life worth living

sometimes i am so glad that i live in this city...

met up with felinity to go check out possible venues for her 30th

it will be taking place 2 days before her birthday in a secret location...

there will probably be a facebook event relating to it for those of you interested in coming...

so anyway, we started in angel, got a bus down to holborn,

popped into conway hall where an old fashioned dance was taking place...

we crept into the balcony and looked down on the dancing partners...

stopped in on G, out drinking in the place where it will be taking place... as it happens...

then got another bus down to the southbank... sat in the royal festival hall for a couple of cups of tea... dropped her off @ waterloo,

lovely to spend time with her, nothing quite like being with someone you've known since you were 7...

she got on her train, i was about to go down to the tube...

but something in me wanted to walk for awhile...

so i popped on my comedy over sized headphones, listened to julian joseph's version of "the other side of the tracks" for the 7th, or 8th time today (loving that tune) in fact you can find out exactly how many times i've listened to that tune today over on my lastfm...

should you want to...

then just south of the river i started listening to my lovely herbie hancock playlist..

butterfly,
sun touched,
bubbles,
people music,
gentle thoughts,

it carried me over the north hungerford bridge, up passed charing cross, passed trafalgar square,

walking up charing cross road...

down onto the picadilly line @ leicester square...

& in fact it carried me all the way out to turnpike lane, starting to repeat the 1st tune again as i arrived at my door...

lovely to walk in london, over the river...

persepolis... & beyond

i forgot to eat breakfast,

ran out the house down to the prince charles cinema to see persepolis which was wonderful, if a touch too long...

during the film i found some chocolate in my bag from the night before... strange breakfast...

then afterwards i got on the bike and rolled gently downhill to the river, crossing the (non) jubilee bridge, (it doesn't make me cross anymore but i mutter to myself as i cross it these days), then up by the south bank, delighted to see the water sculpture back again (appearing rooms), although the day yesterday was a bit grey for it...



up past the Hayward and through that little passage underneath waterloo bridge, down some stairs and then the booksellers under the bridge...

i found my chess opponent and defeated him a couple of times... eating a few nuts he had,

then continuing along the river, past a crowd of people looking down onto the beach where no doubt someone was sculpting sand, all the way to the tate modern so i could check how long the cy twombly exhibition was on for (until 14th september)...

then over the (non) wobbly bridge,

all this in the way that i used to love doing, still love but somehow i don't have occasion to do it so much anymore, probably since CM moved east and further away from the river, drifting on my bike amongst the bank holiday crowds, (those who weren't carnivaling)... slowing for knots in the people, speeding up when there was the room for it, only having to put my foot down once from waterloo bridge to the tate, slowing to walking pace when necessary...

all the while listening to music, mostly the instrumental version of the song i'm working on at the moment, although the lyrics have slowed to a trickle again for now,

so over the (non) wobbly bridge i go, up toward st pauls, round the side, eventually finding my way onto high holborn, by which time i know exactly where i'm going,

to that church where i lost that piano all those years ago,

and they've got a new grand piano, not brand spanking new but newer than the (lovable) wreck they used to have... it's rolled into a niche so you can't get at the keys easily, but i played a few notes at the top of the keyboard and i'm considering how to get a gig in there...

on leaving there i headed straight up to floopy's and by this time, all that cycling, so little food, i was in quite a strange state... floopy insisted i ate a cheese sandwich and i just about made it home, slumped out in front of an episode of the wire, the last series now showing in my computer, being as i looked and it seems we don't have FX... i though we did, but we don't x

another stab at the words

(for the film)

you can't see me...

you can't see me because i'm not there...

you can't see me because the angle is too narrow...

you can't see me because it's the wrong time of day...

walking, stumbling, carrying my bicycle over the rockier bits,

immensely impractical as it is, having a bicycle down there...

all about poetry, and nothing to do with practicality,

except that it was practical tonight, having cycled north from G's place in gypsy hill, wanting the darkness and the desolate nature of the beach, wanting to listen to a few john martyn songs while i rested from cycling at that midpoint on my journey home, walking from the tate modern to waterloo bridge where i got back on my bike and cycled home to finsbury park...

my own G in bed,

walking, stumbling, as you do on the rocks and the shifting sand,

you can't see me because my phone was dead and i didn't have my camera with me...

no visual record of that walk, only the mud & the sand on my bicycle tires and on my shoes when i got home...

my bicycle, which in a way, this film is all about, i started filming from this place because i passed it each week, cycling accross town between two different teaching jobs, it was one of two places where i put down my camera to film the same scene on different days,

this walkway covered in trees that you see before you, my main experience of this is cycling along it,

sometimes also playing chess with one of the booksellers underneath waterloo bridge,

the national film theatre on the left a useful toilet, and wrapped up for me in london, just before i moved to this city that late august day ten years ago when me & luke hedge caught the train in for the nottinghill carnival, my 1st carnival, wide eyed and foolish, luke leading us up to the national film theatre that night where by chance nick cave was providing the live soundtrack to a french surrealist film of joan of arc..

