Writings On The Wall
My plan on Saturday evening was to attend the United Underground 2 event at the Southbank Centre. But things went wrong and I never made it, which was a bit of a disappointment. I however did manage to attend part of the warm up event called “Writings On The Wall”. And thankfully it was worth attending.
I suppose I should start at the beginning. I was up and about at 7.30am on Saturday morning getting myself ready for the excellent London Movie Tour, which was starting production at 9.30am. The tour, which took in countless film and television locations around London lasted for around 3 hours.
After the tour I couldn’t resist heading down to Borough Market for something to eat, but that place must be the biggest tourist trap in London. I couldn’t be fucked queuing up for an hour to get some overpriced food to eat and the hordes of people were a complete pain in the ass. It wasn’t my cup of tea.
Thankfully my trip to Borough market wasn’t a complete waste of time because just a minutes walk form it was an iconic film location, which we had been taken to during the London Movie Tour. The hideout Park Street, which was made famous as a location in the movie “Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels”, and is well worth visiting. The only bad thing about that the movie is that it amazingly sent the over rated and extremely untalented Vinnie Jones on the road to stardom, sorry that was a slip of the tongue I meant to say the underrated and extremely talented Vinnie Jones, HONEST.
I got out of there quick when I seen Big Chris appearing and headed to the Southbank Centre to take in what was left of the “Writings On the Wall” event. I arrived just in time to see a young guy blasting out a few tunes on the acoustic guitar, his name escaped me, but he seemed to have a wee bit of talent and potential.
By this time I was getting real hungry, so I did what any smart guy does in a situation like this I got myself a pint of lager. I swiftly downed pint number one and got myself another. Buy this time my stomach was starting to rumble from lack of food. Thankfully, maybe thankfully isn,t quite the right word to use. They have a cafe at the Southbank Centre, which is an even bigger rip off than Borough Market. It cost me £3.50 for a couple of slices of bread with a wee bit of cheese and pickle inside it and another £1.50 for a tiny bit of cake, fucking scandalous.
Now my stomach had a few crumbs in it, I could settle down to watch the rest of “Writings On The wall”. I unfortunately cant remember the names of anybody performing. There was some more music followed by a few I’m not sure what they are called, modern day poets, spoken word artists or something like that. Whatever you want to call of them or they want to call themselves doesn’t really matter I suppose. But what I will say about them is that each and everyone of them was talentend and worth listening too, which I must admit surprised the hell out of me.
I must be honest and say that I normally wouldn’t have paid any attention to spoken word artists, because I normally associate them as being radical loonies or tree hugging monsters, but I was wrong in my way of thinking. They have voice, which deserves to be heard.
After “Writings On The Wall”, finished I thought I would go for a wee wander around along the Southbank to fill in some time before United Underground 2 kicked off at 5pm. I however developed a craving for some Cherry Beer, which of course meant I had to head to one of my favourite central London pubs, “Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese” on Fleet Street. After 3 bottles of the good stuff, I suddenly felt too tired to head all the way back to the Southbank Centre. So I did what I always do in a situation like this, I had one last drink for the road and then headed home to Kilburn.
One of the organisers of “Writing On The Wall” and “United Underground” are called Ctrl.Alt.Shift, who are an organisation, that from what I can gather are trying to make a positive difference to this crazy world that we live in.
Related posts: