Brief Encounter

Spotted anyone famous in the Dog? Steve Overbury once saw Georgie Fame (famous by name etc.), and on another occasion, gasp, Andrew Ridgeley, but he wishes he had been at the bar 99 years ago when these two popped in.

‘Miss! Hello miss, could I get a coffee please? Hey miss, over here! Miss, I’ve been standing here for fifteen minutes.’

She pursed her rosebud lips at him when she finally deigned to drag her sorry chassis over to his end of the bar, looked him up and down like he was the delivery boy, then reluctantly cranked some lukewarm slop into a cup.

He paid for it, sipped it and pushed it away.

He’d been only twelve when he’d left the USA but he’d already tasted good American coffee thank you, and at just 17 he’d savoured great coffee in Paris, France. Now, aged 19, he was in the Dog in Dulwich Village and the coffee stank. Whenever he came in here it was the same. By the time you got served it was time to go back to work. Will the service ever improve in this bar? Will the coffee? It’s 1912 for chrissake and you can’t get a decent coffee.

‘I usually drink the tea in here. I think there is less that can go wrong.’

He surveyed the gent who had addressed him; the thin care worn face, the round glasses and the neatly combed hair.

‘I guess so. If I didn’t have to teach poetry to a class of over privileged kids this afternoon, I’d have a large one.’

‘I don’t drink. My only vice is Astrology. You’re a teacher? For my sins I’m a teacher too.’

‘Then I’m sorry for you mister,’ he said, ‘Fortunately I’m only temporarily an English teacher. Do you teach English too?’

‘Music. Today I’m teaching singing. Do I detect an American accent?’

‘You have a good ear sir; I thought my accent had been beaten out of me. Chandler’s the name, Ray Chandler… from Chicago. Good to meet you.’

‘Good to meet you too Mr. Chandler. My name is Holst. Gustav Holst.’

‘Holst? You’re a German? You don’t sound German.’

‘No, that’s because I’m from Cheltenham. My family is Swedish.’

‘A teetotal Swede and a thirsty Yank in a Dulwich bar, who’d have thunk it?’

‘I teach at James Allen’s girl’s school around the corner, and between lessons I write orchestral pieces but no one seems to like them.’

‘JAGS, all girls! That’s my kinda school. I teach at the College up the road - all boys - very dull, and in between lessons I write poems but no one seems to like them either.’

‘You’ll get there Mr. Chandler.’

‘Something tells me you’ll get there too Mr. Holst. Are you sure you won’t have a drink?’

‘I don’t think I should get a taste for alcohol at the age of 38 Mr. Chandler.’

‘It’s never too late to pick up a bad habit, I’m only 19 but I’m having a bourbon, assuming I ever get served. Hello miss! And please don’t tell anyone you saw me drinking on duty Mr. Holst, I need this job. I’m saving for a ticket back to the USA.’

‘You’re going back to Chicago?’

‘No, too cold. I think I’ll make my way down to California. Seek my fortune in the sun.’

‘I too will be in the sun in a few weeks time, in Spain. I’m planning to write a piece about the planets.’

‘That’s a pretty big subject Mr. Holst.’

‘Yes, aim high my mother used to say. Aim for the sky.’

‘I’ll drink to that, as my father used to say.’

There is no record that Gustav Holst ever crunched through the snow to the Crown and Greyhound for a cup of tea in 1912, or that he ever encountered a young Raymond Chandler, who had strolled down from Dulwich College for a winter warmer, but on the other hand there is no record that he did not.

There is also no record that the service in the Dog was bad back then but it’s not an unreasonable assumption.