What are you reading Anna

Night Walks by Charles Dickens

What is about

Night Walks

He wrote it at a time in his life when he was an insomniac

Charles used to wander through London at night in an effort to seek a cure

It was during these walks that he really discovered the streets

And it is recorded in this small book

So what has this to do with the Duke of Wellington

One of these observations is called Trading in Death

Let me read some of it to you

It is about Wellington’s funeral

SEATS and WINDOWS to LET in the best part of the Strand a few doors from Coutts banking house

Or more locally souvenirs 

One of the last LETTERS of the DUKE OF WELLINGTON for DISPOSAL dated from Walmer Castle within a day or two of his death

There was quite a cottage industry in those days

It seems quite haunting that the Duke lived and died so near to us

Do you think our house was here in 1852

I doubt it

What do you think was here

I do not have foggiest as the coastal geography has changed so much around here in the last hundred and fifty years

The sea I think was nearer to the castle in those days

Would you pay to watch the Duke’s funeral

I fear I would be a bit late Anna

I mean if you were around in 1852

Watch it on television

I would watch it on television

In 1852

Yes just after the Night Garden

Outlaw

Yes

I cannot get any sense out of this one

Really

What is your question

Would you have paid to watch the Duke of Wellington’s funeral in London in 1852

Dunno

Maybe

Would you

Possibly

Outlaw

What

Would you end this fiction as we are getting precisely nowhere

I was rather enjoying it

Ask Anna

I have

And what did she say

She just took the piss

Do you know something Anna

Pray tell

You take life far to seriously sometimes

It saddens my pen