UK meanderings 2026

I STARTED reflecting on life in the UK from over 20 years ago. I often do this. I wrote the following, and then, as it says at the end, I aborted the project- gave up. Started thinking 'what is the point?' England draft 1 PREFACE: May, 2026 WHY have I decided to revisit this adventurous period of my life? Could it be that I wish to escape from my current life? Might it be that I just feel the need to be creative and I don’t know what else to do? Or might it be that I still have this bittersweet feeling of wanderlust- that I have never really got travel out of my system. That I want to revisit this period because it feels comforting and tenderly familiar. Maybe I want to document when I can, outside of what I have already done which is type out and produce my diaries. When I still can. When I can still remember. And who gets what I hope will be a long, finished book by the end? Perhaps nobody. But I hope its fate isn’t an item atop of some big book burning bonfire. Simply, I don't want to forget. So where to start? The best place is Heathrow airport. I went to England twice before- I think in '87 and then again '93. Pre-marriage, pre-kids. Little or no responsibilities. But this time was different. I knew this would be a longer journey. It felt incredibly exciting. To work overseas. As I found out, it is something else. So we came straight from hot, humid Sri Lanka. Colombo airport. October 12, 2000. ................................................................................................. Heathrow to Hammersmith, to Victoria Station, to Bearsted, Kent. Lugging those two heavy grey suitcases. One each. Absolutely pouring rain. England, my England. And there was Simon at the station, prompt. What a welcome face! He tells us about the floods- Kent, Sussex, other places. Hearing the place names still cause a shiver. I am suddenly dreaming- of Sissinghurst, Asheham, Rodmell- why all Virginia Woolf? KENT Gravelly Bottom Road, Kingswood, Maidstone, Kent, ME17 3NS What a time we were to have here. Pauline and Simon, the little Degus, the cats Missy and Tigger. The world pretty and green. Pauline had this huge property on acres and acres of land. J and I explored our first day and marvelled at its size. Borrowing gum boots. A cute little walk to get milk in Kingswood, the local town. It would be a base for a year or so- a great rock solid foundation for the time we lived there, and for subsequent times as well. Our little Eden. I have many beautiful memories of the place. Times spend in the garden, the visits for J’s cousins David and Caroline, Caroline’s kids, of course all the times with Simon in his garage, or day visits, fox hunting protest, the cinema in town, Christmas… Perhaps there is none better than sitting in Pauline’s conservatory the first morning with the book of towns and villages in England. It felt like I had the world at my fingertips. The world of my childhood. The world of Enid Blyton and all subsequent British literature. Cornwall and Gloucestershire, and Devon and Yorkshire, and Shropshire and Worcestershire, and on, and on, and on. I had found my heaven. I pored over that book with a beating heart. Not a map as such, but a driving guide to all the motorways taking us to all the exciting spots, as if the towns and villages were little satellite places in the sky, and we would be travelling from start to star. We also went by the Greenline bus to London during those first couple of days. J scoured the internet cafes, and I went to the National Gallery and saw all those treasures again, like the massive Une Bagnaid (Seurat), Vincent’s sunflowers, the Arnolfini marriage (Van Eyck), the list goes on. Then the bookshops, like Ulysses in Museum Street, and Cecil Williams, Gekoski, Marchpane. A tour of the Café Royale on Regent Street in search of the setting of Lawrence’s Rananim outburst on his birthday. There would be many visits to London, but the first one back in a long while holds its own special memory. We packed in so much early on. It was a great excuse for Pauline and Simon to get out as well. Sissinghurst quickly followed, then Charleston Farmhouse and Monk’s House in Rodmell in wet, wet Sussex, taking in Brighton at Jill and David Read’s place. Canterbury we found to be nice, but much preferred Elham. In just over a week I landed the teaching job of a lifetime at Maidstone Girls’ Grammar School. The agency I joined- ‘Select’- gave me a couple of weeks at St Simon Stock before I started which was a useful warmup, whereby a nun walked into my class and jaws dropped when I didn’t stand up! My first cover lesson I merely observed Year 13’s discussing Alan Partridge. I sat there thinking, ‘Wow, I am in a British classroom’, it took my breath away. Just staying in with Pauline and Simon had its frustrations- the cooking, Pauline’s moods- but I always felt grateful to be able to live an ordinary life in England for the first time- touring, shopping for groceries at Netto, cooking when we were allowed, meeting Simon’s eccentric friends and buying a 25 pound car, and playing with a ball on the stairs with those beautiful, beautiful cats. Still, I was quite homesick in those early weeks. The postman would cycle up the path. We got a lot of letters in those first weeks, news from home. Gordon and Lisa split, and phone calls with mother showed me how worried she was. One night I just started crying in our room, and it was really sudden. It only happened once, and I didn’t really understand it. Just the feeling of being overwhelmed. Yet there were so many distractions, such as the massive Bluewater shopping centre, and further London visits on the Greenline, and going to the manuscripts room at the British Library poring over Koteliansky’s letters to Lawrence- the actual letters in their big envelopes!!, and Katherine Mansfield’s actual story ‘A Suburban Fairytale.’ And another time to Primrose Hill past the zoo, and Chalcot Square and 23 Fitzroy Rd, past residences of a king and queen pair of poets. By late November I officially started the best job I have ever had. I had an orientation day first where I felt really self-conscious because I had just had a really short haircut. It was terrible. You can imagine why. Fran Mallalieu was having a farewell with 9E, who would become my favourite class ever. ‘Say something Australian!’. I later find out that Harriet Hancock has a mock Australian accent on her home phone message- something about being out in the ‘ute.’ So I am thrown into the deep end at MGGS. Thanks God they are so good. 2 X Year 13, a Year 10, a Year 9, a Year 8, a Year 7 (all English), and on top of all that, 5 one off Year 8 Drama classes. During spares I come to use the lovely room at the top of the stairs for the computers and the internet, checking The Age every day (J and I do not have our own computer). But the staff come to be so friendly and nice that in time I go up there less. There’s the group of men that I talk sport with, especially cricket when the Ashes comes on. It is the days of Glenn McGrath, Steve Waugh and Shane Warne. Martyn Lowe-Wheeler is the intellect. He once attended a lecture at Cambridge by Ted Hughes and lent me ‘Winter Pollen.’ Val Thind is the Head of English, and her trust in me went so far as to order 28 copies of ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ for my Year 10’s by email. (I made the mistake of lending it out to them, and most of them read it that night. I wonder if it is still there, sitting in the English storeroom?? Then there is the trio that I get to know best- even socially. Roy Doughty, Jon Mallalieu, and Dave Reader. One lovely lunchtime we go to the pub and drink beers and play pool. It is so civilized. They can’t believe it never happens in Australia. Only Klaus, the German, is a bit creepy, but I handle him ok. I will eventually have a lovely day seeing Neil Young with Roy (and Murray) at Finsbury Park, and see Burnley V Gillingham with Dave. The only other football game I will go to much later is Leicester V Leeds at the Foxes home ground. We are into early December now, and we know we need to move from Pauline’s. It has been fantastic, but we don’t want to overstay thigs, and we need more independence. It’s not far away. It is 83 London Road, ME 16 ODX. It is not a particularly easy time. J and I fight a lot. She feels stuck, has a lot of pain (terrible weather) and not enjoying Maidstone Hospital, the NHS in general. And despite MGGS, I feel like I am not teaching that well, a bit flat and bored, a bit depressed, and probably very, very homesick. And this place, on London Rd, is pretty crappy. I remember how small it was- our living quarters a garret with a sloping roof. There was only one section in which I could stand upright. A shared kitchen didn’t help, and a bathroom with tired spurts of lime-scale water, no TV, sloping walls. To a degree we come to get used to it, but it is always poky. One day a woman with a polecat moves in downstairs- that’s interesting- and there is a guy (Russian perhaps) who propositions J, and then there is the day I lock downstairs on my way out, and she is locked in all day. My dark mood extended into mid-December, where even on a trip to London I am all complaints. We had seen J’s friend Rob a few times, and went to the V&A (marvelling at William Morris things), and finding Regent St and Oxford St Christmassy and commercial, not picking up much in Soho and Carnaby St, and queuing up for a Thai restaurant in the wind and the cold feeling miserable. I felt completely left out during Rag Week at MGGS, sullen amidst all the frivolity. I felt like a block of ice, dislocated, achingly shy, removed like Esther Greenwood (teaching The Bell Jar), emotionally sterile and not performing as a teacher well. And there is a depressed girl in one of my Year 13 classes- Rosemary Aves- who says The Bell Jar is therapeutic. I had some lovely birthdays when we were away. This first one in 2000- my 36th- was spent with old friends of Jack’s at their beautiful house (Monkton), in Ross-on-Wye. Really generous people, made a fuss. We were in the vicinity so we went to the first of may house-associations of Lawrence- this one the Old Vicarage where Catherine Carswell once lived (the tenants unaware of this association). The night od December 21 ended at Cheltenham Town Hall to see Van Morrison for my very first time. Not the best time to see him (his largely forgettable time with Linda Gail Lewis). But it was a fun night, and he was in good form. The second concert later on in Derbyshire, he was quite flat. We also had a couple of nice Christmases with Pauline and her family. My one and only experience of foxhunting protest occurred at Elham on Boxing Day, 2000. Part of a large group holding placards and watching the brave horsemen with their little Foxhounds. I felt a bit sick after only a few hours sleep and all that rich Christmas food. And Simon drove at 170 kmh. The sign he constructed spelt out the words ‘Fox hunting’s for ‘Barrarians’. Mmmmm… Our gloves were useless and my toes were crying out in pain. I pulled my cap low over my head. The bugles went off and the merry hunters were on their way, the crowd hoping to satiate the hounds by throwing them dog biscuits. When we finally got home, after a detour taking in Dover and Folkestone, I vomited up my Christmas dinner, managing to thumb the small, hard bits through the little sink holes, and scooping up the bigger bits long, grey capsicum bits and flushing them down the toilet. In bed for a brief respite, and then up again for a Boxing Day lunch in Marden for some more rich Christmas food, including vile Yorkshire pudding. How white, how snowed-in was everything in the morning, as we took a stroll around the schoolyard and interrupted the early morning meanderings of a small red fox. Winter in Kent like winter anywhere in England takes a lot of getting used to. Especially the first winter. The wind rocking fence posts and the traffic eerily quiet. A postal van slipping and sliding along the hill at Queen’s Road. 2001 began- literally New Year’s Day- in London again. Very touristy but my mood really brightened. I wrote in my diary that night that it was our mildest day so far, and that I found the walks glorious- along Whitehall, and St James’ Park, Westminster Abbey, and a film at Leicester Square. Maybe it suddenly occurred to me that I was a very lucky man. By late January I was really enjoying teaching. 9E were and always will be, my favourite class. Our little attic had become a happy attic. (classes) MGGS events- Mack & Mabel, theatre London Haymarket- An Inspector Calls By Mid- February we were finally starting to travel a lot, not just to London. A holiday in Bath visiting the tourist spots like The Circus and Royal Crescent, and also out to Van Morrison’s Wool Hall Studios. On this trip we also went to the first D H Lawrence associated house- Chapel Farm Cottage in Berkshire (Dollie Radford’s home). JUNE 29- ABORTED DRAFT

