Protesting the Pope - Strawberry Hill

One of the Policemen opened a gap in the barrier and joined the side of the Angels

Protesting Angels

The angels didn't speak much but they had a minder who was chatting with some cross-waving Irish ladies, patiently waiting to see their spiritual leader. "No, we aren't here to perform", he explained, smiling, "Actually we're from Gaydar, - we're here to protest"

"Gaydar?", they hadn't heard of it, "so you mean.... you are all gay?"

"Yes, exactly"

"Well, now I don't have anything against gay people, but really I don't think they should flaunt it"

There was a pause, and I asked the woman if she thought perhaps Pope was flaunting, at all, in his popemobile and white outfit, parading all around London, and she looked at me, astonished

"The Pope's not gay!"

Meanwhile the policeman was having a better time with the whole rapport and communication thing. Establishing that the angels were local he imagined that maybe they were part of the Richmond LBGT network? They were. "Oh, well  you'll know one of the PCSOs at our nick then, he's quite involved there", and gave a name. They knew him.

Times have changed.

Considering it is a State visit that cost £20m to police it was a pretty small affair. Around 100 policemen watched 75 demonstrators and perhaps 300 supporters who lined the narrow pavements together and mixed good naturedly.

Journalists patrolled up and down talking to protesters. Most of them chose to interview Nina, a photogenic and articulate young woman carrying an umbrella decorated with colourful condoms. She spoke eloquently about a woman's right to control her own fertility, and protect her own health. The mingling policeman asked her for her surname, which she declined to give.  No one interviewed the catholics. 

The sun shone and we waited; after a while a postman cycled up the road to wild cheers from the school children lining the side. Behind the protesters stood Peter Tatchell, thin and old looking now, in a sober suit  "Look, it's that bloke from Channel 4", said a young protester.

The policemen shifted their weight, walked up and down, and explained that no, they didn't know when the Pope was due to arrive. The crowd basked in the sunshine. One top of St Mary's University, some armed police were visible with binoculars. A helicopter hovered.

And then the Pope arrived: invisible in a Jaguar behind dark glass windows, preceded by outriders and security his car came from the opposite direction from expected and dived directly behind the gates, not even passing the bulk of his school-age supporters, who were expecting him from the other direction. Blink and you'd have missed him.

The demonstrators built up a half-hearted chant of 'resign, resign' the catholics waved flags and whooped, and then it was all over; the crowd dispersed, I went for a bacon sandwich at the cafe and chatted with an earnest priest. 

Tomorrow: the march

Do your recognise this man?
In the wake of the G20 all the police officers present were clearly identifiable: with their warrant numbers on their shoulders and and in many casesalso their names on their chests.  Except this one.
The red shoulder tags signify an Inspector.

Last Sunday Morning

Crossing the footbridge over Teddington Lock two Sundays ago something was odd - some sort of a flurry on the narrow walkway ahead. I could see three figures : a man looking down at the river, and next to him two women waving and yelling. Beyond them an overturned cycle. On the opposite bank, a siren sounded.

We dismounted to push our own bikes and a man came running off the bridge; on his way past he caught his arm nastily on my handlebar, but he didn't stop

Pic - Maxwell Hamilton

But the yellowy-green early morning light, the warm sunshine settling on the river, the Thames boats, the fishermen on the bank, a heron knee deep in the limpid river edge created such a dissonance it was hard to understand that something sinister was going on.

The first hurdle in dealing with a crisis is recognising that there is a crisis: the aeroplane is on fire; the man with the knife is going to stab you; the pain in your chest is a heart attack; the light is fading and the temperature is dropping and your companion cannot ski down the mountain. The heroes, the survivors, are not always the strongest and fittest - sometimes they are merely those who recognise the danger.

My friend and I were intrigued but not worried and grinned at the strange cries from the two excitable women on the bridge, until we could hear them properly. "Help us!" they were yelling, but clearly they were in no danger "help us! We need Help". Nothing made sense.

