Fikamusikkonsert-In-The-Fields

One of the many things I love about
our Swedish cousins, is the fact that they’ve
a word in their lexicon which roughly means
“to meet-up with friends and drink some coffee”.
And that word is fika. Some fika. To fika. It’s fika time!
Now strictly speaking, a fika isn’t really a fika without
the accompaniment of something sweet on the side.
A cinnamon roll perhaps. Or a saffron bun.
Or, in tonight’s case at least, a low-key gig
in a church dedicated to the patron saint of outcasts.
Better known by the pseudonym Loney Dear,
Emil Svanängen is a multimember home-recording
one-man-band phenomenon, who appears
very much at ease up on the pulpit this evening.
For whilst other Scandinavians of his age were out
meeting girls, drinking snaps and smoking herring,
Emil was in his parent’s basement in the city of Jönköping,
armed with a minidisk microphone, various instruments and his PC.
In a recent interview, Emil described his albums as being a bit like cakes.
The kind of cake this brings to mind
is a traditional Swedish Prinsesstårta;
multi-layered and dusted with sugar.
A light green falsetto exterior giving way
to a rich swollen centre of whipped
percussion and butterfat handclaps.
If he doesn’t hook you with the spiraling glockenspiel
in ‘I Am John’, he’ll no doubt ensnare you instead with
the whistling refrain that underpins ‘I Was Only Going Out’
or the singalong section which enhances ‘The Meter Marks OK’.
Your sweet-tooth smile widening with each new overdub.
Outside, afterwards, fika-time over for another day,
we lean against the gravestones for a while
and suck on cold beers whilst a steward
sweeps-up cigarette butts at our feet.
Loney Dear has a plane to Boston Massachusetts to catch in the morning
I’ve got a radiator that needs bleeding.


Loney Dear play live on Band Busking Dotcom

The Sport Of Tomorrow

In the future there will be no war.
In the future there will be only Roller Derby.
Faster than frisbee disc golf.
Sexier than competitive eating.
More violent than dwarf-tossing.
Not as Flemish as vinkenzetting.
A kind of British Bulldog on wheels,
Roller Derby is a game of Blood-and-Thunder.
A game of Pluck-and-Fidelity.
A game of Style-over-Substance.
A game of Razz-and-Matazz.
6 Blockers 2 Pivots and a couple of Jammers in the rear.
Three periods of between eight and ten minutes in length.
Each period divided into a smörgåsbord of two-minute jams.
And inbetween? Plenty of good clean unsportsladylike conduct.
Ministry of Neo-Burlesque meets Queercore riot-grrrl.
Rockabilly meets NWOBHM meets Beastie-Girls meets Cybergoth.
Kiss-curls and Monroe piercings.
Polka dots and desert camouflage.
Coloured gumshields, fishnet burn and Betty Page tattoos.
Welcome to The Thunderdrome true believers.
Welcome to Do-It-Yourself Third Wave
Skate-Punk Feminism in all its glory.
Caution: Do not interfere with Rollergirls who skate out-of-bounds.
Remember: Getting a Rollergirl in your lap
is not a right
but a privilege.

London Rollergirls official website

Official list of Rollergirl names

Smooth Fields 6AM

By the time civil dawn cracks open
the cold egg-sack of London’s albumin skyline,
the blood-boltered bummarees of Smithfield
have already been hard at it for a couple of hours.
Their forensic white smocks and barrowboy charm
handed down through the generations;
father to son to grandson to great-grandson.
Jainists of the world take note; livestock has been
traded at this carnivore’s Mecca for over 800 years.
The soil here is used to the taste of offal and warm viscera.
Before Tyburn’s Triple Tree became the city’s main location
for public executions, the crown’s ceremonial killing was done right here.
Devilled kidneys of William Wallace. Sweetbreads of Wat Tyler.
Umble pie of Lollard martyrs and chitterlings of Protestant poets.
Godforsaken heretics and unholy dissidents all.
Smithfield’s temperature-controlled freezing works
sit proudly atop a labyrinth of ancient tunnels.
Tunnels which lead all the way to the hollow centre of The Earth.
Down past the churning waters of the buried Fleet river,
through the hot magma and the thick mantle
to a place where a long forgotten tribe
of homo habilis wage a daily fight for supremacy
with mighty mastodons and sabre-toothed cats.
Living life just as they did at the beginning of the Pleistocene epoch.
Unchanged in approximately 2.2 million years.
The daylight breaks apart the clouds above,
burning away any lingering rheum and gound.
London awakens slowly from the blindside
and prepares to shred new hearts
and grind more bones to dust.

