Here we go again...

You might remember (or you might have just read) that I was going to see The Red Chord from Boston this time last night.

Here's the skinny on what happened:

I shamble out of here. Stop at a cash machine and swear at it when it won't give me any cash from one of my Australian Accounts. Lousy Commonwealth Bank.

Jump on the tube trying to work out which stops I need to take to get ot Leicester Square, since I think to to get to the Borderline (in orange Park) I need to get off at Leicester Square, walk up Charing Cross and take a left a Mannette.

I get confused at Leicester Square because there seems to be an out way for Covent Garden. But it is Leicester Square station... I spend five minutes confirming this. Not good, I'm already running late.

I get up to street level and decide to go whichever way feels like North. I as a Russian Tourist if I can borrow her map to check I'm on the right path. Which I am.

I get to the Borderline (which is actually around the corner from the infamous Crobar in Soho, and therefore closer to Tottenham Court Road... lousy A to Z page divisions) and discover...

That the Red Chord has been postponed until the next night!

I get a flyer for a rock and metal club that is happening after the replacement indie bands play, but I feel sick and prefer the idea of an early night.

So I spend two hours looking around the bookshops on Charing Cross Road (which are many), finding a pile of books that I would love to own.

I wind up buying the latest Metal Hammer and a copy of Juxtapoz (I haven't bought any issues of Juxtapoz since I left Brisbane, but I had a hankering).

Two slices of pizza at Leicester Square and I'm back on the Tube, heading home.

Funny thing about one of the bookshops I was in:

At Street level it was your standard Boho Bookshop, with books about Art and Design, compilations of Essays by radical writers, biographies of rockstars and the like. Downstairs, in the basement they sold... reams and reams of Hardcore Pornography. Dirty DVDs and Filthy magazines.

It reminded me of a bookshop just off Victoria Station: in the front room it was all 20th and 21st Century classics. Anything you wanted. Highbrow stuff. In the next room, away from the eyes of the passers-by, there were racks and racks of girlie magazines of ever descending levels of depravity.

I think that these two examples actually work as illustrations of London in Microcosm. On when level Arty and Intellectual, on the next level pure smut.

Or to put it another way, even though, on the streets of London, you will always see the heights of Chic and Style you can be sure that there is something questionable happening somewhere nearby.

And with that, I sign out.