Living the dream.

It is almost six in the morning. I can hear birds singing. The sound of voices downstairs. Water running. It is not quite light outside, the sun having yet to establish itself in the sky. I think we are going to go to Euston today, to book our tickets. Sirens yelp in the air outside.

This morning, we went for a walk in Ruskin Park, passing the Maudsley and King's College hospital. The air was cold; I forgot my gloves. There were people jogging in the park; one man running in a suit, his coat flying open in the breeze, arms oustretched, as if he were being chased. Planes circling overhead. The park was big and lush with lots of flowers and leafy trees. Gnarly black crows were cawing gently, ducks waded about in the water, grey squirrels darted skittishly here and there.

It is hard to cross the road because the traffic is so dense. Dilapitated old buildings, pubs with names like the Nag's Head, old churches with the faces of women sculpted onto the corners of massive window frames. Outside a bicycle shop there was an incredibly old whizened woman with stark white wisps of hair and black dots for eyes and shrivelled olive skin, gesticulated emphatically with her tiny hands to a placid looking police officer in a tall hat. These lasting images. An unkempt homeless man with matted hair, sitting at the bus stop, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words 'Living the Dream'.

Tomorrow we leave for Dublin.

Walking in Peckham.

We are staying with my aunt in her little flat in Camberwell. An hour ago we went for a walk.

This place hasn't changed at all!

We walked to Peckham. I really love it; it's a bit addictive. All the durable old buildings with scruffy shops that have epic names like The International Beauty Salon built into them, and the multitudinous fruit and vegetable stalls, and the 99p shops selling things like biscuits and curly orange wigs, and the newsagencies that are hardly big enough to fit more than one person inside, and the salons with all the haircuts listed with prices in Nigerian dollars, and the Camberwell College of Art, and the numerous restaurants boasting food from every culture imaginable, and the array of churches offering varying degrees of salvation.

Landing in London.

I am in a hotel room in Heathrow, London. It is very silent because of the dense double windows. It is almost five o'clock in the morning and as dark as night outside (excepting all the artificial light from the street lamp in the car park below). Sleep, now, is not forthcoming.

We arrived here at about seven, ejected from the bland enclosed world that was an aircraft into the tumultuous maze that was the airport. I can still feel the ground swaying with the motion of the plane, as if my body has been programmed to a new rhythm.

It was in the black of early morning that we left Perth yesterday. I woke up at three and got all of my things together. We called a taxi and loaded all of our luggage, three guitars and two bags, into the back of it, and then it was off to the little international airport to board the plane for Dubai.

The sun has come up now, the sky lightly veiled in blue clouds. From the window I can see the street outside. It is quiet. A car glides by every twenty seconds or so. There are men in fluro yellow vests shuffling down the footpath, and others wrapped in smart coats presumably making their way to work. A red bus just sighed as it went by. It looks damp and cool out there. The skyline is a mess of tree branches and the tops of buildings.