The House That Dennis Severs Built

Illuminated by fading candlelight,
I stand in silence on the first floor
of a terraced Georgian house on Folgate Street.
The smell of rose-hip and pomanders permeates.
There are discarded playing cards and empty oyster shells.
There is broken bone china and an unmade four-poster bed.
Huguenot silk-weavers huddle in the basement below.
A 21-gun salute sounds in the dilapidated tenement above.
The bells of St. Mary Spital prepare to chime out the hour.
I stand here, gazing into a cracked vanity mirror
hung against a painted wall. And the face
that I can see gazing silently back at me,
illuminated by the fading candlelight,
looks as if it’s being reflected in a cloud of smoke.
Or should that be smog?
Faded at the corners and daguerreotype hazy.
And the longer I stand here, silently gazing
at this turbid looking-glass visage of myself,
the more I appear to be steadily ageing.
Like Rod Taylor trapped in a George Pál stop-frame animation.
Crow’s feet deepening at the edges of my eyes.
Capillaries cracking beneath the skin on my cheeks.
Flecks of white sprouting all about the beard-line.
Outbreak of liver spots and the onset of Type Two diabetes.
Impotence, dementia and onrushing rigor mortis.
The blowflies arriving to lay their eggs.
My body fat slowly turning to soap.
Meanwhile, away from the gas-lamps and the ticking
of the grandfather clock, away on the other side of town,
a young man lies bare-chested on the pavement near Oxford Street
- sucking early evening air through an open chest wound.
Her Majesty’s police are unrolling their plastic caution tape.
It takes a moment for the eyes to adjust back
to the third generation technology and the closed-circuit TV’s.
At the end of the day, you either see it or you choose not to.
Aut Visum Aut Sumo Non.

18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields

185-187 Oxford Street, Westminster

A City Inside Of Me

Before me, I see a blank place and a blank time.
And it's my blank place. And it's my blank time.
And also. And this is the thing. It’s your blank place too.
And it’s your blank time also. Do you see?
I see a man and a woman. And they're both heading towards 40.
For the sake of argument, let’s call them Christopher and Clair.
For the sake of argument, let’s call them Benedict and Hattie.
There’s no visible fire. And neither of them are sitting.
For the sake of another argument, why don’t we just
call them "me"? And why don’t we just call them "you"?
Christopher and Clair. Benedict and Hattie. Me and You.
All of us heading towards age 40. In a blank place.
At a blank time. In a blank city just like this one.
I see a blank diary in a plain paper bag.
I see a bloodstain in a plain coat pocket.
And I see a neighbour. And a little girl.
And the neighbour and the little girl I see
are dressed identically. Dressed like nurses.
One grown-up nurse. And one pre-pubescant nurse.
Emotion is detached. Dialogue is astringent.
Cryptic unease abounds. It’s all in the nuance.
In a blank time, in a blank place, blackbirds build their nests.
In a blank time, in a blank place, forget-me-nots are in bloom.
It’s okay though. It’s not real. None of this is real.
What I mean is this; they’re just actors. Really. It’ll all be okay.
And the blank place is probably just Richmond Upon Thames.
And the blank time could easily be today, or yesterday or tomorrow.
Neurobabble. Slight pause. White noise.
Franz Schubert's 'Six Moments Musicaux'.
Number 3. In F minor. Do you see?

'The City' by Martin Crimp

Waking The Gods

The Godheads are sleeping.
It’s their divine Siesta time.
At the appointed hour, they will be
awoken by the resident sadhu monks;
who will bathe and feed them
and dress them in today’s choice
of creamy silks and crimson robes
- ready to greet their adoring public.
That’s when the piped music will begin.
Shlokas will be spoken. Lamps will be lit.
And the doors to their golden shrines will slowly open.
There, beneath the luminescent limestone pinnacles
cross-legged in sockfeet upon the milky marble floor,
I will give thanks to Lord Vishnu for bringing her back to me.
I will give praise to Lord Shiva for giving us this second chance.
I will offer my blessings to Ganesh and Hanuman
for granting me the strength to form those
three-little-words
in my gullet once more.
Om Shanti my friends. Peace be unto all.

