May 1st - Day 13

It's a race against time this morning. I've got from ten till eleven thirty to find live music somewhere in the West End...can't be hard surely...

10.25 Hungerford footbridge (downstream)

August 18th - Day 122

                                                                                                         Seven o'clock in the evening. Here's Courtney jamming with his sax on Hungerford footbridge, earning the fourteen pounds he needed to attend a rehearsal/audition in Camden. He'd had a look at some pdfs of music he'd been sent, but didn't know much about it apart from that.                  

August 29th - Day 133

...and back in London. This Polish trio drew an appreciative audience on Hungerford Bridge. They were performing Carlos Gardel's "Por una cabeza" when I saw them - apparently used for the tango scene in the film "Scent of a Woman" (they told me all of this). I'd seen them from the train coming into Charing Cross and I was intrigued, so I postponed my planned visit to Molly Moggs.

September 27th - Day 162

This guy, bagpiping on Westminster Bridge, was making a mint from tourists posing next to him and wearing his spare hat. His notice politley requested a donation of a pound for each photograph.

October 3rd - Day 168

There was a Beer Festival next to Borough Market today, which claimed to feature live music, but only featured a children's entertainer and beer when I was there. I was a little bit tired after the exertions of yesterday which ended at four in the morning, despite the fact that live music ceased to be a feature of the day at about ten in the evening. As I hauled my way once more along the South Bank it was something of a comfort to know that I only had to see one performer today. It was a blustery day and the wind gave me notice of this bagpiper, pacing Millenium Footbridge like he was the appointed guardian of it, five minutes before I saw him.

March 2nd - Day 318

Lunchtime recitals at nowhere new and only a couple of hours to play with, but a beautiful early spring day in London. I thought I'd just have a wander uptown. The train into Charing Cross station often stops on Hungerford Bridge and sits above the Thames awaiting a platform. The rail bridge now has footbridges running along both sides of it and from them one can often hear music drifting up to the stationary carriage. Today was not an exception and once the train had arrived at the station I doubled back and watched the guy below. He was playing Kid Creole and The Coconuts' "Stool Pigeon" when I reached him.

He looked kind of familiar. This is because, looking back at a previous photo, I'm pretty sure he's the same guy I came across on May 1st. Same instrument. Same place on the bridge. Same face. All fairly conclusive. See what you think...

I didn't properly twig until later on, but fortunately I'd decided to stop and listen to someone else.

This chap was setting up as I passed him on the way back to the north shore. He gave his guitar a few strums to check it was in tune and began. He sang too, but was very quiet and was somewhat drowned out by the saxophonist fifty yards further south. And by the trains. I like this photo, but like many on the blog wish I could make it larger, although if you click on it, it gets very big indeed. If you go really, really big you'll see that the man driving the speed boat about to go under the bridge is in fact Roger Moore and he's singing, "Da na-na-na-nah na na na, Da na-na-na-nah na na na. Dah-Nah!" It's amazing the little details one can miss if one doesn't look closely.

Ten minutes later, just because it was a sunny day, I stood in the front porch of St Martin-in-the-Fields with ten other people who'd missed the start of today's free lunchtime concert and listened to trumpeter James Woods-Davison performing Torelli's Sonata in D, G1. When the piece finished, the ten were allowed in for the remainder of the show and I went for a coffee and a salmon and egg sandwich.

I was looking at my diary on the way home and realised that, with the possible exception of Friday, fatherly duties mean I'm not able to see any evening music until Thursday week. Time to get creative.