Ghost Dance.........

I swear to God this morning I saw Jason Robards, the American actor, driving a black cab .... he was turning on to the Euston Road..... I was upstairs on the number 30 bus. Unlikely I know, especially as he’s dead. But maybe not.

In Will Self’s brilliant and hilarious short story, The North London Book of the Dead, from The Quantity Theory of Insanity, it turns out that when people die they end up living in the city suburbs and working in most departments of the civil service........

I recently lost a close friend. My oldest friend. She died of cancer after a brave and difficult, 3 year battle; another too young, too soon. Over the last few days I keep smelling a perfume: at work, at home, on the number 30 bus. I know this scent. It’s not mine, I wear Jo Malone. But I recognise it. It smells like Joseph’s Perfum de Jour. I used to wear it a lot when I was younger. My dead friend wore it. When I was in her bathroom I would spray myself with it and remember my youth. Is it her?

This year has been rather death heavy so far, a sign of growing older perhaps? My Uncle died suddenly, only in his sixties, and then my ex-mother-in-law, eighty something. Death is the only thing in life of which we can be certain and yet we are always surprised when it creeps up, calls our name and we run in the other direction. As a child I asked the nuns if heaven was so great why didn't we all just commit suicide? Shocked by the immorality of such a question about mortality by a minor, they changed the subject.

A couple of weeks ago the oldest member of my yoga class died aged 96, her last words being, 'May I have a glass of champagne please?' Her's was as good a death as one might hope for. It came at the right time, at the right end of her life. When you lose a child, unlike an adult, they grow up in your mind. Year after year. So you lose their future too: where would they be living? What would they be doing? Who would they be? And what would one's own life have been, if they were still here? My daughter would now be the same age I was when I had her. I could be a grandmother. Where do they go?

Rise up hold the reins
We'll meet again I don't know when
Hold tight bye bye
Paths that cross
will cross again
Paths that cross
Will cross again

from Paths That Cross

Patti Smith

Top tip: live each day as if it were the last.......

No sleep till..........Bexhill

Fancy rocking out on the Sussex coast? Bexhill-on-Sea may not be your first port of call, but think again. Because Bexhill has the De La Warr Pavilion and the De La Warr Pavilion played host to An Evening of Words and Music with.........Patti Smith. Yes, I got to see the the godmother of rock, punk, poetry whatever twice in one week. Lucky me. She was, if not necessarily word perfect .... oh how we love it when Patti has a senior moment mid song..... certainly pitch perfect. Honestly, the energy at a Patti gig is above and beyond the average twentysomething band, I kid you not. And last Friday night was a particularly blinding performance, accompanied by her daughter, Jesse Smith, on the piano, a young bloke with a beard whose name I never caught and the extraordinary Patrick Wolf, a musical youth with unbelievable talent who flitted between the violin and harp with breath taking brilliance. I first saw Patrick Wolf a few years ago, doing Twisted Christmas, and he's a sort of musical genius, if you get the chance I urge you, go see him.

It was a remarkably good evening and much needed after a remarkably tricky week running through the good, the bad and the ugly of emotions. So, after a long train journey and fuelled only by red wine and some of the most expensive crisps known to man.......all be it Stilton & grape flavoured crisps........and yes there is good reason why salt & vinegar has endured so long but they had to be tried....... it was a delightful relief to throw caution to the wind and my arms aloft, and do a spot of dancing, while Patti rocked the once glorious seaside town with Gloria, Ghost Dance and a spine-tingling, goose-bumping, heroic rendition of Bird Land.

And then there was the De La Warr Pavilion. What a delight, all curves and kinks and windows, perched on the edge of the beach. It was commissioned by the 9th Earl De La Warr in 1935. Designed by the architects, Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff, and was the first public building built in the modernist style designed to provide the good denizens of Bexhill and it's environs with culture and leisure. And now, after an 8 million quid refurb, it's back on the map. Home to one of the largest art galleries in the South East, it has amongst other things, an award winning bandstand and a magnificent roof terrace commanding panoramic views of land and sea. Quite the jewel of the East Sussex coast.

Top tip: Don't wait for the summer, head for the beach and check out the De La Warr Pavilion at sunny Bexhill-on-Sea.

Thanks for the memory........

It's official, it's over, the game is up....... I'm going to have to carry an official disclaimer, a government health warning....... I can no longer remember. Anything. I'd give in and call it a day if I could remember what day it is. Over the last year there's been a few double booked moments, a bit of lost and not found and the name section of the brain is definitely showing up 'error' . But now the hard drive appears to be full and there's no room left on the memory stick. And I don't like it. I have an ex who's made a career out of losing things, now the son is turning the forgotten into an art form, a cousin who loses phones, keys, clothes, buggies.....fortunately the child wasn't in it at the time...... on a regular basis. But for me this is new territory, a foreign land.

