We spent last weekend in London, staying with friends on the outskirts and then travelling in on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday morning we headed for the National Covid Memorial on the Albert Embankment, next to Westminster Bridge. Last December, shortly after he died a friend of Eliza's who is at university in London went down to the memorial and added his name inside one of the hearts painted on the wall. The memorial grew organically, started by the bereaved without official permission, with names added as the death toll mounted. It stretches from Westminster Bridge to Lambeth Bridge, half a mile long, thousands of names of ordinary people who died from Covid added with dates and messages by family members and friends.
I expected it to be very moving and it was- Isaac's name, part of this sea of hearts and names, each one an individual loss, and it had us in tears. In a part of London full of official and state memorials, statues of monarchs, generals and prime ministers, there's something very honest and democratic about hand painted hearts and marker pen remembrances. It was emotional. Thinking it still is.
From there we crossed back to the north side of the Thames using Lambeth Bridge, walked up Whitehall and got the tube up to Primrose Hill we we sat in the sunshine, had some food and enjoyed the view.
From Primrose Hill we walked to Camden via Regents Canal, had a couple of drinks in the sun and then headed to Soho where they happen to have four of the best record shops in the country within a few hundred yards of each other (Phonica, Sister Ray, Sounds Of The Universe and Reckless). I somehow managed to take us down Dean Street in Soho, home to the Sabres Of Paradise office in the 90s, where Andrew Weatherall and friends based their operations above a strip club and next door to a house once occupied by Karl Marx. The doorman at Sunset Strip said that the guerrilla Weatherall plaque gets more attention than the Karl Marx one these days. I think both Weatherall and Marx would have been amused by that. We had a couple more drinks in the evening sunshine outside the John Snow pub, Soho filling with Saturday night revellers, and then a tube and train back to our accommodation.
On the Sunday we trained and tubed it back into central London and walked from Baker Street to Hyde Park, stopped in at The V&A for an hour or two, missed out on the Natural History Museum due to the length of the queues, and then headed west, ambling up Portobello Road towards the Westway and then Ladbroke Grove. I was looking, at least in part, for The Clash's London I suppose.
There is nothing quite like walking round London, flitting from one part to another, finding something to see round every corner, road and place names that are familiar from TV and songs and part of the culture we all grow up with. In some ways, London is a different place to much of the rest of the country- in parts of central London it feels like being in a different country altogether. We had a good time, tiring too and with some emotional moments, but it was well worth escaping for weekend. This weekend, we have no plans at all- and that feels ok too.
This song is by The Times, the indie/ punk vehicle for the talented Ed Ball, released on an album of the same name in 1983 on Artpop! Records, a driving, low fi slice of early 80s Londonisms.
For balance and also from 1983 this is Get Out Of London by Intaferon, a single produced by Martin Rushent. Get Out Of London is one of those minor hit/ lost gems, powered by frantic acoustic guitars and a torrent of words, which only slows slightly for the refrain, 'I gotta g-g-ggg-g-g- get out of London', followed by the sound of a train passing, before the tumult kicks back in.
