My Captain Jack Moment

All Hallows Eve and I am atop City Hall. Below me the stygian black of the Thames is broken by the reflected blaze of the lights of Tower Bridge. The skin of the flowing serpent is host to rippling spills of phosphorous white and floating instants of sparkling green. Outside on the viewing deck, the wind plays with my tie while my jacket flaps with exaggerated drama. If I was wearing my leather trench coat instead of the suit, this would be my Captain Jack moment.

Thanks to the curve of Foster’s mutated giant sphere dream – the famous ‘glass testicle’ – I can look over the edge with the usual attack of height induced panic. From below I can hear the water lapping the shore, the snap of tarpaulin and creak of the moored rubbish barges. Gulls engage in Spitfire-like dogfights, vicious screeches as they turn and dive.

From St. Paul’s to the Gherkin, the city has never looked more pregnant with the potential of wonder. The emerald glow emanating from the top of Tower 42 makes it look like the headquarters of a superhero team. I half expect to see Green Lantern or Sentry fly from it, possibly to tackle the huge cranes involved in redeveloping Bethnal Green which appear at night to an alien invasion force of red-eyed monsters mechanical monsters. In the distance, sodium orange lights in Shooters Hill look like a line of fire cascading down towards Kent, threatening Bromley with a stream of lava. At this height at night, London is Fairyland.

Voodoo Child

Today is usually one of my favourite days in the capital’s calendar – Open House London. However, as I am on a deadline and alone in the city, the usual tour of usually restricted churches, towers and libraries is muted by both time and mood. Trying hard not to wear my grump head, I drift towards Oxford Street before finding my way into the obscurity of Brook Street.

Although I am ostensibly visiting the Handel House Museum, it is not George Frederick who brings me calling today. For while Handel lived at 25 Brook Street some 250 years ago, it was next door at number 23 that Jimi Hendrix and his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham lived between 1968-1970. In a rather fabulous piece of musical pantheism, the worshipers of Handel who now occupy both properties have created a shrine to the guitar god in the rooms of the upstairs flat he used.

Climbing the creaking staircases to the top of 23, I join a small party getting one of the only two public tours given each year. Whether it is coincidence this tour happens in the week marking the anniversary of Hendrix’s death or another nod to Handel mob’s generous pantheism is never made clear. It certainly seems as if some of the other tourists are beyond nostalgia and simple curiosity, deep initiates of some Hendrix boneyard cult on pilgrimage.

As for me, I am here researching for the Hendrix bio-pic script I am still working on. I know the story I want Voodoo Child to tell. How a man once expelled from school for holding hands with his white girlfriend, found the cultural hoodoo side of London in the sixties allowed him to make his syncretic mix of “earth” and “space” music. How the alchemic clash of person and time in the crucible of changed forever the way music is both played and heard. How the musician who best embodied the spirit of his age became lost to its demons.

The desire to tell this myth brings me to 23. Some mad sense that by rubbing against the rooms restored to their 1968 state my imagination will be ignited. Hunting temporal shades, trying to catch a glimpse of another time still echoing forward. Building psychometry.

It is only in the master bedroom the phyiscal traces build to obvious rock star plush. A crimson carpet that swallows your feet; the draped bed that seems a distant cousin of the Great Bed of Ware; Imperial purple curtains and rugs whose intricate designs would cause contemplation even if you were not as drug-addled as Hendrix. It is recreation of exactly the ridiculous boudoir bling expect of a man who could get away with wearing a Hussar’s jacket.

The Pyschic Boy powers kick in, possibly aided by the white woodchip walls (a touch of overpowering authenticity and one that hints Jimi’s Achilles’ heel may have home décor). While everyone else is looking at the unpublished photographs, I get an explosive flash. A room decorated more by empty bottles than Persian rugs, a pea-souper of dope smog, a wasted George Harrison crashing out. Nothing else till I am about to leave, when I get static-riddled burst of a naked Hendrix, drunk or high, fumbling as he tries open the front door.

Given that Hendrix’s wishes to be buried in England were ignored and his unfinished memorial in Seattle merely a testament to gross exploitation, the restrained way Handel House Museum handle his legacy is a model of how to honour a dead legend. They do not push souvenirs; they do not claim authenticity or offer holy relics. All that is provided is access to the space, some words and an opportunity to push your mind into the past.

