A chance encounter

It so happened yesterday that I was due to have lunch in an Italian restaurant on Grafton Way close to Warren Street Tube station.

On my way I emerged into the sunlight at Tottenham Court Road Tube station and, for no other reason that I had some time to spare, decided – instead of walking northwards towards the restaurant – to walk along Oxford Street to the HMV store in the hope of purchasing a DVD copy of the Mike Nichols-directed movie version of Catch-22.

This proved quest proved fruitless because  – so far as I could tell – the HMV store, which to my memory had seemed to have been there since time immemorial, was either no more (like the parrot in the famous Monty Python sketch) or had moved elsewhere.

At this point I switched to Plan B, which was to zig-zag north-eastwards on foot across the landscape towards the aforementioned Grafton Way which, as some may be aware, begins at its western extremity on the corner of Fitzroy Square.

There I came across a statue of an impressive-looking gent belonging to an era two and more centuries ago, viz. one General Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816) [see right].

It’s one of quirky things in life that, whereas in my career heyday I must have passed by this statue many hundreds of times without paying it particular attention, on this occasion I found myself moved to stop, examine it, and take a photo or two of it on my smartphone.

The fact that I was still ten minutes ahead of schedule and knew that the restaurant did not open until noon may have had something to do with it.

In any event I just thought I’d share with Rust readers some background information about General Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelian military leader and revolutionary, who lived at 58 Grafton Way between 1802 and 1810 – see here – WIKIPEDIA