You Know You're In London When...

1.KGB SPY POISONED TO DEATH BY POLONIUM - Anyone outside the UK following this? The tabloids are eating it for breakfast. Put simply, ex KGB spy died here about a week ago after Polonium poisoning, which is a form of uranium that's only lethal when ingested. Turns out after they found he was about to go, traces of it have been found throughout the city wherever he'd been...his home in Muswell Hill, a sushi bar in Piccadilly, now on various aeroplanes, and a couple of places relatively close to home for your correspondent i.e, the Sheraton Park Lane, where I've done three gigs! and the poor guy died at University College Hospital, one tube stop down the road in Euston where a girl I was briefly involved with is studying medicine of all things....
So the back story is that Putin in Russia is about to hand over power and this guy knew some secrets that could blow the whole process. It seems like an incredibly obvious way to get rid of someone, as well as a pretty good way of sending the largest city in Europe into radiation frenzy....

2.WHALE SWIMS PAST COMMONS - this was about six months ago, and I was walking back from Prets (sandwhich shop) to my shift work office when I saw the headline by the newstand. It was like something out of 'News Of The World' and doubly bizarre considering that I was in the city of London at the time, a handful of blocks from the river. They gave it a name, and the inevitable happened.....crowds of onlookers, poor thing got confused, it stayed around for about five days, they tried to ship it out to sea and it died on the way. Perhaps another remotely related sign of what we're doing to the planet on a larger scale?....

3.OUTBREAK OF EBOLA VIRUS IN DALSTON - this is more an urban East End myth I think, but someone was telling me a while ago that the fairly deadly and contagious Ebola virus, known to exist in certain parts of Africa, is stored in dead animal flesh, which could possibly be illegally imported as bushmeat through various African communities and into central London for a possible second outbreak. Third world Africa and the East End, eh? Still, I reckon Londoners should be more worried about the proliferation of places like Chicken Empire - there's some wrongness in those two pound hamburgers somewhere....

....moral to the story? This is a town where absolutely bizarre and potentially life-threatening events occur on a regular basis.....

....but the strange thing is, with all that and the old world inefficiency and ridiculous bureacracy and pollution and how small and cramped everything is, it's almost as if you start to warm to the wrongness, a case of contempt breeding familiarity.....

.....just another day I suppose....

Round Midnight

....Hidey ho, Kermit the Frog here with another fast breaking news story about your correspondent and his hedonistic life running endlessly through the rat race of this burned out burb, here in the North-East Atlantic, where the sun is already starting to set round mid afternoon, as the ol' girl is regresses into her seemingly natural state of cold, dark and grey.
But it's all right cause you end up not caring really, just flowing along with the rest of the eight millions....currently riding the wave of one of those times where every night is busy and every day filled to overflowing, fuelled endlessly 'off coffee and two minute dinners. Usually these times, like slipping into some wormhole of your own universe, seem to last about a week for me, but this one seems to be spilling over into the fortnight...
No complaints here though, as we're in the middle of the London Jazz Festival, and your humble correspondent has gone all out - Wayne Shorter Quartet last Friday, Cassandra Wilson Monday, Spanish Harlem Orchestra last night (muy sabroso!) and tonight was Michel Camilo and Tomatito. Support act was a Senegalese singer with guitar and percussionist...slept through the first half of course but it was truly great stuff. The main act was incredible - I've been a fan of Camilo for a while now, wouldn't say I love his stuff but it was definitely worth a look....all these big double handers and this little whispery right hand downward thing I'd never seen before.
Currently on world tour to promote their second album, it was to be expected - lots of Spanishy flourishy stuff, famous covers and burning originals, tumbao, flamenco, Cuba, Spain, Argentina, the works, a real concertgoer's concert.
Alas, having napped through a twenty-five quid gig, here I am at a quarter to one AM, sleepless. What to do, what to do...
.......by the way, J-Sax put me on to an Oz show I've been watching on google video called 'The Chaser'? Bloody hilarious!....
So I suppose the main news of late is my impending deportation, due in now less than three months. In a nutshell, all my options seemed closed off, my hopes dashed, and I had resolved to leave. Under a stormy sky I rode up to Primrose Hill with the journal and thrashed it out, made the decision....and then lo and behold, the next day I'm talking to a friend and he puts me on to another friend who may actually have a chance for me. It'll require some heavy blagging and an exorbitant applicaiton fee, but at the moment it's a risk I'm willing to take. More on that as news comes to hand...