Becoming Immune to Brussels

4 am hurts. A black, dizzying punch that still aches 30 minutes later yomping along the towpath. I am king of an empty world all the way to St. Pancras.

The only demarcation between the dark tunnels of London and the backside of pre-dawn Essex is the scattering of distant sodium fireflies. Thanks to the recent Chunnel fire we crawl below the sea. With its usual sense of appropriateness, iPod shuffle offers up 6 Underground.

The French morning on the other side deliver a dull, metallic grey sky. The landscape a muted palette of shabby brown fields and failing green. Rolling through Belgium, the incremental benefits of more light are offset by pollution poxed concrete and graffiti contagion.

Gare du Nord’s usual aroma of urine seems significantly restrained this morning. I manage to descend and catch the metro with a single gag reflex. By the time I reach Arts Loi/Kunst-Wet I have even adjusted to the carriage’s stereo mix of Flemish in one ear and French in the other. Maybe I am becoming immune to Brussels.

After eight hours of discussion on climate change, I begin the drift from Cathédrale Saints-Michel-et-Gudule back to Zuidstation. Achieving my temporary duration grail of a Belgian edition of Paris Match with 14 pages on Jaques Brel, I am in a state of grace. The cold rain coming down does not want to fall on me. The city’s population of pissant pickpockets disregard me as a mark. I am reacquainted with the fact that the Metro PA plays music by a serenade of snatched Bowie every time my train hits a stop. Sunny-faced children wave at me. For a few minutes I feel as if even Mafya bullets would miss me.

I shop for gifts that could also double as a suicidal diet, filling my bag with Leonidas chocolates, cheese, Ardennes butter, biscuits and beer. Nabbing a French graphic novel called Ghostmoney, I spend the wait for the 18:59 back to London trying to improve my French. ‘La marche s’était arrētée et un entrange silence était tombé … un cri a retenti de láutre cōté de la rue.'

Looking out at the unrelenting black beyond the window, the only sign of crossing the French border is the twitching as my Blackberry shifts from BASE to Orange F. The Eurozone becomes one flesh in the dark. Nationhood reduced to data virtuality, the microwave whispers of sovereignty.

We enter the Chunnel. The soundtrack of Blade Runner folds into me. With nothing to look at but my own reflection in the dark glass, I close my eyes.

Lost Entries

Between the fissure of intention and action, 208 entries of English Dreaming, English Rain can now officially be declared lost. Two Moleskines’ worth of words intended for remain unpublished. The sheer scale of missing dispatches makes me realise the vast difference between writing something and actually posting it.

Once externalised, some passages are too personal for publication. Others crumble under the urge to polish. Some stay in black on white scratching because there are times when I cannot forget the motto ‘know, will, dare and be silent’. Most often, they fail to make the jump because I leave too long between writing the review of an event in the little black book and typing it up. Whether Blade Runner live at the South Bank or pheasant curry at Rules, if they words are not posted within a couple of days, the failure of momentum makes me doubt their value.

Of all the lost entries, the ones I missed putting up most are ‘Changing the World One West Ham Fan at a Time’, ‘Pacific Highway’ and ‘Duke Vin and the Birth of Ska’. Maybe these tales of terrorist T-shirts, romance on the road to Port Macquarie and shaking hands with ska legends will have to emerge in some other form.

Dancing to Lou Reed at Below Zero Temperatures

As if getting copies of the latest version of my work to be published in South Korea had not delivered enough pleasant astonishment for one day, Surreal Girl announced I was to be given a ‘surprise’. Beyond being told it was a ‘treat’, being given a precise time (‘4:05pm’) and a maddeningly wide location (‘Piccadilly Circus’), no more information was forthcoming. This was typical of her modus operandi – enchantingly infuriating.

After struggling to buy two extra roasting tins in Little Lebanon as daylight faded, I was reduced to making secret signs with my magic fingers to conjure a black cab. The Powers of the city smiled on me and a carriage with the welcome orange light appeared within moments. After a seat sliding hurtle through the West End, the destination was reached with two minutes to spare.

