STRANGE FRUIT

Last week marked the 70th anniversary of the night the Luftwaffe began to firebomb London into the dust.  Clerkenwell remained generally unscathed but St Pauls was left like an ocean liner sailing a sea of ruin. Despite the preposterousness of the War on Terror, for this reason if no other it's difficult to be a complete pacifist. So on Sunday we went to the tiny but magnificent St Clement Danes, the Christopher Wren Royal Air Force church on Fleet Street, itself a restored victim of the Blitz.

In fact the church is actually probably most famous for having the bells mentioned at the beginning of the children's nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons".  Like Cock Robin, this poem always struck me as a rather haunted thing with those two sinister closing lines - a feeling only re-inforced by its presence throughout Orwell's 1984.  That book was of course written in the aftermath of the London's near destruction and with St Clements just a little way from the BBC's Bush House where Orwell was once a radio announcer.

The Blitz was  one of the times when the battle for the London Stone was nearly lost.  Which event provoked which I wonder? Anyway, here is the rhyme  and the bells ringing at midday on Sunday for the fallen fighters of the air who saved the day and what remains to us of the lost city.

ART OF DARKNESS

My friend Catherine Anyango who you may know as the designer of The Real Tuesday Weld artwork and maker of wonderful films such as this has just had her first book published.  It is a graphic novel version of Conrad's Heart of darkness and it is very, very good.

I confess I haven't read the original novel myself - just couldn't make headway up that awful river but I feel as if I know it through repute and because of Apocalypse Now.  So, it has been a pleasure - albeit a dark one - to read it now in this way.

I really recommend it - as do several other people.  Antique Beat has a limited number of first edition copies signed and dedicated by Catherine.

TIGERS IN ST PETERSBURG

It feels like I have known The Tiger Lillies for a very long time.

I first met Martyn and Sophie in London not long before they were burned out of their Soho flat by an unscrupulous landlord. He was bent on getting rid of them and claiming the insurance.  We had been together in the country for the weekend and returned to the city on the Sunday evening.  I said goodbye to them but heard by phone-call later that they had lost everything - clothes, photographs, instruments and all the music they had recorded for years.  All gone up in smoke.  The weekend had been a Buddhist retreat so I suppose it was a brutal practical lesson in permanence

It actually kind of turned out all right in the end and the band have gone from strength to strength since despite being largely ignored by the music press and industry (well, in the UK at least) - a fact I feel a certain resonance with.

Strangely, we have never shared a bill until this weekend in

St Petersburg.  That was very nice and I do hope we can do so again someday.  Oh and that reminds me, here is the original of the song 'Someday' that Martyn recorded for me a few years ago. 

Quite wonderful and I hope you enjoy it.

They are a very stylish band and very nicely turned out indeed so it was an aesthetic pleasure too.  And it was also wonderful to be back in Russia with our old friends there and to make some new ones. St Petersburg is such a beautiful city.  It is built on a marsh and I heard that the gas that is still released from beneath the surface is addictive and so people keep returning.  I can believe it.

If you were at the show and witnessed the ritual massacre of the great pink elephant, I salute you.  

CHILD ROWLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME

This sinister object is a Victorian water tower in the back streets of Kennington.  It is one of the few remains of The Lambeth Workhouse where children were "taught to read but not write" and where Charlie Chaplin spent part of his childhood.  The childen would have seen it from a window in their dormitory.

It also appeared in the strange short film "The Black Tower' where a tower seems to follow the narrator around London.

I think I know that feeling.

AN ENGLISH ASSASSIN

Only one British prime minister has been assassinated (although, perhaps understandably, there have been several attempts on the lives of others).  In 1812 John Bellingham shot Spencer Perceval through the heart in Westminster.  I am not particularly political by nature but Bellingham was a local.  He lived in Millman Street and had his best coat adapted by another local - Mr Taylor of Guildford Street - with a special pocket to conceal a pistol.

At first thought to be a radical, it turned out that he was apparently just disgruntled.  I say 'apparently' because there is a third more sinister version of this story but at his trial he was said to have held the prime minister responsible for a series of collective wrongs, neglect and abuses by the government which had ruined many lives.  (The continued heavy police presence around teflon Tony Blair's luxury London lair might suggest that people could still feel that way).

He languished just south of Clerkenwell in Newgate prison briefly before being hung there at the gates on 18 May.  He was cleanly shaved, impeccably turned out and, as Samuel Pepys had said of another condemned prisoner:


'As cheerful as a man could be under such circumstances'.




Newgate was probably the most feared building in the British Empire.  It stood in various incarnations for almost a thousand years and was a terrifying temporary home to a vast range of characters - saints, sinners, heros and villains, real and imagined.  Countless innocents died there in addition to the guilty - disease taking many before the executioner could. It finally was brought down at the beginning of the twentieth century.  All that survives of it now apart from folk memory and some inherited language is a stretch of wall in a very private garden.  I managed to make it a visit courtesy of my new friend the wife of the Dean of St Pauls.  It is so tranquil there now it is almost impossible to imagine the horrors that went before or to realise what may still lie beneath the flowers.

The clothes of the executed were by ancient perogative awarded to the hangman and could be sold on for considerable sums due to their curiosity and alleged curative value.  I saw a 'Bellingham's Cravat' for sale a couple of years ago in an old shop on Lambs Conduit street.  The shop is now gone but if you ever come across the cravat do let me know.