There was a man in the water .

The Necker cube flipped and the strange scene resolved itself.

A man was in the river. White haired, fully dressed, he clung silently to the floating pontoon to which a handful of boats are moored. At first sight easy to help, but look: a chained and heavily barb-wired gate guarded the pontoon preventing access. Only 50 metres from the bridge he was nevertheless beyond help from the bank while, 200 metres downstream, two fishermen in a boat sat with their backs to us, oblivious to the women trying to attract their attention. With a jerk I realised that if the man lost his grip then someone was going to have to go into the water and swim to reach him.

I can swim - but I am not the sort of swimmer who should strike out into the Thames and attempt a rescue. But what if no one at the riverside was that kind of swimmer? One thing was clear: if I was going to go in the water then a leap from the bridge wasn't the best way to start and I nervously eyed up the river bank working out the best route.

And then almost as quickly as the danger had come, it disappeared: the fisherman heard and heeded the wild women's callings and with a burst of outboard motor were quickly alongside the floating pontoon, they leapt out and pulled the man safely from the water on to the deck. A policeman arrived on the bridge - a numpty who charged down to the pontoon to stand, uselessly, on the wrong side the barbed wire. The Teddington lifeboat was summoned…. and we continued on or way.

Later that afternoon I reflected that I entirely lack any journalistic aptitude: I could have interviewed the bystanders - did he jump or did he fall? How long was he in the water? I could have taken the name and the photographs of the alert women on the bridge and the lifesaving fisherman and written it all up for the Ricky&Twicky.

At least I have got a blog to tell the tale.

A Week in May

Twickenham, May 2010

Church St, Twickenham by Maxwell Hamilton

The last two weekends of May were dominated by rugby at the stadium: a weekend of Sevens, the Premiership Final and England v Barbarians combined to jam up the town for four whole days: an insouciant breach of the covenant of trust that the RFU owes its neighbours. Exacerbating the annoyance: on the last afternoon unfamiliar and uncertain traffic police were drafted in from North London and proved cluelessly bereft of common sense: despite the street being completely clear five mins after the kick off they refused to open the road; I phoned Control there and then and told them I was hemmed in by numpties. "There's no need to be rude to me Sir' said the closest numpty, mildly, "and I'm definitely not letting you through now."

The crowds reached 80,000 and some friends of ours who live on the main drag made thousands selling homemade cakes to the crowds from their front garden.

*****

Across the road from us lives Alice. She and her husband bought her house just before the war, new from the builder, for about £300. Just a short time later her husband volunteered, went off to fight and, missing in action, he never came home. She waited through four years of war and then another four years of peace before, losing hope, she declared him dead and she told me that because of the delay she never got the letter from the King that other war-widows received.

Alice never wanted to live on the Middlesex side of the river, but that was what they could afford and there she has stayed, alone but certainly not friendless, for seventy-two years. She is deaf and sleepless and now that the weather is warm and windows are open at night, her radio - talk, not music - wakes me up in small, still hours between 1 and 3; Sometimes it's loud enough for me to even make out the words.

I asked her about the rugby crowds and did they bother her? She said I shouldn't complain, sixty years ago the stadium held 100,000, and anyway it is all much better policed nowadays

*****

Every Sunday morning my mates and I go cycling. The bright warm early morning Sundays in May are the perfect-weather highlight of our year and those weeks we go further.   On the last Sunday in May we rode a sweeping circle, never more than ten miles from home, taking in two grand country houses (Syon and Osterley) several miles of the Grand Union Canal and the River Brent, as well as the London Air Parks in Hanworth where a Zeppelin landed in 1936, and the old Feltham Marshalling yards where steam trains once met and were divided and restacked.

