Third Day Off

Another super day weather-wise, plus goofing-around-wise.

Did some laundry and sorted some more paperwork here at home. I was then going out for the day, and needed to take the ticket I had for a gig tonight; however, I couldn’t find it anywhere. After searching every nook and cranny in the house and calling the company that sold me the ticket, I was able to determine that I’d never in fact received it: the Royal Mail had ignored my postal redirect and attempted delivery to my old place. Luckily, they still had it at the local sorting office and I was able to get it there before going out.

I went to Liverpool Street and met up with the Wee Scots Lass (after bumping into my cousin’s hubby, down from Edinburgh, though!). We went to 19 Princelet Street, which is London’s museum of immigration and asylum. Its location is appropriate, since the Brick Lane part of town has been the focal point for many waves of London immigrants over the years. The museum itself is a fascinating building that was a home for 18th-century Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in France, had its back yard built over with a synagogue in the 19th-century when the Polish Jews arrived, and then saw its basement used for anti-fascist rallies in the 20th-century. The museum talked about more recent Somali and Bangladeshi immigrants, and had many touching exhibits created by local schoolchildren (e.g, capturing their ideas for why someone in Bangladesh in the ’50s might - or might not - want to move to England, written on cards and placed on either side of a balance scale).

The sad thing is that 19 Princelet Street does not have much money. It’s staffed by volunteers, but because of lack of funds - and because the building is dangerously fragile, and cannot take large numbers of visitors until it is repaired, which requires funds - it can open only about 10 days each year. This week - Refugee Week - it’s open, though, which is why we really wanted to go.

19 Princelet Street is open until Sunday June 24th. If you’re in the east end of London this week, you should go.

Afterwards, we tubed up to Hampstead, where I showed the WSL the posh neighbourhood, the Heath, and the kind of nosh you can get in fancy north London pubs.

Afterwards she went home and I bussed over to Kentish Town and the Forum to see Grinderman. This band is really Nick Cave and some of his band, The Bad Seeds, but they play a rougher, more garage-rock-band type of music. It’s loud and a bit ugly. I missed the opening acts, but enjoyed Grinderman. The band’s excessive facial hair was a bit off-putting, but they rocked through their set. With only one album out there wasn’t much surprise about what they were going to play, but the live versions were fun and energetically delivered, if not polished. Cave flailing his lanky limbs about while singing is something to see. “Honey Bee (Let’s Fly To Mars)” and “No Pussy Blues” had to be the highlights for me.

For their encore, they came back out with the two acts that had been their openers. To my surprise, one of them was Seasick Steve, the awesome blues guitarist I saw last month. The other were ’70s/’80s little-acclaimed synth-punk pioneers Suicide. The encore consisted of the assembled groups playing a couple of Suicide tracks. I was disappointed, because although Suicide may have been OK back in the day what I heard tonight was boring and dissonant. And they relegated Seasick Steve to whacking a tambourine or something at the back of the stage.