So Regency, So Regency, My Dear

My thoughts and prayers go out to all those touched by the recent atrocity in Mumbai/Bombay.

I visited the city in 1991 and since then I am sure much has changed, not least of which is its offical name. I’d been aware of the name change but was unaware of the origins of the city’s names and reasons behind the change. So I decide to poke around a little to see what I could find.

The name Bombay derives from western influences. It is an anglicised version of the original Portuguese name Bombaim, meaning “little bay”. Gujarati and Marathi speakers called the city Mambai or Mumbai.

In 1996, the city was officially renamed to the Marathi pronunciation of Mumbai in accordance with government policy to rename former colonial entities with names derived from local history.

Reading recent accounts in western newspapers, it seems both names are used in equal measure.

The rain, the rain.

Like a pendulum whose motion is ever so slightly dampened, the weather seems to be swinging back and forth between rain and shine at increased frequency.  I do not recall such rain during the summers of my youth.  I recall long, hot summers and all the accompanying delights such as uninterrupted play at Wimbledon, strawberries and champagne in shirt sleeve order at the Lord’s Test, boating and picnicking on the Thames, all without even the suggestion of a drop of rain.  Oh, happy days.  And, lest we forget, the dreads too:  sitting three-hour A level and degree papers in the suffocating heat of overpopulated enclosures, apologetic underground announcements as we stand sardine-like and slowly broiling, delayed in the bowels of the great city, and on.

Mankind has incurred the wrath of the weather Gods.  Our journey is fuelled by the momentum of previous generations.  The excesses of our fathers have set us on a very uncertain journey.  We roll on inexorably to a future of changed patterns, changed habits, changed lives.  The joys of my youth will remain as long shadows cast back across the landscape of time, unlikely to be enjoyed by my children.

I seem to be going through a phase where men in Prada sneakers find me attractive.  (A rather grand opening for a first entry, I agree, but recently it has nudged to the forefront of my thinking.)

Not abysmal, and partially redeemed by a cutely dimpled smile, the most recent attempt could, very charitably, be considered unimaginative at best.

“Is this seat taken?” he offered as the mid-afternoon tube train rumbled out of East Putney toward the teeming city beyond.  As mid afternoon trains leaving East Putney go, this was one of the fuller, with four other people occupying the carriage, all equally spaced and at various stages of texting, examining a newspaper or gazing off in to space, daydreaming the dreams of a daily tube-rider.  Nonchalantly, I peered over the top of the latest Evanovich to glance at the empty adjacent seat then the face of my Prada-sneakered interrogator before replying, “I don’t think so.”

And there commenced the series of butter-fingered twitchings that involved an iPhone, a book, a heavily worn A&F messenger bag and a series of conspicuously unaesthetic leg-crossings before the  train rattled in to South Ken. and I made a hasty exit with a coy smile.

Have to be a little quicker next time, sunshine.