Outside the Turf Club, Piccadilly
There’s too much moustache wax and pastel corduroy, an excess of vetivers, Trumper’s Extract of Lime, scads of green Spanish leather, flush panelling and Old Boys clinking club glasses, dropping cigar ash, enjoying genteel dereliction and discussions of pelf, mud-fresh potatoes and that day’s running at Ascot or Epsom – And here we jostle, eyes down, umbrellas up, clammy, clutching Poundland bags and rattling tins. The wind tags graffiti, scatters our muttered syllables; pigeons splatter on Range Rovers. Someone jumps the barrier and spray-paints THIS IS THE WAY AND LIFE