Hey All
Hey Everyone,
I had a pretty quiet Bank Holiday Monday, but I had a pretty insane weekend, so I guess it balances out.
I'm trying to pull up the last blog entry I made, since I can't remember where I left off. But I'm in a different net cafe (Haff's is closed for the Bank Holiday) and the PCs are weird. And slow.
[Checks blog in other window]
Oh Yes.
Anyways, I was woken up by Richie messaging me to ask if I was heading to the Dev before Strength Through Joy. this was about 2030, meaning I had slept through my Dr Who alarm again. David Tennant is going to kick my ass.
I dashed off a message to Richie, jumped in the shower, had something to eat and jumped on the tube, making it to STJ by about 2220. It was kinda quiet at that time.
Had a quick chat with Chris D, who was looking pretty schmick in knee high boots over black trousers with black braces and a scarlet button down shirt. Turns out that someone had decided to put on an old-school industrial night at the Purple Turtle in Camden, not realising that the last Saturday of every Month is STJ night. I told him that most likely there would be a repeat of what had happened at Antilight: everyone would come to see what it was like, then at midnight they would take the last tube to their preferred destination. Last week Slimelight, this week STJ.
Sure enough, the crowd did fatten out later on. The Serious clubs in London don't really start until midnight anyway.
Notable about STJ: Richie and a bunch of his Noise Musik pals turned up, which was cool. They included an original member of SPK. DJ Psyche, who I had heard DJing at Antilight when I arrived last week acted as Chris' foil, tag teaming DJ sets with him. And she made some pretty good selections. Definitely better than Laurenz last month (he played a set very heavy on modern EBM, which alienated most of the old-school crowd).
In any case, after STJ closed I took a cab with Richie and his friends to a rather nice flat in Primrose Hill, where I lisetened to people talking about all kinds of crazy stuff. Turns out that John, him that was in SPK, was in several scenes in Dogs In Space, and he also played drums in Max Q, the Michael Hutchence side-project he did with Ollie Olsen. John asked me if, being from Brisbane, I knew anything about a band called Spear of Longinus. I told him what I knew: they were a neo-nazi band obsessed with esoteric national socialism and the only time I had seen them they had sucked harder than a vaculux.
Turns out that they had written to him asking him to produce one of their albums, and he had turned them down. Wise choice.
At about half six a cab turned up to take people back to their respecive houses. I peeled off to find the Chalk Farm Tube station. As it was, the tube wouldn't have been running that early, but just for fun I decided to go exploring anyway. I found myself, first moving through Primrose Hill, then Belsize Park, then the southern end of the Borough of Hampstead. Figuring I should follow the uphill slople, since I am pretty unused to finding any slopes in London, I eventually found myself In the rather nice village at the centre of Hampstead.
I was tempted to take the Hampstead Tube south back to London, but since I had come this far, I figured I would keep wandering. As it was, I found so many beautiful houses my mind was blown. Tiny little lanes with brick houses that defy description. I don't know if they were Edwardian, or Georgian or Victorian or what, but they were incredible.
And every other street had a house on it with a blue plaque on the side: Someone or other lived, worked and died in this house, x-x blah blah blah.
Somewhere along the way I found Hampstead Heath, or at least an edge of it. I would have explored more of it, but I was tired, and it was all wet because it had been raining. I was aware that me, with my scruffy looks and my leather jacket, probably stood out in this well to do area like a sore thumb. So I turned back and tried to find the tube station.
Along the way I passed a man singing a variation on Baa Baa Black Sheep to his daughter in a stroller in a language I didn't recognise. It could have been Hebrew or Estonian just as easily. A french girl gave me directions to the Besize Park Tube station, where I found a horde or American students being herded by a handful of teachers.
It fascinated me that the bleakness and brutal poverty of the Eastern and Southern Boroughs could exist so easily in the same city as the lush beauty of Hampstead and Belsize Park and so on. I saw some tags that some brats had left on a wall and I wished that the kids were there so that I could wring their necks.
Don't get me wrong, when it comes to bleak, grey, urban spaces I believe that graffiti adds some much needed colour. But this was a million miles from that.
I decided to take the bus down to the centre of London, since I figured that there was more that I wanted to see, rather than staring at the walls in the tube. So I did.
Moving south, I discovered that I had doubled back so that I wasn't actually that far from where I started my wandering (I haven't checked my map yet, so maybe I was all in the same vicinity). I didn't jump off at Camden, instead looking out the window at the streets of Camden that I hadn't seen before. Around the corner from the KoKo there is the Camden Library, something I had missed (this fucking computer is running so slow that the letters on the screen don't keep up with my typing meaning that every time I make a mistake I am four words ahead of where it appeared).
I saw buildings I hadn't looked at properly before, as the bus wound a route I was unfamiliar with. I saw stations that I had only seen from the inside. All the while a couple argued behind me about whether they should cancel a cycling trip they had organised because the wife didn't like cycling in the rain (which seemed fair).
I jumped off the bus just south of the river and wandered up to The Strand, which I followed until I hit Trafalgar Square. Then to Oxford Street and then onto the tube back to Leytonstone.
By the time I arrived home I was so exhausted I decided that I was going to go to bed and blow off both the Electrofest at the Astoria and the Stoner Rock show that was going to be happening at The Underworld.
I think I was comatose for about 178 hours after that.
Gotta go.
Over and out.
