LONDON entries adapted from e-mails home.
April 17, London
[Sent from Internet City]
I'm in an Internet cafe w/ Kevin around the corner from our hotel, and
across the street from where we stayed with Steve 11 years ago, and
right near where I stayed in 1985 with Dennis however many years ago
that is. We had a nice lunch in a Belgian restaurant and then David
showed up and we went to a REAL ENGLISH PUB and had some of that real
English warm beer or ale or whatever they call it. People are various
degrees of tired. The flight was a nightmare, the seats were the
tiniest ever and we sat on the ground for an hour before taking off --
someone decided they were too sick to fly and then they had to find
their luggage in the hold. After we finish here Kevin and I are walking
over to the radio station, and meeting everyone else; most of the boys
are watching an Arsenal game in a pub near there. We'll walk by
Harrod's probably, and Hyde Park Corner, then go north to Marleybone High Street.
The weather's a bit crisp but not as bad as anyone expected, and
there's no rain so far. It's fun being here, and there'll be a good bit
of free time for tourism and such. Haven't talked to Jeroen and Thessa
yet. This is a very bare bones internet cafe, it's not even a
cafe, it's just a bunch of terminals at desks in a room with bare
walls. But there are some groovy Londoners here. Pip pip! Cheerio! I
haven't said that to anybody yet. I'm rooming with Chris, Wes had
everybody room-assigned by the time we got here. The hotel's pretty
darn fancy, though most of the fanciness is in the lobby. The rooms are
good, though, very comfortable. I'm probably the only person who hasn't
taken a nap yet. Kirk's brother is in town and will be at the
show, David's wife is out of town so I won't meet her. And Wes's
sister is coming. They have things in different places on British
keyboards, typewriter keyboards I mean.
April 18, London
[Sent from Internet City]
It's Wednesday afternoon, everybody slept late, or rather some of us
slept late. Kevin and I just had coffee, at Starbucks unfortunately,
but the other local option didn't have any appropriate morning food for
Kevin (he likes a scone), and he's very particular about that. We have
to be at the club by 4, but are going to try to go to that part of town
earlier, if we can drop off our stuff there. We'll see! Wow, the sun
has just come out, and it was raining (lightly) a second ago. Last
night Kevin and I had a great, if fast, walk from the hotel to the
radio station, past the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and
Albert Museum and Harrod's and cutting through Hyde Park Corner and
going by the Dorchester and I had the happy feeling of knowing where I
was. After the show, which went pretty well, we had a late Italian meal
at Dino's (established 1949), a small but very nice family owned place
around the corner from the hotel, after deciding not to eat at the
incredibly expensive famous Indian restaurant right next to the hotel.
I have to run now, I probably won't be able to write again today, we'll
be down around Soho from 4 until late. Still haven't talked to J&T
or anyone local; Kirk managed to use the phone card I bought but he had
to go looking for a phone that would work with it. I got a stupid kind
and spent too much money on it, but the BT cards, which are the ones
you want, aren't as easy to find; the other kind they sell everywhere.
April 19, London
[Sent from Internet City] Good morning.
I'm back at Internet City, with CVS this time. We are in the hotel
tonight, for one more night, and then I'm at Jeroen and Thessa's Friday
night . The big rock show is done, and it went down well; I had some
personal equipment problems -- the amp they rented only had one input,
so I could only hear the organ in the house, and slightly in the side
fills, so was mostly just playing by hand memory and missing the feel
of being in it, you know, and the digital piano they got was
serviceable, but felt like a bit of a toy. Nobody in the audience
seemed to notice though, and all the mandolin and accordion stuff was
fun and good and very popular with the people. I got a big hand. Wes's
mother and sister Melanie were there. After the show, his mother shook
my hand and said "Well done! Well done!" in a way that seemed
particularly English to me; I felt like I was being congratulated by
the Queen, or by Barbara Woodhouse
at least. His sister is very tall and good looking also in a very
English way; the general opinion was that she doesn't look like Wes,
but she does a little. She's the one who was on TV until recently. She
told us how when they were both down in Hastings last weekend Wes
showed her a book he'd inscribed when he was 9 years old: This book
belongs to Wesley Stace who hates his sister Melanie and his sister
Emma. Jeroen and Thessa were there too The club was called the
Borderline and decorated like a Mexican restaurant, which it might have
been once for all I know, and is down a little side street in Soho.