Being at 23 Brook Street gives me scenes, but does not develop the narrative. I know now I will have to make the journey to Ladbroke Grove at some point. See if there is anything left in the ghost of the Samarkand Hotel other than the death choke instant burned into the forever. Beyond temporal shades, if anything at the flat brings me closer to Hendrix, it is looking out the window to the city below. London’s magic is something we both have felt.

Jude Law

London is one of those cities where you can walk a few yards and flow across a divide of money, security and class so deep it would take generations or several violent revolutions to cross any other way. By bon chance, I am an oik who for the next few months at least, is sharing space and views with Russian oligarchs. Yet within seconds I can exchange tranquillity and beauty for a carpet of crushed glass and a soundtrack of K’nann.

Nothing illustrates this better for me than my choice of where to get the papers from on a Sunday morning. With several newsagents equidistant from where I live, I can choose to walk through a council estate or flit up Victorian mews. On one journey I may meet a former child soldier from Somalia, the other Sienna Miller giving an exaggerated performance of being trying to be unobtrusive while waiting on her driver.

My own unwanted brushes with recognition, ennui at the whole notion of celebrity and a very English sense that it is rude to bother someone you do not know while there are about their own business means I would never dream of stopping any of my recognisable neighbours. Even the huge Who geek in me has not been enough to make me ask Billy Piper for an autograph when I have twice bumped into her as she took a Sunday canalside walk. Twist will rage at me for ‘wasted opportunities’ when he reads this, but I would hate to be bothered on my patch. Therefore I use that as my guiding principle when seeing the likes of Louis Theroux or Milos Forman by the water. Their fame and my admiration for their work does not give me a right to talk at them uninvited.

Today I saw Jude Law. Beyond the second or two of starring as I tried to work out where I knew his face from, I ignored him. Feeding the ducks is much more absorbing than watching an actor walking with his child. I paid only paid attention in the first place because seeing a man clearly enjoying the company of his son always gives me a moment glowing joy. It is one of those sights which make the world seem like a good place before regret over not being able to remember my father being like that with me intrudes.

A few hours later I heard that Law had been arrested that afternoon for an attack on a photographer. Allegedly he tried to grab the paparazzi’s camera, shouting only a paedophile would want to take pictures of his children. Whatever happened, it was enough for Law to be arrested on suspicion of actual bodily harm and bailed to return to the police station in October. Bizarrely, despite my years as a journalist, I feel immense empathy for Law. Yes you do give up some of your expectations of privacy when your work makes you a recognized face, but you never give up your right as a parent to defend your children.

Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner

It is official. I am a Londoner. For the first time in 18 years, I qualify as a permanent resident of Albion’s capital. I am no longer just spending the majority of my time here; no longer a constant tourist, a visitor who does not know when to leave.

According to all the bureaucrat paperwork I now live full-time in London. It is great. I even qualify for a resident’s card bestowing legitimate library user status and discounts at everywhere from the zoo to the puppet theatre.

Crawling upstream, moving from the hazy estuary border of salt and fresh to my new canalside mooring, I am another alien who has found a home in the hoodoo mix. The polarities have been reversed. When the train passes under the M25 on Tuesday, it will have stopped representing the point where London’s gravitational power splutters out and Essex reasserts itself. It has now become the barrier between future and past. The edge of my city home and the new away of an estuarial satellite destination.

To mark this special day, I have been given gifts. Black glass goblets, green metal kangaroos and cooking bibles. Over curry and champagne, watching a feature film about a boy from Southend who makes mistakes, but is smart enough to learn from them, everything changes.

So, join me in softly singing:

‘I get a funny feeling inside of me
When walking up and down
Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner
That I love London Town’

Back in Hoodoo City

After almost a month away, I am back in London. This is a grand and glorious thing.

London’s complexity, its tidal flux of people in constant motion, its density of both historical and constantly fresh information… Moorcock was right: ‘London is still the best and worst place for a poet or a novelist to live.’

One of the reasons for this is that there are two Londons. The one you see easy and the one beyond. This latter London lies under the skin of the other. It is hidden, secret and wrapped in shadow. The fire of mythological energy runs through its circuits. With every street, you get the chance to walk between worlds.

Being back in hoodoo city, I have the best of both those worlds. I can turn the key and snuggle in the comfort of my home or go outside and be part of the endless unrest. Stay in this room and create novel worlds with my words or walk the city, let it draw new maps in my imagination. London can burn my eyes with fresh information, make me see in a changed light or I can reach out and dislodge its ghosts from their brick and stone haunts.

Whatever else it may be, there is no denying London is a zone of increased potential and right now, right here is where I belong.