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.
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