Friday, 21st of July, 2000

Firstly, in quite disturbing news today, it seems that Einstein was wrong. Well, a bit wrong. Paul Davies reports in the Sydney Morning Herald today that scientists at Princeton have managed to accelerate light to something like 300 times the speed of light in a vacuum. Those that know something about relativity will not be surprised that causality and time seem to be working backwards in this situation. Quite bizarre.
Being himself, Paul Davies can’t help a gratuitous religious reference though (the devil is in it, he says). Gratuitous being the word. Take Davies’ word for it on the physics, but don’t please for a second let him convince you that there’s anything in science that implies god-like nonsense.

So anyway. Finally eh? Finally another blog entry! Well I’ve been busy ok? Let me tell you…

When I finished up the blog last time, I was in an EasyEverything internet cafe on Tottenham Court Rd, feeling very tired, and so I didn’t write up that last day. That was Sunday the 9th of July. Well, it was in fact an altogether tired and tiring day. Had to get back from the Docklands Travelodge to our place in Bayswater… Then Tim & I walked down to Notting Hill and I poked my head into the various second hand music & bookshops there, and bought some old Eddie Campbell stuff I didn’t have yet [Eddie Campbell is a brilliant comics writer/artist from Scotland, now living in Brisbane.] From there we walked up Portobello Rd because I wanted to visit the Talbot Rd branch of Rough Trade. Sadly it was shut until 1pm and we didn’t have time to wait around, so that’ll have to wait till we’re back.

We’d talked to Oma (our grandmother), who was in London at the time, and she was staying with some relatives of ours in Hampstead. Since we wanted to go to Camdem Markets and stuff, it was quite convenient as it’s only a few stops up the Northern Line from there, so we went off to Alan and Joanna’s place and had a very pleasant BBQ with various different members of Dad’s side of the family.

In the meantime I’d been talking with Kirra on our mobiles, and we were going to meet in Camden. It turned out that she was flat broke and we decided to meet after Tim & I wandered around. Of course it had started raining, and in addition to this, Camden Town station was only open for people exiting, so we would have to walk up or down to one of the next stations on the line to get back to Tottenham Court Rd station and meet her.
Anyway, I said to Tim I’d meet him in a little while, and went wandering the shops a bit. There’s a FANTASTIC comics shop just down from the station in Inverness St (I even remembered the street name from last year!) called Mega City Comics… It’s almost up there with Gosh, although not quite ;) I found quite a bit of interesting stuff there.
Then went around the corner to the Music & Video Exchange and found the Tipper single I’d been looking for for ages. Wanted it for the µ-ziq remix, but the Phoenecia remix is gorgeous, and the Buckfunk 3000 mixes and the originals are great too.

I then went off looking in another record store and a great bookshop, so by the time I found Tim it was getting on to time to go to Kirra, and it was also starting to really pour. Naturally I didn’t even make it to Camden Markets - oh well, next time. Any attempt of mine to get new clothing or suchlike is likely to be foiled by such circumstances (ie my lack of urgency in doing anything about it).

But anyway, after finding an umbrella for Tim, we found a bus which took us all the way to Tottenham Court Rd, where we met Kirra, over a year since we’d last seen each other. We went off to the wonderful Wagamama’s for dinner again, and then after a little wandering around and a stop at the Blue Room (lovely cafe in Soho that we frequented along with Danae last year), and I was off to the EasyEverything to write the blog and all. Coincidentally I’m writing this blog entry in the EasyEverything off the Remprantplein in Amsterdam…

Uh… that’s quite a lot of writing for one day isn’t it? Perhaps I’ll be a bit more concise from now on?
On Monday the 10th of July we were finally out of the mouldy old room in Bayswater, and trouping off to Prague. A 2hr plane flight (horrible British Airways food making me wish for QANTAS already, but the service and comfort is the same really), and then a taxi bus to the hostel. We already were experience language-barrier problems, and it took quite an effort to ascertain that we actually were at the right place. Once this was sorted out, we found our rooms. The hostel was this big complex of buildings that must have come straight out of the Soviet era - horrible rectangular concrete monstrosities with these prison cell rooms (well I exaggerate, just a tad). It was also somewhat out of town… So once we got on a bus & train into town we kept our eyes open for places. We went straight into the main square, and I was surprised at how much I remembered from last time I was there (1997, with SBS Youth Orchestra). Had sausage & frites (pommes frites = hot chips, and everywhere on the continent they’re called by this French name) - already most happy with Czech food ;)

