Up and out.
St Pancras Station behind the British Library:
A quick cab ride to the north end of Marylebone High Street, and then a gentle wander in the crisp winter morning.
One of my favourite bookshops:
The rear of the shop:
Out and more gentle strolling before stopping at the Paul bakery. We'd been here before and had enjoyed our visit.
Unfortunately, the smile on your author's face belies the fact that both the menu and the service had changed for the worse - a fact confirmed by the fact that my order was forgotten about and I had to go and remind them 15 minutes later. A nearby couple were similarly inconvenienced as their order was also unacceptably tardy and forced them to leave without eating as they had "places to go". It's unlikely that we'll be rushing back, but at least that gives us an excuse to check out other places in the area.
More walking, back to our hotel. My travelling companion grabbed this shot of yours truly (circled):
The hotel foyer:
A rest, a freshen up and a change of clothes and we were ready to venture out to our second gig.
First, a visit to Nenno pizzeria:
The band took to the stage. Tyshawn introduced his fellow musicians and explained that they don't talk between numbers and then listed the tunes they were going to play. The three band members then looked at each other, checking that each was ready, and Tyshawn started to count off, "One and, two and...".
At this very moment I (and everyone else in the hall) became aware of footsteps coming from the back, behind and to my right. If a squad of jack-booted Nazi stormtroopers had marched down the aisle and appeared at my elbow to arrest me I don’t think they could have been more disruptive to the proceedings - but this disturbance was caused by just two people - someone I shall refer to henceforth as The Girl (a more accurate description would be “The Sour-faced, Entitled, Poodle-haired Millennial Girl”) together with her boyfriend, who henceforth will be referred to as Gormless - arriving late to take their seats in the centre of the front row.
Tyshawn paused, waited for them to sit down and then, with infinite grace, said "We'll take that again" and restarted the count…
As seen here:
Tyshawn played one of the smallest and most stripped-down drum kits I have seen being played anywhere other than by street buskers – snare and bass drums, hi-hat and ride cymbals only.
From the opening number (the standard “Autumn Leaves”, based on the French song "Les Feuilles Mortes" written in 1945 by Joseph Kosma) to the encore (the Harold Mabern tune “In What Direction Are You Headed?”), the band played a fantastic set of intriguing and complex music taken largely from their two most recent albums, Mesmerism and Continuing.
And then it was all over and the guys said farewell:
“But wait”, I hear you ask, “what of The Girl and Gormless? After their unforgivably rude entrance, did they really allow the rest of the concert to proceed in peace and harmony?”. Did they b*ll*cks.
Around 20 minutes before the end of the concert, The Girl held her phone up, pointing it towards the band at around her head height. It was clear that she was not taking photos or a video, because her screen was almost completely white (thereby increasing the visual disturbance to anyone behind her - fortunately we largely had people between her and our peripheral vision).
After a few minutes of trying to avoid being distracted I worked out that she was scratching at the screen with her stupidly long talon fingernails and seemed to be using the touch screen for... sketching... Goodness knows what this distraction was like for those immediately behind her or, indeed, for anyone with her in their direct line of sight.
At the end of the gig, Tyshawn – in a move more usually seen at rock concerts and MOST unusually for a jazz concert – threw his drumsticks off the stage towards the front row. Words cannot describe my grim satisfaction when The Girl reached up to catch them, only for a couple sitting immediately to her right to grab both of them before she could.
We left, taking a short cut behind Kings Cross and through St Pancras. Around half way, like the little boy I still am, I stopped to watch around 20 construction workers about to hoist an enormous window unit a couple of hundred feet into the air to install in a new build:
While we were watching, we saw, walking by, the couple who had managed to grab the drumsticks. I blurted out, "I'm SO glad YOU got those sticks", which drew slightly blank looks, until I continued, "because if the woman next to you had got them I'd have probably exploded". The penny dropped instantly. "OMG!!! Wasn't she awful?” they cried, “we had to keep holding our hands up to avoid the light - we'd have said something, but being in the front row we didn't want to disturb the band. Yes, as soon as he threw them we thought “we're 'avin' both of them!"" And we all laughed - and carried on with our evening...
We walked back to the hotel, capturing these shots along our walk and in the entrance and foyer:
A good night's sleep and then an uneventful return to Leicester on the 12.02.
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