J
I had a pretty quiet Bank Holiday Monday, but I had a pretty insane weekend, so I guess it balances out.
I'm trying to pull up the last blog entry I made, since I can't remember where I left off. But I'm in a different net cafe (Haff's is closed for the Bank Holiday) and the PCs are weird. And slow.
[Checks blog in other window]
Oh Yes.
Anyways, I was woken up by Richie messaging me to ask if I was heading to the Dev before Strength Through Joy. this was about 2030, meaning I had slept through my Dr Who alarm again. David Tennant is going to kick my ass.
I dashed off a message to Richie, jumped in the shower, had something to eat and jumped on the tube, making it to STJ by about 2220. It was kinda quiet at that time.
Had a quick chat with Chris D, who was looking pretty schmick in knee high boots over black trousers with black braces and a scarlet button down shirt. Turns out that someone had decided to put on an old-school industrial night at the Purple Turtle in Camden, not realising that the last Saturday of every Month is STJ night. I told him that most likely there would be a repeat of what had happened at Antilight: everyone would come to see what it was like, then at midnight they would take the last tube to their preferred destination. Last week Slimelight, this week STJ.
Sure enough, the crowd did fatten out later on. The Serious clubs in London don't really start until midnight anyway.
Notable about STJ: Richie and a bunch of his Noise Musik pals turned up, which was cool. They included an original member of SPK. DJ Psyche, who I had heard DJing at Antilight when I arrived last week acted as Chris' foil, tag teaming DJ sets with him. And she made some pretty good selections. Definitely better than Laurenz last month (he played a set very heavy on modern EBM, which alienated most of the old-school crowd).
In any case, after STJ closed I took a cab with Richie and his friends to a rather nice flat in Primrose Hill, where I lisetened to people talking about all kinds of crazy stuff. Turns out that John, him that was in SPK, was in several scenes in Dogs In Space, and he also played drums in Max Q, the Michael Hutchence side-project he did with Ollie Olsen. John asked me if, being from Brisbane, I knew anything about a band called Spear of Longinus. I told him what I knew: they were a neo-nazi band obsessed with esoteric national socialism and the only time I had seen them they had sucked harder than a vaculux.
Turns out that they had written to him asking him to produce one of their albums, and he had turned them down. Wise choice.
At about half six a cab turned up to take people back to their respecive houses. I peeled off to find the Chalk Farm Tube station. As it was, the tube wouldn't have been running that early, but just for fun I decided to go exploring anyway. I found myself, first moving through Primrose Hill, then Belsize Park, then the southern end of the Borough of Hampstead. Figuring I should follow the uphill slople, since I am pretty unused to finding any slopes in London, I eventually found myself In the rather nice village at the centre of Hampstead.
I was tempted to take the Hampstead Tube south back to London, but since I had come this far, I figured I would keep wandering. As it was, I found so many beautiful houses my mind was blown. Tiny little lanes with brick houses that defy description. I don't know if they were Edwardian, or Georgian or Victorian or what, but they were incredible.
And every other street had a house on it with a blue plaque on the side: Someone or other lived, worked and died in this house, x-x blah blah blah.
Somewhere along the way I found Hampstead Heath, or at least an edge of it. I would have explored more of it, but I was tired, and it was all wet because it had been raining. I was aware that me, with my scruffy looks and my leather jacket, probably stood out in this well to do area like a sore thumb. So I turned back and tried to find the tube station.
Along the way I passed a man singing a variation on Baa Baa Black Sheep to his daughter in a stroller in a language I didn't recognise. It could have been Hebrew or Estonian just as easily. A french girl gave me directions to the Besize Park Tube station, where I found a horde or American students being herded by a handful of teachers.
It fascinated me that the bleakness and brutal poverty of the Eastern and Southern Boroughs could exist so easily in the same city as the lush beauty of Hampstead and Belsize Park and so on. I saw some tags that some brats had left on a wall and I wished that the kids were there so that I could wring their necks.
Don't get me wrong, when it comes to bleak, grey, urban spaces I believe that graffiti adds some much needed colour. But this was a million miles from that.
I decided to take the bus down to the centre of London, since I figured that there was more that I wanted to see, rather than staring at the walls in the tube. So I did.
Moving south, I discovered that I had doubled back so that I wasn't actually that far from where I started my wandering (I haven't checked my map yet, so maybe I was all in the same vicinity). I didn't jump off at Camden, instead looking out the window at the streets of Camden that I hadn't seen before. Around the corner from the KoKo there is the Camden Library, something I had missed (this fucking computer is running so slow that the letters on the screen don't keep up with my typing meaning that every time I make a mistake I am four words ahead of where it appeared).
I saw buildings I hadn't looked at properly before, as the bus wound a route I was unfamiliar with. I saw stations that I had only seen from the inside. All the while a couple argued behind me about whether they should cancel a cycling trip they had organised because the wife didn't like cycling in the rain (which seemed fair).
I jumped off the bus just south of the river and wandered up to The Strand, which I followed until I hit Trafalgar Square. Then to Oxford Street and then onto the tube back to Leytonstone.
By the time I arrived home I was so exhausted I decided that I was going to go to bed and blow off both the Electrofest at the Astoria and the Stoner Rock show that was going to be happening at The Underworld.
I think I was comatose for about 178 hours after that.
Gotta go.
Over and out.
J
posted by the.exile at 7:52 pm
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