What were the skies like when you were young? Friday, I had a little wander through what I now hope a cloud is like at Anthony Gormley’s exhibition at the Hayward. It was wonderful, really exciting if not a little disorientating and a bit damp. I wasn’t sure about the rest of the exhibition, though I liked ‘Event Horizon’ the figures placed all over the Waterloo area which you can see from the top of the Hayward. It’s on for a few more weeks and much recommended.

A while back, I mentioned how much I enjoyed the nicknames of East End gangsters in a book I was reading. Well, this weekend I listened to this album compiled by the late John Fahey from old 78s - astonishingly evocative recordings, as are the wonderful names of the musicians: Blues Birdhead, Pigmeat Terry, Geeshie Wiley, The Mississippi Moaner. Well, maybe not the last one, but you see my point.

On a similar note, surely the finest inventor of fictional names was PG Wodehouse: Pongo Twistleton, Gussie Fink-Nottle, Oofy Prosser, Major Brabazon-Plank… Brilliant. Charles Dickens was fond of giving his characters names which alluded to their characters or destinies, the most obvious being “Oliver Twist” - his life is destined to change from the orphanage to respectability, that’s the twist - but I like Betsy Trotwood from David Copperfield (who was always trotting, constantly in a hurry). The Betsey Trotwood was also the name of the pub over the road from the Guardian where I had my first job. Coincidence? Nah.

The improved weather suggested a listen to ‘Aja’ by Steely Dan this weekend, which in turn reminded me of the documentary about the making of that album. I’m not really a fan of these sort of rockumentaries, (if you will) but Fagen and Becker remain a quality double act. On Youtube, there are clips about both ‘Black Cow’ and ‘Peg’ which show them at their - perfectionist - best. That’s it for now - I’m in Belgium this weekend, so probably no WCR for a couple of weeks…

Hello, hello. Well, a bit of a nerd post sorry about that. But I thought I must inform you of something special. Suppose you go to a lot of websites which feature RSS. And you think well I could do with a better system to organise and receive the articles I’m interested in from all the wonderful weblogs all over the interweb.

Well I have already done some homework for you. If you can’t stand using Safari or Firefox as your default RSS reader I insist that you give Vienna a go. It’s easy to use, free (open source) and best of all automatically checks for recent articles. It also syncs with Growl which displays onscreen notifications for various OS X applications.

There you have it, the really, really simple (RRS) way to read really simple syndication (RSS)…

After my recent forays into East London, I kicked off my Weekend Cultural Runnings a day early with an almost unprecedented Thursday evening in West London - Notting Hill to be precise. Strange how you can live in a city for years and stick fairly closely to your own area, as if there are some crazy ley lines or something. I’m sure Iain Sinclair would have a view on this. Though if they try to make me go to South London, I’ll say no, no, no. Anyway, my trip west was necessary because I was keen to celebrate the birthday of my friend Scott at the Notting Hill Arts Club and great fun it was too. The night was called ‘Yo Yo’ though I was sad to miss the Ragga Twins who were playing later as I had to skedaddle owing early due to a crack of sparrows meeting the next day. But it’s all good. Talking of the Ragga Twins - and in Islington, we speak of little else - I’ve got me a copy of this really good compilation put together by Soul Jazz. It’s great. What’s more, it has ‘Super Sharp Shooter’ on it. I know from experience that DJing at weddings can be a somewhat restrained experience - one has to take into account the sacred ceremony one is celebrating, the diverse age-groups present - but when my pal opened his set with that at my friends’ nuptials a few years ago, I saw it as a distinct statement of intent.

With this dreadful weather, never has there been a better time to sit and read indoors. I’ve been working my way through Ford Maddox Ford’s ‘the Good Soldier’ which I’ve found fascinating and it has reminded me greatly of the unreliable narrator in ‘the Great Gatsby’, though John Dowell in Ford’s book is even more sketchy on the details. I’ve also been re-reading George Elliot’s ‘Middlemarch’ for the unforgivably lazy reason that my Ford book was upstairs and I was sitting next to my book shelf downstairs. How terribly decadent.

Talking of decadent, I’m really looking forward to BBC4’s programmes about George Melly this week. Catch them if you can.

Finally, my cultural runnings have been a little light on the visual arts recently but I’ll be putting that right when my wise and patient father takes me around the Salvador Dali exhibition at Tate Modern in a couple of weeks. I’m not a fan, based on those ubiquitous melty clocks and I’ve always thought Dali was a total charlatan, but I’ll be heading there with an open mind, or at least, trying bloody hard to.

My weekend runnings took me twice to east London, innit. On Saturday, I met Theo - the brand new son of two of my best friends. A fine name, though I’m still not sure if he was named after the jazz musician or the quick-as-mustard Arsenal winger. Either way, Theolonius Monk’s music is often described as being ‘childlike’, appropriately enough and while I love the cover of the ‘Underground’ album, this recording of Monk with John Coltrane, only very recently discovered in some (probably literally) dusty archives is the doozy. In the meantime, watch this.

