My friend Jack and I walked around the river Thames last Sunday. The greyness of London at this time of year soaks through your pores. Last Winter I wrote a piece of music, called ‘The White Sky’. With all that anaesthetic blankness overhead, Summer can feel as distant as a house you you moved out of years ago.

The White Sky

I have written before about the South Bank, and how much I love its blend of expansive modernist architecture, ragged but lovely humanity, and the timeless industry of the River. Its faded and renovated squalor embodies the grandeur and the humanity of the capital. When I was young, my parents used to take me to see Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the Royal Festival Hall every year. Even back then, I felt how strong the character of the South Bank was: this thriving concentration of artistic output in the midst of urban dereliction (it used to be a lot seedier twenty years ago, believe me). Nowadays, I like to meet up with friends there. There is always something interesting (and free) to stumble upon such as a musical performance in the RFH lobby or a photo exhibit in the National Theatre balconies. It is the quality and the abundance of this sort of thing where you really see the advantage of living The Big Smoke.

So we wandered round the Thames. We met a girl on (what used to be called) the Hungerford footbridge who was trying to sell dream-catchers. She was somewhat furtive about the fact she wanted to money for them. Jack fancied her. I have no idea what a dream-catcher is.

At the foot of the bridge we went straight in for a free hug (were they the same troop as at Glastonbury?), watched the skateboarders, and discussed Joanna Newsom. A girl was down on the beach beneath the Oxo tower, combing for something or other.

Then Jack mugged a child, and we had a look at some more stuff, and parted company.

With some more time to kill I headed back onto the bridge by Embankment for the second time that day. It was getting dark and I was tired so I stopped to listen to a morbid yet persistent steel-drummer. The West Indian clangs sat weirdly with the gloom, but it was a nice way to take in the end of the day over the Thames, since I was cold and tired.

Looking across to St Pauls, the Barbican, and the Natwest Tower made me think about the persistent grind of London. Working and surviving in this city can really feel draining although people do not often like to admit it. Actually, come to think of it, sometimes it’s all we talk about, perhaps because it is something we all share. The city looks awesome of a Winter dusk. Shelley wrote of the eponymous mountain in his poem ‘Mont Blanc’:

Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible

The lines could have been written for those fortress casinos in the square mile. If good old Percy Bysshe were writing today, he might well write about the city instead of Mont Blanc, and he could have picked a worse spot than the Hungerford bridge to reflect man’s relation to the vast and awful power down the river.

I looked over to the terrace on the South Bank where the free-huggers had been. The crowds had mostly gone home. It gets cold down there when the sun goes. I noticed there was an arc of people performing. The double amputee at the end of the bridge was still begging after hours in the bitter evening, poor sod.

I approached the horseshoe of singers by the river bank. There were a few people stopped to listen despite the cold  so I took a seat on a bench. Close up you could see that they were a dozen or so young ladies probably around the age of twenty. I realised they were American immediately when they started to sing. Not from their accents. Everyone sings in American accents. The clue was in their quality and understanding of performance, of which Americans are the masters. They are just better than everyone else at entertainment. It’s like when you see Russian ballet dancers, Italian drivers, Australian cricketers, Spanish Flamenco dancers, British football hooligans, French pickets, or German nudists: as far and wide as you travel, when you see one there is something inside you which clicks and thinks: ‘They’re taking it to a whole different level. Shit, that comes from the source.’

The girls (a troupe from Princeton Universty NJ called The Tigressions) were singing a capella standards, and their own arrangements of modern pop hits. Rich harmonies, perfect tuning, packaged with all that American charm. Perfect to warm the proverbial cockles. Here is a link to some of their music - I recall them singing an arrangement of ‘Happy Ending’ by Mika. It was surprising to hear something so luscious and personable amidst all the cold riverside concrete. Singing just for the joy of singing. No pretensions to fame and stardom, that bane of true music. Just a group of young ladies on holiday in a ridiculously grey city, enjoying singing with each other.

