NOTES

Thank you again, friends, for your solicitude. Everyone is fine. Lloyd was in London but walks everywhere: Ben quit his job yesterday so was at home. The seventy-two virgins seem to be not so attractive today. Then there’s the worry about the Chinese and their pedigree pig-sperm in space programme.

More from the archives. Photo by Bill Fuller

Phil, Karen, Steve, Pio, Silvana, Ziki, Will, Sam, Peter, Gayle, Bill, Claude, Dave, David, Nicole, Fabrizio, Rita, Marcia, Anna, Bill, Beverly, Lyn, Peter, Miles, David, Norma, Matías for your messages. The day was good and cool enough to walk in. And this was where.

Today seems appropriate to put up these two newly-discovered photographs. Franco Beltrametti and Giovanni d’Agostino sometime late 1980s/early 1990s. (Thanks to Anna Ruchat and an anonymous German photographer). Edward Dorn in Buffalo in 1977. (Thanks to Mike Kelleher). Click image to enlarge.

Similar, today

Cambridge, Saturday July 16th. 2005

A major retrospective of the Life and Work of Jeff Nuttall is at the
Mid-Pennine Gallery, Yorke Street, Burnley BB11 1HD
from July 4th until August 13th

It Never Entered My Mind Bud Powell
ID Card Song Doghouse
Magical Misery Tour National Lampoon
M’appari Tutt’amor Enrico Caruso
The Blessing Don Cherry

Direct download: five.mp3

Previous two playlists, as Player will cycle through:

Click here for what I saw

For what it’s worth, this is what happened:

Our train pulled in to Edgware Road going eastbound. A train passed us into the tunnel going westbound. A huge explosion took all the air from the carriage and made our ears pop. At this point our train’s doors started opening and shutting and the lights went off. We were on the platform, so I got out and walked towards the stairs, as it felt very wrong. I asked the LU man what was up and he told us there had been a power surge, and the Tannoy started telling everybody to evacuate. White dust was coming from the westbound tunnel. I sprinted up the stairs, and people calmly left and started to get cabs and buses, thinking it was a power surge. I texted work at 9.03, and somebody texted back and said there was a bomb. That was it. I knew when the explosion happened that it was a bomb, but believed the power surge thing because it was easy.

Otherwise London is good.

Your messages and enquiries are appreciated, but we are more than fifty miles from the nearest Underground Station. Ben was on the train ahead of the one that exploded at Edgware Road but got out fast. I have to stay in bed for another two days (thanks, John, for the ride home) but things seem stable: more minor surgery on 13th.

for the many messages. John James is coming in fifteen minutes to drive us to the hospital. I’ll be back here as soon as I can.
TR

Lorenzo Thomas died this morning.

Panama, 31st August 1944 –– Houston, Texas, 4th July 2005

The city is obliged to be dark
And mysteriously desolate under
Ritualized demands of departure
Dracula, 1966
Houston Chronicle obituary
Electronic Poetry Center Author Page

Me and My Shadow Whispering Jack Smith
Tutankhamun’s Egypt Delia Derbyshire
Marin Inflatable Boy Clams
Hon Shirabe Tajima Tadashi
Fever Nancy Sit
Ritmica No.5 Amadeo Roldan

Click here for photographs of some of the people at The First Pearl River (Guangzhou) Poetry Conference.

Click for Quicktime Movie (modem) or here for Quicktime Movie (broadband)

Click here for more photographs of Guangzhou

I came back from China to learn that my oldest friend had died after a six-month illness. Half a century ago Colin was the first person I ever saw wearing an Italian suit — a decade before “mods”. He, Brian, Josh, Mickey and I spent most of our free time together for several years: in dancehalls (Welling Embassy, Tottenham Royal, The Lyceum, Streatham Locarno) and modern jazz clubs (Studio 51, The Flamingo). Sharp, intelligent and literate, he was a boiler-maker by trade. Rosina’s letter said:

Colin died after six months of illness. He had mesethelioma – asbestos-related cancer – as a result of working at G.E.C. Erith in the late 1950s, early 1960s. I nursed him at home, as was his wish.

The lagging used in boilers then is now illegal. We danced with those fibres in his lungs. He died in his own bed, lucid to the end. One daughter: Sally.