This time it was the Patti Smith tickets. I couldn't remember what I'd done with them. I'd been delighted to discover she was doing a talk at the Royal Geographical Society so called a friend and arranged to go. We'd discussed it, made plans so I knew I'd got them. I racked my brains, searched through the emails. Nothing. And then the awful realisation began to dawn: I'd booked the friend to come with but had I actually booked the tickets to go see? I rang the booking office and tried to explain to the lovely Laura that I couldn't remember if I'd booked or not but I didn't know which card I'd booked with if I had.... or hadn't...... or any other vital information. She was concerned, patient and helpful. Perhaps the Patti Smith fan club demographic is full of the old and insane. Perhaps she's been inundated with calls from the bewildered, unable to remember where they're going......or why. Eventually I discovered I hadn't booked the tickets. I'd asked my friend to as I'd been working. I had in fact been really efficient. I just hadn't remember how efficient.

And Patti? Well I have to declare I'm a fan so my views may not be everyone's but frankly they she should be because she was brilliant. As she rocks through her 65th year she just seems to get younger. She exuded energy and inspiration as she corrected and contradicted her host, Geoff Dyer, who was, at best, disappointing. Professing to be a huge fan, he'd apparently failed to do his homework as he rambled through supposed anecdotes that turned out to be wrong, untrue or misquoted. Not that any of that put Patti off her stride as she regaled us with tales of Robert, Bob and Alan. And then there was the song. An unexpected and delightful coda to an event billed as a conversation, Patti Smith unzipped her guitar and with a voice that just gets better as we all grow older, she sang My Blakean Year. Spellbinding.

'So throw off your stupid cloak embrace all that you fear

For joy shall conquer all despair in my blakean year'

Top tip: I said it before but it's worth saying again now it's out in paperback, treat yourself to Patti Smith's Just Kids.

Heading for a spin....

I'm laying on the sofa, wrestling with the knotty problem of a sesame seed, part of my Omega sprinkles, inconveniently wedged between the back molars. I should be working but I'm not. I'm reading. Reading my book and listening to Lauren Laverne on 6 Music. Dancing Barefoot comes on the radio:

'She is benediction

She is addicted to thee

She is the root connection......'

This is one of my most favourite songs. Ever. This is the song I will take to the desert island. I want this song played at my funeral. I love this song. I have seen Patti sing this song many, many times. I have seen her standing on stage, removing her shoes and socks, dancing like a red Indian......that's a native American to you.....to this song.

The September sun shines through the yellowing leaves of the plane trees outside my window, the trees that obscure my view and usually keep me in the dark, are sparkling. I should be outside on such a day, enjoying the glorious end of so many wet weeks; the dying days of the season washed up on the beach, summer spluttering it's last before the fall of autumn wraps it up for winter in the amber glow of oranged leaves and smokey bonfires, while fingers, sticky with the butter drips of crumpets, reach for cashmere blankets they wished they'd purchased in the summer sale.

'Here I go and I don't know why

I fell so ceaselessly.....'

But I'm not outside in the sunshine. I am instead, transported to New York, September 1996, to the grassy knoll near the Summer Stage in Central Park. People, strewn across the park, sprawl on the grass, listening in the dark, to Patti Smith. I'm late: the child, the babysitter, it doesn't matter, I'm here now. This is the first gig I will write about while I live in New York. I will even interview the guitarist, Zeke Schein, when I discover he has stepped in last minute and usually works in Matt Umanov's Guitars on Bleaker, spitting distance from my apartment. But I don't know this yet. Right now I can hear the music but I'm too late to meet my mate Dave. He's already on the other side of the fence. I join the line, my hand is stamped, I'm in.

'She is sublimation

She is the essence of thee...'

The Summer Stage is a small, intimate, outdoor venue. Patti, untimely widowed, has recently returned to performing, just as I arrived in New York. How lucky am I? Dave and I have seen her read her poetry on this stage already, and, beaming with motherly, musical pride, introduce her young son Jackson. Armed with his guitar he played what I imagine was his favourite song of the day, 'Smoke On The Water'. The boy was good. But where is Dave tonight? We have no mobiles to navigate us through the shiny, happy people. I buy a beer in a plastic beaker and stand in the crowd, alone, and I think: I will not move, Dave will find me. I look up and Dave walks towards me, smiling, and Patti is singing.....

'I'm dancing barefoot

Heading for a spin

Some strange music draws me in

Makes me come on like some heroine.....'

Top tip: Read 'Just Kids' by Patti Smith and get to unravel the life and times of Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe while you hang-out in the lobby of The Chelsea Hotel with Bob and Janis and Andy and Sam and............