Poltroon - New Literary Night - kicks off tomorrow

Dave from Messengers Of God and Orlando (Eileen Rose and Alabama 3) are launching a new literary salon at Ye Olde Mitre Tavern off Hatton Garden and Holborn Circus. It's the first night tomorrow and starts around 7.00. Go down and support them - it's sounds a cracker.

Also it's just round the corner from Bleeding Heart Yard and Ely Place which feature in Little Dorritt and Bleeding Heart Square two of my favourite books.

Night-Visiting Songs

Very early on Thursday morning, really just 40 minutes after midnight I had a pair of night visitors. It was my old flat-mate Paul Farley and his pal Neil a producer from Radio 4. They were making a programme, to be broadcast in July as part of a series called London Nights about different people’s experience of nocturnal London. Paul wanted me to recount some of the tales that I’d told him about Kings Cross and living here and also to verify some of his memories from his years here. It had been in Kings Cross that Paul decided he was going to give poetry a go and signed up for the late Michael Donaghy’s evening class at City University; the rest, as they say, is history.

Thus we had a wide-ranging chat over a bottle of wine (it had been a good five years since we previously met) recalling episodes like the early morning caller claiming to be a neighbour and wanting to borrow some kitchen foil as he was “going fishing and needed something to wrap his sandwiches in”; this was a time when you’d regularly find uneaten Kit-kats on the staircase minus their wrapping along with abandoned works. We talked about the crack houses, the prostitutes and the brothels; the night I heard someone shouting “get the shooters” in Midhope Street.

I told him about the days of Rough Trade Distribution being in Collier Street, and lunchtimes in The Malt And Hops (now The Ruby Lounge)on Caledonian Road with Claude Bessy, CP Lee and a host of others, and then sitting out afternoon closing time in cafes and flats around the station and Hillview. The time when Claude lost his bus pass, went to retrieve it from the station and was promptly arrested for possession of speed. He was fined £20 a sum recouped and more through the sale of CP’s hastily-recorded cassette Froggy Went A Courting.


Then there were the cats. In 2006 an oral history CD The Argyle Square Sound Trail was produced by the Kings Cross Voices project. There were amazing stories on there. It was the first time I ‘d heard of the Regent Theatre, formerly The Euston Music Hall, that stood where Camden Town Hall Extension now blights the landscape. It was all where I heard the tale of Fireworks. He was the caretaker based in Midhope House and on Saturday mornings he would bring buckets of water out into Midhope Courtyard which were used to drown excess kittens born on the estate during the previous week. Apparently it was a popular spectator sport for the local kids, but for me it conjured the vision of a pack of ghostly cats swarming around the courtyard.


And then we got on to the whole idea of Kings Cross as a place of power, a crossing point of strong creative currents, of ley lines if you will. The Vale Royal, the Intelligent Playground, the visionary metropolis evoked by Blake in his Golden Quatrain:

The fields from Islington to Marylebone
To Primrose Hill and Saint Johns Wood:
Were builded over with pillars of gold,
And there Jerusalem’s pillars stood.

And from thence we came to Rimbaud and Aidan Andrew Dun; of whom more later.

River Sounding at Somerset House

Somewhere, I'm not sure where now, I'd picked up a brochure about this and then promptly forgot about it until yesterday. Then it became a matter of rush, rush, rush, as the installation closes at the end of tomorrow.


River Sounding is worth a visit for two reasons. Firstly it's a fascinating look at the Thames through video and sound. Secondly it allows you access to the Lightwells and the Deadhouse; below ground level parts of Somerset House not usually publicly accessible. The Deadhouse, alone, is worth exploring just for the memorial stones to various 17th Century luminaries.


The installation itself - 'A journey through the hidden sound worlds of the River Thames' - uses video footage of the river, bridges, the mechanism of Tower Bridge and buoys. These are displayed on the brick walls of coal holes. Sound comes from strategically placed speakers with the water augmented by bells, clocks and other mechanisms. It's a hypnotic, entrancing experience.

More info here.

Ashes To Ashes - Barbara Nadel

I read this story almost entirely because it's set in St Paul's Cathedral and surrounds (it also takes in Wilmington Square and Holborn, albeit briefly) on the night of 29th December 1940. That was the Sunday night of mass bombing when the City burned in a firestorm and the iconic photo of the cathedral framed by smoke comes from that night.

It was only because of the setting, which is certainly evoked accurately, that I read through to the end. The plotting is creaky and the characterisation is confusing. In the first hundred pages you struggle to differentiate Mr Phillips, Mr Andrews, Mr Smith etc etc and her protagonist, a middle-aged half-Indian East End funeral director suffering post-traumatic stress from the Somme, is surprisingly and effectively persistent given his seemingly-debilitating condition.

As the story plays out over one night, it takes in the struggle of the watchmen to save the cathedral as a symbol of London - at one point the dome was in serious peril from an incendiary - along with child prostitution, city rookeries, freemasonry and Aleister Crowley. Plus parts of the cathedral, such as the triforium and the library, remain to this day more seriously bizarre than is indicated here. So the feeling remains that there could have been a much larger book here, especially as the author has indicated an interest in Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd.

Banksy at Bristol Museum

Monday morning I went to see the Banksy exhibit at the Bristol Museum. To be truthful I still remain unconvinced by the supposed artistic merit of the fellow and his ilk. I seem to remember Spike Milligan and unnumbered Punch cartoonists playing much the same game forty years and more ago. And then there was Terry Gilliam...

But that said the whole effect of the Bristol experience is impressive, particularly if you’re familiar with that museum. That, I think, was why I wanted to see it and why I was prepared to sit outside on the pavement for an hour and half to ensure I got in as soon as the place opened. I’ve been going to that museum regularly since 1972. It’s hardly the most exciting museum but it’s comforting, it’s welcoming, and it has a small collection of excellent pictures. It also has Alfred – the stuffed gorilla – who we used to go and talk to when we were tripping, the gypsy caravan, and the box plane hanging from the ceiling in the entrance hall.



That those items had been there so long, and basically unchanged, made this initiative so radical. As not only was it brilliant to see this prankster’s (admittedly slight) subversion of the collection, but to see so many people there; I’ve certainly never had to queue to get through the door before. And because you had to look carefully to see that you’d spotted all the jokes, and at times you really couldn’t be sure, it meant everyone was looking at everything very carefully. And that was what I found most heartening, along with the hope that some of them will think to go back again after this exhibit has gone.

And Alfred, as ‘a Bristol icon’ remained untouched, though the caravan had been clamped, and the plane had gained a pilot and the title ‘Escape From Guantanamo’.

Lament For The Public Library 1

I’ve worked, on and off, in public libraries in London for the last three decades. I’ve worked for the same library service since 1999, and ironically I’m now working in the same building where I started off in 1980. It’s been a long trip and taken in a fair range of the capital, and in truth – and with certain provisos – it’s been a disheartening experience. I’m pretty sure I’m now coming to the end of my library career and I can’t say that I’m that unhappy. The demise of public libraries over my lifetime has been a shameful episode, in which many parties can share the blame, but there’s little doubt to my mind that’s what’s done for them is their connection to local government.

From when I was a child I knew clearly what a library was. The St. Albans Library stood on Victoria Street. There were two rooms downstairs – adult and children’s libraries - and a reference library above. It’s currency was books, and secondarily, information. The one time I remember going upstairs was to find names of African tribes; I recall being given, or finding, a book with a page full of them which I assiduously transcribed. Later I used the Bristol Library on College Green; mainly to borrow records (jazz and folk, no pop, no rock) which we painstakingly examined through magnifying glasses and noted down all visible scratches.

The point was we understood what these places were for; reading and information. We went to school and school was where we were taught and where we learned. The library, and there was a good one at school too, supported and supplemented that learning. The librarians, and we called them all librarians, helped us to find what we required, but they weren’t our teachers. In a way they were helping us to cheat by giving us more, extra, information.

Public libraries were funded by local government, but local government stayed at arms length. It let the appointed Chief Librarian, Borough Librarian, whatever the title, get on with it. He (usually he, despite the predominance of women in the workforce) was a professional and he could be trusted. So long as the books balanced, and there were no obvious complaints, and often even if there were. Libraries, as providers of books and information, were understood to be a good thing. And so they were, these repositories with collections that grew and grew, that held on to the important titles from past in their special collections. That devised a country-wide co-operative system that meant that if a book were needed in St. Albans and it were in Aberdeen it could be obtained.

There was much that was smug and middle class about libraries but then there was much of that about all of UK society in those times. But the cultural changes of the 60s and 70s did, albeit slowly and unevenly, work their way into the public library system. So that when I first worked in them they were approaching, at least for the user, the aspect of a free zone where all ideas stood equal and could be accessed. You could find a comprehensive range of politics of every hue. You could find avant garde literature. You could find masses of foreign language material. You wanted something odd and you could find it. And the music section had started buying rock, pop, and punk. And still local government; the councillors and the chief executive; didn’t impose a view, and kept the funds flowing. But things were changing – and to that I will return.

When The Rain Stops Falling

I made my first visit of the year to the theatre. That's as many times as last year - when we went to see The Revenger's Tragedy, and that was it.

Last night Jane and I went to the Almeida to see an Australian play When The Rain Stops Falling by a fellow called Andrew Bovell; he had something to do with a film called Lantana, which I haven't seen.

Not knowing what to expect but as ever thrilled and chastened to be back in a theatre once again I was taken aback by a fantastic piece of work. It was a story about generations of a family that played itself out over a period of eighty years, beginning in the late 1950s and running through till thirty years hence.

It roamed back and forward through time, gradually exposing the family secrets and enlightening the audience as to the various relationships and connections. It was a poetic work, almost operatic, with its repetition of phrases and situations, and in its entirety it was deeply moving.

As other critics have stated it is a play you have to stick with as it takes time to see the pattern emerging. At the end we were craving to see the beginning again. Of course that's just like poetry or novels, or most works of literature for that matter.

The clip is not from the production we saw. It's from the Sydney Theatre production which is also running now. But it hints equally well at the power of this piece of work.