There were others who were enjoying this spontaneous performance as well. I noted a slightly gruff looking cyclist who seemed absorbed by the music. He sat there intently, taking it all in, clutching his bike frame. Also there was a little girl who went right up to the singers and stood right in front of them. She was young and uninhibited, bathing in the overlapping vocal lines.

I hope the young ladies from New Jersey enjoyed their vacation in London. At least they looked like they were having fun, despite the gloom. It is indeed cool that they were able to contribute to and even become part of the life of the South Bank in their visit. I was grateful, at least.

Walking along the streets of Soho of a Wednesday night after a sterling Lebanese dinner, I was reminded of the depiction of Greenwich Village in Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’. The main streets (Greek, Frith, Dean, and Wardour) which stretch away from Old Compton Street like tines on a fork, are festooned with sultry lights of myriad colours.Curiously, Soho is a lot less cluttered than I remember it being a decade ago. The Village in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ was filmed largely on a soundstage (although partly on location in London including Soho strangely…) and perhaps this is what makes me make the link between the two locations. There is something stage-like about the restless avenues – as though the pavement has been set for the playing out of bizarre dramas. Every shopfront offers a different sideshow for your delectation.

I have always been struck by the strange adjacence of Soho’s opulent refinement and its meretricious abandon. You can look into a dazzling eatery, marvel at the fortune of its guzzling patrons. Then you notice that, but a metre away, the neighbouring establishment is a simple yet ominous door with a hand-written sign advertising: “model – young, curvy, and sexy” followed by an arrow pointing towards a rickety set of stairs leading down to the underworld. I imagine the girl at the end of the tunnel is being falsely advertised. It’s going to be “old, staunch, and angry”.

Anyway, we were strolling down the glittering streets last night, enjoying the wafts of espresso and the champagne cackles from the bars when we noticed this cool shop which was still peddling its wares at 9:30.  Its walls were dressed with antlers, clothes for aspiring nu-rave bands, and rakish interior-designers, whoever the fuck that might include. Coincidentally, they had a replica of the penis-statue from Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’: a nice touch by the proprietors.

As I walked in, I was aware that I was about to judge the shop by the music it was playing. Unfair, but inevitable. I was taken aback by how avant-garde the choice was. Dispersed chuckling and snappy interjections from a digitized male voice. I was about to aske the sales-assistent about his eclectic music-taste when I realized that he was busy chatting to his mate on Skype, which was being piped over the shop’s loudspeakers. Close thing.

Things took a pleasant if absurd turn when we were having a natter with the shopkeep. He brought his skype-mate into the conversation, who seemed to have some detailed knowledge about a certain pair of shoes we were perusing [we were actually sniffing it, because apparently it smelled sweet like a My Little Pony]. I could not tell if the man on the other end of the computer was bullshitting, though, because he was clearly very stoned.

Over the miracle of ip video telephony, he proceeded to show off his latest discovery – a perfume dispensed by an aerosol which stained you bright blue for about ten seconds, then faded to invisible. At that point I wondered if I had become stoned. Somehow. Maybe it was sniffing the shoes. He stood there spraying himself temporarily bright blue all over. I remarked that he must smell incredibly powerful. He said that some people pass out because they get so carried away with the spraying.

Anyway, I would reccomend Kokon To Zai on Dean Street for its thrilling shoes and conversation.

After more strolling, party-location scouting, and bumping into a friend of mine wearily awaiting an exceptional hamburger in Garlic and Shots, we caught the tube home.

I used to love Soho, then I grew sick of it, then I feared it, then I liked it again, now I love it again. Like Kubrick’s vision of Greenwich, it is a dreamlike place of weird frolics and fantasies, tingling incitements to the id. A fine place to sleepwalk.

