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Once in Tilbury, I disembark and plunge Londonwards, the outline of its grey buildings muscling into the sky like a rude person’s bag on an empty train seat, which you see a lot of in London.
He’s a big man with a craggy face and an ease among labourers and tradesmen that suggests, if the mood took him, he could summon them like Tarzan summons the animals and have them take you to pieces, violence-wise.
He looks at me. He really is a big chap. And his accent is a guttural East End oi-oi that screams ‘I am a physically violent man.’
It’s not important how long I’ve been here, but I guess if this were a film they’d have done that thing where I stay still while everyone around me moves unbelievably quickly.
Most people choose not to linger in a place like this. But I feel a bit like Tom Hanks in The Terminal, only without the Russian accent that, hand on heart, I think Tom knows he never really mastered.
I spend the night at the Lark Guesthouse, run by Dave and Ashley Lambert. They’re a gay couple, so their sense of humour’s not for me,
