THE GHOST HOUSE

When I first met Theodore Tyburn and asked his address, he gave it me - 23 to 24 Leinster Square, London W10. When he didn't respond to my letters, I stopped by one day to see if he was in. The house, an elegant period mid-terrace home, was the sort perhaps once lived in by a merchant family and probably now sub-divided into little expensive apartments like its neighbours.

There was no response to my knock - and the windows were screened so it was impossible to peer within. Curious, I went around to the street behind to see if I could see anything more. I was startled, shocked even, to discover that from the back the house was revealed to be nothing more than paper thin - a mere facade disguising a huge ventilation shaft over the Hammersmith and city line.


How many letter have been posted there
Only to fall, like mine,
Into London dead air?

SPRING DREAMING

Spring has come to London, mad as March hares. This one, an albino, is over a hundred years old and fell asleep for ever somewhere on Dartmoor in the nineteenth century. But after a fashion, he lives on here with us in a house in a city in a way never dreamed of back then. He has company - blue birds, an owl, a squirrel, a parrot, a blackbird (who flew into the window one day), a whole family of grebes, a hawk and a miscellany of others. Some find them spooky but for me they are magical - creatures from dreams, frozen in flight or caught for ever in the light.

Speaking of such things reminds me that my old friend, that peculiar animal Cibelle Blackbird has a new single "Man from Mars" coming out followed by an album "Las Venus resort palace Hotel" in May. I have had heard them both and I can confirm they are marvellous. The album is set in a club at 'the end of the world' which sounds a little familiar - maybe there is something apocalyptic in the air of Clerkenwell and Dalston.

Cibelle is one of the stars of the "Dreams That Money Can Buy" live score by The Real Tuesday Weld which I am looking forward to seeing performed again later this year. Here she is singing, the final sequence: A kiss like a knife:




One day we will never wake up.

IT WAS A WONDERFUL LIFE

I was very sorry to hear of the death of Mark from Sparklehorse. A gentle giant and a modest man. In London a few years back, he seemed a fish out of water - a rural creature blinking awkwardly in the light. I loved the little world he managed to create from words and pictures and funny sounds.

Some of his songs with their references to frogs and owls and myrtle felt like a magical pagan americana.

Here is a Song for Mark - originally meant for someone else - but, under the circumstances, this time for him.

NO GREATER LOVE HAS A (WO)MAN

We often bemoan Celebrity Culture - especially now when anyone can become famous for not much in particular but the fame fixation isn't particularly new. London is full of monuments to celebrities - mainly from the nineteeenth century or earlier. True, they were made to people who actually did something socially significant at the time - for instance, for exploiting and massacring lots of indigenous people for financial gain in the case of 'Clive of India' - oops, sorry, I meant for bringing the benefits of Empire to the natives!

Now I love the London statues - some of them are very camp (Hello James II!) and many have interesting stories behind them. For example, the reason Charles I was placed seated on a horse in his monument in Trafalgar Square is not because he was particularly equestrian but because he was very, very short - virtually a midget. Once you know this it's very apparent.

My favourite of the lot is in fact an early and noble example of the Democratisation of Celebrity - G.F Watts's late nineteenth century 'Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice' in the little churchyard now called 'Postman's Park' just to the south of Clerkenwell. The churchyard is overlooked by a rather Orwellian building - previously the Royal Mail sorting office - hence the 'Postman' moniker but it's a rather tranquil place to escape from the hustle of the mid-week city. The monument is most unusual - a wall of tiles protected by a sort of lean-to stable roof. Each tile commemorates the heroic self-sacrifice of an ordinary person resulting in them saving someone else's life at the cost of their own. Mostly they seem to have been working class (another big distinction between this and other nineteenth century monuments).

The various mortal situations described tell something about the society of the time - there are a lot of burning houses, run-away horses, drownings, poisonings and so on and the inscriptions on some of the tiles, whilst occasionally melodramatic, are often very moving. My personal favourite is that to a certain 'Solomon Galaman aged 11' who died of injuries incurred from saving his little brother from being run over in Commercial Street:

"Mother I saved him but I could not save myself"

There is also a statue to Watts himself who died leaving the wall incomplete. Further tiles were sporadically added until the 1930s and very recently a new one has been placed. Anyway, it's a lovely off-the-tourist-map place to visit to get a sense of the city, our mortality and the wonderful potential of the human soul.

