I gave myself two choices on Tuesday after two nights in Sylvie’s gentle arms in Willesdon Green.

1) Jamming on the balcony of the Inn on the Green

or, 2) busking in one of my favourite spots, Walkers Court, in the heart of Soho.
(Here’s a song I wrote in this very spot (great accoustic too) in 2007, mid-winter: http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/soho-blues/)
I opted for Soho and did what I always do when I’m in the area: enjoyed a cup of coffee at the 12 Bar Club in Denmark Steet followed by half an hour of window shopping in London’s accoustic hub.

I’d just set up my mini Vox amp and was about to launch into some red-light dirt blues when a policemen arrived on the scene and moved me on explaining that until Westminster City Council change its tune I’ll be liable for arrest playing there cheek by jowl with the whores, the pimps, the tourists and the men in suits (amongst others, including roots music afficionardos).
I try to appeal to his discretion, telling him the shop-keepers love it and last time I played here I had the whores dancing but he moves me on in such hurry that I leave behind my purse (inscribed, meaninglessly, with the letter R) containing my Abbey-link card, Oyster, Cambridge Water Authority payment card, small lump of hashish, about 20 quid in cash,

Adam Spreadbury-Maher’s calling card (a beaut shot of Shelley Lang as Becky with her legs open from his recent revival of my 1995 play, The Present, at his Cock Tavern Theatre) and my return coach ticket to Cambridge. Not sure what else was in there, maybe nothing. So there I was having a homelessness and non-attachment to material things flashback, big time. (The bad cop knicked it, I know he did, because it was under my leather jacket and when I came back and confronted him he looked very, very, gulity – bastard) I ended up doing what I should have done in the first place: walked via Hyde Park to Ladbroke Grove where I borrowed the coach fare plus enough for a cappuccino from fellow-boatman and enlightened landlord, Dave, played my heart out for a couple of hours in an unforced, unsubsidised, muti-cultural community, and caught the 10pm coach home.
Walking is the best training for sculling for all sorts of physiological reasons, if you can find the time.

An expert rower never loses touch with the ‘ground’, the footplate, and allows the toes to ’stretch out’ with the release of the fully covered blade. Beats running and certainly beats erging.

Ask any wily old Thames boatman, like Bill Colley, in his Richmond Bridge Boathouse.
http://www.yell.com/b/Bill+Colley-Boat+Builders+and+Repairs-Richmond-TW91TH-3188965/index.html
Walking is the best training for the professional Thames sculler.

Time to think too, as any Barry or Phelps will tell you.
I love the coach because I get a chance to follow the Thames in and out of London.

The stretch from Blackfriars to Houses of Parliament is as tough as is gets for a single sculler rowing up on the flood. Why? Becuase the river is effectively squeezed between the buttresses of the bridges and the river is a constant swirling swell from the commercial river traffic. Just to stay upright requires supreme watermanship on this stretch. Visiting Marathon Scullers beware!

Incidentally: the ’squeezing’ of the London Tideway is the simple reason why the Upper Thames is a time-bomb regarding flooding. There is nowhere for the excess rainwater to go. When that happens, periodically, London’s totally antequated Victorian sewage system becomes automatically overloaded with the run-off and raw sewage is pumped directly into the river via ‘overspill’ outlets at Hammersmith and elsewhere.

The last time I witnessed this was when I was boatman at Furnival Sculling Club in 2007. It is a depressing, Mayor of London (plus Port of London authority) -endorsed, systematic, licensing of River Thames pollution. The shit takes days to clear and can be seen and smelt washing up and down with the tide for a week or so. No one talks about it. Replacing the Victorian pipes, I mean, because politicians don’t really believe that putting a clean Thames at the centre of their policy-making is always going to win votes, whatever the short-term cost. Anyway, who can blame Boris for preferring to pander to his bloated plutocrat mates in the Finance Sector, the types who don’t give a flying fuck about a clean river as long as no one talks about it ?… ah, there’s the rub, the talking, the vital and dynamic debate. The Freedom of Speech. This is a flood warning.

Two highlights of my two-weekly excursion to the big smoke were meeting the fascinating and brainy anarchist sympathiser, Naomi, on the coach down; and exchanging eye-contact with arms-trading QinetiQ boss, Pauline Neville Jones, who turned up for the balcony gig at the Inn on the Green on Saturday around 5pm.
http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/banjo-nicks-open-mic-at-the-inn-on-the-green-ladbrooke-grove-london-saturday-25th-april-and-every-second-saturday-bring-an-instrument-bring-a-tune/
She wrote in the Guardian (20th October) that the kind of inter-faith music-making which Banjo Nick at the Inn on the Green exemplifies should be supported by funding bodies.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/20/prevent-radicalisation-inclusiveness I was pleased to read that and very pleased that Neville Jones likes to back her ruminations up with experience in the field. Musicians always get there first when it comes to creating the language of peace. Right now, Sufis, like Milo (regular at the Inn), lead the way: creating the conditions necessary for the kind of music-sharing in which Israeli musicians celebrate pan-Middle eastern arabic influences, for instance.

Lets not forget that Israeli jews originate in Egypt according to Numbers 33 (Old Testament) and their ‘right to exist’ as a nuclear-armed blister of racial hatred (a state) in the Holy Land depends upon an exhausted Moses getting his idea of God’s permission to slaughter fellow arabs and grab their land via a burning bush on a mountain side. Forty years on the road. Can we forgive the old rambler for the odd and murderous hallucination? What kind of God is that? Not mine. My god is a clean river. Musicians tend to offer no safe havens for religious and war-indoctrinated types like the board of QinetiQ and Islamist terror-merchants. When I think about masters of war like Neville Jones I see an MOD hardliner obliged to borrow a langauge she sees no truth in. She gets too much of the estimated £40 Billion the British taxpayer gives over to the Ministry of Defense, annually, to have any credible feeling for the beauty of peace. Potentially lethal. So intelligent and so sold-out to death and destruction share-holders. Can I prove she has no conscience? Tough assignment but I’ll do my best.
http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/banjocaravana-what-are-we-fighting-for/
On Discrimination (for Boris). Relaxing of laws against busking in some London boroughs and the recognition that the refusal to license buskers with no fixed address in Mayor of London authorised busking locations on the Underground means that many fine troubadours will be tempted to give London a miss and head straight for Berlin where musicians are welcomed with such open arms it takes he breath away. Much to the evident delight of the majority of Berliners who give generously, if they like it.
Show me the way, Lord, Show me the way

I lost my haystack, I lost my stack
A ya gotta stack, boy, A ya gotta stack?

I lost my country, I lost my tree
A ya gotta a count, Boy, A ya gotta a tree?

Laws against mobility (the ancient right of the troubadour) are not intended to target troubadours! They are intended to target ‘terrorists’ who might be anyone the police officer thinks might be a terrorist on whatever level of prejudice the police officer is forced to labour. The suspension of Habeous Corpus, the ancient right to be found innocent until proved guilty is a thing of the past, unfortunately.