It's run by Barry who used to tour manage Steve and so Kirk knows him.
He's tall and bald. Also there were David Lewis, of course, who's off
to Bangla Desh today, and I met Amanda and also I re-met Anna or Chris and Anna who used to live in New York.
And Kirk's brother Tim was there, with his wife, on the way to see her
mother in Holland. After the show we came back and sat in the hotel bar
(all the pubs being closed) and I had a nine-pound (money not weight)
glass of Laphroaig that I certainly made last a long long time. I
didn't know it was nine pounds until I'd ordered it.
Yesterday
we went down to Soho in the afternoon, Wes, me, Kirk, Kevin and Cathy
Wes's manager, though Kirk left soon to meet his brother. The rest of
us walked through the busy streets and had lunch at a restaurant that's
somehow connected to Soho House,
David's club. The decor was nice -- funny log stools at the counter,
and low couches at the table, almost like a Moroccan restaurant; the
crab cakes I had were just so so, but the tomato and onion salad was
nice, with a mustardy vinaigrette. Had some espresso with Kevin at
another place that had no flavor at all, absolutely none. Amazing! Went
to a bookstore that was nothing
but rock-music books, and they had that Da Capo book I'm in with the
Tom Waits story, and that's the first place I've ever seen that for
sale. Also there's a Crowded House
biography I looked at that quotes my Spin article on them and also
there's a quote about Dennis Keeley from one of the band (he knew them
back in the day) saying how he was the nicest guy and would get mugged
all the time -- which he was a lot back then. Oh it's 11:02 and we're
now officially late for our meeting in the lobby to decide what we're
doing today. I just almost lost my connection here too so I'm going to
send this before something bad happens. Will probably try to see a play
today, this screwed up again i'm sending now. xo
[Sent from the Webshack] I'm
here in a different internet cafe, the Webshack, a block or two from
Black's, Jeroen's club where we went to eat. Kevin is here too. He met
me in Soho after walking around with Kirk and his brother and sister in
law, and after I went to the play with Wes and Cathy Wes's manager. It
was "Semi-Monde," an old Noel Coward
play that had never been produced (it's full of gay characters), and it
was all right, not great, but fun to see, in an old theater, the oldest
theater on that particular street (but only like 110 years old, not
Comedie Francaise old), and before that we walked all around Covent Garden
and Soho and Picadilly Circus and Wes pointed out places where he had
done this thing or that thing, and we had really nice sandwiches at
some place that got an award from Snapple for the most original
sandwiches in southeastern England, a place Wes used to go, the
sandwiches were all Indian, mine was chicken with apples and mango
chutney. Then we went to the play and then we went to the HMV where I
bought a Francoise Hardy
two CD compilation for 12 pounds which seemed like a pretty good deal.
Then I went to meet Kevin at the place we had bad coffee yesterday; it
was the only place he could think of to meet. It was fun walking around,
the weather keeps changing, right now it's sunny out, but cold. I just
want to eat in every restaurant and go into every cafe.
April 20, London
[Sent from Jeroen and Thessa's] Thessa
is sick and didn't stay for the folk show at the Border's, though she
did deliver the keys to the house, which in the end I didn't need
anyway because Jeroen was with me. He came over from work and saw the
last half or so; it was actually a long set, very long set for a
bookstore in-store, and there was a nice crowd, a nicer crowd in a way
than the actual club show (with very little overlap), younger and
better looking possibly, but in any case very attentive. They had
requests, and we played some of them. It was me, Wes and Chris, and
Mark did the sound. Daphne Kwong from L.A. Style days was
coincidentally there. They had a piano but it was out of tune and we
abandoned it after Humble Bee. I got to play lots of mandolin solos,
and it was nice to be playing the quiet music again. It was a really
good show in fact. The rock show Wednesday was reviewed in the paper
today, I'm not sure which one, though I read the review; it was mixed;
it was 3 stars out of 5. They didn't quite get him -- he doesn't
translate to the English sensibility so well, which is ironic. I think
we would have done as well or better with the three-piece we had at
Border's.
So -- today I woke up at 10. Kevin was knocking on my
door but he was gone by the time I got to it, running off to Harrod's.
