bliblical
I cycled down to London Bridge for a meeting with Everett - London Bridge, let me tell you, is where it all began for Plan B, sometime last August (and Careless Talk too, apparently! In the Upper Crust cafe!). See, Everett doesn’t like leaving Brighton all that much so he sticks with London Bridge as a meeting point. Means he doesn’t have to move too far from the Hove train that will take him back to his nice, quiet house and Misty’s Big Adventure CDs. But I digress. It was a good meeting, although I got the deadline fear (rightly so) and a few other fears besides. But in a good way. We drank coffee and talked about bands who looked like they’d “been put together” and our suspicions thereof. Kicked ourselves for not going to see Ultralyd last week*.
Everett explained to me a clever and mathematical way of writing features, which I might try but I might not because I’m really bad with percentages.
I got on my bike to go home. And then chanced to look up at the sky above London Bridge. When I’d cycled over it to the station an hour earlier it was bright silvery yellow white, with a fitful sun trying to break clouds the colour and consistency of persian kittens. But now. Holy fuck. John Martin and William Blake and a thousand bad fantasy artists between them could not paint this sky. I’m telling you, it was the blackest, gloomiest, most foreboding thing I have ever seen, darker than Camden Underworld, backdrop to a representation of ‘The Deluge’, or, failing that, ‘The Day of Judgement’ (only without writhing naked repentant souls, more’s the pity - just tired, grey-clothed city people struggling home).
It was biblical, and London was doing its best holy city impersonation, temples of Mammon lit up like Bruce Nauman installations and adorned with stone goddesses. And me, in the middle of it. I saw the rain before I felt it, noted with interest that it looked pretty hard, maybe it was hail…maybe it was hail; maybe it was gonna start raining frogs…it wasn’t hail, but damn it was painful. I wobbled through Shoreditch with water in my boots, tasting the weird London rain on my lips, whether I wanted to or not, catching sight of myself in windows with hair all slicked down to my head like a wet dog. All through this, I kept laughing. It kept me warm, almost. As extreme experiences go, getting rained on so hard you’re almost knocked into an altered state isn’t actually as bad as it sounds. Honest. I’m just glad it only happens to me about twice a year.
* Ultralyd. Oh my good god, ULTRALYD! More on them later.
Posted on Friday, October 15th, 2004by Frances May Morgan
*still scratching*
That’s the best decription of London I’ve heard yet, makes me miss the old place.
Posted by chris on October 16th, 2004 at 1:17 pmIt was quite sunny in Brighton.