[ 23:45 monday 11 july – shipton street, london ]

on saturday night jan got wind of a big open-air party at a location that would be announced on a secret number. this seemed splendidly nostalgic, like a proper old rave from 1989. however when it was revealed around midnight that the venue was actually a field in the middle of norfolk the distance seemed a little forbidding. hence jan and i found ourselves pedaling over london bridge, with vatche racing ahead on his ancient lambretta, towards kosmiche club’s ninth birthday party. this was being held in two of the railway arches under elephant and castle station, promising a line-up of bizarre krautrock bands and misfit djs. earlier in the evening i’d taken the precaution of sending our names down for the door list so we were hopeful we’d be allowed in.

we arrived to be told that faust was about to start their set. gosh! faust as in the german experimental rock band from the early seventies? we zig-zagged through a scattering of odd-looking dancers making angular movements in the first room, cut left around the back and squeezed our way into a room crushed full of wide-eyed people.

it was several degrees hotter in this room and drippingly humid. at the front was a small stage piled haphazardly with exotic instruments. and sure enough in the midst of the instruments were three members of faust, back together thirty years after the band split up. initially my excitement was tempered with a certain doubtfulness. once-radical groups going back on the road decades after the peak of their fame can be a less than edifying spectacle. but as soon as they started playing, or rather speaking, my scepticism was dispelled. this was not at all like the effects-drenched electronic droning of their former incarnation. in its place was a dry, unaffected, acoustic-driven sound-world based on percussion, soprano saxophone, flute, guitar and a variety of more exotic plucked instruments. but really the driving force was the words; issuing in a cannonade from jean-herve peron; sometimes sung, often declaimed, with a great deal of looping and repetition.

he is a strikingly charismatic musician who treats performance as a way of playing with the audience. he makes us complicit, sets us racing to follow him. we know he is telling us something, offering clues, teasing us. but we aren’t sure what we’re meant to do. he waits. repeats a phrase a few more times. sits on the front of the stage and holds the microphone out to his right. his eyes twinkle above his bushy beard. he repeats the phrase again. ah! someone at the front realises that peron is inviting us to come up to the microphone and say the phrase ourselves. with trepidation they go forward and lean towards the microphone. are they right? maybe. yes! then another person understands and goes up, and another. in a later song most of us end up taking off our shoes and clapping them above our heads.

possibly i’m making the performance sound like a sort of irritating novelty act which it truly wasn’t. there was an energy, an inventiveness, a delight and joy in the act of making music, that completely swept me up, along with the rest of the audience. peron and his associates possess a rare kind of greatness that has no interest in taking itself seriously.

at the end of the set peron explained that there wasn’t time for them to get all the instruments back to the green room ready for the next band, so we would have to help. i ended up carrying his zither. much later, when it was time for me to cycle home, he was standing by the exit and i spoke to him briefly. he invited me to go and visit him, “it’s a large house” he said.

[ 16:30 thursday 7 july – old aske’s hospital, shoreditch, london ]

i’m just back from biking down to ludgate hill, right in front of st paul’s cathedral, to drop off some papers with our accountants. the streets are filled with people on foot, pouring out of offices  and streaming southward, presumably towards the mainline stations at london bridge and waterloo. many are dragging suitcases behind them. the streets are almost devoid of vehicles. one can hear the patter of footsteps and a murmur of conversation, usually drowned by internal combustion engines. the eeriest thing is the absence of red double-decker buses.

modern urban horrors such as todays generally achieve their most pervasive impact through their affect on infrastructures (electricity, water, gas, cash machines, transport). yet as a cyclist i’m almost completely unaffected by today’s collapse of all public transport within and into london. i came into the office as usual, dropped off my papers and will return home when i’m finished. there is a gulf between my experience of the day’s reality and that of the many for whom routine and normality have been turned upside down.

the number of casualties is yet unknown so the usual bidding war proceeds in the media. 2 dead. 20 dead. 33 dead. each outlet waits gleefully to pounce on a higher number so that they may wring their hands the harder and wail the louder, so that their voices may be more clearly heard in this ever-competitive marketplace.

a flurry of sms and email through the day has probed and confirmed the wellbeing of friends. i pray that nobody i know is hurt.

: c :

[ 23:57 tuesday – shipton street ]

the final minutes of the solstice. i sat on the roof watching the moon materialise, huge and yellow, from liquid wisps of cloud. in london the past few days have been sweltering. there is a feeling of being somewhere else, a thrilling sense of danger and possibility on the midnight streets.

one month and a half ago i was on stromboli. the words i wrote have remained unsent. perhaps i was shaken by the strength of my feelings to be there.

