LOST FOR WORDS

I occasionally get asked about illegal downloading. It's a complex area and I never quite know what to say so I'm always interested to hear other people's opinions. I do feel rather sympathetic to this piece by Jack of the White Stripes.

But it is a good time for the listener - and we're all listeners. And the same technology and changes that have made all the file sharing possible has made so many wonderful things happen too - especially being able to connect and interact with people all over the world. People can give so much back. For instance, we've played several times in the Russian Federation and whilst I don't believe I have ever had any royalties from there, it has been wonderful to see a crowded venue enthusiastically singing along to the words of a song - especially as I often have difficulty recalling them correctly myself..

And that brings me to Maria Delice from St Petersburg who sent us this:

Lovely stuff and much appreciated Maria.

Maybe I should get an autocue.

DEFYING GRAVITY

The other week, I spent a day with friends at a beautiful house in Topango Canyon - a kind of wonderful wilderness area within the city of Los Angeles.  The girl who owns it is inexplicably never there but we made good use of her trampoline.  Now I defy anybody - even the most down-hearted or cynical -  to start bouncing on such a trampoline and to not feel happy or at least to not grin broadly. It becomes absolutely impossible to take oneself seriously anymore -  and trust me, I've had a lot of practice.  If things don't work out, I am considering starting a bounce-yourself-better therapy business or political reconciliation service.  I am sure if you had put Bin Laden and Bush together on a trampoline they would have worked something out.

Last week I visited Lambeth Palace gardens - another beautiful oasis in a busy city - on one of the very rare days it was open to anyone but the Archbishop of Canterbury and the chosen few.  There are twelve acres of gorgeous, secret, mediaeval gardens said to be home to amongst other creatures a tall blue fairy who has been in residence longer than any christian (I will tell you the story of her counterpart The Lambeth troll one day).  As I wandered amongst the topiary and beehives, I rounded a leafy corner to find ... ah! .. a trampoline.  I couldn't resist having a bounce.  I realised it was possible, given enough vigorous and well-timed rythmic oscillation, if not to reach Heaven, then to at least see over the old boundary wall and catch a glimpse of a nurse in St Thomas's Hospital opposite.  Now I don't know how the Archbishop spends his time off from what must have been a very trying job of late, but this seemed a possibility - especially given the exhilarating updraft one would experience under one's robes.

This corner of central London is interesting for many reasons - it has for instance: the bus stop with the most beautiful view of the city; a strange monument to William Blake (a local) and the museum of garden history which is without doubt the most peaceful place to lunch before renewing an assault on Westminster and the West end.  The gardens won't be open to pagans again 'til next year unfortunately but there is a new and very good exhibition in the palace itself.  

If you see the archbishop while you are there, do bounce gently up and down to see if he responds with any recognition.

JUST BELOW THE SURFACE

Clerkenwell get its name from a spring (one of many in the area on either side of what was the valley of the lost river Fleet). The spring formed a well which was regarded as sacred - or at least efficacious for good health.  It became the site of an annual pilgrimage of clerks from the old walled city of London who would perform mystery plays there.

Now it looks like a large quite nice loo.  I visited the other week - for old times sake. It is nice that it is still there - albeit in the corner of a very ordinary building

Here's a secret - if you ring Finsbury library, they have a key and will arrange access by appointment - you may even be met there by a very pleasant and learned historian.  

I believe the water retains some of its old, fabled properties but drinking it is not recommended for mortals.

A THAMES MENAGERIE

On returning from Los Angeles, I took a walk down the Thames - to re-aquaint myself as it were with home.  Passing the Houses of Parliament where there has recently been so much upheaval, and heading towards EC1, there is a strip of embankment once called Alsatia which I have been finding of interest of late.

This is because it is populated by a veritable bestiary of fabulous and strange creatures (and not just the politicians).  Here you can find camels, sphinxes, dragons, strange sea creatures, a golden phoenix, psychedelic elephants and of course their head zoo keeper - Father Thames.  

Oh, and politicians too.

HANGING ON FOR DEAR LIFE

Just south of Clerkenwell are two places with gruesome pasts.  Smithfields, still a meat market, was once the abattoir of London and also the site for the slaughter of various human animals - including William Wallace / Braveheart / Mel Gibson.  Further on, and now under the watchful eye of the central criminal court's Recording Angel, was another execution ground at the entrance of what was Newgate Prison.  


For hundreds of years Newgate would have made Abu Ghraib seem like Disneyland.  Tales of its horrors are legion.  In its day hangings were saved for public holidays and although intended by the city's fathers to be a warning to wrongdoers, in fact turned into something like the Notting Hill Carnival.  It is said that 200,000 citizens, half the city's population, turned out to see their hero Jack Shepherd finally get his comeuppance. (The bounty hunter who turned him never got chance to enjoy his reward, meeting his own end at the hands of Jack's many friends.)

The 'Drop' and the broken neck it caused was a later mercy granted to the condemned to finish them off quickly.  In those days, hanging was a slow and intentionally tortuous affair of slow suffocation.  Death could only be hastened by human intervention - by paid members of the crowd or by determined family and friends who would rush forward to pull on the hanged person's legs.

Dickens was one of those so appalled by such sights that he became instrumental in them being carried out in private behind the walls of the prison and eventually stopped altogether.  But not before they had cause to pass into the  phraseology and slang of the English language.  So, if you know any celebrities, you could remind them of the origins of their words, when they complain about 'hangers on'.. 

But be warned, they may think you are just 'pulling their leg'.

IN KENSINGTON GARDENS

... is a smallish area, packed solid with the tiny graves and loving memorials of countless canine 'dearly beloved'. It goes a long way to prove to foreign visitors that everything they've heard about the English and their dogs is quite true.

Meanwhile, a friend tells me that more than half of the population of the Great Britain's cats are alive here in London.

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.