Neasden’s Shri Swaminarayan Mandir: Daily Murti Darshan

The Eighth Wonder Of The World

Old Father Thames is 535-metres wide
as it meanders around Woolwich Reach
in search of Gravesend and The Nore sandbank
and the open epicontinental sea beyond.
Standing guard against the threat of storm surges
sit the steel-plated sentinels of The Thames Flood Barrier;
their foundations sunk deep into the London chalk below.
Water levels continue to rise.
The British Isles continue to tilt.
These steel-plated sentinels stand firm. For now.
There are those who have claimed the barrier
to be “The Eighth Wonder Of The World”,
but in truth it faces some pretty stiff opposition
for that much-disputed of titles.
There’s the Acropolis of Athens for one.
And Cambodia’s Angkor Wat temple complex for another.
Then there are the 2,000-year-old Banaue Rice Terraces in The Philippines.
And the monolithic Moai statues of Easter Island.
There’s Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia cathedral.
And the Panama Canal.
And the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
And the Eiffel Tower.
And the Moscow Kremlin.
And the Empire State Building.
And the Sydney Opera House.
And Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi’s vast Terracotta Army.
There’s even the artificial Palm Islands in Dubia
and the Astrodome stadium in Houston Texas to consider.
Not to mention King Kong and WWF wrestler André The Giant.
(Both of whom are now sadly deceased).
However, to my mind, the main problem with
The Thames Barrier’s claim, is that it’s not even
the biggest moveable flood barrier in the world.
No, that particular honour goes to The Maeslantkering
- which is located in the Nieuwe Waterweg waterway in Holland.
Well, that and the fact that The Thames Barrier
would appear to closed to the public on a Bank Holiday.
Even thought the website said it wouldn’t be.

On The Way Home From The Jeffrey Lewis Gig...

With a dozen fresh bagels tucked under my arm,
I wend my way home from The Jeffrey Lewis & The Jitters gig.
Flames burn outside Hawksmoor’s exalted Christ Church.
Hoxtonheads queue for ale outside the notorious Ten Bells.
I’m happy walking the soused streets of Spitafields tonight.
I’m in no rush to reach the tube. I’m in no rush to get to my bed.
The last time I saw Jeffrey Lewis play, he started with a joke.
The last time I saw Jeffrey Lewis play, he brought
along his painted guitar, his girlfriend Helen,
his younger brother Jack and his Uncle Louie too.
“Professor” Louie Lewis, no less. Who provided support.
And things were no different tonight I’m glad to report.
The joke, the girlfriend, the younger brother and the uncle;
all were present and correct. Why change a winning team?
The last time I saw Jeffrey Lewis play,
he appeared to be thinning badly at the crown.
Truth be told, his hair looked like it’d been falling out in clumps.
Clogging-up the drainage system on the Lower East Side no doubt.
If anything, Jeff’s tonsorial troubles have
escalated since the last time I saw him play.
Has he ever considered plugs, I wonder?
Or cosmetic transplant surgery?
Or some finasteride? Minoxidil? Mane-For-Men?
Chinese knotweed? Aerobics? Or a little Syrup-Of-Figs?
I wend my way past Rough Trade’s new flagship store,
where earlier this evening I chanced upon an impromptu
live performance from Alt-Country freak-a-Billy Jim White.
I wend my way down a sidestreet where once I bought
a tinfoil carton of brown Liberty Cap magic mushrooms.
Back when it was legal. Back when there was a loophole in the law.
It really wouldn’t be too much of a diversion
for me to wend my way a little further Eastwards;
past the blue door behind which dwells the girl I still adore.
Maybe I’d find the courage to take a deep breath and knock.
Maybe I’d find her at home, and maybe, just maybe,
she’d invite me in for a while from out of the rainclouds.
We could slice the bagels in half, pile them up,
and place them carefully in the freezer compartment.
It really wouldn’t take me too far out of my way at all.
But the two of us haven’t spoken in such a long time.
And it’s been even longer than that since last we communicated.
I’m happy walking the soused streets of Spitafields tonight.
I’m happy for the drizzle to fall upon my long face.
If I'm lucky, it might just wash me into a storm-drain,
along with the rest of the flotsam and the jetsom
and the chancers
and the have-nots
and the oh-so-might-have-beens.

Oldest Pot Plant In The World

The broodboom Cycad first arrived
on the banks of the Thames back in 1775.
Fair to say it's seen it's fair share in all that time.
The Uprising in the American colonies.
The expansion and contraction of The British Empire.
The ages of Boz Dickens and Saucy Jack.
The coming of the railways and The Industrial Revolution.
A Great Stink, a Great Famine, a Great Depression and a Great Smog.
The construction of The Crystal Palace.
The re-location of The Crystal Palace.
The immolation of The Crystal Palace.
The Battle Of Cable Street and The Troubles in Ireland.
2 World Wars and 1 World Cup.
New Wave, Punk and The Carnabetian Army.
The end of apartheid in it's homeland.
The Brixton Riots. The King’s Cross Fire.
And four terrorist bombs on a July morning.
The broodboom Cycad’s been steadily growing away
at an average rate of about 2.5 cm a year.
That’s 2.5 cm a year for the past 232 years.
It’s not in any kind of a rush that’s for sure.
Now, it’s my sister who possesses the green fingers in my family.
My fingers, in stark contrast, are toxic black. All full of glyphosate.
I fear I’ll kill this living fossil if I stand near it for too long.
And I don’t want that on my conscience.
Best I beat a hasty retreat to The Temple Of Aeolus,
and leave this ancient evergreen to continue photosynthesizing.
Or whatever that thing is that plants do.


The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew