The Elderly Gentleman Outside Exeter Cathedral

"It's a beautiful cathedral, isn't it?"

On the way home, I'd stopped outside the Clarence Hotel, on the newly-cobbled pavement and turning circle by St Martin's Church.

This was the sort of everyday chance encounter with a stranger that you get used to as you get older. When you're a teenager you only ever speak to other teenagers (except relatives, of course). However, age and the cold chill of early evening November loneliness make a person more amenable to a nice chat with just about anyone.

I agreed with the bloke and then realised that he was almost unique - he was from a Britain of about 50 years ago, like the major in the Ealing film, The Ladykillers, only he was a retired doctor and not a major, like Cecil Parker.

He was well-tailored in what could have been Austin Reed: grey suit (though no waistcoat); red tie and white shirt; traditional gentleman's overcoat. With thinning grey hair, probably aged about 70.

He spoke in an exquisite accent, consumately well-spoken, almost to a Brian Sewell level yet more natural. He'd been a doctor at Moorfields and Barts in London and then moved to Exeter 40 years ago, presumably when still a young man.

In the early evening, late November darkness (around 5pm) he obviously thought I was a lot younger than I am, recommending I emigrate to "Australia, Canada or New Zealand". His brother had done so many years ago (Edmonton, Canada) and he would now recommend anyone to emigrate.

He had to go, but: "Remember you met a gentleman in Exeter and he said emigrate to Adelaide". I will. This man - despite a successful medical career and the trappings of career success - obviously laments not doing so himself.

On the other hand, he left by declaring Exeter to be "the finest city in the world". The late W. G. Hoskins would be proud of this incomer to the city of Exeter.

The Heart of the Game - Jimmy Greaves (Time Warner, 2005)

This amazing book is only £6.99 in paperback and it has Jimmy Greaves going on a fascinating discourse of football - why it is so popular, the history of the game, the different clubs, and the rich heritage of the game.

This book must be bought, something I realised after about 30 minutes of browsing through it in Waterstones, Roman Gate, Exeter.

The new, modernised Waterstone's bookstore is awful and I prefer the old layout. The new Costa coffee cafe at the High Street end of the shop is too noisy and the atmosphere is more of a cafe than a nice, quiet bookshop. The floorspace is obviously much larger, since they've taken away some partitions that previously divided up the place (on the site of the old ABC cinema, demolished in about 1989).

Anyway, the Jimmy Greaves book is a revelation. Is he a great, intelligent writer or has it been ghost-written? I wonder. It opens with an anecdote about the Spurs team the in a hotel in Leicester the night before a match back in the 1960s. The Spurs skipper, Danny Blanchflower, gives a Plato-esque exposition on why the game is so popular. Fascinating.

Dawlish off season

I hired from Exeter Library a copy of the brilliant 1987, John le Carre tv series A Perfect Spy. My mission today is a very simple one: to visit Dawlish and locate the 'bed and breakfast/guest house' which was run by Mrs Dubber (Peggy Ashcroft) and in which Pym stayed when he was on the run from the Jack Brotherhood and the secret service.

First Great Western has admittedly done a fantatic job in introducing many, many very cheap "Cheap Day Returns" in the Western region. Today, on the automatic ticket machine in the small lobby of Exeter St David's station, I punch in "Dawlish" and find that it's only £3 return.

Alas, the train itself is not a Network South East, London Waterloo-Paignton train (or an Inter City 125 with decent, traditional style carriages) but a 2 car diesel unit (DMU) which is filthy. This is the same sort that operates on the Barnstaple route with all its splendid scenery. Yet, it obviously hasn't been cleaned for a long time and the windows are barely transparent.

In the tv series A Perfect Spy, Magnus Pym (the brilliant Peter Egan) gets the night-sleeper train to Exeter and then he's seen arriving in Dawlish on one of those red, double-decker 1980s vintage Devon General buses. Curiously - in what counts as film/tv licence - his bus arrives from the Torquay direction.

Pym gets off right by the central birdlife lakes in the middle of town and walks onto the beach, the one where he used to play football with his father, the notorious Ricky Pym (played by the late Ray McInally).

He then walks up towards the western end of the promenade where he finds the bed and breakfast run by Mrs Dubber. Easy enough. Job done.

In the station itself, there a curious cafe called Geronimo's, a sort of Red Indian-themed little cafe specialising in All Day Breakfasts, etc. I partook of the All Day Breakfast - very nice indeed, only £2.99 (plus £1 for a pot of tea), sort of bacon, hash browns, fried egg, baked beans, mushrooms, etc. Geronimo's itself, as to be expected from the name, is full of all sorts of American Indian memorabilia such as bows and arrows, models of chiefs, most of it authentic and all for sale.

Dawlish itself is a delightfuly, surprisingly big town that reaches some way back up the valley of the tiny stream - "Dawlish water"? It's full of Regency villas on its western slopes, many let out for long-term holiday accommodation.

Apart from that, the only notable thing to happen was when I was walking along the high street, towards the library, eating an ice cream cone (with flake) that I'd bought a few minutes before. There was a strange scratch and whack around my head from behind and before I knew it my ice cream had gone, whisked away by a fucking cheeky seagull that just swooped down and stole it. The sheer nerve of it.