I cannot believe that I never saw this till recently:

Now, I never thought that Parson’s Green and Sand’s End had particularly flourishing gay scenes. You are more likely to see pink pashminas than pink pride, blt sandwiches rather than l/g/b/t sandwiches. Perhaps the somewhat reserved status of these areas is brightening up a bit.

Perhaps they have some preposterously effective way of turning Tories there? I wonder how many local Telegraph readers amble in and wonder ‘Oh what might have been? Had that sunny day at Cambridge turned out differently… bollocks, they haven’t got the egg out of that properly’?

Have any of you had the good fortune to pass this busker on Oxford Street recently?

He drums on plastic tubs and other sundry household items perhaps for fun or economic exigency. I imagine the tupperware-based kit is a lot easier for a busker to lug around than a standard drumkit. It sounds different too, as you would imagine. More punchy. He must have to hit each ‘drum’ a lot harder than normal to get the same volume as a conventional skin. I approached the main drag from a side-street, and found myself drawn by the intoxicating drumming sounded irresistible.

It went like this

After he had finished I went and shook him by the hand, I had enjoyed it so much. I was shocked by how hard his palms were! They were heavily calloused (like old feet) from years of obsessive drumming. I would have stayed and listened for hours but I had to rush off into the underground bundle at Bond Street.

Check out this natty graf I found in the seedy back alleys of notorious Chiswick:

Text reads:

…And so his liver slipped away, ever distrusting,

He felt he would one day make his mark.

A prince of aesthetics, a creature

Of slim frame

Full of endorphin.

… BEHOLD JESUS

Make of this what you will. I instantly decided that I quite liked it. You can probably work out a lot about the author of this apocryphal text by the fact he uses block capitals (be they small and messy), aggressively crosses out his mistakes (wants to conceal his mistakes, and boldly applies the word ‘aesthetics’ in graffiti, spelled correctly. As we all know, all proper graffiti has to have spelling mistakes and references to private parts (eg ‘My cock smels of apples’ – see critique by Quentin Bumboy in Viz magazine some years ago).  However, all we get is internal organs. I think the ‘liver’ lets it down a bit. Perhaps ‘foreskin’ would have been more apposite. The author is clearly not worried about pushing the proverbial envelope.

The prophet must have had this particular wall in mind – it is black like a school blackboard, so he must have especially made sure he had some chalk in his back pocket before he left the house. Unless he was transporting some for an unknown reason and was spontaneously inspired. Was the school reference intended? If he had planned this graf, I would not be surprised if he had pre-written the message, which makes me feel he does not have much else on. Says the guy writing the blog about it.

Is Christ risen as a nu-rave trendy? Has he taken too much pill and his liver gone for a walk? Is he still Jewish? Is it hard being called Jesus in this day and age, or does it help him blend in with the Hoxtonites all the more?

I think if anything have proved that this is a work of deep complexity and originality, shocking us into action with the morbid grasp of our own zombie-ish conformity. It therefore must be a Banksy.

The streets of London are sprouting tomatoes now.

I imagine the fruit will taste like drains but I shall try it nonetheless. At least that is if the local foxes/raggamuffins/parakeets don’t get there first.

I like the idea. Polish cuisine is never really going to be slimming is it? It’s a shame the proprietor did not read the slogan to himself out loud though…

The gutterpress launch another war, this time on violence. Will they never learn/give up/ realize the ironic madness of their ways?

I lean against the newsagent’s wall in dismay.

We know that barbers just don’t give a fuck. We know they feel a hairstyle photo in their shop window only really matures when it is at least two decades old. But I have never seen a head shot so faded (and clearly so loved) that some manky tonsorist has taken the trouble to restore it with biro. Badly.

More often than not, I take my camera with me when I go for walks. You never know what you might find: something lying in the street, someone lying in the street, or something you have never noticed you walk past every day.

I have uploaded some photos from a walk I took the other day in my photo gallery (they are sitting there on the last page of photos). I should probably make a new section for this sort of photo. God knows I take enough of them.