A puncture and a canal-path diversion for a broken bridge delayed us and we were out for two hours; half a mile from home my friend Karl peeled off sprinting for the local church where his bell, and seven impatient bell ringers awaited him (when he got there they had gone).  His church are running a £14,000pa deficit (the vicar says on her blog) despite making lots of money out of the rugby crowds - car parking. The last two weekends in May - with four games! - were especially profitable.

*****

Our entrepreneurial friends on the road to the stadium had a fiftieth birthday and we were invited for drinks and smoked salmon with sour cream on blini (when I was young smoked salmon came on crustless triangles of buttered brown bread, when did that change?) . At the party was a slightly-well-known Twickenham based actor who is currently appearing in the West End. Tall, blond and striking, she dominated the small back room and the assembled company; Mrs Botogol and I affected not to recognise her, but other guests were fawning and politely praised her work; she beamed.  I dropped the name of an even more famous Twickenham-based actor - whom we know from school, and was rewarded by a momentary frown across her peach-perfect brow. I am a git.

Fetching another canapé from the kitchen I introduced myself to our hosts' next door neighbour, who was hovering shyly near the red wine. He told me he had lived in his house, alone, for almost sixty years. I asked him if Twickenham had changed in all that time. "Not a bit", he said, happily, "Not a bit". I wondered if he knew Alice, who has lived no more than two hundred metres away from him, for all that time.
They've never met.

Madison Violet

Madison Violet enjoying themselves

There's nothing like a late Sunday evening for a crush in the  overheated room over the Cabbage Patch that plays host to the Twickenham Folk Club (now cunningly rebranded as TwickFolk@CabbagePatch)

We were there, Mrs Botogol and I, to hear an obscure Canadian country roots/folk duo called Madison Violet (as featured by whispering Bob Harris on Radio 2)


Doors were at 8pm so, obsessively punctual, I hurried us there for 7:59. But there were two support acts. Of course there were; it was very hot and the wine was warm. Mrs Botogol was not amused.

But it was worth it!  If we had not been entirely warmed up by the slightly sulky¹ Good Intentions who preceded them ("We've come from Shoreditch. Just now that is. Actually, we're from Liverpool. Well Gaby's not") it wasn't our fault, but when these two upbeat, wise-cracking  women took the stage, positively revelling in each others' company, it was impossible not to smile.

In a packed set they played almost all of their new album - No Fool For Trying - the upbeat title track contrasting with the bitter and angry tones of Woodshop and Black and White, the yearning of Ransom and charming nostalgia of Small Of My Heart

There were a couple of Flight of the Concords moments as very dedicated tour-following fans fresh from New Brunswick and Switzerland made themselves known, Lisa and Brenley handling with aplomb, and the crowd sang cooperatively when called upon.

Here are MadViolet singing the most moving song of the evening -  Woodshop - Brenley MacEachern momentarily choking up in her introduction as she recalled the death of her brother, and the family tragedy about which the song is written.

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The set finished with singular - and sinister - cover of Simon & Garfunkel's Mrs Robinson, the  somehow menacing arrangement and heartfelt, angry vocals emphasising the less than wholesome nature of the story - and the familiar song suddenly took on a unexpected hue.

Exclellent. They are touring UK and Ireland in next two weeks - go see them.




1 - I reckon they had a row in the traffic, for their music was actually laced with some wry country wit "I was a poor boy this morning / and I'll be one again tonight / there is nothing I call my own / and I will not need my 12 string / when the angels call me home"

Today's giant ballots

I know where my democratic duty lies in this time of crisis and disillusionment: to make a protest vote.

At 7.15am this morning  Twickenham polling station was almost deserted as I collected my ludicrous, 70cm long, ballot paper, and watched the teller carefully enter the serial number against my name on the roll.

Does any seriously believe that our votes are actually secret?

Can there be any doubt whatsoever that ballots for parties like the BNP are not subsequently retrieved and carefully traced back to the individuals who cast them? As was done to communist votes 40 years ago?

Fortunately, I voted neither BNP nor communist, so I dont suppose anyone will care.

