the cabbies capital

Without getting involved in some sort of self flagellation about my blogging break, I am slightly annoyed at how easily I slipped into a “it doesn’t matter if I don’t update” and “I haven’t got anything of interest to say” because, as I’m sure many of you would be eager to point out, that didn’t stop me in the past.  And I as proved to myself on Thursday, even when hung over & not wishing to engage the brain too hard, you can wander outside your front door and find something to talk about.  So having started on such a local level, let’s go to the other extreme and tell you about my favourite London building.  THE London building, one that whenever I drive past or go near says something to me about my city that is very difficult to put into words.  But with the help of a few photos (some taken by The Cabbette) and some muddled together text, I’m at least going to have a stab at summing up this magnificent building.  Having visited St Paul’s during the summer with The Cabbette and having the specific intention of dragging her to the top, as I had done when she was about 3, it took until last week when I was parked on the rank outside St Paul’s looking at the view you see in the photo at the start of this post, that I finally decided to revisit that, er, visit.

And the only way to travel up to town for a visit like this is the train.  The overground from Tooting goes a slightly long way round (you head off east for a while before finally heading north after Herne Hill) but the upside of that roundthehousesness and the train line’s predilection for being at first floor level, is that you get some interesting views into people’s gardens along the way.  Unfortunately the tools that the Cabbette & I had at our disposal seemed incapable of recording these interesting views and I’m left showing you a dull photo of some houses and an out of focus view of St Paul’s itself.  But both these images have something about them, they aren’t good photos that’s for sure, but they hint at how that journey is for me.  Little glimpses into other people’s lives as you speed/crawl (delete as appropriate) past suburban London until after Elephant & Castle you get into the city properly and then, just around a corner, is St Paul’s.  It might be viewed through a grimy train window but it’s still unmistakable and still magnificent.  I’ve spoken about this area before, in what was one of my first ever blog posts, so won’t dwell on it too much.  But if you do get off the train at Blackfriars, there is much to admire between there & St Paul’s itself.  I suggest walking east along the river path and taking in the delights of White Lion Hill and the concrete jungle that lies on the north side of it.

Through the walkways & alleys you can then come across what must be the only totem pole in the City of London.  Apparently it represents the seven ages of man, but that is about all I’ve been able to find out about it.  From there you cross Queen Victoria Street (QVS) with the Piccolo Snack Bar almost opposite you, Mellon Bank building to your left and what is now the HQ for Scientology on the right.  Further up QVS you’ll also find the Samaritans HQ and you’ll often see Samaritans from all over the world hanging around the building waiting to be indoctrinated waiting to learn the latest Samaritan good news.  Perhaps it’s St Paul’s itself that is pulling in these religious nutters and they feel somehow more validated by being in the shadow of the place.  Really, why would they want to be based there?  Anyhow, I’ll park my anti-religious bias for a few moments so that we can take a left opposite the Millenium (aka Wibbly-Wobbly) Bridge and take the short walk up Peter’s Hill (please, can I have a hill named after me? Richard’s Hill has a nice ring to it I think) to St Paul’s.  If the queue to get in is a bit long, listen to the nice wardens who will do their best to direct you round to the entrance to the crypt where you can also pay your slightly expensive entrance fee (UK residents can opt to Gift Aid & turn their ticket into a yearly pass) without dealing with the tourist hoards.  Then try not to get caught taking a sneaky photo of Nelson’s tomb, which didn’t come out properly anyway, and you can get upstairs to the main event.  As we were there for one reason only, we headed straight for the stairs to start the ascent.

As you’d expect there are a lot of stairs, and not all of them are easy to navigate.  Those, like Mrs Cabbie, that are of a nervous disposition need to think twice about making the trip to the top.  Others, like me & the Cabbette, take these things in our stride, often quite literally sprinting up the stairs only being held up by slow moving Americans the size of a bus or Scandinavians who seemed to insist on taking rucksacks containing their life possessions with them to the top.  But if you do get slightly out of breath on the way up there are plenty of places to stop & have a breather.  There is the  whispering gallery of course, but my favourite place is the bit where you can look through a glass porthole in the floor at the cathedral beneath and completely shit yourself up.  I mean, the view looks pretty but do you really want to see how high you actually are and how far you’d drop if the 300 year old floor beneath you gave way?  Where’s health & safety when you need them?  But at least the rush of adrenaline helps you make the final push to the top where you are confronted by sight of London spread out around you in all it’s glory.  Well we would have if the gallery at the top wasn’t so full that we had to queue to get outside and despite lot’s of “move alongs” and “Avanti you planks” it took some time to get out and enjoy the view.  But enjoy it we did.  I include one picture of that view, the rest you can see in my Flickr stream.  Sorry BEM & others offended by my Facebook account deletion, but you’ll have to interact with me a different way.  Like opening another tab in your browser, or ringing me.  Difficult as this time might be for you all, I hope our friendships will survive FBgate and still prosper.  Bugger, wasn’t going to get drawn in to all that, perhaps I should leave that for another day and blog post, “How Facebook is evil” or something along those lines…….

