THE LONDON FINGER

Nearly everyone knows about the London Eye. Looking over the rooftops from here I can see it winking between two chimneys. And of course the London Nose (or the Soho noses) have become a quite common dinner conversation topic of late. But I was walking with a friend the other day in Lincoln's inn fields and we were discussing the much lesser known "London Finger".

I like Lincoln's Inn Fields a lot.  As a youngster, I remember back in the prehistoric era (the nineteen eighties as you would call it),  it was the unlikely location for a  citadel of homeless people as was the Waterloo roundabout (now the site of the gleaming I-max cinema**).  It is funny how times change isn't it? I mean one of the reasons I liked the anti-capitalist protest at St Pauls last year was that it reminded me of those times when central London was not so corporate and hygenically controlled.  I was as apolitical then as I am now (albeit for reasons of age) but it seemed to be an era in which the city authorities were much kinder to the dispossessed.  Camden, who control Lincoln's Inn and a bit of Clerkenwell, must have almost encouraged them given the extensiveness of their cardboard shanty town.  But then property prices took off and everything changed. A memory of the time  does linger on as there is still a nightly soup kitchen in the square(organised by the Hari-Krishnas I believe).

On a more bloody note, it has a personally squeamish association.  During one of the darker nights of a personal apocalypse a few years back I dreamt of a scarlet road leading from my place through the centre of town to the West.  I dreamt that me and my friend and then housemate Glen Duncan were walking along it and as we passed Lincoln's Inn, we witnessed the horrific execution of Anthony Babington.  He was a young, idealistic, romantic Catholic (er, I guess that was the connection) but a bit thick and ended up disembowelled  with his head on a pole on London Bridge after leading a failed plot against Elizabeth I.  

I later discovered that this road, which leads from Shoreditch right through to Ealing, passes many such old execution sites and in fact Lincoln's Inn Fields seems to have retained some of its visceral memories.  For instance, it is still home to the Royal College of Surgeons and the grisly Hunterian collection - a sort of cross between a medical museum and a freak show.  For a while it exhibited a 'Yeti's Finger'.  This was obtained from a Himalayan monastery by the explorer Peter Byrne who, in an incredible tale of Indiana Jones style derring-do, had to substitute a human digit or it in order to avoid a curse. In an even more bizarre twist, the finger was smuggled to London hidden in the lingerie of the the wife of movie star James Stewart.   It then disappeared for many years before re-surfacing in a display case at the Hunterian.

It's a Wonderful Life.  You really can't make this stuff up can you? 

The finger came from a large, ancient withered hand which the monks in the monastery concerned believed to be that of a Yeti or 'abominable snowman'.  DNA testing established the finger to be in fact of human origin (yes I know that means it probably still has a fascinating history but it is one of the reasons I dislike science.)  Anyway, it has disappeared again.  If you find it, do let me know won't you?  The lingerie too.

On a somewhat related note, and given that it may be too late as tickets are limited,  if you like this sort of thing, join us at Westminster Arts Library next Thursday 28th March for "London Bone"  - an exploration of the skeletal underneath this city's flesh.

More details  are here

Now think on.

**Lest we forget,  this was always a musical place: Ray Davies set "Waterloo Sunset" nearby and it was here that Gavin Bryars found and recorded the tramp who sang the heartbreaking "Jesus blood never failed me yet"

BEAUTY PRIZE

I was digging around in a trunk in the attic the other day, looking for something or other and I pulled out this. It was labelled 'rough mix' but I had a listen and  thought I would post it because if I don't it will get forgotten again.

I can't even remember why we didn't use it in the end.  It is an odd process putting together an album - even these days when albums aren't the way a lot of us listen to music anymore.  You go through all these tracks and versions,  remixing and re-editing, putting this next to that , choosing that one and leaving others behind. 

But his was one of the Tallulah songs from "The Last Werewolf" and as Glen Duncan's sequel "Tallulah Rising"  is now out, it seemed a nice one to dust down again.

It is definately a woman's song - here with Pinkie Maclure on wonderful form and a lovely string arrangement courtesy of Marcella Puppini.

And so of course, I couldn't think of a better person to illustrate it than Louise Brooks.

Take a deep breath, lie back and..

SWEET THAMES SONG

 
Drifting back downstream, it is Tower Bridge is probably the bridge that most of us think of as representing London.  I actually find it rather camp but of course it has some rather tragic and morbid associations.   As well as 'Dead Man's Hole' the river mortuary on the north side, a few years back, there was the incident I wrote of here when 'Adam' a six year old Nigerian boy's body was discovered floating under the bridge.   He was a victim of the Yoruba cult.  I was reminded of this recently by the grim incident of the French boy murdered in London by his sister and her boyfriend who claimed he was possessed by an evil spirit (the un-selfconcious irony is mind boggling).

On a slightly lighter note, several people have come a cropper on Tower Bridge  - especially in the early days when, in an impulse that I completely understand, it was popular to try to leap across whilst the bridge was being opened. One of them, the famous Clerkenwell deep sea diver Benjamin Fuller, leapt in such a grand act of derring do that he ended up swimming with the fishes - a deep sea dive from which he sadly never surfaced.

I will now leave these tales of bodies and bridges despite there being many more to tell.  Here is Glen Duncan reading from the 'Sweet Thames' section of Eliot's The Waste Land.  

It was a piece we did a while ago. I forget why.