Exploring, we found a more central hostel and decided to move there for the next few days.
Jordan was desparate to see some “Black Light Theatre”, apparently a Czech speciality - theatre with actors, music, puppetry, the black light being puppets apparently floating in the air…
We bought tickets and went in at 8:30 (sun still up - Europe’s weird in summer…) Unfortunately the music was utterly appalling, as was the acting, and the puppetry was less than impressive. We left after the first half (I was falling asleep, it was that bad!) If you want to see Black Light Theatre in Prague, just don’t go to the one doing Faust, OK?

So it was off to dinner. Naturally I would settle for nothing less te schnitzel, although it was naturel schnitzel (just fried in flour) and I had it with rice and yummy spinach with garlic (not as good as the creamed spinach we make at home though!)

And on Monday the 17th of July, we were finally off to Amsterdam! It took most of the day, some 8 hours of transit. 2 hrs to Heathrow and then a wait before the 1 hr flight to Amsterdam (this is because we were flying British Airways as part of our QANTAS tickets). We got to Schiphol airport, bought train tickets for the next few legs of our journeying, and then hopped on the train to Amsteram Centraal. Jordan went off looking for money places (but our Westpac Cirrus card doesn’t want to work for some reason), and was gone an inordinately long time. Then Tim went off looking for him and disappeared too! Lara and Petey in state of much worriedness… I went off looking and no they hadn’t been mugged or skinned alive or anything, they were just waiting in a queue at an exchange place, and Tim had thought it would only be a minute… Ah well.

Anyway, we took the tram down to the Leidseplein, just up from where I stayed last year, and found our hotel. It’s on one of the canals, a lovely room overlooking the water and street below, lots of space - great place! VERY steep stairs, but only one floor up so I guess I can’t complain ;)
It was night by this time, and we wandered in search of a dinner we could all agree on. We ended up at “Adi’s Shoarma Masada”, where we had exquisite shoarma (shawarma, doner kebab type meat) with fresh pita, fabulous baba ganoush, homous with tahini, other dips… frites… lara had felafel… One of the dinner highlights so far for all of us (why are you laughing? We just have our priorities right, that’s all) and Adi was a lovely Israeli guy who talked to us at the end and (once Jordan had dragged us out, as Veren would have chatted all night otherwise) walked us up to one of the “Coffee Houses” up the road.
Being, as I am, uninterested in such things, I went off to find some internet, but most places were closing and I very soon went home.

On the 18th of July we had a free day. Tim accompanied Veren off to the Hague, to go to the Australian Embassy and get Veren an interim passport, and Jordan went to try and get our two boxes out of customs (hopefully he’s finally got them today!) I wandered Amsterdam, marvelling (as it was with London) at how familiar it was. I still remember my way around, and last year seems like yesterday in a way… I first went to Gallerie Lambiek, probably the most impressive comics shop in the world. It was apparently the first store established just for comics, and has an amazing range of beautiful things. It’s unfortunately very expensive, so I found various small and rare things I wanted, and left it at that.
After wandering into town and finding the jazz shop I remembered from last time, I spent a bit of time in Boudisque, a great record store, and then did an hour or two of internetting at my favourite Amsterdam internet cafe round the corner (it was there that my first tour diary of last year was written).

I was then called back to the hotel to do some busking. When I got back I realised I’d left my Lambiek bag somewhere with the new comics in it. Frenzied searching did not reveal it. I rang Boudisque but they couldn’t find it… I didn’t think I’d left it on the tram, because I had a vague memory of thinking “am I holding enough?” as I walked to the tram… After busking (quite good crowds, sold a few CDs and gave out lots of flyers about our gigs), I went back into town. Boudisque was closed, so I went back to do some more internetting… and lo an behold, there was my Lambiek bag behind the counter. My mood immediately became less black (*many chortles from my friends*).
I proceeded to solve my Hotmail problem. Hotmail had been refusing to download my POP mail properly for days. It would sit and think for ages, and then eventually time out and fill my inbox with old emails I’d deleted days ago. I couldn’t understand this. In addition, www.start.com.au would download my new POP mail, but it only downloads 20 messages at a time, so it wasn’t much use.
Eventually I managed to download a secure shell program for windows, which allowed my to login to my ISP’s computer with a text terminal (Telnet access is barred because it’s not secure), and logged into my account… There were 135 emails there… What had happened, I think, is that hotmail doesn’t delete the messages from the server until it’s completed downloading them all (sensibly)… At some stage in the last week I’d tried to download my POP mail, but it had taken too long and the operation hadn’t been completed. Then gradually over the next week the email kept on building up. And because I had Hotmail only downloading new messages as well, I wasn’t aware of this…
So I sat and manually deleted about 100 messages with the UNIX text-based mail program, and then Hotmail happily downloaded the rest, and to my relief all was fine again. I don’t know whether it’s scary or cool that I remembered enough UNIX and networking stuff from Uni to be able to do this…

