The Journey Down To London
It was a very early start to Friday. I was awake at 3.45am and was out of bed by 4am. The reason? A train to catch from Glasgow Central to London Euston departing at 5.33am. There had been strike action happening in the days leading up to the trip and I kept an eye on the Avanti West Coast services on their website. It was showing a green tick and “good service” for Friday morning’s train. I remained hopeful. A final check when I awoke and yes…we were good to go! Booked the taxi at around 4.55am and was dropped off outside the station at 5.10am. Joined the queue that had formed for boarding the train and was through and settled in our seats within 5 minutes.
The only trouble we had was some signal failures between Lancaster and Preston stopping the train and delaying our arrival by around 30 mins. Other than that, it was all grand.
We arrived at Euston around 10.40am and decided to go over to Friends House (the Quakers house) and get some fuel in the cafe there. It’s a good cafe and nice and quiet as…unless you’re a Quaker, you’re probably not even aware of the cafe’s existence. We had the first and what would definitely NOT be the last of our sweet treats there. The OH had tea, I had a latte and we shared a slice of brownie and had a little mini pistachio creme filled pastry each. They were £1.30 and utterly delicious! From there we decided to head to the Wellcome Collection which is just a little further down Euston Road from Friends House.
The Genetic Automata Exhibition – Wellcome Collection
The last time I was in an exhibition space was at The Baltic in Newcastle when we visited the city in July. There we saw a fantastic exhibition by an artist named Larry Achiampong. Well, blow me down with a feather! Who was having an exhibit in the Wellcome Collection? Only Larry! In collaboration this time with another artist, David Blandy. The exhibition is called Genetic Automata and is primarily about the very flawed Eugenics movement. It was strangely very topical for me because the most recent podcast I had been listening to has been ‘Bad Blood: The Story of Eugenics’, presented by Adam Rutherford (Who was consequently also involved in one of the video pieces in the Genetic Automata exhibition). There are a total of four video pieces that make up the exhibition, as well as an interview video featuring both Achiampong and Landy, discussing the exhibition.
We were incredibly tired on Friday and wanted to get to our hotel early so we could get some time to rest before the gig so we only looked at half of the exhibition and agreed to return on Saturday when we would have more time to explore and complete viewing the videos. It is a wonderfully moving and evocative exhibition. It runs until 11 February 2024. So if you are in London over the next few months, I highly recommend taking a visit to the Wellcome Collection and seeing Genetic Automata. I also recommend listening to the Bad Blood podcast also.
Food – The ‘Too Good To Go’ London Experience
For food we decided to try out getting some things to eat via the ‘Too Good To Go’ app. If you’re not familiar with it then let me explain. It’s an app where food chains, eateries and restaurants try to reduce food wastage by offering ‘surprise bags’ – food that has been left over from the day’s trading (aka ‘too good to go’ – in the bin) and has been discounted and sold off. We tried a couple of places near the hotel we were staying at. One coffee shop/cafe called Archie’s and another called The Phyllo Bakehouse. We collected both within a half hour time frame (through the app, the eateries taking part set a time for collection that day – in this case: from Archie’s we could collect between 16:00-16:15, and from The Phyllo Bakehouse between 16:30-17:00). From Archie’s we collected a savoury roll – I think it was a falafel filled ‘sausage’ roll – as well as a GIANT almond croissant and a GIANT pain au chocolat. From The Phyllo I was given TWO bags filled with various pastries and doughnuts. There was SO MUCH! We were probably hoping for some more savoury things as you can get sandwiches, wraps and salads in amongst the foodstuff given…but we got all sweet stuff apart from that one savoury pastry roll from Archie’s. We honestly couldn’t complain. We paid £3.59 for what we got from Archie’s and £3.39 for the food from The Phyllo. It was a LOT of food for £7 and certainly would not have been that cheap had you been buying it off the menu.
The Gig Itself
Having topped up our Oyster cards back at Euston so we could travel the buses while in London, we caught the 43 bus to London Bridge to get to the Union Chapel for the gig. On the way, look at what I see! Lol. Honestly! You can’t make this stuff up. It was literally around the corner from the Union Chapel, right by Highbury and Islington tube station. First there was The Royal Dick by Summerhall and now The Famous Cock in London. I obviously attract this stuff wherever I go.
We got to Union Chapel around 6.40pm and there was already a queue to get in around 30-40 people long. The weather had been really warm during the day but as the sun had now set, there was a wee chill in the air. In the venue though, I was still plenty warm enough to have my Anchoress Versions shirt on display (it was too cold to do that in Edinburgh – where it remained hidden under a jumper I was wearing).
Despite being some way back in the queue when we arrived, once inside the chapel we managed to get seated in the second row of seats. I had a wonderful view, just to the right of centre.
A beautiful surprise at the opening of The Anchoress set with Father Simon Cutmore taking the stage to recite the lines from ‘All Shall Be Well.’ His voice was a little lost in the end by the most fantastic cheer of applause for Catherine as she arrived on stage.
Back outside when we were waiting in the queue, I saw a lone magpie land on the Union Chapel guttering. Like the rainbow that awaited me across the street from Summerhall – I saw the magpie as a sign. ‘One For Sorrow’ is the song that begins the set proper, but I should have seen two magpies – as it was definitely ‘two for joy’. This being my second Anchoress gig for 2023, of course.
