May ….May ….May ….May….the shortest month name with no ‘R’ ok to eat oysters and I finally gave myself a Royal deadline…

I begin where I meant to begin in the middle. The night before I went to Mexico in February I watched John Huston’s Under the Volcano which follows the dramas in a single day of the self destructive alcoholic British Consul Alan Bates in a tour de force performance with Jacqueline Bisset and Anthony Andrews.  The opening credits with the dancing calavera puppets and idiosyncratic music is surreal. 

It’s as memorable and haunting as the film based on a book by Malcolm Lowry.

Mexico is all about death. DBC Pierre who was born in Mexico was the first to explain this to me in his excellent Mexican road trip in the BBC series The Last Aztec. I did email him during the lockdown regarding this and got a helpful reply and a small excellent book to read.

As a result of the film I said to my friends “Let’s not go to a mountain bar in some obscure village for a nightcap after a cock fight nor go to a bullfight… “

So we didn’t. We kept to the path….

When we returned I heard one of my friends saying: “It wasn’t dangerous at all… it felt really safe!”

“But there was a dead man found outside our hotel in Oaxaca don’t you remember? Forcing us to take a detour around the block…”  I said. All I could see was a hat poking out from underneath the body sheet.

I love the work of Diego Rivera (my favourite was in the National Palace The History of Mexico which is just that – a great visual history of Mexico that proceeds along the stairwell of the Palace painted between 1925-1935) but even he as a socialist and one time communist, ended up in the US with Frida who did not like the gringos to make money.

Leon Trotsky who was in exile (as seen on this poster) and very much a WANTED MAN by Stalin ended up in Mexico after travelling from Norway…

He was friends with Diego Rivera and had a love affair with Frida Kahlo …the house is very close by to the Blue House the family home where she resided.

He was killed eventually by an ice axe and not by a bullet -but the holes from another assassination attempt punch the corridor walls and can still be seen…I tried to imagine his grandson hiding under the bed next door and how terrified he must have been.

President Biden visited the Mexican President Obrador in January to try and curb the trafficking of drugs to the US from Mexico.

The sons and grandsons of the original cartel bosses may be more powerful and even more ruthless. They come from wealth not poverty and the drugs such as Fentanyl are fifty times more powerful than heroin.

People seem to disappear a lot and you see this displayed in the mysterious photographs of the many missing people posted on walls outside the Cathedral in Oaxaca.

I was looking for the most powerful drugs lord in the world and head of the Sinaloa Cartel ‘El Mayo’.  A $15 million bounty for his whereabouts but I couldn’t find him.

I was intoxicated by the colours and the light in a country of extremes and fascinated by its past and its present with my basic Spanish.

I loved the purple Jaracanda trees that bring so much colour to Mexico City. I had no idea they were imported by a Japanese gardener in the 1930s.

The Tule Tree (El Arbol Tule) outside Oaxaca in Santa Maria El Tule is possibly thousands of years old.

I had been before to Mexico City and Oaxaca in 1999 – fin de siècle post University sojourn with my brother and a group of friends before I moved to London and at that time I was there for about a month. 

The Spaniards in Mexico City, which once resembled Venice under the Aztecs, buried its 45 rivers due to disease prevention. The only clues to their existence is in the street names. Due to being built on a lake and bed of clay the ancient ruins are now rising (Temple Mayor was only discovered in 1970s) and the Spanish Colonial architecture and buildings are sinking. The air hangs heavy because the city is polluted like a dust bowl where nothing flows out.

Mexico City is said to have sunk so low (20 inches a year) that it is said that it cannot be saved.  The earthquakes visible in the large hairline cracked pavements and in old photographs may shake these foundations but it’s problems lay far deeper.  This world is falling apart.

Ten days felt like weeks and weeks such is that feeling when you travel…..

There have been so many highlights in what was a long winter:

A huge thank you to everyone who came to my gig at The Troubadour in November to celebrate the release of the album Endless Climb with David Baron which was a sell out (even if you can’t actually buy the album on iTunes still and one song is missing altogether I’ve now put it on my Bandcamp page!) Despite all these setbacks I thought all was good until I still had to pay the venue to play £45 to be exact (?) …bunch of cowboys running music venues these days!

So I think I prefer going to gigs than playing them these days and Bob Dylan…was the best ever…

Other highlights were John Cooper Clarke …who had to come up quite close in his tinted specs to see who I was: “Johnny …..Remember Me?” I asked. He was brilliant…

The Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha had me in tears as the war rages on and on in their country…

Standing outside and Sitting in The Royal Courts of Justice in support of David Wolfe QC and Stop Sizewell C campaign made me feel more hopeful…

Finally, the Coronation of our King tomorrow (which was my deadline for this post)….

Even though I made the journey which was like a pilgrimage to see the The Queen Lying in State with my friend Emma last year…

(and I had the most enjoyable time hearing the life story of Steve Swallow pictured here who served in the British Army in Ireland barely drawing breath for the entire 9 hours, who was interviewed by news outlets multiple times)

I don’t think I will go to such great lengths this time…..

Anyway, here’s a glimpse of another Coronation …

and another king…

I owe a great deal to a lot of people that gave me support over all those years in my music including David Baron and Anthony Phillips. I write this in the hope of remembering and also in the hope I don’t quietly give up .

Much of the visual material I upload (but not all of it) is original.

For example, this wonderful photograph of Claudia Cardinale below (who sadly died in April of this year) is actually as far as I can tell unique and reminds me of rainy April. There’s another like it out there but not this one!

I found this photograph below at the weekend. A few years back the picture libraries of all the newspapers got rid of their photographs and I have found some really interesting ones.

I am honoured to have done vocals for Karl Culley’s new album and I am hoping to do some more collaborations soon.

Until next time and I hope it won’t be so long…(but it might be) maybe not as long as the postcards I sent from Mexico! May be Baby I’ll write ya soon.

This was written by ChatGPT

God help us xxx