We were discussing London's needs. Each of us was suggesting some
long-felt want which most appealed to him or her.
Some had declared that what London chiefly wanted was a tube from
Victoria to Chelsea. Someone else said that what it chiefly wanted was a
glass roof over Bond Street and the chief shopping area. Someone else
said that what it chiefly wanted was perforated pavements to let the
rain through at once--and so on.
"What I want," said a pretty girl--so pretty that I almost got up and
set about providing her with it--"is a guide to the cinemas. I adore
cinemas, but there is no means of knowing what is on unless you go to
the place itself. Then very likely it's some stupid long play, with more
printed descriptions than deeds and more letters to read than people to
see. Now there ought to be a list of all the cinema programmes on sale
at the bookstalls, like _The Times_ and _Spectator_."
"Wouldn't you have a cinema critic too," someone asked, "like Mr.
Walkley, to say how the films amused him, and so on?"
"No, I don't want that," she said. "But I should like information as to
how long they were, and if they were American or Italian or French or
English, and I should like a star to be put against those which Mr.
Redford had not thought splendid."
When it came to my turn I said that London's most crying need was a
tailors' clearing-house.
"What on earth is that?" they asked.
"Well," I said, "I'll tell you. All men have tailors, and for the most
part they stick to them, because they find them all right, or fear to go
further afield to begin all over again. But every now and then it
happens, no matter how good the tailor, that a coat is stubborn. It goes
on being wrong. Fitting after fitting leaves it even worse than before;
and the result is that one either loses one's temper and bangs out of
the place and never enters it again, or, not wishing to hurt the
tailor's feelings, one accepts defeat and gives the coat away the next
day at considerable personal loss. In other words, a time comes when one
either cannot, through disgust, bring oneself to visit one's tailor
again on that matter, or when one cannot, through sympathy, bring
oneself to ask him to do any more. Don't you know that?"
They agreed.
"Very well then. This is where the clearing-house comes in. The tailor
there is prepared to tackle such cases as those I have described. He
will come to the coat with an open mind and put it right. You can ask
him, without any false delicacy, to do so because it is his business.
That's what London most needs," I concluded.
"I daresay you're right," said another of the party; "but in my opinion
what London most needs is a good restaurant which has pork-pie on its
bill of fare."
* * * * *