Nursing Home

MOTHER- NURSING HOME- I saw you, as usual, last Sunday. It was later than usual for my weekly visit. You were awake in your large reclining chair in that spot next to the curtained window, next door to where father died. You looked much the same. Tired, worried, but with a smile for me, and J, and the boy. It never seems to be too much of an effort for you. You do genuinely love these visits. You often talk of being grateful because some residents never see anyone from the outside world. It was nearing lunch time, 12 o’clock. It is always 12 o’clock. That’s what happens when you return to a regimented process such as your earlier days. You give up the privilege of waking up, or eating, or sleeping whenever you want. We placed you in your wheelchair- or rather, the help did, quite perfunctorily. Of course, that is your lot now, this inability to walk. But it is not this loss of a function that troubled me all of Sunday. It was your sight, or rather, lack of it. You took your place at the usual table of four or five other people, all men. Brian is the one that is always next to you. He is kind and seems younger, or at least much more capable…alas, than you are. Sadly, the others look listless, bored, regrettably taciturn. J took the boy for a walk so I sat next to you. Because we arrived so late, it meant that I sat with you throughout your lunch. We held hands a little and chatted and then I did something that struck me as a role reversal from another time. I cut up your food and fed you. In a sense it was heartbreaking for me to do. They plunged large rounded pieces of beef on your plate topped with gravy, and medium-sized roast potatoes. For some reason you were not given the carrots and other vegetables the others received. I could see quickly that you needed your meal to be cut up. I sensed your inability to slice meat with a knife and fork. Even the potatoes were a bit too big. I thought this would do. I watched you, sadly, as you began to try and lift food with your fork to your mouth. This would not do, so you requested a spoon. Then the shock. You tried to lodge some meat and potato onto your spoon, and lifted the spoon slowly and gently to your mouth, your lips expectant. But there was nothing on the spoon. You missed, and couldn’t see to see this. You are so blind. That’s when I began feeding you. A bit of cut up beef, a sliced in half roast potato. After a while you said you had had enough. Then, finished, grateful, you began to talk to nobody in particular (or perhaps it was Brian), about me and how I am your ‘baby.’ You said it several times, laughing, and then saying sentences that were confused or garbled. They did not make much sense. Again, references to being your baby. It left me feeling hollow and so, so sad for you. To see you in this state. Blind, confused, laughing…at what? My mind flashes back to you sitting on a beach chair in the backyard at Reservoir, looking cool with a summer dress, sunglasses on, and a cocktail in your hand. You are smiling, confident and young, your hair lit up red or golden. As I walked out after that to go home, I began wondering ‘is there someone there on other meal days, cutting up your lunch and dinners, and feeding you, and making you feel comforted and secure? Or do you dread the hours, trying your best to disguise your blindness, chirping meaninglessly but merrily to hide your disabilities?’ Your inability to walk and your blindness make life so much harder for you. And I know it is going to happen to me as well. Perhaps someday S or A will write something like this about me.

The AFTERLIFE (1)

THE AFTERLIFE (1) (inspired by SUM: Forty tales from the afterlives by David Eagleman) WHEN you arrive at a black wrought iron gate after you have died and see the electronic notice: WELCOME TO THE AFTERLIFE, pretty soon you will be asked to select your afterlife option. Without thinking about it too much, you might choose ‘REPEAT’, which is in fact an opportunity to do everything all over again. The good, you think, outweighed the bad, so it seems like a pretty good option. What you soon discover, however, is that everything is in clumps. It is not linear, as you lived it. First up is birthdays. I have all of my 81 birthdays over 81 days. My fingers get sore from opening too many presents. The one that brings the biggest smile is the bike, when I was 13. A red and blue Malvern Star. Subsequent birthdays were an anti-climax present-wise. But when I get to 36 again, I get to revisit the Café Royal, in London on Regent Street. DH Lawrence’s birthday experience at the same venue was at a similar age around the mid 1920’s. He ended up vomiting everywhere, in the Domino Room. A more mundane experience is sixty accumulative weeks of continual teeth cleaning. Sometimes your mouth drips with blood. You watch your teeth slowly changing shape and becoming irregular, and stained. Hair brushing is also mundane. This only goes for 45 years and then stops. Not even a comb is needed after that. Football match after football match, eight months of it, more triumph than despair, the blue and white stripes the common denominator. After a while the sirens hurt your ears. A cumulative thirty years of sleep, sometimes restlessly. There are some classic dreams- especially numerous are the car crashes built around anxiety you often had. These are also bunched together- a bunching in amongst the bunching. Thank God when they finish and are replaced by 2000 or more erotic ones. Staring blankly at walls takes up close to a year. Your feelings of emotional anguish- that terrible adolescent break-up that caused stomach pain. Boredom, ennui, broken bones or mere sprains and head knocks. These are the moments that you suffer the most in reliving. Cutting finger and toe nails takes up 3 days. You never did do that kind of thing much. Pulling out ear wax and picking your nose takes up triple the time of this. As for shaving, 300 days, and doing dishes (shamefully) 130, all painfully boring but better than gardening- 270- and cleaning the toilet- 190. Month upon month is spent driving various cars, the majority of it in the same one or two suburbs. Several of these months waiting restlessly before a red light. Only a week on a plane, but what a jam- packed week of excitement and anticipation. Ironing, games shows, shoe laces, sunburn recovery and swimming, telephone conversations. It is weird waiting to see what clump comes next. The biggest dread is the big clumps of embarrassment, and failures at work, and terrible restaurant experiences and sore stomachs, toothaches and vomiting. These are all counter balanced, naturally, by periods of beautiful reading and watching experiences, delectable food and stimulating walks. At the end of the day, it is reliving the best moments of your substantive self: as son, bachelor, father and husband. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