Sunday saw me striding manfully down Columbia Road Flower Market, or as manfully as you can stride when you’re carrying two bunches of lilies. By coincidence, I’ve been reading a bit about east London recently. Firstly Ed Glinert ’s ‘East End Chronicles’ (though I would also recommend The London Compendium, fascinating stuff) and this weekend this book about organised crime in the East End. I’m not a fan of the true crime genre by any stretch of the imagination and so skipped most of the Robin Hood-esq nonsense about the Krays and the Richardsons, but I really enjoyed some of the vernacular and nicknames and especially the chapters on the 1920’s and 30’s. There is loads about the Italian Sabini family (who were based not that far from where I type these words) which is where Graham Greene apparently got the inspiration for the gangsters in Brighton Rock. Need to re-read that one thinking about it.

Finally, go Brian! If you’re not watching Big Brother then this won’t mean much to you but oh my goodness, that man is such a hoot. I placed a modest wager on him winning the series a few weeks ago and with the odds now at 8/11 or something, it’s looking like a very good move. My last successful bet involved the Pontiff, but I don’t think I’ll go into that now…

While I was sad about George Melly’s death in the week, I thoroughly enjoyed reading some of the anecdotes about his extraordinary life this weekend. I was back at my parents’ house where a lot of my books still reside and spent a happy half hour re-reading some parts of his autobiography ‘Owning Up’ which covers his life in the jazz world in the 50’s and 60’s. It really is hilariously funny. One anecdote I particularly love/loved is that worried about his weight and having read somewhere that gin was the least-fattening spirit, George switched to drinking - or rather downing - neat double shots when out and about - which he fears didn’t do much for his burgeoning reputation as a bit of a reprobate… I need to get the other volumes, though my copy which I got second-hand years ago is signed by Melly himself. Lovely.

The whole trad-jazz period lovingly evoked by Melly in ‘Owning Up’ came to a pretty abrupt end when the Beatles and what we can call the ‘beat-boom’ started in the early sixties. Before then, a uniquely British take on New Orleans jazz really was the soundtrack to teenage dances across the UK, mainly due to the law at the time stopping many US performers from playing over here. When this lapsed, Melly met his hero Louis Armstrong several times which is very sweetly described. There’s a plethora of Armstrong’s early albums available but I’ve stuck to these - wonderful stuff. I owe my father for my interest in Melly - over lunch on Sunday he repeated his great anecdote about once spotting Goodtime George in a pub smoking a long cheroot - so I think this might be an early birthday present for him.

Talking of reprobates, my cultural runnings were somewhat disrupted by a very lively Friday night I spent in one of these strange new smoke-less pubs in Camden. Nonetheless, I applied my hangover to Don Quixote (which I can see becoming a regular remark on this blog). In fact, to paraphrase the narrator’s remark in Money about smoking, unless I specifically tell you otherwise, I am either starting to read Don Quixote, reading Don Quixote or putting Don Quixote down.

The rain fell on Londontown this weekend which suits me as I hate the sunshine

Anyway, I sat at home and did some light reading. I’m still working my way through the new translation of Don Quixote mentioned before, but I also finished reading this book of my girlfriend’s which had been hanging around for a while. It is actually quite an interesting tale, all about the Indian Rope Trick and how it never existed in India but was invented by some American journalist and subsequently picked up by conjurers in India. But it is what would be a diverting long article in a magazine turned into a bloody long book.

That said, there are some interesting things about Victorian magicians and in particular, the Society for Psychical Research founded in 1882 who were very influential in their day. The theory goes that the death of Prince Albert led to that era’s obsession with mediums and spirituality, an idea explored in depth in this excellent book by Matthew Sweet about the Victorians, too much to go into here, but fascinating stuff, definitely.

And I can’t let mention Indian conjurers without alluding to Wilkie Collins’ corking novel the Moonstone - and as pointed out in John Sutherland’s wonderful The Literary Detective, what on earth are those Indian conjurers doing at the Varinder House?!

All this India Rope Trick reading reminded me of this record - specifically the song ‘Indian Rope Man’. Brian Auger is still working today and Julie Driscol - perhaps best known today for recording the theme to Absolutely Fabulous - now works under her married name of Julie Trippets, all good stuff I’m sure. There is also a great version of ‘Light My Fire’ on the record, though I think it was illegal to release an album in the late sixties with a cover of it. I loathe the Doors, they’re surely the most-overated band ever. But I’ll go into that another day.

And finally, not really cultural runnings - though no change there - but the confusion about Theirry Henry’s transfer to Barcelona took up considerable quantities of my head space over the last few weeks and I found this really helpful site assisted me in reading far too much speculation around it. Useful site, whatever you’re interested in.