Evidence that you need to know one Albert from another

I'm going to Cornwall tomorrow. I've booked my taxi to Leamington Station.

'What's the address?' the taxi office said when I rang.

'Albert Street. Leamington,' I said.

'Okay.' I could hear him scribbling.

'Not Albert Street, Warwick.'

'Ah,' he said. I think he knew why I was making sure.

Warwick is the town closest to Leamington and there being two Albert Streets can cause confusion. Albert Street, Warwick, sometimes gets our takeaways, and we get theirs. 'Pizza for 8?' says the delivery driver.

'Sure,' I say. 'We'll take it. Please tell the people in Albert Street, Warwick, that we're very grateful. We've just eaten shepherds pie and broccoli but we're bound to be peckish later.'

That's when they get suspicious and clutch the pizza boxes to their chests.

We've had taxis turn up to collect people from Albert Street, Warwick.

'Where were they going?' I ask. 'If it's Morocco or a world cruise, I'll get in anyway. Let me just get my bag and toothbrush.'

About a year ago, a woman with a clipboard knocked on my front door.

'Hello,' she said. 'I'm from the council.'

'Hello.'

'Here about the extension in your back garden.'

'You are?'

'I presume you know that your landlord has applied to build an extension on the house into your garden?'

'He HAS?'

She took exception to my surprise. 'It's all documented here.' She pointed to her clipboard and tapped it.

'In OUR back garden?'

She tapped it again.

'If you want,' I said, 'you can come and look at the back garden. I'm not saying it's small, but at the moment there's an ant in it and a bee and they're battling for space. I'm even going to Slimming World so I can sit in the back garden without my thighs against the fencing on either side.'

She looked down at her paperwork and frowned.

I peered over at it and spotted the address on the form.

'Albert Street in Warwick,' I said. 'Not Leamington.'

She flushed a shade I haven't seen since I last ate pickled beetroot.

'I'm so sorry,' she said.

'So am I,' I said. 'We could do with a downstairs loo and somewhere to put a broom. I got hopeful.'

She turned and ran to her car.

'While you're there,' I shouted after her. 'Tell them we like more pepperoni.'


It's my ambition to move to Albert Street, Warwick. I'd like to have lived in both Albert Streets.

What's more, Albert Street in Warwick has a church in it, and that's the church in which I married the spouse in 1982. So it would all have come full circle if I ever achieve my ambition.

And, if the woman with the clipboard is anything to go by, we're more likely to get somewhere to put the broom.

I'm back from Cornwall on Friday and will be saying to the taxi driver then, 'Albert Street, please. The Leamington one.'

He'll understand why.

Hopefully, the people at Albert Street, Warwick, would never get to see the contents of Fran's fridge

STOP PRESS: [The next day] Hey, everyone. GUESS what happened with my taxi to the station this morning ....  Yup. It went to Albert Street, Warwick. And I only just made my train ...