a few months later having moved here, finding myself by the river one night, sad & alone but revelling in the romance of this river, these skies, a romance that hasn't left me these ten years...

the poetry of this place... step by step, bridge by bridge...

something about improvisation, about that stumbling walk along the beach, carrying my bike at times, step by step, bridge by bridge...

millenium, blackfriar's rail, blackfriar's road, that strange bridge that doesn't exist, just pillars,

walking passed the jetty from which this is filmed, passed the side of this walkway... lowtide... the whole area only temporary,

something about walking there, in between the land and the water,

step by step,

about this being the improvisation...

improvisation not just the water... as i'd seen it before, but the graceful or clumsy steps between land and river, some solid sand some mud...

but my bed now, maybe more of this tomorrow, very glad to have found a way in to the words

x

from the National Film Theatre Cafe

(this is the 2nd extract from my imaginery blogging journal that updates to the web as i put pen to paper)

sat in NFT cafe, having eaten a piece of toffee cake which i couldn't afford because i spent most of my money on cocktails with my boobelah a couple of hours ago... my tea awaits me...

the woman behind the counter gave me the cake even though i didn't have enough, a little present, & while i ate that cake i completed today's difficult sudoku - the 1st time i've done it...

i started it after i left work, grabbing ten minutes by the thames before going to meet dinah... sat beside an elderly couple - she wanting a drink - he wanting to walk - she wanting a drink - he wanting her to pack her bags for their holiday tomorrow - she wanting a drink - he folding his arms - she wanting a drink -

lovely to drink cocktails with my baby - her last double show wednesday - my last chance to bring a smile & some alcohol to her work before she becomes a student next week... such a delicious brief thing... much glee...

once she'd gone back to work i sat by the river again - the beautiful september sunlight fading as i worked on the sudoku - taking occassional pictures of waterloo bridge - when it got too dark to scribble numbers in boxes i locked up my bike & explored the lowtide, lower than i've ever seen it...


more pictures... my feet very slowly sinking into the damp sand of a peninsular reaching further into the river than i'd ventured before...

then this cafe - the cake - the alcohol wearing off - the sudoku triumphantly completed - the tea now drunk -

life is good

x

gear change

after such a lazy day yesterday it was hard getting up this morning to go to work and all through the day i was swinging from focused to vague in a way that was obvious to my students... they didn't seem to object however and i gave a good lesson...

at one point i asked them to, at some point in the next hour, write down a sentence that i or someone else said... i got them to work in groups and make rhythms out of these sentences and one group in particular started with a sentence of mine that began:

ok... errr... right... now...

and turn it into a james brown style:

OK! ugh! Right Now!

i was pleased with the workshop, it's a funny one, it serves the function that another teacher takes out the students one by one to assess them, and i teach the same group two different modules throughout the year that pretty much encompases my known workshops, so not only does it kind of not matter, but i don't want to do anything i'm going to repeat later so i often come up with something just for this session... as i did today... successful, if vague...

and then afterwards i took a copy of the london paper and sat by the thames doing the sudoku, very similar to last tuesday, taking pictures of my bike at intervals to try and catch the changing light... the difficult sudoku is so hard in that paper, i don't think i've got one right yet...

popped over to the cafe near dinah's work to see her before she started her last ever tuesday working at that place...

then cycled home as the evening drew in, once more out without lights, must get used to having them with me...

x

sudoku & reflect

i taught my 1st session @ my work today... search & reflect... it went really well... i've got a great apprentice...

after work i was given the london paper in the street which i at first declined - but then accepted because they have 3 sudoku's in there...

last week at some point i was given the paper and i tried the difficult sudoku and it killed me... i was sat on a bench by the thames trying to work it out for hours it seems, a very nice woman from one of the stans sat next to me and gave me the odd biscuit while i furiously worked at it... in the end i thought i'd found a way in to the last stage but in my haste to complete it i got it wrong...

but by then i was so cold i gave up & headed home...

so today i started with the easy one... i did it while i was still at work...surprisingly hard actually... then i cycled down to the river and did the medium one... taking pictures of the lovely sky every few minutes... easier than the easy one as it turned out...

i began the difficult one but fairly quickly decided it was time to head home being as i didn't have my bike lights with me and the sun was setting...

when i got home i began the difficult one in ernest and it is damn hard... i'm banging my head against it and getting nowhere fast...

so here's a slideshow of the setting sun pictures i took... i'm getting back to the sudoku... take care...



x