[ 16:00 friday 6 may – piscita, isola di stromboli ]

these are beautiful days stolen from the prevailing madness. i arrived here last sunday and tomorrow i depart. almost a year has passed since my previous time on stromboli. for the first four days the island was enveloped in a magical stillness. scarcely a ripple on the purple water. the air saturated with the sun’s silent bombardment. the ground exploding with foliage and blossoms, raised high up the volcano by the winter’s exceptional rains.

i have spent many hours alone, motionless against the black rock or slicing through the soft water. not thinking. just sensing, absorbing, knowing. the rest of my time i have been with my friends.

immediately on arrival i was enmeshed as if i had never been away. it was a homecoming, a feeling that a place in the fabric of the community had been kept open for me. during the months in london perhaps i forgot how much i love these people and how vividly alive i feel when i am amongst them. my friends in london are no less dear to me but the complex inter-connection of a community is absent and i am diminished by its absence.

today the weather changed.  the wind rose and swung to the north-west sending windows and doors banging. thunder menaced from the horizon. fat drops of rain introduced a deluge. the sea rose and started throwing grey waves at the shore. the island shows a different mood as i return to london. what does it mean for me?

[ 01:33 friday 11 march – shipton street, london ]

the house of commons has just commenced debate on the government’s inventive new prevention of terrorism bill. hazel blears, the sharp and lawyerly home office minister leading for the government, is currently explaining why the government is rejecting (for the third time) the amendments which the house of lords persists in making. live feeds from both houses are open on my screen, as they have been for the past few days.

for those unfamiliar with the bill, it proposes that the home secretary should be able to issue “control orders” imposing a range of restrictions on british citizens. these include bans on using telephones and the internet, bans on meeting or corresponding with other people, bans on continuing particular kinds of work and (last but not least) house arrest.

the government’s creative genius reaches its dizzy apogee in the suggestion that these restrictions should be imposed upon people who have committed no crime and against whom no court has passed judgment. those subject to restrictions would have no right to be informed of the accusations made against them. restrictions would be maintained for as long as the home secretary deemed necessary.

the house of lords, that intolerable and undemocratic relic, has once again been proving itself the final guardian of basic liberties. stalwartly and in the face of great pressure the noble lords have repeatedly refused to pass the bill. gently and ponderously they introduce amendments to blunt its most egregious charms. specifically they demand that the burden of proof required to impose restrictions should be raised from “reasonable suspicion” to “the balance of probability” and the entire legislation should self-destruct after nine months. the government is determined to accept neither amendment.

02:21 – “clear the lobbies” cries the speaker. the honourable members file out of the chamber to vote.

02:29 – “lock the doors” cries the speaker. the names of members in each lobby are ticked off on giant sheets of paper.

the government will prevail and the lords’ amendments will be struck down. the size of the government’s majority and the force of whip applied on this bill make it inevitable. the bill will then return once more to the lords. this ping pong will continue through tomorrow unless one side buckles.

“the ayes to the right 298, the noes to the left 216”. the government wins by a majority of 82.

it emerges that mr blair, the prime minister, has been present in the house of commons throughout the debate and indeed voted in the division. yet he has not seen fit to enter the chamber or participate in the debate. the speaker apologises that he has no power to summon the prime minister to the chamber.

the majorities in the lords for each amendment have so far been solid, but i feel uncertain if their resolve will hold. one way or the other it will be resolved by tea time.

i remember the night in november 2001, sitting in my house in stromboli with the wood-burner rustling and crackling, as the previous prevention of terrorism bill was lurching through the same process. then as now the erudite words of parliamentarians reached me via rectangles on my screen. how distant it seemed then, how close it feels now.

: c*

[ 13:30 saturday 12 july – liverpool street station, london ]

the train hums angrily and creeps along the platform. a pre-recorded voice announces excitedly, in various languages, that we’re off to stansted airport. after 11 days in london i’m going back to stromboli for three days to pack up all my equipment and entrust it to poste italiane’s european delivery service. hopefully at least some of it will find its way to london (possibly even in working order). it can’t be any worse than parcelforce, surely?

being back in london is strange. the unremitting grey skies hovering over the city for the first few days felt like they were pressing me in into the ground but i started feeling more cheerful when the sun came out. the things i miss most are the freedom to swim in the sea on impulse and bumping into friends whenever i set foot outside the door. i hate having to think about locking doors again. my first visit to a supermarket was a predictably grim experience. but lots of positive things are happening with trampoline and this keeps me from getting too gloomy. this is why i came back, after all.

warren and ann were in london when i arrived, fresh from their journey through italy (to my delight they even paid a flying visit to stromboli). they’re back in san francisco now but have kindly let me stay in their house in greenwich for a few weeks, so i have a breathing space before i have to get to grips with house hunting. on july the fifth they held a “fourth of july” party. visitors were greeted with a rainbow-striped italian “pace” flag alongside an american stars and stripes, which i thought was an intriguing conjunction.

