What a gorgeous day. I cycle to kings cross leaving home at 7.15am for a meeting from 8am till 9am. Then I cycle to Southbank centre where at 9.30am I meet Tessa Watt to discuss the press launch of The Slow Down London. Tessa gets out the front page of The Financial Times who gave over their entire front page to it.
At 11.30am I meet Michael Vale , an associate artist at the Southbank centre , to talk about physical poems on the southbank centre site. He will be placing my Alban Berg
Quartet poem in the same place where the late musician, twenty five percent of the quartet, used to sit.
At noon I meet Rohan Heath. It’s the first time we have seen each other in 15 years. Rohan was a keyboard player in my band Secret Society. He left to tour with reggae star Eek-a-mouse and then had a hit record of his own called The Key The Secret. He travelled
the world bought a home in Hampstead and now lives a good life. His late father
is a famed Caribbean writer. Here is his obituary written by Margaret busby.
We catch up and resolve old issues and it’s like we’re two teenagers basking in each other, but a little older and certainly a little wiser. We did alright Rohan. I give him a grand tour of the southbank centre and we spend a good two hours chatting laughing and catching up with each other.
We sit to eat at the Italian here on the Southbank and I bump into Michael Lynch the CEO here “three weeks lemn” he says to me. There are three weeks left here until he leaves.
I meet Mary King and Laka D , vocal coach/genius and conductor, cause today is also the Lambeth sings event. Thousands of children singing on the stage and likewise thousands of Lambeth parents fill the royal festival hall.
I wave goodbye to my friend and at 3pm meet Matt Fraser who helped me by informing me of Namibia where I may be spending some time with The British Council soon. Matt comes to the artist in residence office. He is warm and generous with his time and with the picture of Namibia he meticulously paints for me. I shall be accepting the offer if it comes through to my agent.
My radio programme was on at 3,.45pm, on BBC radio 4 but I missed it again! Still I can get it on Listen Again, BBC’s brilliant service. I was supposed to be meeting Whitney my friend tonight at 6.30pm but it turns out that the book launch we were attending is actually tomorrow night. So there’s a free night to kick back with the journalist. I bike home from Waterloo Bridge. That is precisely where my office is. The Riverside Rooms. I am trying to get my spelling right in these blogs. How am I doing? At night at home I read the next installment of Lost in The Stars by Kurt Weill a musical based on the book Cry Beloved
I've still got a Secret Society vinyl LP!
Rachel
WOW!! That's so damn brill. You've got to read the blog with the knife and tell me what you think…. it's one of the recent ones i put up.