MAYBE THIS TIME

I am slightly ashamed to confess that I only saw the film Cabaret for the first time about three years ago.  I had always been put off by the theme song 'Life is a Cabaret' - a staple of of bad end-of-the-evening karaoke sessions and sad end-of-the-pier crooners.  Once seen however, never forgotten.  The music, the lyrics, the routines, the acting and the clothes are all genius of course but also there is the sadness and the sense of impending doom. Plus there is monkey song scene "If you could see her through my eyes" which simultaneously manages to articulate a very poignant expression of true love  - and be one of the funniest routines ever committed to film.  

It was a great pleasure to DJ before the showing of the film on Thursday at the beautiful Somerset House.  How often is it possible to play Kurt Veil, Tom Waits, Berthold Brecht and Lotte Lenya and get away with it never mind be egged on?  

I am now looking for a knitted pattern tanktop so I can be as elegant as Michael York.  In an ideal universe I suppose I would be a combination of him and Joel Grey whose turn as the MC of the Kit Kat club is simply jaw dropping.  
This film beat The Godfather to the Oscar.

Respect.

LIFE IS A ..

Cabaret and Cabaret is one of my favourite films so I am pleased to be DJ ing before the outdoor showing at the very wonderful Somerset House on the north bank of the Thames this Thursday evening from 7.30pm

Glad rags and cushions (but hopefully not umberellas) advised..

THE TOWERS OF LONDON

Last night to Battersea Power Station again. A swish party in a beautiful ruin. But for how much longer? If you are not from these parts you may recognise the building, left, (with The Real Tuesday Weld tour bus bottom right) from a Pink Floyd album cover.

It sails majestically above the Thames opposite Chelsea - a vast derelict cathedral of power. Unfortunately, unlike its sister down river at Bankside (now the Tate Modern) it is destined to be developed for mainly commercial use. That is the way of things of course.

The dearly beloved and equally unique Shunt Lounge under London Bridge Station has finally closed its doors to be replaced by the toilets for the priapic glass tower being built above destroying the Victorian vaults. I was there when one of the grey men from the developers was arguing with a friend who is one of Shunt's founders. A sad occasion.

In a way it was an archetypal clash of worlds repeated through the history of this town - someone who contributes almost nothing to society (but with power) against somebody who contributes a lot (but who is pretty powerless). Shunt was very popular, innovative and self funding. The vaults and Borough Market are a piece of history. The big glass penis will be what? Open plan office space in a London overloaded with such.

Of course the city always changes and we will soon forget. When Poppy, who is four years old, is all grown up, there will be no ruins at all in central London (barring some future man made catastrophe). Kings Cross, Elephant and Castle, Nine Elms and Shoreditch will all have been made over for many years by then. And you will be able to buy a cappuchino (well, the English version) almost everywhere.

A strange and rather melancholy thought.

AMONGST THE STONES AND FLOWERS

A little while back we held an art and music show called 'The London Book of the Dead' in the ancient vaults under St Pancras Church in Bloomsbury.

We played surrounded by the tombs and gravestones of the departed. It is quite a remarkable place and I had a very strange experience once when I was there alone during the set up.

If you visit the church, probably the most striking thing to see is the portico held up by four classical female figures based on caryatids at the Acropolis . Once, there was more to them than now meets the eye. You see when the builder - an Italian called Charles Rossi - who had them made at considerable expense, brought them to the church for installation, it was discovered that they were slightly too tall to fit. Oh Lord!

Under the pressure of the schadenfreude of his workers, the jeering of a gathering group of onlookers and the foot-tapping impatience of the church officials, Mr Rossi had to think fast. He made a heroic decision - or, one might say, a heroic incision - and removed a twelve inch slice of each lady's midriff. This, an early example of the gastric band operation, saved the day but is no doubt what gives them that characteristic and rather dumpy slouch. I have no strong feelings either way about cosmetic surgery but I quite like these girls the way they are and it is rather peaceful to sit in the shade in the churchyard under their watchful gaze on a hot, busy day.

This old song was written in the very same churchyard looking out at the busy city a few years back whilst waiting to take a train from Euston. I was thinking of it and St Pancras this last week on the fifth anniversary of the London bombings. They happened in the neighbourhood and that sad day was marked when the church was very movingly covered with flowers.

I will be back performing in a kind of vault this Sunday as part of Battersea Arts Centre's One on One show from 8-9 pm. Apparently, I will be in a large box with one audience member at a time playing a selection of such old and new songs.

If you come and have the stomach for it, do say hello.

MURDER BALLAD

Who killed Cock Robin?

I, said the Sparrow,
with my bow and arrow,
I killed Cock Robin.

Who saw him die?
I, said the Fly,
with my little eye,
I saw him die.

Who caught his blood?

I, said the Fish,
with my little dish,
I caught his blood.

Who'll make the shroud?
I, said the Beetle,
with my thread and needle,
I'll make the shroud.

Who'll dig his grave?
I, said the Owl,
with my pick and shovel,
I'll dig his grave.

Who'll be the parson?
I, said the Rook,
with my little book,
I'll be the parson.

Who'll be the clerk?
I, said the Lark,
if it's not in the dark,
I'll be the clerk.

Who'll carry the link?
I, said the Linnet,
I'll fetch it in a minute,
I'll carry the link.

Who'll be chief mourner?
I, said the Dove,
I mourn for my love,
I'll be chief mourner.

Who'll carry the coffin?
I, said the Kite,
if it's not through the night,
I'll carry the coffin.

Who'll bear the pall?
We, said the Wren,
both the cock and the hen,
We'll bear the pall.

Who'll sing a psalm?
I, said the Thrush,
as she sat on a bush,
I'll sing a psalm.

Who'll toll the bell?
I said the bull,
because I can pull,
I'll toll the bell.

.

All the birds of the air
fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,
when they heard the bell toll
for poor Cock Robin

TRADITIONAL