Due to the proximity of the Butcher’s shop, and 52 Solihull Road, it’s a fair bet that Walter drank (heavily) in that pub.

It’s an enormous old pub, and in the twenties was replaced by a M & B twenties portfolio suburban design as below.

The actual Mermaid above the bar, which defied gravity and proportionality, but after which countless pie-eyed drinkers must have lusted was removed and lost to mankind forever.

Except… it must have caught the 09.00 Great Western express from Snow Hill station, regularly hauled by the super-fast “King” class locomotive “King John”, and his fellow royalty and deposited in London.

By sheer happenstance in the sixties, Doris’s husband’s son, (keep up) saw it on Portobello Road in that famous market. It had lineage, and was accredited to the pub, so David Morgan bought it and hung it in his flat in London

What a remarkable coincidence, circularity, fate that Walter would have seen it, and his daughter’s husband’s son (from a second marriage) similarly admired it. Life hey? You couldn’t make it up (and it’s not April 1st.!).