London on Late Night

 Tottenham Court Road's east side is now completely unblocked. They've finished the outside of whatever that is. This was last Friday.

 My straight line's walk continued through Trafalgar Square, and past Parliament. There weren't many people around; there were possibly more police, but dotted around in twos and threes.

 What the outside's currently meant to look like feels unsettled. In a ground floor window in Pimlico, I noticed a naked couple enjoying their heating, I suppose, just pottering. Not these windows. Older windows. 

 

 I realised at this point I hadn't seen Vauxhall in over a year, so turned back and crossed the bridge. Vauxhall was looking a lot more finished now than it had in 2018, when I had the heroes of Time Spanner brought here at gunpoint.

 

 Of course it was. However, 2020's emptier streets, and clashes between police and the bone-stupid private militia of a reality TV star, might have made now an even better setting.

 

 Or whatever year this is. It's impossible to photograph the moon with a phone, isn't it? 

 

 I didn't take many pictures of the waterfront. The finished flats were almost entirely glass, and while it didn't seem impermissable to photograph their interiors, and nobody inside was naked, it still felt a bit like a mistake. Maybe I just wanted to photograph stillness.

 This flag was a nightmare. How has anyone ever photographed a flag?

 

 I'd known they were going to build an American Embassy in Vauxhall ever since David Byrne posted something about it in 2006 or so, on a blog that's now impossible to find. He'd expressed pertinent concern at the growing demand for castles, and queried its need for a moat.

 

 It's a post that's stayed with me, but this was actually my first visit. The embassy had quite a bubbly, Barbarella-ish approachability up close, for a fortress. In Los Angeles, it was now coming up to one o'clock in the afternoon. I was aware of this because one of my favourite people in the world would be preparing her first ever appearance on "The Tonight Show".

 

 I sent her wind-chapped salutations from the base of a building we'd pretended to escape three years ago – oh yeah, we still totally text – and returned home via the south bank. As two girls overtook me on roller blades, keeping warm somehow, and bearing music too mellow to blare, I thought how alright all this was, and how much it resembled a 2021 I might have looked forward to long ago. I wouldn't be wearing a parka though. I'd be in a long woolen coat or something. Maybe I should buy a long woolen coat. 

 Here's London Hughes in Los Angeles on Late Night.