That night Lara, Veren, Tim and I went and saw the new Woody Allen movie, Sweet and Lowdown, about the swing-era jazz guitarist Emmet Ray. It’s hilariously rendered with part documentary-style interviews, and part flashbacks with Sean Penn playing Emmet. We all presumed whilst watching it that he was a real person - the name sounded familiar - but various factors led us all to gradually suspect over the last day that he’s fictional (the one song he wrote in the movie was credited to Dick Hyman at the end, and none of the performances were credited to “Emmet Ray”), and I’ve just confirmed that. The music, anyway, is wonderful (Monsieur Camembert fans will love it) and the acting and directing is superb, as is Woody’s writing, as usual. A must-see.

And yesterday (19th of July)… woke up very late, after midday… Did our laundry, just down the road from Lambiek, and had yummy bacon & egg breakfast. Tim and I posted stuff home - I sent books & comics to the tune of 70 guilders (about $50 maybe). Ouch, but worth it for the weight loss ;)
Went busking and met Penny and Marty, lovely cellist friends from Sydney. I used to go out with Penny. Now she has a baby, and Penny and Marty got married about a month ago, and are here on a honeymoon, and visiting Penny’s parents and little brother. Penny’s not-so-little brother Tim, a violinist, is also here, and it was lovely to see them as we wandered the Albert Cuyp Markets and did some busking again.
Then we were off to Paradiso to soundcheck. It’s a quite amazing venue, a big old building. The smaller room, in which we’re playing, is upstairs, and is really quite sizeable. The sound is fantastic and it looks great, with a fairly big stage (jokes about nice to be high in Amsterdam… yeah whatever). We didn’t end up playing until midnight (that’s the way it works in this town for some reason), to a not enormous but not tiny crowd. A lot of them were quite drunk, and talked loudly, but they were very enthusiastic all the same… Tonight we’ve been asked to start at 12:30! Probably more people then, so I guess we’ll do so. Considering how late I slept in today, that doesn’t bode well for a full free day tomorrow, but hey… Perhaps I’ll get to sleep a little before last night’s 4:30am (by which time the sun was starting to come up… ugh).

Which brings us neatly to Today. Today involved getting up at about 12:30pm, and exploring more. I found the “American Book Shop” which I remembered from last time, with a comics section upstairs, where I got one more backissue of Authority (still missing a few) and the new Bacchus collection of Eddy Campbell’s. I went to Waterstone’s and got the new novel by Kathleen Anne Goonan, The Bones of Time (which I’ve been looking for since the same time as I went and found Justina Robson’s Silver Screen (still in the blog’s Recommended Reading I think). I found Kathleen Ann Goonan’s first novel, Queen City Jazz while touring Ireland last year - a very interesting view of a nanotech-filled future. The new one should be more well-written hard science fiction.

After that I um… bought some cello strings finally, and found the Virgin Megastore. I wanted to go there specifically to find the first album by Taraf de Ha�douks (having bought the second & third at their gig). I went in, marched right up to the World Music section (same place as last year), straight to the gypsy section, and there it was. Nothing much else of interest, but in any case it was a successful mission.
Once I finish this blog, it’s off to get some dinner on the way back to Paradiso. It’s now 10:20pm and I’ve been here for over 2 hours. 8 minutes left on this ticket, so I’d better finish up.
As usual, I hope this has been an enjoyable an informative read, and feel free to write to me and comment if you like. I’ll be emailing out the Tour Diary so far to special friends soon!
Love, Peter.
Next entry here]

