Trafalgar Square is one of Planet Earth's last remaining handful of constants. As long as it's not raining, the scene is the same: happy tourists posing beside the lions, other happy tourists loading their cameras while the calcuating pigeons, fat and smug, waddle about, open to offers - and boy, have they long since moved on from bread. Chocolate raisins are now a favourite.
It was particularly sunny as I slouched across the square recently. Two of the famous birds alighted on me - one on my head, the other on my left shoulder. As I didn't have any food, I guess I was flattered. You know the feeling - joy to the world, peace on earth. Hell, I reckoned, I must radiate niceness.
A second pair checked me out, one on each hand. Francis of Assisi-like, I reckoned they had been specially trained to land on inoffensive, non-radioactive types - in other words, the few left in the Northern Hemisphere not carrying a mobile phone. The pigeons settled. Funny, you never notice exactly how loud all that billing and cooing is until four birds select you as their new home. Tourists looking for that definitive shot began to take an interest in me. Bird-women go down particularly well with Japanese visitors operating quality photographic equipment. I am now immortal. Photographs of me and my birds have by now been developed internationally. I am a London tourist memory alongside the last remaining punks, the Chelsea Pensioners and the Palace guards.
Cameras clicked. My expression became an issue. Should it be benign, stately - how about indifferent? There's also good old amused, and how about what comes most naturally, embarrassed? No one does embarrassed-to-death quite as well as I do. Still, from a large crowd, the birds had picked me - what an endorsement. Having always been a magnet for dogs and cats, this is not that surprising. But pigeons had never previously expressed such interest.
"Look this way"
Obviously, I've entered a new phase. More saint-like. Stoic. Increasingly noble. Could that really be possible? Looks like it is. Arms outstretched, I am a haven for pigeons. Germans, Canadians and a couple of African visitors, cameras raised, intone: "Look this way." Verily, pigeons have sharp claws. Close up, the beaks are more menacing than expected. I walk slowly, cameras still clicking.
"Luv, you should see the back of your jacket," sighed a concerned London matron. Ah yes, jacket: black, velvet, newish, smart even. So much for that. A sensation akin to warm glue spreading was also beginning to assert itself in the area adjacent to the top of my head. Another one of those days in a life full of those days. . .
I should have known. Earlier that day, the seats in front of me on the plane from Dublin had been occupied by a trio of braying businessmen, engaged in three separate but highly competitive conversations. Clearly the three most successful men in the world, they were a terrifying spectacle. Bloated, cartoon-like and appealing probably only to a mother's forgiving eye, they subjected the stewardesses to a battery of sexist comments. But the women never reacted. They must be very highly trained, or perhaps they are just used to it. Why don't wildlife film-makers explore the bizarre world of the businessman, nature's most unattractive primate?
Uncluttered
We landed at Stansted Airport. Architects rave about its purity of line. To the untrained, anti-post-modernist eye, it is the Twilight Zone, something out of a J.G. Ballard novel. Feeling that airports should be atmospheric, bustling places frequented by people who look like international spies, as well as by more ordinary citizens captivated by that temporary sense of importance that comes with an airline ticket, even antisocial individuals such as I expect airports to resemble theatre foyers. Instead, Stansted - clean, almost deserted - is all glass and carpet, uncluttered by humanity. There are pockets of settlement, however. There's even a Bewleys. So we decided to sample the out-of-Ireland Bewleys experience. Breakfast is not quite the same when each piece of bacon, each sausage, is priced individually: in Stansted there is no "breakfast special". In the queue, a Black Londoner spoke to a mobile phone: "Look, darling, I want you and your stuff outa my place by this evening, all right?" Ahead of him, the handsome Dutchman who was at least seven feet tall attracted even more attention as he objected to the way the food was presented. "I didn't expect to have to put together, to assemble, my breakfast in this way," he argued formally. "Why can you not serve it more conventionally? Say, `Here is a fried breakfast', instead of offering components as if they were computer parts?" Tense, politely irritated, there was a heroic grandeur about him. The man serving the components was unmoved: "Next, please."
Tea-bag takeover
The world has been taken over by the tea-bag. Teapots are becoming obsolete. Many cafes have adopted the revolting habit of presenting a cup of hot water accompanied by a naked tea-bag. Bewleys is one of the few places where the discerning tea-drinker may ask for tealeaves without being branded a potentially dangerous subversive. I asked for Darjeeling. "Don't 'ave it." How about Assam? "Don't 'ave it." How about Earl Grey? A tea bag was presented. "May I have tea leaves?" "Don't 'ave them." A Yeatsian tragedy could be pending. "But there are lots of boxes of tea, look." Determinedly looking at a space in the middle distance, the tough, don't-mess-with-me little woman replied: "You want tea leaves, you can buy a box of the stuff. I don't 'ave any."
Perhaps Bewleys is not meant to travel. At least the tea-bag was served in a pot, albeit a leaking one. "Where are the jugs of milk?" "Don't 'ave jugs, there's milk there." Oh no: positioned beside those nasty little sachets of sugar were small containers. You know, those disgusting little plastic pots of quasi-milk? The ones that invariably squirt liquid in your eye?
And it did.