I can't really compete with that but here is something from a little while ago - a version of a song sung by my friend Cibelle which came out on some compilation or other but was a bit neglected.

CATCHING THE LAST TRAIN HOME

If you look closely at this picture, you will see a vertical-ish line of green curving to the right of the two trains (just lower-left of centre). This is what remains of the platform of the station from which coffins and mourners set out for Brookwood cemetery in Surrey where there was a corresponding station to receive them. It was bombed in the second world war and never rebuilt but the station building still stands on Westminster Bridge Road as you can see in the photograph below.

On Saturday, I sneaked around the back of it, climbed up a flight of steps, found a gate left providentially open and managed to get out onto the area adjacent to the line. It is strange up there - a wide brick tundra three storeys above street level with trains and signals clanking and flashing and nobody to see them.

The train was operated by The Necropolis Railway Company (really) and first, second and third class carriages were available although I have never been able to find out whether this was implemented on a purely financial basis or enforced according to the social standing of the mourners - or corpse.

Way to go.

When I am in charge, I shall I re-instate it.

UNREAL CITY

Here are post-it note prayers of propitiation in St Mary's Woolnoth a city church. One of them just says "Dear God, please help me today" - a simple sentiment I can sympathise with. Like many converts to atheism, I sometimes wish I still had faith.

St Mary Woolnoth is my favourite London church. Designed by the mysterious Nicholas Hawksmoor, it is an expert lesson in how to make a small thing seem grand and of course looms large in T S Eliot's Wasteland:

"And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine."

I followed this route on Sunday with David after we saw a wonderful recitation of the poem by Fiona Shaw at the equally remarkable Wilton's music hall in Limehouse. If you ever have chance to visit either of these buildings, do - they pin the two ends of English culture down rather well I think.

And on the subject of wastelands, yesterday to see 'The Road' with Glen. I've rarely been affected by a film so much but then I have rarely been so affected by a book as when I read it a couple of years ago. Very reassuring that such a subtle take on what morality and humanity actually mean in a godless world has managed to make the mainstream - but a very sad way to learn it of course.

Bless us all.

RIVER CROSSING

The Thames has seen many, many strange things in its long journey - even in recent times, we have had headless bodies, a giant statue of Michael Jackson and a whale. Whenever I am at Vauxhall cross - a large busy intersection of railway lines, an underground station, a bus terminus and the home of the English secret service - I always remember that this is a place of some prehistoric significance. Take the ramp next to MI5 down to the relative peace of the river foreshore at low tide and you may see why.

In 1999, following the discovery of neolithic axe heads, the remains of a bronze age timber structure were revealed by the eroding river bank. It is considered to either be an early bridge across the river or possibly a jetty intended to connect the shore with an island which is now lost. Bronze spears were also discovered - apparently intentionally placed into the river bed.

This location is significant - it is the point where the tidal Thames turns - where salt water meets fresh and the place where the rivers Effra, on the south bank and Tyburn, on the north, (both now subterranean) empty into the greater river. These outfalls can also be seen at low tide.

As these rivers were once navigable, it is likely that the area was a focus of some activity and it appears that several ancient routes converged upon it - as their contemporary equivalents still do. A southern projection of the Roman Watling street reaches the river on the north bank and Kennington Lane, thought to be the route of a raised pre-roman trackwa, joins on the south bank. The timber bridge / jetty would be a continuation of this route - linking the Kennington settlement either with the 'holy' island or the north bank of the Thames.

There are two rows of about twenty stumps - leaning inwards and giving an estimated jetty width of about four meters. They may soon be gone because now exposed,they are subject to erosion. The mystery to me is how they survived for thousands of years at all - particularly in a situation like this.

It is a new year and that reminds me, I must soon write about a very odd thing - the time machine hidden in a secret location in a very posh part of town..

CHRISTMAS IN CLERKENWELL

You may not have known it but the Christmas Cracker was invented in Clerkenwell. A certain Thomas Smith, confectioner, based in Goswell Road developed it in the 1840s from a Parisian paper-wrapped bon-bon by adding a written message, a toy, a mild explosive and eventually a paper crown.