: c*

[ 18:40 wednesday 25 july – palissy street, shoreditch, london ]

exactly three weeks ago i travelled down to oxford with landon and bought a new cannondale hybrid bike to replace the gary fisher which was nicked from the stairs here. lightweight aluminium frame, beautiful gearing and brake mechanisms. lovely thing.

for three weeks i’ve felt free again, zipping from one side of the city to the other, ducking in and out of the usually-static traffic.

at four o’clock this afternoon i had a doctor’s appointment. i chained the bike to a lamp-post with the massive articulated lock i bought. perhaps thirty seconds before i emerged from the building at twenty-five past four, three asian youths built up a stack of crates, unbolted a sign from the lamp-post and lifted my bicyle clean over the top. at least four witnesses stood and watched them doing this, making no intervention whatever.

i ran through the warren of council estates in the direction in which they’d made off, hoping to catch them. later on dave boswell took me cruising round on his motorbike.

but they are gone, as is my bike. i hardly had time to become attached to it.

i cannot help thinking of my year in the isles of scilly, a year during which i never once had cause to touch a lock or a key. it’s time to leave.

: cH

[ 02:15 thursday 21 june – palissy street, shoreditch, london ]

i’m just back from the 333 bar where i spent a couple of hours in enjoyable gyratory motion. this place has more or less become my local. the reason remains a mystery though. the decor is hideous, getting a drink typically involves a ten minute wait and the management prefers to hire djs whose record collections have been harvested exclusively from provincial car-boot sales.

but compared to the uber-self-consciousness of most venues in the area the convincing mediocrity of the 333 is rather comforting. and in consequence it seems to attract a less dreadful crowd. tonight, though, something went awry and the music was actually rather good. initially i assumed it was just a momentary lapse and the usual horrors would resume shortly, but after a few songs i was forced to conclude that a decent dj had slipped through the aesthetic cordon.

the dregs of shoreditch (a category in which i happily count myself) was out in force, parading its arsenal of crazy hair and crazy moves. my tonsure is not at all up to scratch. but to put this in perspective the marx brothers would look low-key round here.

with delight and amazement i espied mr steve emery amidst the throng. we were fellow passengers on a flight from london to sydney in december 1998. it was quite an adventure. bits kept falling off the aircraft and as a result we enjoyed impromptu sojourns in bahrain and singapore. i met steve a couple of times in london after we returned but until tonight i hadn’t seen him for a couple of years. it was a most warm reunion.

earlier in the evening i was working on the sse glasgow film and scanning slides from ghana (i’m up to film 7 of 21). there are a few images in there with which i’m really excited. friends keep telling me i must do something with them and maybe the time’s come when i should try to sort something out. but i’m still not sure what. my friend mr james madelin, in a brief period of unemployment, organised an exhibition of his photographs which i thought very enterprising and admirable.

this afternoon i had my first computer tutorial with michael. i got him one of the new apple ibooks, which i think will suit him well. judging by today’s experience this is going to be far less of a struggle than i anticipated. after a couple of hours he was able to work his way round the operating system. i’d say he picked up the basic concepts a little faster than most children i’ve taught, which must be considered impressive for a man of 85.

shyly he disclosed his objective of visiting tesco’s site and signing up for their online grocery delivery service, which struck me as a charmingly quotidian goal for him of all people. we did not get online today but our next session is booked for friday and i daresay he shall have his groceries.

my earlier outpourings about voting provoked quite a response, mostly critical. i’m grateful to everyone who took the trouble to write and i’m reconsidering some of my more jaundiced attitudes. i thought about publishing a selection of the responses via this list but it struck me that there was probably a better way. maybe i should set up an “open-wanderer” email group where people can post such responses? many of those who read this are able writers with strong minds and diverse opinions. i dunno.

the weekend before last my beloved bicycle was stolen. it was a lovely blue gary fisher hybrid, purchased for me by mr adam allen-foord, my brotherinlaw, back in 1997. it served me faithfully in london and in the isles of scilly. it was chained to the bannisters of the staircase on which i live. i had already taken off all removable parts. but someone sawed through the chain and removed the rest of it. it is just an object but i was quite attached to it and i miss it. oh well, i hope it serves its new owner as well as it served me.

last wednesday the esmee fairbairn charitable trust decided whether they would give sse and circus foundation the funds to undertake our learning web project, which is what i came back to london for. but they haven’t told us yet. it’s a bit nerve-wracking.

