THE WRITER AT WORK

Roy Kerridge on the

curious by-ways of the journeyman hack

NOW that my picture has been drawn by Springs and my writings mentioned in the same breath as those of Kerouac and Julie Burchill, it is time to reveal my working techniques. First of all I place two or three articles in a plastic bag, and then I hurry to Fleet Street and hawk them from door to door. I walk very quickly from office to office, usually using the stairs, as I'm nervous of lifts. As I wander in and out of various buildings, into the curious back- rooms beloved of features editors and up and down dingy service stairways, I liken myself to a polecat or some other creature of the weasel tribe, forever searching banks, hedges and rabbit warrens for its elusive prey. Sometimes I pick up a book left on a table, and carry it off in my bag to review. As soon as rabbits (I mean editors) get to know me, they change their bur- rows, so my pattern of runways is con- tinually changing. For a long time I would turn off at Southampton Street and visit the offices of New Society magazine. These have long been housed near the legendary home of the old Strand Magazine, the paper I would really like to be writing for. The stories of W. W. Jacobs, Conan Doyle and P. G. Wodehouse first appeared in the Strand. It had always been my belief that the spirit of the Strand would inevitably possess the staff of New Society, the statistical articles on the incidence of tooth decay in ethnic communities gradually turning into tales of adventure, romance and drama set in a vividly depicted Limehouse or • Cable Street. eGood Lord, Holmes!') It was not to be. New Society suddenly moved to Piccadilly Circus, where it was shortly joined by Encounter to create a new literary centre in the heart of Soho's viceland.

On my way down the Strand to Fleet Street, I sometimes look into St Dunstan's. This beautiful old church has now been reborn as St George's, on lease as a place of Romanian Orthodox worship. In Ortho- dox churches the altar is screened off from the laity, and at St George-Dunstan's a remarkably decorated wooden screen has been fitted in. One of the panels shows a bright green dragon whose tail twirls away into the horizon like a coiled spring or a yew alley in a stately garden. A gentle, holy man with a white beard, one of the priests seems, mysteriously enough, to be an upper-class Englishman.

Another stop on the way to the Daily Telegraph is the Law Courts, where I sometimes pause for a cup of tea. The relentless jollity of the barristers and the gloom of their victims make a curious picture, with the vast black and white mosaic floor and marble busts of the great judges as a background. At one time, the Law Courts boasted an excellent res- taurant. White vaulted ceilings, waitresses dressed in traditional black with white frilly aprons and QCs who popped their wigs on the floor beneath their chairs as they sat down to a roast meal made a unique atmosphere. Nowadays a bleak and expen- sive self-service café sells rolls and cups of tea to the victims, while the barristers (no doubt) make for a secret eating place where they can laugh at their clients in freedom.

Passing the great statue of the Griffin who guards the City, I sometimes cross the road and trot rapidly down Bouverie Street, where tramps sit thankfully on warm gratings and angry printers picket the Sun. In such cases I am headed for the Mail on Sunday or the Field.

Usually, however, I press on to the Telegraph and end up in the Kings and Keys, the Telegraph pub. This is a favourite watering hole for writers-errant (or errant writers) on their way to the Spectator or the Field. Freelances and long-term Telegraph men used, in some far-off Golden Age, to have a separate bar from the printers. Printers and journalists do not mix, so Telegraph men now have to pick their shifts carefully. Running a gamut of uproar- ious unionised printers to the bar can be quite an ordeal for a sensitive writer. Enormous hands reach out to ruffle your hair, and big red faces breathe beer into your sallow features. Printers here seem both to despise writers for earning less than they do, and to resent them for writing all that stuff which they (the Telegraph prin- ters) have to print. Without these accursed scribblers, the printers feel, the papers would consist of blank sheets only, and a printer's life would be made far easier.

Once, when I had managed to climb up on a barstool at this pub, a big, dour printer walked slowly and deliberately up to me and kicked me on the shin. Then he returned to his seat.

`What was that for?' I asked in surprise. `You-was-backing-into-me,' he replied. `You-was-using-my-space.'

Invisible demarcation lines on the bar make even the resting of one elbow a hazardous task. However, I have spent pleasant moments in the Kings and Keys. Once the landlord's small brown cat, a lithe and delightful creature with curious markings, stuck its head playfully into my plastic bag and then rushed off wearing it, with myself in close pursuit. When not too irritated by journalists, the printers some- times burst into song. Cockneys among them sing music hall ditties, and the Irish sing ballads, some of great antiquity.

My business and pleasure at the Tele- graph over, I hurry round the corner into Farringdon Street. Holborn Viaduct, a vast red bridge covered in statues, beckons me on to the literary quarter at the top of the hill. A friend of mine works at Mount Pleasant postal sorting office at the top of Farringdon Street, so I sometimes meet him by chance and have a break from literary matters. Here too can be found the steamy old-world Quality Chop House (Progressive Working Class Caterer) where the staff of the Spectator and the New Statesman dine side by side.

Although the Chop House serves an excellent steak pudding, I have no time to daily, but hurry on towards Coram Fields and Doughty Street. Squatters, some apparently heroin addicts, live in the Geor- gian terraced houses along the way. Once I found a complete set of clothes, good quality tweeds, scarfs and overcoats, hang- ing on the spikes of a basement area railing. I knocked on the door and a skull-faced heroin addict answered and gave me a quizzical glance.

`Are you selling these clothes?' I asked.

'No! Some old boy thinks we need them, so he keeps leaving them there for us,' she replied, and slammed the door.

Evidently the squatters would rather freeze than wear clothes that were not in fashion.

At last I reach journey's end, the happy haven of No. 56, the Drones Club of Doughty Street, where I offer the editor of the Spectator an article entitled 'The Wri- ter at Work'.