Even after folding and refolding my silly ballot paper the teller had to use a ruler to help me poke it into the narrow slit.  He told me they only had one ballot box at the station (same as usual) and he was worried that it will not be big enough for all of today's giant ballots. I agreed.

I worry we may have a 'hanging chad' type problem of our own today.

Station Time

Twickenham Station by botogol.

Twickenham railway station is nothing if not traditional. There was a refit a couple of years back but the new canopy hardly disguises the bleak 1950s architecture and when it rains water still tumbles through the roof and puddles on to the floor. At the top of the stairs up from Platform 4 the post-war feel is reinforced by the glassed-in display cabinet containing notices from the obscure Twickenham Society (is it a hoax?).

They don't sell Oyster Cards.

At the entrance to the station is a little kiosk. For many years it was manned by a 'character' of the old school who glared out from behind a high counter and 'hello darlinged' the girls on their way to Putney High. He's long since gone and now the shop is run by two young Asian men who have gone some way to inject a 21st century-feel with bright lighting, a cappuccino machine and a selection of samosas, but their little slice of modernism is belied by their polite good mornings and the way they noticed when I switched my regular newspaper. Becasue, you see: Twickenham Station Time is set to 1958 and like the Torchwood Time Rift, it's compelling - it draws you in

Yesterday at the little kiosk the woman in front of me asked for the Manchester Guardian. The Guardian moved to London in 1964; I don't suppose I have heard it called that in twenty years, but the newspaper was handed over without hesitation, and just for a moment I seemed to catch a glimpse of the old masthead.

I bent down to take a Guardian of my own from the pile and, when I looked up, she was gone.

Tut Tut

It's not easy getting from West London to the Dome on a Saturday when there are no trains through Richmond and Twickenham.
....and no Jubilee line to North Greenwich.
So we drove
....and no Limehouse link either, just one large traffic jam from Tower Bridge to the Blackwall tunnel.

In two hours on a French motorway you can travel 200 miles - I know, I have done it. Two hours after we left home we were in Wapping. We had eaten all the Werthers, spotted four Stobarts and two Norberts, and retrieved all the CDs from the floor and sorted them into two piles: scratched and unscratched. We had played both the unscratched ones twice.

The only thing that could possibly make it worse was a car crash, and sure enough on the Highway a texting imbecile ran into the back of us. Before you could say whip-lash injury Mrs Botogol had leapt from the car to handle negotiations. In the driving mirror I saw bundle of tenners changing hands - urban fashion - and we were on our way again.

"Do you think there really is a curse?", asked one of the children, afterwards in Starbucks, knocking my Americano all over my newspaper.

Smiles and Goodbyes

It's not often that Mrs Botogol and I go to the pub of a Friday evening, but last Friday we did: we found ourselves with a small window of time: after some oohing and aahing at a riverside firework display and some 'yes, butting' at John Humphrys In Search of a Decent Mic, and prior to collecting a Botogol child from a party (100 noisy teenagers crammed into a biggish suburban Victorian house, all texting their absent friends).

"D'you know what I fancy doing, Mrs B", I said, "in this snatched and precious child-free hour we find that we have together?"

"Scrabble, I suppose?" she said, not entirely unenthusiastically.

"Nope", I said , "well, actually, later on, yes, possibly, but nope: right now I fancy going down the pub, so fetch your coat".

An old joke, but a good one, and a cheap laugh is always worth a smack round the back of the head. That's what my Dad says, anyway.

So that's how, dear reader, we found ourselves sharing a jumbo packet of cheese and onion in the Twickenham Tup, snucked up hard against each other on a large leather sofa shared with two spotty teenagers, all of us watching the house band Cambio strum out their very own version of Babylon (yes, indeed: they made it their own)

I say 'band': it was actually two kids with guitars; and less Pet Shop Boys - more Flight of the Conchords.

To be frank I thought Their Good Riddance (Time of your Life) worked better than their Moonlight in Vermont but, at the end of day, I'm a sucker for live music of all sorts and as Mrs Botogol sagely observed: if they haven't ever rehearsed Mustang Sally they can't really be expected to play it for any random bloke in the pub just because he shouts loudly, now can they?

So it came to pass last Friday evening, while two unappreciative old men in a far corner of the cavernous suburban pub nursed their quiet pints of London Pride, unseeing, unhearing and while, behind the bar, three strappy-topped young barmaids danced and pranced, Mrs B and myself, on our leather sofa shared with two young texting teenagers, well: we rocked.

While we rocked our sofa-companions texted blurry camphone pictures to absent friends, and eventually I went off to the bar for two more glasses of Australian Pinot Grigio before the second set, then at 10.25 we had to put our coats on and left: no encores, no cheers, no vote of thanks, no epitaphs, we just slipped away.

I'd honour Cambio with a link, but they appear to be the only band in the Western Hemisphere without a page on MySpace

John Humphrys, since you ask, was rubbish. Well, for anyone who, perhaps, hadn't realised that Humphrys has met quite a few famous people, some of whom have been mildly funny, it would have been a revelation. But for the other 569 people in the building, the ones who had come to this Book Festival event hoping to hear about his book it was a tad disappointing. "Thank you very much Mr Humphrys", said the hapless MC sending Humphrys off into the deep, dark night with a few well chosen words, "for coming here to talk about your book. Although you didn't actually say much about it did you?"


We could hear the teenage party a good three roads before we got to it: music, voices and dancing, merged with the bleeps of incoming text messages and missed calls. In the shadows of the front garden our particular teenager answered her call, and we set off for home. What was the party like, we wondered "It promised a lot, Dad, but yielded little"

We took the short-cut home, over the railway station bridge, and it was there, high above the platforms and the electrified tracks, in the neon gloom of an autumn night that we spotted our S J Harvey's peculiar and poignant notice, and we paused, and we hurried on.

-----------------------------------------------------------

There have been 107 green ideas since I started in Oct 2006, and it's been a lot fun.

I'm not stopping now, not exactly, but I have a new project in mind and I'm not sure I will have time to manage both. If the new thing works I'll be back in the new year, I reckon; if it doesn't - well perhaps next week. Or perhaps once a month.... or once a week :-)

I know what I like...

...and I like what I know.

Without a hint of a shadow of a doubt, the absolute best part of an all-round excellent gig by Genesis at Twickenham last week was Phil's tambourine dance solo in the rain. Not because it was funny - which it was - not just because the dance is a traditional feature of Genesis live - which it is - but because of the heart-wrenching, unashamed, sentimental, sheer bloody nostalgia that led the band to put on, on the big screen behind him, footage of a younger, hairier, bearded Phil from the 1970s doing the exact same dance.

You can make it out here (just about)



Before Sunday, the last time I saw Phil Collins live was about 2004. I was on my own in New York for a weekend and Phil was playing Madison Square Garden on the Friday. Unaccountably no one I knew at work wanted to come with me, so I went alone.

It's not great going to a concert on your own at the best of times, but evening was really made up when I found myself sitting a row of seats that seemed to have been reserved specially for lonely, billy-no-mates-losers like myself: the entire row of seats were singles; every single one of the occupants were male. On my left was a vast middle-aged baby from New Jersey, at least 300lbs, dressed like a seven-year old in pink t-shirt and billowing shorts, sucking on the teat of bottle of isotonic sports fluid. On my right was a Korean who had brought his laptop.

How desperately I wanted Phil to realise that I was with them, but not of them.

The audience in Twickenham were completely different, hardly geeky at all :-)

Whispering Grass

It's not a criticism of the Twickenham Rugby Club groundsman when I observe that the grass on the Colts pitch is too long for wheelchairs.

It's also bumpy.

