Some Observations from Wednesday Night

(or Sushi on the Sidewalk, Mythical McDonalds and Learning about Liverpool Street)

Amanda Palmer by @SAHFENN via The Village Underground

Observations from the night of Wednesday 20th June:

1. Kimonos are cool.
2. Trust Amanda Palmer to find (who must be) the only hot bagpipist in London.
3. Running across the full length of a station, just in time to see the rear red light of the train that you were so vainly chasing snaking away into the night is every bit as dispiriting as it is made to look in the movies.
4. Liverpool Street Station closes on a Wednesday at 0103 precisely. I do not know why it does so, but I also kinda love it.
5. Many organisations (including the City of London) erect public information maps around London that do not orientate North. On the one hand, I understand that most Londoners always know the relative directions of the landmarks around them. On the other… why would you do that? Just why? In the name of Elaine*, why?
6. The City of London is really quite beautiful at night.
7. The City of London is really quite beautiful when nobody is in it.
8. Points 5 and 6 may be, to a large degree, connected.
9. There is an entire breed of night workmen in the City of London who come in after business hours and redecorate through the night. Watching this is somewhat surreal.
10. If you’re in a McDonalds for long enough (and late enough) they will offer you free fries.

*See my next blog post, On Swearing.

*

[Transcribed from scribbled notes on a pad of Tescos paper]

It’s been an eventful evening – and I’m choosing that word with care – so here’s hoping that it will not become more so. You can probably gather as to why from the above.

Casting my mind back…

My evening began when the phone rang – not a common occurrence, as everyone I know just seem to text constantly and never bother with that whole human contact thing.

“Hi,” says a friend. “I’m at the underground place. Where are you?”

The underground place? Well that’s very nice for him. Has he watched too much True Blood and found a Vampire bar?

“The underground place?”

“Yeah, what are you up to?”

“Just getting ready to go meat a friend for a drink.” I say this in total honesty.

There is a confused pause.

“A friend for a drink? Aren’t you coming to Amanda Palmer?”

Amanda Palmer? I think, now standing in the centre of my room and pivoting. Amanda Palmer… I am looking at the pair of tickets which I have placed conspicuously in the centre of my bookshelf so that I can, under no circumstances, miss or forget them.

Ah, I conclude. Amanda Palmer.

In 105 minutes I got ready, ditched my friend (apologies, Artur), jogged to the station, got  a train, ran through Shoreditch, bought an extortionately priced can of Becks Vier, and squeezed my way through The Village Underground (Ah-ha!) in time to cheer Amanda Fucking Palmer to the stage.

So the evening started with success.

The Village Underground (courtesy of The Village Underground). A pretty cool space.

I won’t review the gig here, but needless to say it was awesome. There is a grand total of two bands who I enjoy when they play a set full of new material, and Amanda Palmer isn’t one of them. But she did, and it was great. Luckily, it seems that through attending lots of gigs and some mildly obsessive online stalking youtubage there were only two of the “new” songs that were actually new to me.

Anyway, I heard Half Jack for the second time in my life, loved it just as much, and was blown away by just how well AFP’s new band can rock with the old Dresden Dolls material. I saw Neil Gaiman sing about murder and was struck by just how much he conforms to my mental image of the BFG. And I was slapped in the face by my wallet with the very serious point that a can of Becks is never, ever, in any scenario, in all possible worlds, worth four quid.

[Amanda Palmer interlude ends]

*

The last train to Liverpool Street had already slipped quietly into the night before I even arrived, and on examination my Android train app wasn’t playing ball.

"Is there another train to Cambridge from Kings Cross tonight?” I ask the gentleman at the information point. He checks his computer and nods.

“You have… fifteen minutes exactly." A pause. "It’s possible."

I love him for that, just a little.

So I run. I count stations as they go by on the tube. The poster at Liverpool Street said the tube is nine minutes to Kings Cross, but surely that has some lee-way? It’s midnight, the trains must surely be faster…

Nine minutes later I arrive at Kings Cross, run through the warren of tube tunnels, jog across the station to watch my train pull slowly away and fade from sight. There is something about this that is oddly crushing, so I go and buy a coffee with lots of undeserved sugar in it.

The earliest train back home leaves Liverpool Street at 05:20. So I swing back onto the Circle line in the direction I had just come. It’s at times like these that I wish the Circle line was still an actual circle. And that it didn’t close. There would have been something oddly fitting about circling London endlessly until morning.

On arriving back at Liverpool Street Station I did the only sensible thing: I bought take-away sushi and sat on the steps outside, drunken-people-watching, and consuming prawn and salmon nigri.

*

Train stations are literally plastered in information. Departure details, arrival info, timetables, updates, schedules of engineering work, tube maps, train maps, bus maps, street maps. Numbers to call for train times, numbers to call for tourist help, numbers to call for tickets and others for lost property. And signs, in all directions, for everything.

At 00:45, however, I am required to ask when it is that this particular station closes. At 0103, I am told. For reasons that passeth understanding.

Still, only five hours to kill until home time.

*

With my phone dying, relief comes in the form of a late-opening Tescos (pad of paper – check, pack of biros – check) and a map to the nearest 24-hour McDonalds pasted to the side of a different, derelict McDonalds, near the station I set off.

The map, it turns out, wasn’t orientated North.

I didn’t realise human beings did that.

Being tired and grumpy I simply looked at the thing and went “Go north, over the road, left then right” and didn’t really think much more about what it was that I was doing. This added a night time circuit of the City to my evening’s tour, as I realised that I had wandered in entirely the wrong direction (30 St. Mary Axe being the clue).

As I walked (humming Gilbert and Sullivan) I was struck by how many of the buildings had people working inside them, refitting shop floors at 01:30 in the morning. I found myself wondering whether there were builders (and indeed whole firms) who dedicate themselves to this sort of night-time, guerrilla decorating. Sneaking in and out after hours, making sure everything is done before the following morning comes.

The episode of Fawlty Towers with the dodgy builders leapt to mind, and I imagined oblivious mid-ranking employees arriving at work to find their offices now part of a squash court, or that the stationery cupboard has mysteriously vanished. Better still, builders who perhaps got the wrong address, so that a seasoned tailor, proud of his century-old bespoke business, arrives at work to find that it is now a Starbucks.

So anyway, I’m still in McDonalds, renting a table by the hour for a cup of coffee a go, being chased from seat to seat by a pair of night-builders, who are amicably leavering up split beige tiles from the cracked floor, and replacing them with new, slightly lighter beige tiles, which do not match.

Currently on page seven of the notepad, I will let you know how the word count goes. If you are reading this I got home somehow…

Music: Arcade Fire, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

(Being the only piece of decent music played in McDonalds for four hours, I was very grateful for its timely appearance.)

And for reference: The Dresden Dolls, Half Jack and Neil Gaiman singing about murder.