Ciao, Bella!

Sunday 3rd July was the wife's first gig. Latin jazz duo BelCanto played 4 songs at the enormously popular Ealing Acoustic night, held on the first Sunday of every month at the very groovy La Tasca tapas restaurant.
They blew the bloody lid off the place.
Kicking off with the cheeky upbeat bossa rhythms of A Lentidao, penned by guitarist Simone Chiappi (who, although Italian, does not poo in bins), they switched gear straight away, silencing the crowd with a sultry latin version of Cry Me A River. They tried to close with Simone's high octane flamenco tribute to a lost weekend in London, Strand (the tongue twisting Italian lyrics to which Clare handled flawlessly), but neither the crowd nor the organisers wanted them to leave the stage, so they calmed it right down again, with a beautiful arrangement of the Italian jazz standard Estate, which Clare delivered with such sensuous relish that there wasn't a dry nose in the house.
With promises of a showcase ringing in our ears, we made our way to the after show party, and celebrated in true rock and roll style - by sipping glasses of chilled white wine.
Viva BelCanto.
Next gig will be August 7th. See BelCanto's website for contact details.

Silence

I expect there will be many blogs with a similar title being posted right now.

Just observed the 2 minutes' silence to commemorate the live of those who perished in last weeks bomb attacks.

Happened to be on Tottenham Court Road, along with literally thousands of others. The pavement was packed with people, staring gravely at the floor, or at each other; strangers standing shoulder to shoulder, part of a strange community.

It's the first time I've felt a sense of community in the centre of London: normally, your fellow Londoners are a nuisance; an impediment; but for two minutes, the concept of "Londoner" meant something special. A gigantic family of human beings mourning the loss of their brothers and sisters.

Deeply moving.

Terrible

What a weird day July 7th was.

Totally impossible to get my head round the fact that people just like me were brutally slaughtered going about their ordinary business, in places that I and my friends pass through on a regular basis.

London was a very strange place to be. At times, jammed with people and cars making their way out. At other times, deserted; a ghost town. Shops, bars and restaurants shut, with hand written notes in the window.

I walked from Covent Garden to Turnham Green that evening, and it was as though nothing had happened: people were still jogging in Hyde Park; taxis were still trying to knock down pedestrians on Kensington High Street.

Surreal.

May it never happen again.

Italians poo in bins

A five day break in Italy saw me and the Missus in the beautiful tuscan town of Pisa (of leaning tower fame) last Saturday night.

We've both been working lunatic hours recently, and decided we needed a really chilled-out wind-down. So naturally, after checking into our hotel, we went straight out to a lively bar and danced til 3 in the morning. The DJ played 20-minute bursts of brilliant disco, worryingly interspersed with ear-meltingly cheesy europop which was difficult to dance to even ironically, so we had ample opportunity to drink or visit the facilities.

On a trip to the gents, I discovered, to my horror, that a previous client had found it necessary to poo in the waste paper bin. To be fair, it looked as though it had been a fairly pressing matter, but even so, the gentleman in question could surely have aimed at the centre of the bin, rather than the rim and surrounding wall?

I feel sure that an Englishman in similar circumstances would have mopped up the worst of the stippled putrescence. Perhaps with his silk kerchief? I'm not so sure the European Community is such a good idea any more.