Saturday, 8th of July, 2000

Hello again! After after I finished my last blog entry and emailing, I went to Rough Trade in Covent Garden. I have to say that Rough Trade probably has to overtake Ambient Soho as the best record store in London… Or at least equal it. You can listen to as many CDs as you like, and they’ll play vinyl on the store system if you ask.
But the range is just incredible! I spent hours there, just looking at stuff, and then longer listening ;) Good fun, not so good for my bank account balance, but y’get that. I made sure I didn’t spend anything over what you’d pay in Australia. And just everything (up to a point) was just there on the shelves…

From there I went up Shaftsbury Avenue to New Oxford St… popped into Forbidden Planet, a big mainstream comics chain, but they have some quite good backissues. Then I couldn’t resist going back into Soho. I went down to Sister Ray and found the first Gimmik 12″ (which comes sealed in a brown paper bag!) and poked my head into a few places.
Then I met the others again and we headed off to dinner at Wagamama’s! We’d been looking forward to this, on our own memories and many many people’s recommendations, and it does not disappoint. It’s cheap for London, wonderful asian food. Lots of Japanese and some vaguely Chinese and other stuff. Our lovely friend Guy Curd (who has sold many a FourPlay CD for us at gigs) came along too.

Next day, Thursday the 6th of July, was the first gig day for FourPlay! We picked up a hire car at Victoria Station and drove out to Hampton Court (apparently Henry the 8th liked Hampton Court Palace so much that he had his honeymoon there - again and again. Haha. So say the ads for the place anyway). We played at Hampton Court Flower Show - very odd. Middle aged couples mostly, but enough people appreciated our music to buy quite a lot of CDs…
From Hampton Court we then drove a couple of hours out of London to Chichester, where we were playing as part of the Chichester Fringe Festival. I was designated driver as usual, but probably mostly because I like driving so much and have a fair amount of stamina with it… Tim was designated navigator, because he’s damn good at it!
It was really good to get out into the country… although all in all I’m a city gent and prefer cities. But it was nice to go exploring a bit. Chichester is a bit country-townish though. We found the venue but there was noone there… We then found our way to the accomodation, at the University College (”Bishop Norbert” building, or somesuch) and at least we all had separate rooms, a nice change from the mouldy five-person room in London! But the beds were a bit narrow and my shower seemed to only dispense cold water…
The gig itself was… ok. Well, if I may say, we played wonderfully - good sound makes a bit difference! We were really tight and had a great time. Beforehand, at the end of soundcheck, I started playing a groove on the cello, round and round, and Veren eventually began improvising a beautiful tune over the top. It was a fabulous experience, and revitalised me somewhat as I’d been getting a bit tired out… I wrote down the chord sequence and rhythm in my Palm Pilot afterwards *grin*
But there weren’t very many people there, as it hadn’t been properly publicised. A bit of a shame. Considering how few people were there, we still made very reasonably CD sales ;) But still…

Next day, Friday the 7th, we made our way back into London. The traffic was abonimable, and we found that practically every second street is one way in the wrong direction, or blocked off, or something else that it doesn’t say in the London A-Z (street directory). Infuriating. Finally got back to the hotel and had to leave shortly afterwards to go to the Royal National Theatre to play an outside (but covered gig). It’s very near the centre of town, and therefore it was completely hellish trying to drive there. We somehow made it on time though.
Lovely location, right on the Thames, but unfortunately the sound was less than spectacular and we felt like we played awfully. The audience, conveniently, didn’t. There were quite a lot of people, and it wasn’t bad…

After the gig, we met quite a few friends, including, surprisingly, and old school friend of mine, Charles Blumer. Also there was Tim’s girlfriend’s mother Dita. We thought we’d be seeing her the next day, but it was great to meet up with her then. We all went off to Brick Lane (kind of India Town) for dinner, meeting up with Guy there too. A fantastic meal at City Spice, near the far end of the street.
I then ran around unsuccessfully trying to find an open internet cafe near our place, but gave up and went home. I did find a great pirate drum’n'bass radio station… At least I think it was a pirate, it was mono and not great reception…