: cH

[ 17:59 thursday 7 june – coffee@brick lane, shoreditch, london ]

democracy is being celebrated today, rather as mass is celebrated each sunday by christians. throughout these isles people solemnly attend public buildings, queue at a booth and write an x in one of several squares on a piece of card (using a soft pencil whose colour has carefully been selected). then the card is folded and posted through a slit into a black metal box secured with a great big lock.

this is the third general election in which i have been entitled to vote and the first in which i have chosen not to. perhaps this will also be the last uk general election in which i am free to make such a choice without thereby electing myself a criminal. we shall see.

it would be easy to deplore my choice and point to all the peoples in the world who are fighting for democracy. it must seem ungrateful that we who have achieved it should scorn its exercise. i do sympathise.

last december in ghana i witnessed a poignant moment in the emergence of a democratic society. after 26 years of rule, flight lieutenant jerry john rawlings decided to step down from the presidency.

ghanaians had heard this before. a couple of decades earlier he’d called elections and handed over to a civilian administration only to take power a year later with another coup. people couldn’t quite believe this time would be any different. in the weeks before the election people were growing noticably tense. rumours of army movements began to bubble around. it was an uncertain time.

on election day i was travelling in the remains of a van from the akasombo dam in the east of the country to takoradi in the south-west, where i spent my first night by the ghanaian atlantic. in every village i passed there was a crowd around the polling booth. i stopped for a couple of hours in the capital accra to sample the mood. the air force was making its presence felt and officials were a little more edgy than usual. but the election seemed to be proceeding smoothly.

as the results came in through the following days i was amongst the fishermen of dixcove and jamestown. people hovered anxiously in groups around the few battery-powered radios they possessed following the announcements and calculating the implications. at first it looked as if the opposition was going to wipe out rawlings’ party. a sheepish euphoria began to rise, rather like children who have done something very naughty but are close to getting away with it. then a trickle of contrary results began and the mood changed.

it looked shaky for a day or two but finally it was clear that rawlings’ party and his chosen presidential candidate had been rejected. power had been transferred from one group of people to another by the choice of a large portion of the population. there had been violence and intimidation and fraud but it had been limited. fewer than a hundred people had died.

unmistakably it was democracy. everywhere i went you could see that people were feeling a new pride in their country. ghanaians knew the world had been looking at them, desperate to see some cause for hope in africa. ghana had just done something good.

meanwhile the most powerful society on earth was playing out the most farcical election in its history.

which sort of brings me back to where i was. out in ghana there was a tremendous sense of urgency about voting. back here in britain somehow it just doesn’t feel so important that i go and write an x in a little square.

–

the proportion of a society which chooses to vote in an election is an indication of the effectiveness of its system of government. it’s a kind of meta-vote, more fundamental than the support expressed for any specific individual or group. i think we should regard the falling levels of participation in elections throughout the ‘developed’ world as a sign of growing democratic maturity and progress. these societies have outgrown their current crude systems and are in the process of evolving to something more sophisticated. but this is not quite how politicians view low turn-out. indeed it is notable that the main pressure to keep participating in the old ritual comes from politicians which has to makes you wonder.

our system differs from feudal monarchies mainly in the provision of a mechanism for people to remove the ruling cadre from time to time. this is a great improvement but it mustn’t blind us to how little else has changed. we still operate a system where a small group of people has a monopoly of authority over a large group of people. the fact that this large group of people is accorded the opportunity to put an x in a square every five years or so does seem a trifle disappointing as the extent of our advancement.

people argue that pre-democratic systems were operated for the benefit of the ruling cadre, whereas modern democracies are operated for the benefit of the whole society. but i suspect this analysis is a little rose-tinted. modern governments are certainly obliged to put more effort into maintaining the appearance of serving wide interests than did their forbears, but i doubt there has been a clear-cut transformation. humans nature hasn’t changed a lot.

it is also notable that just as the franchise was being extended more widely throughout our societies, real power was starting to seep away from governments to industrialists and financiers. what’s left may be little more than a charade, a habit continued for the reassurance it gives us.

of course there is debate about electoral reform. but it restricts itself to changing which small group will take control as a result of your x in the square.

i have not yet encountered a human community which does not to some extent concentrate decision-making authority. hence i find notions of direct participatory democracy, in which everyone is involved in every decision, utopian.

but it is simply not acceptable to bat away criticism of the status quo with this argument. a million other possibilities exist if only we have the courage and imagination to consider them. if we were not so fetishistically attached to our current systems we might not be so blind to alternatives.

i suppose i could have gone and put my x outside any of the squares, or written a short poem or a limerick on the card instead. but whilst the freedom exists to do nothing at all i think it is a purer expression of my democratic opinion.

[ 00:44 friday 7 june – palissy street, shoreditch, london ]

election results and reportage stream in as i write. my desktop is alive with gleeful proclamations of conservative annihilation. in the bbc’s video feed the sombre commentary is punctuated by computer-animated caberets. this is our grand quad/quintannual supplication to the god democracy. the public demands a triumph and a sacrifice.

let us observe what our revolutions and struggles have won for us. this is a game show.

: cH