From here I am not really sure I can express and articulate it all, but I’ll try. I was so immensely happy to be in such a beautiful place and watching Catherine and her amazing band of musicians giving us all such an amazing performance. As nervous as I know Catherine was about the show, very little of it showed in her performance. What was obvious is how much she now loves being up there and performing. I could see it in Edinburgh and it was even more evident on Friday night. It is an absolute thing of beauty to see her just really loving being there and embracing it all. And it shines through in the magnificence of her performance. Through the angst and sorrow of songs such as Let It Hurt, the drama and power of Unravel, the tenderness of This Is Yesterday, the electro-pop funk of Bizarre Love Triangle, the Gothic haunt of The Heart Is A Lonesome Hunter, the vitriol of Show Your Face, the satirical sophistication of Human Reciprocator. All of those were magnificent.
New track, Damsels, is already a standout for me and on Friday night, Catherine was joined on stage by Eaves Wilder for accompanying vocals. When cellist, Gillian Wood, was introduced on stage I knew it was time to brace myself. Catherine would be performing 5AM and I wasn’t sure my heart could take it. She wasn’t sure whether she could do it without crying herself, she had told us. But she did, and I just about managed to hold back my tears.
But at the end of The Exchange, during a final bow to the crowd in front of her, the tears flowed from Catherine. It was all I could do to whoop and cheer as loudly as possible, for wanting to rush on the stage and fold her in my arms and hug her forever.
Whilst outside waiting in the queue before the show, I had posted on Facebook with a selfie I had taken. Sharing the picture, in a post I said “If anyone was going to get me to return to London to the Union Chapel, it was The Anchoress. I had been to the venue only once before and that was to see John Grant in 2017. As magnificent and overwhelming as that was, Catherine equaled it, if not surpassing it. I think that’s the best I have for summing up how it all was and how I felt being there and what an incredible privilege it was to witness it.
I must also mention once again the incredible Leoni Jane Kennedy. Hearing Ammunition, I was moved to tears once again. She really is an exceptional musician and a fabulous songwriter. I am really looking forward to the release of her original material as an album next year. You can read my previous post reviewing the Summerhall gig for more information on LJK.
The Next Day – London Exploration – The Barican, more Genetic Automata and a hectic West End
After a night of catching up on sleep, we checked out of the hotel at 11am for a looooong day in London. The weather we were experiencing in London could not have been any different to what people were experiencing back home in Glasgow. London was glorious and a warm, sunny 25 degrees. Glasgow, by contrast, was almost 10 degrees cooler and suffering torrential downpours and flooding.
We tried to make the most of the time we had left in London. The first thing on the agenda was going to the Barbican Centre to see an exhibition inside the library called ‘In The Moment: The Art of Music Photography’. On display were photos by Syd Shelton, David Corio, Ray Stevenson, Michael Putland, Sheila Rock, and Jill Furmanovsky, among others. Of course I know Jill’s work well from several photoshoots she had done with Simple Minds. David Corio had also worked with them. To my surprise, Virginia (Turbett) had one of her photos of Prince on display, which was great to see. There are a good number of photos on display. It is in a fairly small area of the library and although there are plenty of photos to view, most are A4 or smaller. It’s not your typical gallery space – so, as a say the display is small in terms of space but bountiful in terms of subject covered. If you’re in or near that part of London, I recommend a visit. The exhibition runs until 4 December. You can view more details at the Barbican website HERE
After the Barbican visit, we headed back to Euston to return to the Wellcome Collection and the Genetic Automata exhibition by Larry Achiampong and David Blandy. The bus we took to get there dropped us off by Tavistock Square so we decided to take a quick visit to the park. A good excuse for a wee Minds pilgrimage. It was sssooo warm, and one would imagine VERY different weather to what the boys experienced when they were there back in 1980 for the photoshoot with Virginia. Yes, it was towards the end of October when they were photographed at Tavistock Square but given how the weather was on Saturday in London, with not a single leaf shed from the trees – them all still very green and very attached to the branches, I couldn’t imagine Jim and Co frolicking around in the leaf litter as they are in 1980 if the same photoshoot was to happen today. There’d be no leaves to frolic in, for one!
After the Wellcome Collection we decided to head down to the West End to see if we could find a cinema screening Stop Making Sense. Big mistake! A sunny Saturday in London meant there were SWARMS of people traversing Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. I don’t even remember it feeling like that when I was in London last November to see Sarah Brown play Ronnie Scott’s. It was like swimming through treacle! With little luck finding a cinema and a screening, we decided to get the hell out of the West End and head to Victoria and grab a bite to eat before getting on the red-eye coach overnight back to Glasgow. I was desperate for something savoury to eat after 24 hours of eating nothing but sweet pastries. Who knew I’d grow tired of eating sweet things? Lol. We found a Pizza Express nearby and had some fabulous pizza in a VERY warm restaurant. It was great to sit and relax for a while and have something savoury!
And…home
A final short walk to Victoria Coach Station and not too much time to kill before the coach was due to depart at 10.30pm. The coach ride home was perfectly uneventful. I wished for sleep and kept looking on enviously at the passengers around me who slept soundly while the much-needed shut-eye eluded me. Well, you can’t have it all…