Saturday the 8th of July. And a crazy day too. I’m not sure I’m mentally up to writing about it right now.
Yeah alright.
Well the first thing we had to do was return the car to Victoria Station. Easy enough, not too much traffic… Got there and then did a bit of internetting at a very cheap place near there (the Easy Everything chain (I’m at one now) have this system where the cost of use changes depending on the demand, so at lowish-demand times you can get over an hour for £1. At any time it’s cheaper than anywhere else). Then we got in a taxi to go to the Greenwich & Docklands Festival. They were paying…
So we got to Greenwich and had some spare time. It turned out to be in fact a lovely place. We found a £1 bookshop (and a £2 one next door!), and there’s a nice market and some great eateries and things. It was rather rainy though, so we didn’t end up having heaps of people for our two sets. The soundguy was fantastic though, and although for the first gig we were exhausted, the second ended up being quite tight and a pleasure to do.
What’s more, the lovely Trish Young from the Clouds was there. Having just done some recording for Jodi from the Clouds’ new solo album, it was great to meet Trish, and of course we played our cover of the Clouds song Domino. We chatted to her and her boyfriend and their gorgeous baby for a while afterwards, and hopefully we’ll see them again when we’re back here.

After the gig, we had to get to the accomodation we’d been provided - the Travelodge at East India Quays. This is in the Docklands area, but hardly next door to Greenwich. After enjoying it in the afternoon we really wanted to get in there, and Tim & I wanted to vegetate to Mission Impossible 2 at 6:15pm. However, the taxi went all round about to get to the Travelodge… Nice enough rooms, one each, all double beds, TVs, nice bathrooms etc. But just not very centrally located ;) Tim & I tried to get in to Greenwich and it took us about an hour to find our way there, even with Tim’s A-Z. Asking for directions, we were pointed the wrong way twice, and then we flagged down a taxi and the driver had no idea either, and drove off as we were talking to him!
Luckily the next taxi driver was very helpful and drove us down the road to the start of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. Yep, we walked under the Thames to Greenwich! Most enjoyable ;) And rather plush lifts at either end. The Tunnel was opened in 1902 it seems, and still going strong.

However, it was an immense disappointment to get back to Greenwich. We were exhausted as it is, and too late for the movie, and time didn’t want to hang around for the 9:30 showing. AND there are no internet cafes in Greenwich. Evil bastards.
So we had a relatively nice Asian meal and then took the Docklands Light Rail back (which is how we should’ve gotten there in the first place!) As we got there we ran into the others, going out. I was desparate for Internet, and Jordan said he wanted to find some too, after seeing the Bluegrassy Knoll at the National Theatre.
The Bluegrassy Knoll are a fantastic band from Melbourne, with whom we’ve played gigs on numerous occasions. We’ll be crossing paths a few times on the tour. Last night they were doing their extremely cool live soundtracks to (silent) Buster Keaton movies. Funny and clever as always. Sadly, during the second movie it started raining. Everyone piled into the foyer of the National Theatre, and shortly afterwards they came in and said that until the weather stopped or it got too late, they’d just play us some music acoustically. Everyone crowded round, and as it pelted down outside they played us some excellent bluegrass and gypsy-inspired music. Loved it.
Unfortunately it was too late after that for internetting, so Jordan and I took a cab home.
NOT as easy as it sounds. How do you flag a cab down in London? For that matter how do you find one? We went up to the bridge, but had no luck there, so we wandered backwards, and eventually found some, but they proceeded to ignore us. I think they were off-duty… Eventually we found one. The guy knew the approximate area he was going to, but not exactly where it was, but being a taxi driver, he neglected to check the map until we were lost ;) Checking the A-Z he found that the right turn he had to make was just after the spot where we did a U-turn a minute earlier, so another U-turn later, and some blocked off streets and weird round-abouts too, we were home.
*sag* Dropped into bed, watched some really crap TV (Alan Alda and Jacqueline Bissett in some crazy ’70s horror movie - she was verrrry pretty I must say!) and finally dropped off to sleep.

I’m afraid today’s exploits will have to wait for the next blog entry. I’m very very tired and have 4 minutes left at this Easy Everything place. 3 minutes now! Next stop Prague, and hopefully I’ll be able to do another entry really soon!
Peter.
[Next entry here]

Wednesday, 5th of July, 2000

Well, so we arrived in London yesterday! I slept about 3 hours in total on the flight, so I was completely trashed… Nevertheless, I managed to be basically awake all day.
On the flight we had some rather boring movies (can’t be bothered to remember them - oh yes, don’t see that atrocious movie with Rupert Everett and Madonna… Horrible Hollywood rubbish. Mind you, I only made it through the first 15 minutes or so before I got back to listening to Julieanne’s excellent travel tape, or some CD or other.
Alternatively I was probably setting up my delectable Palm Vx (see last entry). Incredible - it fits easily in my jeans pocket, and contains my entire address/phone book and diary and to-do book, plus as many notes on different things as I could come up with - it has 8Megs of memory… When I get home I can download heaps of software for it too…