JUST ANOTHER BIRTHDAY

ON ANOTHER BIRTHDAY DECEMBER 21, 2024 I MUST grow up and own that I have turned a certain number today. It is, after all, only a number. It is a state of mind. Turning ... is nothing at all. Feel overwhelmed if you like. Sure, it is quite remote from, unfamiliar to, a distant stranger of 21. 21 was a long time ago. Do you remember the party you had at home. The people you knew then that you do not know now? The mistakes you made? But it was still the same you. You quoted King Lear, if you recall. King Lear was pretty fresh then. But quoting King Lear when you were 21 shows that it is still you. Turning... is a piece of cake, and easy to own up to. No embarrassment or shame. It is a simple two syllable number that has a fine ring to it- the way that the final syllable- the ‘ty’ at the end, bounces confidently of the roof of the mouth like the sound of an old-fashioned cash register. As I write I suddenly feel that I can get used to this number and laugh off the way that I have been dreading it these past couple of days. How ridiculous. I can even start to embrace it. I am embracing it. It is a fine number and makes me feel full of wisdom. I have an advantage over so many people. Wise, experienced, knowledgeable, sharp, but not deteriorating. People older than me are deteriorating. Their minds are becoming soft like marshmallow. And those younger often haven’t got a clue. They are still figuring things out. Aha, what a great feeling! Now that I have turned … on December the 21st (this birth date has been with me for quite a while now- it is a loving, comforting number- it clings to me in a protective way- a date I have always been proud of- a source of comfort and strength, coming along once every year, and always anticipated, especially when I was 21…) Yes, now that I have suddenly turned…, (and fully embracing it like I have those other years that ended with the ching of ‘ty’) I am thinking about all the things I am grateful for the way that turning … has allowed me to be. Look how rich is the knowledge of my favourite writers. The way that I can still read perceptively- past my peak, sure- (remember the absolute youthful pleasure of reading Women in Love and To The Lighthouse when I was in my twenties?)- but still savouring good reads, absorbing new fiction and writers’ letters, my brain a little softened and weary, but still in reasonably sharp nick. I have a body of overseas knowledge behind me. Famous people’s houses, famous galleries and libraries and museums. A great painting is still a great painting. I haven’t had the actual picture in front of me for a long time, but I am certain that Sunflowers still speaks to me, as does the person who created it. I wasn’t much older than 21 when I stumbled across Bathers at Asnieres- its powerful massive sprawl on the wall- and Guernica at a different museum in a different country, but at the same remote age. I will probably see them again. I still have years left. They will impact me again, of that I am sure. Now I find myself at the age of … (proudly I might add again), I still love hot food like curries and spices and chillies and sauces. I can still taste these things like I am 21 again. Whiskey still has a nice kick. My smell is not bad. I could never really smell that well back then either. I can walk and I can run. I realise that a few more birthdays that end in ‘ty’ might put paid to that (I know people close to me that this has happened to), but right now even having 21 as a remote memory, doesn’t mean I cannot whack on those black Puma runners of mine and run around the oval several times- ten or twelve, in fact. That’s pretty good. Ok let’s not get on to seeing and hearing. Much, much deteriorated. Looks the same. Wow, certainly not 21 anymore. The lines, the skin, the hair, the hands, the neck. All sad imitations of my previous self. And the hearing… oh, don’t start. The seeing even more depressing. To be going blind… It is a terrible, terrible thing. You feel powerless, uncertain, fumbling, alienated and insecure and disadvantaged… But I am embracing this new age of mine as I wake up early on this day, right? December the 21st is a great day. The age I suddenly have forced upon me is fine. Wow, all the things I can still do. The physical stuff, and all the processing. I am going to go back to bed and sleep a bit more so I can enjoy this special day when I wake up again that little bit more, by being alert, awake, not worrying any more…

STATES OF MIND

SITTING on the bed with an ok red wne and 'the boy' dog, still in the first week of hols and feeling relaxed, and I confess to a kind of guarded happiness, life doesn't seem immediately filled with strong and subtle pressures. Of course I am lazy and unfulfilled and static in my emotions and behaviours, but at least not as restless, aggressive, unhappy, anxious at this very moment in time. Well, I am rarely of ever aggressive. But anxious too often, yes.