I had a very religious upbringing so sadly, I am less inclined towards belief these days but it was lovely to walk to Westminster on Christmas Eve for the carols in the abbey. As we stood and the choir sang, I noticed some of my fellow genius loci (and sometime antagonists) but, in honour of the occasion, and the place - elected to set aside centuries old rivalries - well, temporarily at least.

The abbey is always wonderful, not least because it contains 'Poets Corner' - a chapel or chamber which is the very epicentre of English Culture with its extraordinary array of tributes to the literary, musical, political and spiritual heroes of these islands.

Afterwards to Trafalgar Square to inspect the Christmas tree - an annual gift from our Norwegian friends in recognition of British efforts on their behalf in the war against "Hister of the crooked cross'. Very nice - but I thought the crib opposite to be rather feeble - perhaps it is a victim of the credit crunch. The bells of St Martin's-in-the-Field were pealing as we walked backwards home through the frost. Lovely

Anyway, here is that other tune I mentioned and briefly posted. It is rather perky - so watch out. Oh, and a very happy new year to you too.

A DREAM AT THE END OF THE YEAR

What's in a number? Not much it seems. I hear the word 'trillion' almost every day now and as this decade draws to a close there seems doesn't seem to be much fuss being made about it at all. Perhaps that's because the last time - the millennium - seemed such a grand numerical event. Even though another day is just another day, it did feel then as though passing from December 31st 1999 into January 1st 2000 was a big deal. I seem to remember I was high that evening - sitting with friends somewhere up on a hillside above the San Francisco rooftops, watching fireworks explode into gigantic red hearts over the bay. On reflection, they may have just been inside my head.

Almost ten years later, sitting here looking out over the London rooftops, I'm thinking that on a personal level, the noughties were rather a momentus decade. Ten years of The Real Tuesday Weld for a start (the first ten years if they let me). As I am sure for most people, there were personal tragedies, deaths, births, lost and found loves, revelations, travel, unexpected meetings, a lot of surprises, adventures and new friends. I miss my father, I find myself generally feeling slightly stunned but perhaps more than anything, as ever, I feel very fortunate. I'm blessed with amazing family and friends. Thanks so much to all who have supported us and to all the people we work and play music with.

After 'I Lucifer' I thought: "I'll write about Love because there's not much worth saying about anything else". After 'The Return of the Clerkenwell Kid' I thought: 'I'll write about death because there's not much left to say about Love'. After 'The London Book of the Dead', I thought: 'I'll just say nothing for a while' and so, for the last year couple of years, as well as the touring and all that I've really been making instrumental music for films, producing other people and writing songs for others to sing.

As ever at this time, we make our little audio christmas card to send out. It's expanded in content over the years and now become quite something in itself - a proper greetings card by Catherine that you can send to a loved one and an entire mini album of new music. Some of this is from recent projects and collaborations and there is a sneak preview of what is next. I'm very pleased that it features our friends The Puppini Sisters, Louis Franck and Joe Coles.

If you like you can get it from this place

For you, there is also a little something else. Enjoy, and I hope that this decade has been just the forerunner, the entree, the opening act for all the wonders that are to come.

With very best wishes

TEA OVER THE BOSPHORUS

A couple of years back I had a dream about being in Constantinople - or rather in a version of the city that had survived into some strange alternate version of the future. The next day I tried to capture it in a song which later metamorphosized into something else but today I looked up the original rather rough demo which is here if you like.

In waking life, I have never been to Istanbul so it was a great pleasure to be invited there this weekend and indeed to see so many people dancing at the show. I was surprised to hear from our friends there that this is quite unusual in Turkey. But apart from the odd dream, I only really know the place from rumour, imagination, occasional news reports and the memory of reading the story of Belisarius as a child. Thanks to Elif, Kerin and Hakan at Tamirane for having us.

The city is soaked in so much blood and history that it almost makes London feel shallow. Thankfully it seems to have managed to somehow retain a degree of mystique through this internet age (where the abundance of information and the sense of mystery appear to be in direct conflict) and yet, like Rome, it has avoided becoming merely a museum or consumable heritage experience for visiting tourists. The very warm and hospitable people, the wonderful spice market, the stone and the sea, the sound and the scent - and of course, that Queen of drinks, Tea.

Sitting up there on the Golden Horn, on the border of Europe and Asia where the Orient Express once came and thinking of Agatha Christie. it was easy to dream of the past.