(He'd been knocking like 5 minutes before I heard him at all.) By the
time I got cleaned up and got my stuff packed up to put in Mark's room,
I had to run off to meet Ruth and so couldn't get to the Kensington
internet place this morning. I caught the tube (buying a fruit scone
from a stand to get change so I could use the quick ticket machine
and not have to stand in the long line, or queue as they say here) and
rode the elevator down to the train and took the train to Covent Garden
where I was to meet Ruth but she wasn't there yet so I got a coffee at
Coffee Republic then ran back to wait; she took me to Joe Allen (I
think it's called, and I think there might be one in New York), a
large, basement restaurant with lots of theatrical posters going back
to the '60s or '70s and brick walls and no sign on the door, which is
in a kind of alley, no sign that I noticed anyway. It got very very
busy while we were in there, and most of the people were very well
dressed, though the vibe was casual. I had, what did I have, I had a
smoked salmon appetizer and the sweet potato and carmelized onion tart,
which was quichelike in proportions. Then we walked around a bit,
Ruth showed me where she went to school, which turned out to be the
LSE, where David teaches, and also the Old Curiosity Shop, the
actual one Dickens based his book on, then we stopped in another place
for coffee and dessert, we split a raspberry and honey tiramisu which
was very good. Ruth had a date she had to go to and I walked to find
the Border's where we would do the in-store, no first I went down to
Soho to the Webshack where I internetted yesterday, but it was so
crowded there it would have been ages before I got a machine, so then I
went to look for the Border's and found it, and then walked a little
more because I was early to meet those guys, so I walked around some
more, down Carnaby Street where I bought Alison two cameras at Boot's,
and then checked the Webshack again, but there were still too many
people, so then I went back and went to the Border's and went upstairs
to see if Chris and Mark were there, and they weren't, but the people
from the store were setting up for the in-store so I went up to talk to
them and then Chris and Mark did arrive and we set up stuff and did a
sound check and waited for Wes to arrive from doing interviews with
Austrian journalists, and we did a little sound check and then we went
to an Italian deli, very modern, to talk about what songs we were going
to do and get a bite, a little bite to eat, so we did that, and then we
went back to do the show. Which we did as explained above.
Then
we went to dinner, Wes, Cathy, Wes's old school friend and housemate
Jo, and Jeroen, and me, to Black's, Jeroen's club, for dinner, where I
had Watercress soup and a chicken and peanut dressing salad and a prune
crumble; before dinner we got to go up to the top floor, or the 2nd
floor (the floor above the dining room), which we didn't get to see
when Thessa had her broken leg, and that was comfortable, there were a
lot of fireplaces and cushiony things and nice fixtures. Then we went
to the 12-Bar to see Chris play a show, it was a funny little club
where the ceiling under the balcony was so low that if you weren't
standing within the first 3 feet of the stage you couldn't see the
performer's head. So Chris played sitting down. There weren't more than
20 people at most to see it, and fewer than that sometimes, but he was
really good. Someone set off a fire alarm in the middle of his set, and
it shut off the sound system, so he played 2 or 3 songs without the PA
before they got it back on. Then Jeroen and I caught the bus to here
with Jo, who lives nearby. She and Wes did plays together, or rather,
at the same time, back in Cambridge, and were in a band together, the
Accelerators. She's a freelance scriptreader for the BBC. I also saw
where the BBC World Service is based today. (It's right across from the
LSE.)
Pushkin was here a moment ago but is gone
somewhere now. Thessa was already asleep when we got here. Jeroen is
hoping for an extra ticket to the Arsenal game Wes is going to
tomorrow; they're meeting at some local pub, the Old Compton Arms, I
think, around 1:30. I think I may walk from here back to the hotel,
which will be a long long walk, but it'll be my last chance to see
London, and maybe I can do a little shopping on the way. Unless it's
raining tomorrow, in which case I will go underground. We're meeting at
the hotel at 4:30 then going back over to Charing Cross Station to get
a 6 o'clock train to Hastings. I have no idea what that'll be like down
there, but it'll be an adventure. Then Monday morning, Wes's cousin who
owns a taxi will take us to the airport, me and CVS, and also Mark, who
will take a tube from the airport back to London to meet his mom, who's
come over to vacation with him for a few days.
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