Anyway, so we got to London and took the Heathrow Express and the tube to Bayswater, where we’re staying. Cheap accomodation, and the place is accordingly pretty… cheap ;) The toilet is particularly not to be commented on, although the shower is fine and there’s hot water 24 hours.
Hung out there a bit, and walked around, found a nice place for breakfast (1/2 hour wait before we could check in) and then… Then we took the tube in to Oxford Circus and went to Soho! Of course it had to be my first stop in London! Went into Borders on Oxford St to buy the current Wire Magazine, and found there the new Will Self novel, How the Dead Live, which was reduced from £15.99 to £11.99, which is reasonable enough for a new edition hardcover, so I got it. Actually a good price, as it’s a signed copy!
And then… Berwick St! Oh how do I love you. Let me tell you the ways:
Well there’s Selectadisc, where I found that most of the CDs are £12 or less, which is about $30 or less, a big surprise as I’d been thinking London’s going to be much more expensive! It’ll still be cheaper in New York, but nevertheless this is pretty good.
Then there’s a number of second-hand record/CD places along the way, the best being the Music & Video Exchange (there’s quite a few of these, including one near our place, in Notting Hill Gate, and one in Camden. Next to MVE there’s Sister Ray, a very well known and cool place, although not the most kindly-priced…
And finally there’s the fabulous Ambient Soho. It’s home of the Worm Interface label, who put out great weird-ass drum’n'bass and electronica, and they just have the best selection around (not enormous, just well-chosen *grin*). Possibly best of all, you can listen to as many CDs and records as you like before you buy. Most places in London (all the rest on Berwick St) won’t let you listen to anything (same in New York - drives me crazy). Spent ages there… Got the new Beefcake CD which happened to be playing on the shop stereo at the time and is amazing, and the new Worm Interface compilation Alt Frequencies 4, which has the best Jake Mandell track I’ve heard in ages… Also got two 12″s: the new Tim Tetlow on Planet µ (amazing) and the Pocket Monster Remixes on Lux Nigra.

After that it was internet cafe time, and another nice discover - The Webshack in Soho was £4/hr last year, but now is only £2/hr or about $5. Much more reasonable! The computers are pretty crappy though.
[Today I’m in the Internet Exchange in Covent Garden, where it’s 3p a minute, which is £1.80 an hour! And the computers are really good (wheel-mouses, wow!)]
Went from there, with Jordan (our fabulous manager), to Gosh! Comics, opposite the British Museum, and spent ludicrous amounts of money there, but all wonderful stuff that I needed, you see…

That night we went and had a Japanese dinner and then saw Chicken Run, the new Nick Park movie (he’s the Aardman chap - Wallace and Gromit…) which was very cute and funny. The other three kept dropping off, but it takes a lot to make me fall asleep ;) Mind you, we got home and I got into bed and once I turned off my Palm Pilot (*ahem*) was asleep before I knew it.

So a decent night’s sleep and then we’re at Today. Oh yes, forgot to mention that Kirra called last night, but we were all too tired to speak much. Talked again today and will be meeting up later. Kirra starred in last year’s Tour Diaries as the lovely lovely friend who put me up (with her flatmate Danae) whenever I was in London.
Haven’t done a great deal yet today - had FourPlay meetings and stuff, and then Jordan & I made our way in to Covent Garden. We neglected to get baked potatoes, much though we wanted to, because extra fillings were £1.10 each (so it’s like $18 for a jacket spud with garlic butter, cheese, corn, bacon and sour cream). They thought we were mad for wanting more than two fillings. I mean Hello?
Now sitting the Internet Exchange writing a blog and replying to emails, and I’ll be going off to Rough Trade soon, one excellent record store I haven’t visited yet, just up the road.

It’s a weird feeling wandering around London, because it really feels like I was only here yesterday. I did spend quite a lot of time here last year, but still… I love this place though. I expect New York will be the same.

Expect more entries whenever I get a chance. Last year I emailed diary entries home every couple of weeks… This time it’ll be blog entries quite regularly, maybe collating them and sending every couple of weeks. Hope they’re entertaining as ever,

Love Peter.
[Next entry here]