london

I grew up in Croydon, which was a cultural graveyard made only partly bearable by the fantastic Warehouse Theatre. (It’s still a cultural graveyard, but now with added Ikea and knife crime.) Music was my only outlet, but there was a serious lack of live music, so it was two turntables (and occasionally a microphone) for me. I spent an unhealthy proportion of my time hanging around in record shops, listening to 12″s that I couldn’t afford and waiting for something exciting to happen. Nothing exciting happened, so I got out of Croydon as soon as I could.

I vaguely recall Big Apple Records in Surrey Street being one of those record shops, purveyors of white labels so obscure that even I had no idea what they were - all shiny black sleeves and illegible marker pen. Now I discover that Big Apple Records was the spiritual home of dubstep in its early days.

Bastards. They could have told me they were planning a musical revolution.

In 2003 I worked for some weeks in Baghdad following the invasion of Iraq, based at the UN headquarters in the Canal Hotel. As many of you probably remember, the Canal Hotel was bombed up on 19 August - shortly after I left the mission - killing many of my friends and colleagues. This is a long way of explaining how I first met Soodad al-Naib, one of the Iraqi staff working in the Humanitarian Information Centre while I was there.

Soodad was injured in the Canal Hotel bombing but after moving to London, she’s made an amazing recovery and is now pursuing a career as an artist. Her paintings are dark and deep, almost abstract but with a mythic storytelling quality. Her work is going to be part of the Untitled Artists Fair in London this year, from Saturday 31st May - Sunday 1st June at Chelsea Old Town Hall. Admission is free but you need to have tickets - download them from this link. Come on, free art! What more could you ask for?

While reading this post, you should be listening to Modern Art by Art Brut.

If you haven’t seen Gary Cohen’s documentary Judah and Mohammed, you should track it down somewhere and watch it. It gets under the skin of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and after an hour of following two young men - one Israeli Jew, one Palestinian - it gets under the viewers skin as well. What made it especially powerful for me was that you are actually watching Judah and Mohammed grow and change over a period of 18 months, without any sermonising by the documentary makers. It’s this human story that really brings home the futility of the conflict, and the way it distorts people’s lives on both sides.

This was a good excuse to write something about the documentary, since I wasn’t blogging at the time it was screened. However I should also say that Gary is hosting the launch party for The Berakah Project, a group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim musicians on 27th November at St Paul’s Church on Bedford Street in Covent Garden. Too often, these sorts of project turn into a worthy muddle, but the music clips on their site talk of a dynamic blend of different styles with firm roots in the music of the middle east; so head along and enjoy.

I don’t want this blog to become monopolized by the “Iraqi translators” story, but if it does, it’s not a huge price to pay. While I was running and then recovering from the Montenegro Adventure Race (of which more later), a number of things have happened.

The venue for tomorrow’s meeting has been changed. It will still take place tomorrow (Tuesday 9th October) at the same time (7-9pm) with the same speakers in a changed venue very close to the original one: the Attlee Suite in Portcullis House. The long-suffering and highly efficient Mette Kahlin will be standing outside the door of the old venue (Committee Room 14 in Parliament) pointing the way to the new venue. To get there, walk to Parliament and find the very ugly building at the corner of Bridge Street and Victoria Embankment, facing Big Ben.

The meeting is still going ahead in order to keep the pressure up on the government. Today, Gordon Brown announced acknowledged the existence of these Iraqi staff (in his words, he “paid tribute” to them - ho ho ho) and announced a new more policy:

Existing staff who have been employed by us for more than twelve months and have completed their work will be able to apply for a package of financial payments to aid resettlement in Iraq or elsewhere in the region, or - in agreed circumstances - for admission to the UK. And professional staff — including interpreters and translators — with a similar length of service who have left our employ since the beginning of 2005 will also be able to apply for assistance.

Apparently more details will follow later this week, but the bloggers involved in this campaign will keep up the pressure to ensure that a) the government follows up on this announcement, and b) that the “agreed circumstances” that Brown mentioned are broad enough to have an impact on the lives of Iraq employees of the government.  Frankly the terms outlined above leave a nice back door for the government, since it’s safe to assume that all locally employed staff will have contracts that are less than 12 months.  Let us join together in holding Mr Brown’s feet to the fire on this one.

Oh, and Dan Hardie is not a doctor.

One of my short stories won the Leaf Books open short story competition last year, and has now been published as the title story in an anthology called “The Light that Remains and other stories“. You can buy it online at the Leaf Books website and eventually through Amazon (I hope).

“The Light That Remains” is a spare and unsentimental story about death, except it’s not. It’s about how to look at the world differently, except the main character is blind. It’s about reading, except that nobody opens a book throughout the whole story. It’s about London, except it’s the London that most people forget about.

I enjoyed writing it, and you might enjoy reading it. Why not buy a copy and let me know how it goes?

Photo: Golden Blind Man, by Darren Levant.

The Spitz is one of the best venues in East London - great bistro, interesting gallery and a fantastic line up of music for all tastes. Well, the Spitz was one of the best venues in East London, because after a battle of many years they’re being forced to move out of their current premises.

The Spitz occupies an unfortunate position on the edge of Old Spitalfields Market, which has been chipped away over the years by the expansion of the City. A rearguard action has saved the historic market buildings, and the market itself still retains its outsider ambience (but only just).

Being in one of those historic market buildings, the Spitz has been under intense pressure from their landlords for several years, presumably because the landlords could get more rent if that unit wasn’t occupied by an alternative music venue.

So that chapter in the history of the Spitz is over, but hopefully they’ll find a new venue and come out of their corner fighting. To mark the end of that era, there’ll be A Great Night in the Spitz on Thursday 27th September at 7pm, with tickets at £15 for an amazing line up of jazz, blues and other musicians.

To finish, my favourite quote in the campaign to Save the Spitz came from Beth Orton, who said

If the Spitz closes it will be an absolute disgrace and a sure sign that London is on the way to becoming a glorified shopping mall with a series of unnecessary restaurants and shops that only recognises the power of the City bonus and not the creative force that gave areas like Spitalfields its identity in the first place.”

Can’t say I disagree with her.