A Day in London - Flashbacks.

A bar off Regent Street.  Rich kids in clothes that don't come from department stores;  the casual clunk of Mulberry bags, the click of Sophy Lazlo heels, the over-priced economy of Dolce and Gabbana.  Gyozo Dumpling soup.  A blueberry, free-radical infusion. A man eating sandwiches with one black leather glove.  The Nash church is locked against student protest.  A Bond Street jeweller sells diamonds bigger than the Ritz to Saudi princes and unshaven oligarchs.

Newspaper headlines signal the inevitability of Greek bankruptcy - a financial storm gathering over Davos.  The red lines in the street outside the door. No Stopping.   Someone selling consultancy at the next table. "Third party participancy."   People on the pavement walking, walking, clutching their mobiles, bags, mineral water.  A car with smoked glass windows, single numbers on the plate.

The doorman with a blue-tooth earpiece who wishes us a pleasant day.  Standing in front of a Picasso with six noughts after the price.  Underground, a crowded metal bullet hurtling through darkness.  Another bar.  Beyonce on the speaker system, Amy Winehouse - scorched throat music.  Another tea, another wine.  Spaghetti bolognese.

A spat of rain.  The flowering of umbrellas.

This is my day.

(Extracts from  my journal. Now on my way back to Italy)

A Floating Vote

One moment you’re up to your ankles in compost and the next you’re staring out at the river Thames and London Bridge from the Glaziers’ Hall where the Worshipful Company of Glaziers usually hang out. The building is relatively new since the original was burned down in the Great Fire of London, but the Company was established around 1328 and has its historic charters displayed on the walls - beautiful calligraphy with wax seals the size of dinner plates. There’s a great sense of history here. The tower of London is visible (just) from the bridge if you know where to look, almost swamped by high rise buildings housing financial institutions.
The occasion is the 90th birthday party of one of Britain’s leading Communist party members - Tony Farsky, a contributor to the Morning Star, and a leading peace campaigner, still active in his 10th decade, campaigning for better education, and social equality. He is currently chair of the Southwark Pensioners Committee, lobbying vigorously for pensioners rights and an end to ageism.
Tony is also a great lover of Jazz and his sponsorship has helped a lot of small promoters. The birthday bash had a fantastic line-up of British Jazz musicians, including the great Don Weller, Alan Barnes and David Newton. Several of Tony’s contemporaries put us all to shame jiving and Lindy-hopping - I hope I can do the same if I ever become a nonogenarian.
Among the guests were people from the Jazz world, various peace movements, C.N.D., the communist party, and other political groups. Lib Dem Simon Hughes, fresh from News Night, was one of those who made a speech and caught my attention when he began to talk about the all party committee he chairs on ‘Conflict Issues’. This parliamentary group seeks to reverse political thinking - by focussing on identifying areas of conflict and trying to defuse situations by non combative means.
Having sworn not to vote Labour again after Tony Blair dragged us into the Iraq War, I’ve been very cynical about the state of politics in Britain. But the closer the Big Three get to each other in the polls, the more interesting it becomes. After listening to Simon Hughes, I’m seriously considering voting Liberal Democrat. I liked it when he asked ‘Why are we selling arms to countries who can’t afford to feed their own people?’ I’m aching for a blast of common sense in politics - straight talking, real convictions rather than politic-speak.
I was very impressed by Nick Clegg’s intelligent stand on the Trident missile system during the leaders’ debate. Civilised countries such as Sweden and Denmark don’t feel the need for a nuclear submarine, yet they seem perfectly safe in the world. In Europe, France has enough nuclear weapons - and submarines - for all of us! The billions that Trident will cost would buy an awful lot of much needed health care and education. We are no longer a super-power - we are part of Europe whether we like it or not - a small country, whose national debt is frightening. Do the government seriously, honestly, believe we can go on competing with the USA, Russia and China?
We’ve interfered in the world too much and for all the wrong reasons. Not humanitarian (we stood back and watched the slaughter in Rwanda) but economic reasons. If you’ve got oil or valuable commodities, we’ll send the troops, if not, sorry mate, there’s nothing we can do.
I can’t describe myself as a pacifist because there are things I would probably fight for if there was no other way, but I am a peace lover and a socialist believing passionately that everyone is born equal and has the right to live and bring up their children in peace with a roof over their heads and enough food to keep them from starvation and someone to pick up the pieces when things go wrong.
I won’t be voting Communist, Labour or Conservative next week, but I just might think about voting Lib Dem.

Romano Cagnoni at Blacks Club, London

I’ve rarely been to a Gentleman’s Club, being the wrong gender for membership. Blacks has its own particular atmosphere - undulating wooden floors covered by woven Persian rugs, kilim covered sofas and cushions, foxed antique mirrors, dim lighting, small rooms you can squeeze half a dozen people into, gin and tonic drunk out of porcelain cups, poured from a Prohibition coffee pot. The entrance to the Private View was through the basement bar, crammed with men, drinking in a frankly pub ambience. A strange place for a feminist.