MEETING COLM TOIBIN ON HIS HOME TURF

I CAN’T exactly remember what year it was. I think sometime in 2001. It was cold, then. You told me sometime before- ‘Look me up when you get to Dublin- I’m the only Toibin in the phone book’- So we did- we looked you up from a phone box. You sounded a trifle uncertain on the phone- Did you remember me and our roughly planned visit? Was it terrible timing? Had you started The Master? At any rate we set off to Upper Pembroke Street We had with us a drink of some sort And maybe some cake or biscuits, to be hospitable. I can’t remember what it was like opening the gate And knocking on the door. I think I found it momentous Which it probably was- and ballsy- what did we have to offer? We sat inside at an old wooden table A mountain of books on top- I remember one of them was about Rouault. We spoke of many things and you Gave us some advice about travelling in Ireland Seemingly dismissive of your own places Enniscorthy, Tuskar Rock, Cush Gap Keating’s Hotel, Curracloe, Friary Street, Nora Webster, Eamon, Blackwater And wanting us to explore the ancient- The Aran Islands Inishmore, Inishmaan, Inisheer An authentic escape from the modern world. But we never did get there- we travelled A conservative path instead We had a lovely time at Colm Toibin’s But I look at the occasion now With a few small regrets. We have no photos commemorating our trip. I was too shy to ask if I could see his study And his fabulous books and maybe even a manuscript or two I wish we talked about his childhood stuttering And each of his books that I have devoured over the years And how it felt to write a book like ‘The Heather Blazing’. Instead the afternoon wore on too quickly And Colm took on my suggestion that we had better get along now And stood up and answered a mobile call in the shadows of another room. Now, if I ever visit Joni Mitchell Or Van Morrison or Paul McCartney Hopefully I will be much better prepared.

ISN'T IT A PITY: A LOOK AT PART 1 OF A NEW BEATLES DOCUMENTARY

ISN’T IT A PITY ‘Isn't it a pity Now, isn't it a shame How we break each other's hearts And cause each other pain How we take each other's love Without thinking anymore Forgetting to give back Isn't it a pity Some things take so long But how do I explain When not too many people Can see we're all the same And because of all their tears Their eyes can't hope to see The beauty that surrounds them Isn't it a pity Isn't it a pity Isn't is a shame How we break each other's hearts And cause each other pain How we take each other's love Without thinking anymore Forgetting to give back Isn't it a pity.’ JUST finished watching Part 1 of the new Beatles documentary, ‘Get Back’, by Peter Jackson- the hugely extended version of the 1969 film ‘Let It Be’, preparing for that album in Twickenham Studios in London. Except it’s much more than that. It has been edited with archival footage from old concerts and film excerpts and news articles that provided inspiration for new songs. A really telling piece occurs when the band is jamming- they do a lot of jamming- Chuck Berry’s ‘Rock & Roll Music’. They are currently playing it in the film with some gusto, however, you can see fractures in the band. It doesn’t quite seem right, there are small tensions everywhere and you can just feel it throughout- at any rate, for this section, Jackson has spliced in old footage of the band playing it live on stage in their heyday- flashing back and forwards between the two performances synchronized at the same time. It creates a magical yet sad effect- gone is the tightness and happiness of the first performance on stage- a lot of smiles and the sheer pleasure of performing- and the current one, Twickenham Studios, 1969, where there is more of a ragged and tired look, and Ringo in particular on drums looks bored, George Harrison going through the motions. An even more powerful moment takes place at the end of Part 1. Paul and John are rehearsing an old song from very early on in their repertoire- ‘Two Of Us’, that would appear on the album. An old song, and very basic, from the early 60’s period, and not much of a song really, more of a filler. I think the problem was that John Lennon hadn’t written very many new songs and there was the pressure to complete this new album. The camera flashes between John and Paul in the jamming of their intimate song about friendship, and it’s just like old days- a potentially heart-warming moment, trying to capture the glory days, having a lot of fun- except occasionally you get close-ups of George, looking completely left out, not a part of the ‘Two of Us’- it looks like there are tears in his eyes. Perhaps he feels unwanted, or superfluous. It seems they didn’t really value his song writing contributions, until ‘Something’, at least. Anyway, George looks fed up and discarded and irrelevant, and suddenly he announces he is leaving the band- ‘see you ‘round the clubs.’ This occurs moments before the ending of Part 1. Apparently, they meet up days later to try and talk him around (which they evidently do). But the three play on merrily for the next couple of days- John even says casually that he might bring in Eric Clapton if George doesn’t come back. He makes George sound so disposable. Ironically Eric was George’s best friend. Then we have the credits, and the poignant lyrics of ‘Isn’t It A Pity’ playing over it. It wasn’t the first time George tried to introduce the song into the band’s repertoire- it occurred way back in ’66 for Revolver. Evidently, he tried it again for ‘Let It Be’. And why not? It is a beautiful song that captures the feeling of being shunted, made to feel an outsider, dispensable, an adjunct. ‘Forgetting to give back. Isn’t It A Pity.’