But before I go whisper to all my Twitterites about how silly all that lot over on FB are, here’s that view from the top;

…..the way people just fall apart……..

Oh my, Friday 3rd July 2009 was some day. A day when I stepped out of my comfort zone and lived to tell the tale. Regular readers of this blog may have picked up on my propensity for over excitement and hyperbole when I talk about London. Well this post has the potential for people to think the same about how I view, and write about, myself. It’s difficult not to show a bit of yourself when you keep a blog. But my focus has always tried to be about stuff, and things, and other people. But my week, and more importantly my day on Friday, have had a potentially profound effect on me. Really. Much as I enjoyed Blur, and they were fantastic, it has precious little to do with them either. This is all about me, me, me and what I did. I’m breaking one of my personal rules and going all self aware and, possibly, a bit self-important on you all. I’ll apologize in advance, you can all start hating me now.

Back in the great Britpop war I was always on the side of Blur. Oasis, to me, were always a bit provincial and Blur had that metropolitan style and not a small amount of substance to back up the air of arrogance. Come on people, Oasis had one and half decent albums then fell off a cliff into Status Quo-esque parody and cliche after cliche. Blur produced one album that truly tapped into a generation (Parklife), then followed it with work that at least showed signs of progression and many moments of true quality. And I haven’t even mentioned the first 2 albums which also contain some great pop moments. Their comeback had sort of passed me by though. I had a similar problem with The Specials this year, did I really want to see these old men be a shadow of their former selves? I thought that I didn’t. But as the gigs got nearer, I was getting 2nd thoughts. Lots of people I knew were talking about going, Twitter was talking about it big time, I even let myself watch a bit of the Glasto coverage. And they didn’t look that different, Damon was back to being THAT Damon, Alex is, er, Alex and Mr Coxon has grown up into Graham Coxon Superstar. Poor old Dave just really gets ignored doesn’t he? But then he always was.

And, after my usual waffling, we get to the main event – last Friday. And what I’m going to talk about isn’t much to do with the gig, it’s really about how I ended up being there and what I also did that day. Writing this blog has lead me down paths I didn’t even know existed. It now appears that it’s starting to change me in ways that I didn’t know I could change. Hopefully, these changes will be for the better, but then I’m not the one to judge that. Those that know me well will soon pull me up if I show signs of over confidence or too much self importance. Having made the decision that I should go I then had to get a ticket, I Tweeted, I Gumtreed, I tried sister-in-law who once shared a house with Dave Rowntree. But nothing quite came off. And while I was doing this, my cab had a fit on Monday and was off the road for a couple of days, I was helping launch @tweetalondoncab (see my last post), I met @paul_clarke to chew the fat on a few ideas and I also did a two hour film shoot with the BBC for a Ukranian TV show. Blimey. If BEM is reading this, I know he isn’t going to believe I could be quite so energetic and pro-active. Then on Friday, still without a ticket for Blur, I took a deep breath and headed for the Tuttle Club, something I really would never have done even a few months ago. But I went, talked to a few people and really enjoyed myself. Finally finding out that my Gumtree contact was basically touting his spare ticket I decided that I’d go anyway and get one from a bone fide tout. And just to clarify, I was going to attend this event with none of my regular mates. I knew a few Twitter contacts were going and was hoping to meet as many of them as possible, but once again I would never previously have thought of heading for something like this without the safety net of a couple of “regular” friends. But head off I did, and tried to play my confident Londoner card with the tout, after returning the ticket he gave me that was for Thursday 2nd July, they eventually supplied me with a “charity” ticket that had clearly been some sort of freebie. But after being sent to every single entrance around the perimeter, I eventually got in (having to make a £10 charity donation in the process) but was rewarded with a guest wristband. And once I was in, I waited to make contact with anyone I might possibly know who was already there. And here’s the real nub of what I’m trying to say, I waited ON MY OWN, had a few drinks in the bar where nice waitresses will bring you more beer when you need it, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.  I ended up sharing a table WITH STRANGERS and even TALKED TO THOSE STRANGERS.  And what could have been better?  Not much from where I was sitting, & TALKING TO STRANGERS.  What I hadn’t factored in was my phones useless battery and the fact that thousands of people being so close, means minimal phone & data connections. But I managed to hook up with @Britt_W, her lovely daughter Mirjam and Mirjam’s boyfriend. And a good night was had by all. Blur rocked, played exactly the right songs, in pretty much exactly the right order and I even got a cab home. I’ll pass over the fact that he was a very miserable cabbie.

After all that excitement in one week, what I have I learned? Well, Blur are ace, I should go to more gigs, I can talk to all sorts of people about all sorts of things, I can say “yes I enjoyed it” in Ukranian. But more than anything, I learned to do stuff on my own. Not be on my own, not all the time anyway, but be prepared to go a little bit out on a limb and get outside of my comfort zone. It seems that doing that makes you feel a bit better about yourself.

ps, I’ve also bought tickets for The Specials in November. They’d better be bloody good.