The reason for my visit is that one of Italy’s best photographers (we’re talking Italy’s equivalent of Cartier Bresson and Robert Capa here) is exhibiting at Blacks. Romano Cagnoni is one of that generation of photographers who covered the social revolutions of the sixties, the Vietnam war, Biafra and, more recently, the conflict in Croatia. He is one of those whose iconic images were seen by millions on the covers of Time, Life, Vogue, and Paris Match, without any of us knowing who exactly had clicked the shutter.

Two collections of black and white photographs are on the wall - images of London and Italy. There is a very young Mary Quant measuring a hem, a policeman arresting a barefoot girl wrapped in a sheet in Hyde Park, side by side with images of sheep in the ruins of a Tuscan hill village, and old women on church steps in Romano’s native Pietrasanta. One of his most striking images is the one above, of the Chelsea twins with their matching hats and frilly dresses.

By coincidence, I’ve just been reading Roland Barthes ‘Camera Lucida’, and that has made me think very hard about photographic images and how we read them. Barthes poses a number of philosophical questions about photographs - do they actually exist? Apparently not - without a subject there is no photograph, only a blank sheet of emulsion. So, of themselves, they don’t exist. And then there is what he calls the ‘punctum’ - a detail or section of the image not deliberately intended by the photographer (so not engineered), and probably different for everyone. It is the part of the image that makes the photograph sing for each of us individually.
For me, it was the black sole of the girl’s bare foot as she stood in a ballet pose, wrapped in a white sheet like a blonde angel on the tail gate of the Black Maria in Hyde Park. Or perhaps it was the no 19 bus passing by and caught in the upper segment of the photograph like a surreal score card.
But, having so recently come back from Asia, my favourite photograph has to be this one, which catches the precarious beauty of the region so perfectly.

Anyone interested in knowing more about Romano's work or viewing the exhibition should contact Sandra Higgins - sandra@sandrahiggins.com

Pub Jazz in London

One of the delights of staying in London is the variety of entertainment, including pub jazz. I love modern jazz, the kind where musicians have to improvise live in front of an audience, taking spine-chilling risks that sometimes result in sublime music. The thought of doing that kind of improvisation as a writer in front of an audience fills me with horror! Yet jazz musicians do it at every gig. We’re lucky enough in Britain to have some of the very best musicians in the world. The sad thing is that they’re not always very popular over here and often more famous in America, or in Europe than in their native country.
We went down to the local pub here in west London - entrance free - and found ourselves listening to four of the best around. The luscious Andy Cleyndert on bass - last seen on Jonathon Ross backing Barbara Streisand - the ebullient saxophonist Alan Barnes, who can also be heard on Radio 4's jazz programmes - and trumpeter Bruce Adams, who won Opportunity Knocks at the age of 14 and can play two trumpets at the same time. The pianist was John Chritchinson who played with the legendary Ronnie Scott until the latter died a few years ago. Quite a line-up. It’s the kind of music you can get high on - complicated, risky - you’re listening to people pushing their talents right to the edge, and what you’re hearing is completely original.
Sadly, there was hardly anyone in the audience under fifty. What will happen to the music when we’re all too old to get to the pub?

Below is a link to one of Britain’s most under-rated musicians - the great Don Weller.

London as a Foreign City

London is strange. Living either in the north of England or in Italy I don’t come here often and when I do it’s like arriving in a foreign city. Getting off the Gatwick Express at Victoria to be met by a wall of people and literally having to fight your way through the crowds waiting for trains routinely delayed or cancelled is overwhelming; queuing six deep just to get down the steps into the tube station, then letting tube trains go because you can’t squeeze yourself or your luggage through the door is frightening. I find myself thinking “What would happen if something went wrong?” So many bodies packed together, there’s no room for panic. But when I fall over on the escalator struggling to control two suitcases, a young Chinese man picks me up with great kindness and I’m not trampled underfoot.
It’s the contrasts I notice most in London. On the Piccadilly line there’s a homeless guy who rides the line with his belongings in bin liners. He’s usually drunk, asleep on the seats. He smells like a fusion of the Rat and Parrot after a bad night, and the gents at Paddington. Everyone leaves him alone, stepping gingerly over the pool of amber liquid gradually seeping out across the floor.
Then you get off the tube and within minutes you’re in one of the Cathedrals of Capitalism. If you judge a shopping mall by the flower arrangements in the ladies loo, then this one is definitely five star.

I window-shopped in Prada and looked at a beautiful leather bag that would have been perfect for lap-top, books, junk. The price tag was £1,125.00. Neil has never paid as much as that for a car! There’s enough stock just on the front shelf to fund the Piccadilly Man for a year, and it’s hard not to think about the morality of that, even as I’m drooling over the Perfect Bag and fantasising about winning the Lottery.

But even though the human politics disturb me there’s a definite buzz here. I sit in cafes and watch people. I love being anonymous. I feel I’m eavesdropping on other people’s lives - part of a live reality TV show scrolling past the window. My favourite cafe has books stacked between the tables and comfy chairs you can read - or even write - in.