Not that the groundsman doesn't do a good job with his scythe, paint-bucket and roller; He does, he does; It's just not..... accessible

Last Sunday afternoon, for instance, when the end of season 7s festival had all finished, the BBQ was winding down and scores of multi-coloured rugby players were making their way home, I was walking from the U10s pitch back to car carrying the tent, the kit-bag, my rucksack, my boots and the remains of the picnic.

On my right a crowd had gathered around the control caravan watching the prize giving. On my left, some 50m away in the middle of the pitch, was a small boy, about my son's age, in a wheelchair. All alone. As I watched him he struggled forward a few yards, he stopped, he tried to turn, stopped again, went a few more yards forward, hit a bump and threw his hands in the air in frustration.

I looked around very carefully to see if anyone was watching him - parents, siblings? Dom Jolly and a Channel Four camera crew? So far as I could tell there was absolutely noone at all... so I heaved a sigh of relief and hurried on my way.

But when I came trudging back three minutes later he was still there. Well, he had moved about 10 metres. I cursed and I diverted to speak to him

"Hello. Are you all right, mate?"
"Yes"
"It must be hard work wheeling that through the grass. Would you like a push?"
"Yes!"
"No problem. Where do want to go then?"

He pointed. He pointed at the public footpath in the far corner of the field. The path that leads past the railway bridge to the reservoir.

"There!!"
I considered this very carefully for a moment.

"Tell you what" (brightly) "are your Mum and Dad here?"
"Yep"
"Great! So where are they then?"

He tossed his head - indicating the crowd around the caravan.
"So, shall I take you over there?"
"No!" fiercely, "there!" He pointed again.

I considered my options and I began to sweat:

• I imagined myself pushing him off into the distance, down the footpath past the railway bridge to the reservoir

• I carefully visualised myself pushing him in the direction he didn't want to go, perhaps shouting at me, towards his father. Who would turn out be a tight-head prop, no doubt about it. Evidently with a medal-winning elder son.

• I imagined myself leaving him on his own, in the middle of the field, unable to follow me Momentarily heartened, I imagined breaking into a run as I neared the car...
  

No good deed ever goes unpunished.

The sun beat down.
I moved my weight from one leg to the other
"We-ell....um"
"There!!"

At least, I thought to myself, desperately; at least I'll be able to blog about it later....

Old Woman Climbing

Hurrying along my road on Saturday morning, my sharp eyes were distracted by a pair of smartly-dressed, middle-aged burglars climbing over the side gate at No 42. I stopped dead in my tracks, un-holstered my phone and appraised the dangerous-looking pair

Ever since squatters moved into No. 3 last month, everyone in our road has enjoyed being vigilant. In the orange glow of the urban night, dark rumours have circulated from dinner party to book club, talk of shadowy goings on, mysterious comings and goings, the amount of litter that's built up in their garden, and should someone clear it up or do we just leave it.

Naturally, I was thrilled: thwarting a Broad-Daylight Burglary would give me something to brag about and something to blog about, all at the same time.

I flipped open my phone, thumbed the 9 button and silently rehearsed my call. Burglary In Progress. Suspects IC1, 1 male, 1 female. Beige Slacks, Beige Anorak, Grey Hair, Medium Height, Early 70s, ringleader is climbing gingerly and slowly over side door of #42 with door keys in hand....

....I smiled brightly and strode over "Are you all right? Can I help at all?"

And the boot was suddenly, firmly, unequivocally on the other foot. She didn't look like the look of me AT ALL. She was elderly. She was climbing over a rickety 5ft side door, down to a crumbling 3 foot wall. But she wasn't about to trust me.

There was, you see a problem: I was picturing myself as friendly neighbour, offering a helping hand both literal and metaphoric. Unfortunately I was wearing an England rugby shirt; It was an England match day and I live in Twickenham. To her I was one of 70,000 passers-by up in town for the game and on the lookout for an opportunistic bit of burgling before kick off. I know that now.

