Mail as well?’
‘Well you have to on the plane because it’s smaller than the Telegraph and easier to read’.
They drained their glasses.
‘Well I must be off now, I have things to do.
Bye, thank you., he said waving at the girl behind the bar.
And with that they left. The door squeaked shut, the fire smoked. Both the soup and the pint were finished and the promised rain beat down outside. If I was to dirve there was no more drinking for me, so I followed them out to the near empty car park. Three cars departed in the rain and all was quiet in Surrey again.