Tottenham Court Road

These English, they were sad, they were stupid, they were unintelligent, everything which the Swiss exile from Swiss scenery esteemed himself as not being.

"And the women," said a lank man with oily hair and a long yellow face, "women, camels, their eyes like blue porcelain, their hands like hams for largeness, their feet like the foot of elephant, their teeth as is one who has swallowed a pianoforte not completely." So arose the chorus of detraction, justified perhaps by the thin stream of worn-out working women that trickled along Charlotte Street towards those strange courts which hide in the square bounded by Goodge Street, Howland Street, and the Tottenham Court Road.

"Since I am here, ten interminable days," a pink-faced, square-faced boy went on, shrugging round broad shoulders, "I see not one woman that one may call a woman that is not French or Swiss or German.

Thou hast reason.

Oh, bother, she said, and let the parcels fall from her arms on the mat of an open doorway.

Then she made an apron of her dress, lifting it with one hand and dropping the parcels in it, and so carried the load along Goodge Street, brave in crimson petticoat and lifted skirt.

In Tottenham Court Road she saw a taxi meter cab.

The driver caught her eye and raised his hand.

And...

Yeah, we did LA 2, which is like London Astoria 2, which was like Tottenham Court Road sort of thing, around the corner from there.

And that was a bigger one.

It was 800 or something, wasn't it? I think it was with Seafield and Ortega, I think.

So it was very sad because I saw it.

I would get the tube into Tottenham Court Road in the morning and I saw the headlines on the tube saying, Jimi Hendrix passed away or whatever.

It was an absolute shock because there he was.

He was only maybe 100 metres away.

And that's what is the foundational thing I love about the genre.

um so yeah that's kind of you know there were other games my journey to shmups was building i remember buying syvaria in the original computer exchange and kind of that was another game where i just was realized these half hour long games you could just put dozens or hundreds of hours into kind of absorbing that nuance um and playing you know getting getting deeper and deeper into this game system but yes i so i was already a shmup player and i started to go so i've already mentioned it um uh casino leisure it was called on tottenham court road a tiny little mate you know i had a ground floor but more fruit machines there down in the basement the ground floor was um mainly fruit machines and then down in the basement they had all these old tatty electro coin um cabinets and i mentioned that because an old english arcade an old uk arcade manufacturer an importer and distributor and so on And yeah, casino was their kind of their, as I understand it, their original business.

It was actually a few doors up the road on Tottenham Court Road, the very original site, but literally was there for the era of kind of mechanical stuff.

They had, or at least the owner, John, would say they had the first pong machine in the UK.

Yeah.

But yeah, it had a Cave logo and a Capcom logo, which was an unusual combination.

So that curiosity drew me to sit at that cabinet and So, yeah, I guess that is to actually answer your question.

It was at Casino Leisure on Tottenham Court Road about 2006.

Mama, Papa, and the three girls, nay, even T. Rembrandt himself till he fell in with the great genius, they all abounded in precise anecdote of the class just above them.

They must always have been like that from the time the founder of their fortunes had nailed down carpets in people's houses till he became what he was now, the chief partner in a flourishing carpet emporium in the Tottenham Court Road.

If they had been asked to dine with the Prince of Wales, they would have come home talking about the King.

T. Rembrandt, I have said, Tommy Codd himself shared these amiable weaknesses of a knotted noble ambition till he was about twenty years old.

In those days, old Cod was nailed to his chair by the palsy, and used to be rolled round the house swearing and spitting and prophesying ruin and dishonor for the family, because the son of the house would not decide to save him from being swindled by succeeding him at the Carpet Emporium.

He generally shouted all day.

His vociferations reached even as far as the Tottenham Court Road, and deputed clerks, picked dauntless men, presented themselves from time to time to render an account.

His mother begged, his sisters implored T. Rembrandt to bring peace to the bosom of his family.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I keep saying Tottenham Court Road.

Tottenham Hotspur.

Sorry, I was going to say Tottenham Court Road.

Because I said it as well.

I almost said it as well.

Away we flashed.

Roads all mud, horses plunging, postboys cutting, measured finchley common in seventeen minutes ten seconds, rode over a smoking common councilman at the Adam and Eve, run in at Tottenham Court Road, and came neatly up

making postillion-like motions

the waiters recognized my lordship gave me the best apartments the very rooms the turkish ambassador had and there i lived in first style no epicure never chose more than five things at table drank champagne and ten days took my leave to visit my cumberland estate in order to build to be ready against my return

Great.

Then I made a decision to start walking to work because I was taking the central line from Bethnal Green to Tottenham Court Road, where I'd then go to my office in Mayfair, on London's Underground or the equivalent in New York through Manhattan.

And I realised that it was not the way I wanted to start my day when I was on this stuffy, sweaty train.

Sometimes it would just break and stop and you're just stuck there like a little sardine with no agency.