Random Bookshop Shot.

Just off Charing Cross Road... Note the copy of Bob Dylan's cult novel 'Tarantula' replete with a big hairy monster on the front. (Not at all like Bob himself, of course.)

The Olympic Stadium, Stratford, March 2009

It's going nicely...

A Day On The Rails...

There was an argument at the station. A man had been stopped by the ticket inspectors at the top of the stairs. They were arguing like it was a matter of life or death. Eventually the man stormed off without paying, swearing at one inspector who told him to go make an official complaint, then swore back at him in turn. Neither man won.

I got on the train. It went past a huge cemetary where a funeral was taking place. Apart from the hearse and the old fashioned black and chrome Bentley for the family, there were cars - and lots of them. They were parked behind each other in a long, continuous line leading up to the avenue where the funeral was no doubt taking place. That was the roundabout tribute to this person - never mind the garish floral tributes, it was the twenty or so cars, all carrying those who wanted to say goodbye.

Later, on the tube train, I saw a dishevelled looking woman reading a newspaper. She looked rather lank and grubby, her long greasy hair hanging over her face as she looked down on the paper. She had a battered black leather jacket under which poked out the bottom of a women's white top with green stripes - the kind you might get out of Bon Marche. Her legs were pipe thin and clad in narrow jeans. This was all topped off with a pair of dirty white cowboy boots that ended with long pointed toes. It was quite a sight.

Then she looked up and turned out to be a man with a thick bikers' moustache. I quickly looked away.

When I got back, the ticket inspectors had doubled in number and there were two policemen too. They were taking no chances. Fare dodgers seem to think a free ride is worth pulling a knife out for these days. Or maybe it was just a performance put on for the commuters - or a mixture of both.

A Day Out In Clapham.

On the train into London, two kids sat behind me. A girl and a boy, aged 15 or 16, Asian, eating snacks. Like most young people, they talked, talked, talked and talked without actually saying anything. Silence or anything too remotely serious is torture for the young and they know it. All those sullen, silent, erious adult faces on the train: it's better to go yak-yak-yak-yak-yak than that, and gorge on junk to drown out the howl of the speeding train.

Their accents were mostly Bengali but, this being East London, there was cockney, Essex and Jafaican here and there too, a wild car crash of accents. It was Babel with crisps and chocolate.

Later I found myself by the Long Pond on Clapham Common. The Sun was shining brightly on the water so I shielded my eyes as I took pictures. The ducks bobbled about aimlessly or chased each other off in mini tidal waves of fury.

Then I saw the fox. At first I thought it was asleep. But then I noticed its rictus grin, the dried, blackened bloodstains. and the leg that had almost entirely been ripped off. A big dog must have got it a night or so before, yet it looked so peaceful.

I felt I had to take a picture of it. Odd though this sounds, I felt like I was at a crime scene of a place where a great tragedy had taken place. If I didn't take a picture, who'd believe the fox had lived or died? As I did this, a short schoolgirl - maybe 14 - in grownups' makeup walked past and looked at me with a mix of alarm and disgust. There was no room in her life for death and the unusual. Her sweater was deep red - the colour of blood.

I then met up with a friend at a McDonald's in Liverpool Street. Some young men behind us got into a fight over next to nothing. An off duty policemen intervened though and herded them outside to calm down. As we walked past, he was still doing this, all the while drinking his milkshake.

Anarchy In The Pub

We were in a pub near London Bridge, at the going away do for a friend. We were upstairs in the function room. It was worn and subject to benign neglect, while the barmaid was fierce and unfriendly.

On the wall at the other end of the bar was a massive round oil portrait of a dead Monarch, starting soullessly with covetous beady eyes. Next to it someone had stuck up a four page Anarchist newspaper with a piece of bluetack.

If you pulled the rag open, you could open it up and read the pages inside. It preached self-relaince for the working classes, 'us and them', a simple morality play where the poor were virtuous and good and the rich were all villains.

But no one really listens - it's just a dangerous dance for some to flirt with and a cyclopic obsession for others to while away their lives with.

Yet that protrait of the monarch will still be there, staring with empty hungry eyes, long after the anarchist newspaper has faded and decayed and been thrown into a landfill. There is a lesson there, but what it is is debateable.

A friend of ours climbed on top of the pool table to toast our soon-to-departed contemporary. The barmaid roared at him to get down, but he didn't listen. She told everyone who was cheering him that they could all fuck off too. But he only got down when he was finished - she said, 'you can't have any more drinks!' And he said - 'good! They're overpriced anyway!' With that moment he said more than a whole army of anarchists ever could.