The smell of the tanners' and the litsters' work still hung in the night air, although they had long since gone to their weary beds.

The telly's bollocksed.

Moſt great and puiſant Monarke of the earth, Your Baſſoe wil accompliſh your beheſt: And ſhew your pleaſure to the Perſean, As fits the Legate of the ſtately Turke.

But that's nothing compared to Victoria Station, where a million gallons a day are pumped away, most of it from the Tyburn brook. There's a pumping house underneath the station that an Underground press officer once refused to let me see, sadistically adding, 'It resembles the set of Phantom of the Opera '.