They were babysitting their grandchildren. The front door was stiff. Their arthritic fingers couldn't pull it open from the inside. They couldn't get out. They went out the back and round, but their son had freshly padlocked the side door because of the squatters.

I smiled harder. 'Really, you shouldn't climb, OK, but let me at least help you down....BE CAREFUL! .. look, put your foot here... no, HERE"

Reader, she climbed. I watched. She stumbled. I opened my ventilated armpit holes. She reached the ground. I left.

On the way past No 3, I walked on tip toes and craned my neck to try and see over the cardboard sellotaped to the inside of the bay window, and stubbed my toe on the new recycling bin that has appeared on the pavement.

On the Clapham Omnibus (yes, really)

Now, you wouldn't think that anyone who has lived in London for 20 years would be stupid enough to get on a Replacement Bus Service when the trains aren't running

Well, I am

In my defence, it was only at the station I realised that the trains weren't running. Should I go back and fetch the car? But there was the bus all ready to go.... I went for it.

Looking back, I made three mistaken assumptions

• Mistaken Assumption #1: That the bus was about to leave.
• Reality: The driver was merely warming the engine

• Mistaken Assumption #2: The bus was replacing the FAST train that I had planned to catch, and would go directly to Richmond, and Putney
• Reality: it was replacing the slow train. St Margarets, Richmond, North Bleedin' Sheen..
  

• Mistaken Assumption #3: That the bus driver knew the way
• Reality: The driver failed to make that half-right turn at Chalker's Corner and crossed Chiswick Bridge. We had gone wrong. Worse, we were on the wrong side of the river.

Nobody on the bus said anything

Well, I was reading the paper and I didn't notice until it was too late. That's my story. Perhaps everyone else was doing the same.

Aren't we all polite?

As the bus accelerated up the A316 toward Chiswick there came just a few faint murmurings "Aren't we supposed to be going to Mortlake?", "Well, I thought so", "Did we actually cross the river?"

But no one spoke to the driver.

It was a good half mile before, finally, a woman deferentially piped up:
"Excuse me, driver?"
"Yes?"
"Um, Do you think we've gone the wrong way?"

Reader, never, ever admit that you are wrong. If you doubt my advice, rest assured that the benighted driver of the 09:10 replacement bus service from Twickenham to Clapham Junction learned his lesson on Saturday.

- peace and calm -
- peace and calm -
- murmur whisper -
- peace and calm -
- polite question -
- peace and calm -

"I missed a turning back there didn't I?"

- PANDEMONIUM -

"Do a U turn!"
"He's missed the turning!"
"Turn right"
"Turn left"
"Keep going"
"Hammersmith Bridge"
"Slow Down!"
"3 point turn"
"Everyone put your hands in the air, sit down in your seats, and no one will get hurt. Now all of you - give me your phones"

OK the last one was me and, no, it wasn't funny and it wasn't clever,

Bewildered by the conflicting heckles the driver simply plunged on. The further we strayed from our route the later we were going to be. The later we got, the faster he went. The faster he went, the more we shouted

"Don't be stupid, he can't u-turn in a bus, "
"Keep going until we hit a roundabout"
"Turn left and then left again"
"I will execute one person every 40 minutes until my demands are met"

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man. It's in a desperate situation like this that true natural leaders emerge. I coughed gently.
Unfortunately our true natural leader turned out not to be me but a wild red-headed woman at the front, with no sense of direction and no memory for roads. "There's no roundabout up this way!", she yelled, just a few hundred metres short of Hogarth Roundabout, "Not for miles..Turn LEFT now!"

Tyres screeched. The bus turned left. I strode masterfully to the front.
"Um, can I get out?"
"Out of the bus?"
"Um, yes"
"OK"

Odd decision.

One moment I'm in a warm bus, with plenty of material for my blog unfolding before my blackberry. The next I'm on a street in Chiswick. It's raining softly. I'm carrying ski-boots.

