Elephant and Castle

Happy Birthday to Kevin. However hard he tries, he never manages to narrow the gap in our ages. We are going to the Elephant and Castle for dinner. This isn't a pub as you might expect, nor is it an underground stop on the Bakerloo Line, but a diner, and our local one is on the water, so we can watch the sea-planes while we eat.

In London, the Elephant and Castle isn't just an underground station either, it's a bloody great rabbit warren of underpass tunnels below a roundabout and where you need to have a great sense of direction. If, like me, you don't, woe betide you, you have to keep popping your head up, trekking back up to the surface to see where you are and where you need to be going.

Just a few days before Princess Diana died, I was negotiating this very place, trying to find the bookbinder specified by London University or King's College, I don't remember which, to have my MA Dissertation bound. Here they'd call it a thesis, but in Britain we reserve that for PhD's.

A couple of days before she died, I had to go back to collect it. I can remember what I was wearing, because one second it was appropriate, the next not. I was wearing shorts and a T-Shirt. It was warm and muggy when I went in to the bookbinder's, when I came out, the Heavens opened and crashed. For the life of me I can't remember how I kept the precious document, all bound in navy blue and gold, from being wrecked, but I did, and delivered it safely to the University.

Two days later, the world itself crashed.

Meanwhile, back in the present, and tonight in fact, Laurence has gone to work. His shift is from 19.00 to 3. He is being shown the full range of tasks to be done at Wendy's, and the drive through is open until 2.

On an entirely unrelated note, I have noticed that Bjork has released a new album called 'Volta'. According to the review, she has 'mined volcanic beats' for it. Jolly good. Here's the thing though. I've never got Bjork. Why is her music enjoyable? How is it enjoyable? Why is it called music? WHY the fascination with her? I JUST don't get it. And yet quite sensible people think she is amazing. A phenomenon in some way I suppose.

A colleague sent me the URL of a website owned by Yann Martel, he of 'Life of Pi' a book which I adored and others loathed.
The website is called 'What Stephen Harper is reading', Stephen Harper you may remember is our Prime Minister. It's rather a hopeful title, because Yann is personally sending Stevie a book a fortnight to try to enrich the Premier's moments of stillness.

Good luck Yann. You'd probably be more successful negotiating the Elephant and Castle blindfolded, but I admire your pluck.