todo

In my head on this particular day are Tomasini’s String Quartet in B flat major IV, the sound of a thousand butterflies dancing in a field one late summer, the cover illustration from a Penguin edition of Our Mutual Friend, a recipe for Key Lime cheesecake, the text of an A-level Geography book, and a pocket watch.

The Oxford Book of Money, published in 1995, used ‘Money Rant’ because they said my poem explained the culture of money really well and made that explanation accessible.

Then there was the Sari Squad, who were quite incredible. They were a group of Asian women based in east London – each one a wicked kung fu fighter, each one willing to defend their community to the end, and some of them did actually wear saris. They started by guarding women’s gigs, but would then guard any gig where fans might need protection fro

the Ruts, one of my favourite punk bands, who had ended their set with ‘Babylon’s Burning’, which I think is one of the best punk songs ever written.

A guy called Red Saunders, along with a few of his friends, had formed Rock Against Racism in 1976, not just as a reaction to the racist skinheads terrorising our streets, but also in response to comments made by Eric Clapton and David Bowie. It’s extraordinary to think that back then Eric Clapton (aka God) said he agreed with Enoch Powell and that

On television I caught glimpses of the heroes of the Black Power movement. Muhammad Ali, Stokley Carmichael and Yuri Kochiyama were all preaching about the condition of black people, and Angela Davis was still regarded as the most dangerous person in the USA.

Some images of the site can be found here: http://linksofnoltland.co.uk/index.html

The Thames is England’s longest archaeological landscape and thousands of the objects that fill our museums have come from its foreshore. Among them are numerous Bronze and Iron Age swords, shields and spears that were found along the stretch between Vauxhall and Teddington and include the famous Battersea Shield.

Anna Monkland’s Calcutta novel Life in India,