The ‘surprise’ was vodka cocktails at the ice bar on Heddon Street. For the next 45 minutes I was bundled into a quilted cape and gloves so I could drink cinnamon infused Absolut in a minus five degree environment. Everything inside the bar – walls, benches, artwork, glasses – was made of ice. When I moved through the airlock into the cold, I felt as if I was entering Hannibal Chew’s workshop from Blade Runner. I half-expected the fur hat wearing bartender to say: “You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.”

As a theme bar, it should have been awful, but it was glorious. I could not help but smiling with childlike glee at speakers and lights recessed behind walls of frozen water, the lusciously vibrant colours of the cocktails and the sight of Surreal Girl dressed like a Siberian Yupik. I loved dancing to Lou Reed at below zero temperatures. My feet may have been frozen, but my cynicism was meltwater.

Afterwards we weaved through the extravagant streets of Mayfair. Shop windows too beautiful and expensive to look in, twinkling lights clustered into the shapes of giant angels. Our toes thawed out as we moved under the invading empire shadow of the Grosvenor Square fortress. Crossing Park Lane’s flowing river of headlights, we hit Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland.

It was hard to tell if the Ferris wheel centrepiece was meant to be lit like a snowflake of star, but that did not really matter. As it rotated, its blue LED light was a beacon for wonder. With a box of freshly cooked cinnamon pancakes and cups of Glühwein to keep our hands warm, we watched the ice skaters. Around us children ran amok with just purchased fluorescent lightsabres, high on too many caramelised nuts and too much pre-big day excitement. There was no snow, no carols, but at that moment, the romance of Christmas danced among the fairy lights and smiles.

Midwich Cuckoos to a Northern Soul Soundtrack

According to Elvis Costello and Wendy James, ‘London’s brilliant when it’s raining…' Yesterday, it was pissing down in London. After meeting up with Dickon, I found I had four hours to kill before the evening’s action. The usual round of the bookshops on the Charing Cross Road took up two, so I decided to seek shelter in the Odeon in Shaftsbury Avenue. I feared I’d have to endure something bordering on artsy pretension in exchange for protection from the weather given which cinema it was. At best, I was hoping for a good documentary. Instead I got Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence.

I can only describe Innocence to those who have not seen it, as Blade Runner done as an animated buddy-cop movie by Ridley Scott on a magic mushroom bender, re-edited by the studio to have a happy ending and more haiku-based exposition. Seeing it on the big screen, I emerged from the bowels of the building with the decompression that always follows a potent cinema experience.

After the wonderful guilty pleasure of seeing a movie in the afternoon, it was onto Treadwells for the London launch of Generation Hex. Fittingly given the title of the book, despite it being a London occult book launch, it was a younger, less snobby crowd and the usual malicious atmospheres were absent. I’d only come up to town for it because it was Stephen Grasso’s night. Despite the distant taint of my blagger and journalist past, it takes more than a few free glasses of red get me to go to a launch, especially if it has any link to the snide, lunatic political world of the London occult scene. Stephen is one of the few people I’d ever brave that cacophony of poisonous prattle for.

However, the launch was refreshingly devoid of cocktail jazz/atonal droning, careerism and pretension Christina Oakley Harrington gave a passionate speech about the book and managed to give the whole thing a celebratory, party attitude - something also helped by Stephen’s choice of a Northern Soul soundtrack.

Good conversations with strangers on Jack Parsons and Ogun, a rum, cigar and Bounty Bar interlude and the fact that other friends apart from Stephen were there, made it a night that despite what is happening in my life, I was almost able to enjoy. Especially as I think Christina said she was smitten with my book. I might have got that wrong. I did also enjoy the free wine.

More than one person could be heard echoing my view that Stephen is the best writer on magic to emerge in the last 20 years. He read his ‘Midwich Cuckoos’ piece that, like the rest of his work, is strong on emotional truth, inspirational clarity and a nice turn of phrase without recourse to poncy language. You can be of a non-mystical persuasion and still get the same pleasure out of his prose that you can from Alan Moore or Susanna Clarke lighting up with the page with their descriptions of the magical.

Hearing that everyone’s Season went so well, the positive reaction to Stephen’s work and the general celebratory ambience gave last night a sense of a New Year party. All dues paid. Clean slates. No auld lang syne, but nods at the Crossroads. The side effect of feeling that I’d been at a New Year party was the 3am heartbreak and loss was more intense and I’m trying to cope with today on an insomnia jag. Even so, London can be brilliant when it is raining.