BENNY GREEN
How does a man kill time in London? I am not thinking of weeks or months, which are the easiest things in the world to fritter away —nearly as easy as years, in fact—but of an awkward period like, say, two hours, which is too short for a visit to cinematic purgatory and yet a little too long for encamping in the lounges of West End hotels. Once upon a time the Marylebone and Westminster reference libraries were good for a bit of time-wasting, but in these earnest days I find both those establishments scandalously overcrowded with students poring over un- readable books. I must say it is a sad business when people are reduced to the ex- tremity of using reference libraries for re- ferring in; back in the good old days you could always get a seat and just stare glassily at the wall, or read back numbers of Scrutiny, which amounts to the same thing. Today, that kind of lighthearted, carefree life is over. Diligence is the word.
In my prime as a fritterer I had several useful dodges. The cafeteria at the National Gallery, for instance, I always found strangely conducive to a successful com- pletion of the Times crossword, and it was always exciting to cross Horse Guards Parade with a tape measure, to see whether the statues of those venomous enemies, my lords Roberts and Wolseley, had drifted any further apart overnight. In summer of course, there is Lord's, where the hardness of• the benches is more than compensated for by the infallible soporific of the cricket. At this point perhaps a word of warning is neces- sary. I hear several stories of timekilling friends who had ugly experiences at Lord's, and always the sequence of events is the same. The timekilling acquaintance is sitting there happily dozing, the ravelled sleeve of his care knitted by the sounds of leather on willow and the committee dropping bricks, when suddenly the rain comes down, play stops and the sleeper is therefore rudely awakened, finding it extremely difficult to get back to sleep again until play recom- mences. In any case, Lord's is only open five months a year, and I find that all in all, the most pleasant and reliable time- killing place in London today remains what it always was, Regent's Park.
Regent's Park is the most gracious green space in or near the centre of town, far better proportioned than Hyde, much more effectively insulated from the stench and racket than Green, far less precious than St James's, where a recent visit revealed to me the hideous sight of the lake with no water in it. Also very much in Regent's Park's favour is that it is exactly the right size for what Piglet would have called the two-hour explore. And wherever you roam within its limits, you are never all that far from public transport. It therefore fulfils my two demands of any park, which are that it should be accessible and seem remote. Indeed, if it were not for the priapic imbe- cility of the Post Office Tower, the Regent's Park skyline might seem not to have changed since the prewar days when I first gazed at it.
Having been on friendly terms with the place for so long, I have come to take a pro- prietorial interest in its welfare, and can always notice when somebody has attempted a sneaky amendment. It saddens me to report, for interest, that those two arthritic willow trees in the Botanical Gardens, which for as long as I can remember have stood erect by kind permission of metal supports, have suddenly been removed. It is not that I mind. It is simply that somebody should have asked me first. It is the same with the old drinking fountain halfway up the Broad Walk, replaced now by a piece of marine sculpture of unusually repellent aspect.
Of course I quite realise that Regent's Park is not the haven of free expression it appears to be. Glancing the other day at its rules and regulations, I learned after all these years that people entering it must not take alcohol or dogs on the rowing lake, or beg for alms, or stick notices on trees, or perform military evolutions, or emit smoke or visible vapour to the discomfort of others, or take up indecent postures, or hold race meetings, or play dice, or tell fortunes, or enter it in verminous condition. Frankly, if I had known all this in my youth I might never have plucked up the courage to go anywhere near the place.
As it is, whenever I set foot in Regent's Park, past and present become inextricably confused. Long-lost incidents regain their freshness, like the morning I sat on a bench with my father on the day of the 1939 Cup Final and tried to think of a way to broach the subject of tickets; a three-way conversa- tion with old friends in a deserted tearoom, which began like a parody of a Turgenev novella, 'So she's finally left you then'; illicit strolls up the drive of Hanover Terrace in the hope of catching a glimpse of H. G. Wells; watching an old friend sinking slowly to the bottom of the boating lake with a sickly smile of disbelief on his face; the unexpected momentary resonance of my voice the first time our boat ever shot the iron bridge facing Bedford College; the night I got locked in, when for a while my only companions were the ducks, quacking their way home with callous indifference to my plight, even though I had kept their great-grandfathers in stale bread and rock cakes. My finest hour, however, I have saved till the end. I once played 'Autumn Leaves' on a soprano saxophone on the stage of the Open Air Theatre, in the rain, to an audience of two. After that, the least they could have done was to make me an honorary keeper.
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