And there's no taxi rank on the Hogarth roundabout.

Boo Hewerdine

An enthusiastic band of the faithful squashed into the noisy back room of the Cabbage Patch pub in Twickenham on 26^th November, for a lively gig from a witty and on-form Boo Hewerdine.

Belying the slightly uncomfortable performance on his 'Live One' album, and his sometimes brooding on-stage presence behind Eddi Reader, Boo smiled and joked his way through a baker’s dozen of songs accompanied by the winsome, if breathless, Rosalie Deighton on vocals, and the talented fast-learner Dave Marks on bass.

The small back-room at the Patch, which doubles as the home of Twickenham Folk Club each Sunday night is intimate in the way a top oven is intimate, and it's hardly an ideal venue for a softly-spoken singer. Indeed, from time to time in the gig Boo, like Rosalie before him was accompanied by the not-so-faint sound of bar chatter the other side of the door, and occasional crashing of saucepans from the nearby kitchen. The lack of space was such that come the interval, the trio were forced to hide, hilariously, behind a velvet curtain - hapless Manie Krugers: ‘off-stage’ but with feet and elbows clearly visible.

Nevertheless the homely surroundings seemed to suit Boo, perhaps in some part accounting for the stronger, meatier delivery than typically heard on his records – and beneath the plaintiveness and sadness easily associated with Boo’s music, on this hearing I detected a thread of anger running through the gig, beginning in a powerful Bell, Book and Candle (complete with introductory Emmerdale synopsis), and continuing through to Slow Learner, normally dismissed as slightly too self-pitying, which came alive with the added bite. (Has Eddi recorded this song? I think it would suit her).

That’s not too say our heartstrings went untugged. Teasing his audience by inviting requests (‘Nope, sorry, it’s got to be the one that’s in my head already’) Boo seized on a thrown-out shout of Ontario to set up a trio of ‘dead puppies’:

Ontario, complete with slightly anomalous sing-along chorus, segued smoothly into Murder in the Dark, Boo's depressing, pessimistic picture of married life, and then (abandoning any pretence of requests now) a tight I Felt Her Soul Move Through Me finished the section. Credited on the album to Hewerdine/Reader/Henderson/Dodds, to my mind this song is nevertheless Boo’s own - and possibly his finest. Written after the death of Boo’s mother and Eddi’s father in just a short space of time, it’s a simple but powerful piece with clever and subtle images. Hearing anything sung live often brings out different aspects, and this time the couplet ‘Too late I landed / To say goodbye’ suddenly struck me as the keystone of this short song.

But it wasn’t all miserable. We enjoyed Patience of Angels and - this being a folk club after all - Boo obliged with a new song Harvest Gypsies written for up-and-coming folk artist, Kris Drever as well as the sentimental favourite Follow my Tears; the choruses of all accompanied by an enthusiastic audience.

Boo finished with Peacetime, which will be the title song of Eddi’s new album out in January. Peacetime’s not a new song - it’s on Anon. I’d never really thought of it as a ‘protest song’ before, but that’s how Boo described it, neatly extending and tying off the angry thread that I detected weaving in an out of all his songs that evening.

Boo has recorded eight albums with Eddi, and he told us that Peacetime is the best of the lot. Listening to the song last night it wasn’t hard to imagine it with a Simple Soul type arrangement, with Eddi’s vocals soaring over the top.

A new album! Eddi Reader sings the songs of Boo Hewerdine, perhaps? A great prospect.

Boo’s on tour for a while longer on his own before he joins up with Eddi in the New Year. See him if you can.

Rosalie Deighton

Set List

Stone in your shoe
Bell Book and Candle
Harvest Gypsies
Patience of Angels
Slow Learner
59 Yards
Honey be Good

Follow My Tears
Ontario
I felt her soul move through me
Murder in the Dark
16 Miles
Peacetime