Soho

Shadowing the course of the river, The Strand streams out like an arrow straight into the heart of Trafalgar Square where Nelson in his thick, sweet-smelling, admiral’s coat watches over the Houses of Parliament. Then it becomes night. The yellow glow of The Lyceum is behind me. Tap-dancing along the shiny wet pavement I take the silk route to London neon-Xanadu. Horns catapult their way down Strand in an instant, and here I am, or was, left, right off the edge of a glittering black cab tarantula thing. Dangling off its door, a stain in the tumbling night. To Soho! Clattering down Soho's stone shoemakers’ streets to the wood-panelled walls of Norman’s Coach & Horses, where diaphanous shadows slip away from the light and into impenetrable corners of the bar. That's old Good Cheer lurching about the room red-faced and tipsy over there, hacking away at the honky-tonk piano to the beat of a bag-lady shuffle. She, outside waiting for drunks to pull the sun up onto their backs at dawn, and about then she'll slip her bony fingers down the back of cushions to check for pennies and needles stuck bent in the noses of smeared syringes. She should have a home to knit in. The lurid neon shudders, spins, and zaps on red brick walls, setting fire to the gargoyle faces of passers-by. Women in stone archways fan their heavy black eyelids like cypress branches and, wow!, they're all shimmering mirages in a parched throat. This bee-stung heart swells dangerously in conditions like these. I take a sip of coconut rum - the rumbling sounds of nightclub bass drums throbbing through lovers' silhouettes - it's a heatwave. Brings to mind the Lesbian poet Alcaeus - wet your lungs with wine, for the dog-star is coming around and everything is thirsty with heat. This city seems so open and yet, I know, so tightly-closed. Boys and girls, fresh pearls wobble and bop inside pink and white clams' shells, shimmying shut tight in their private London universe. Oh, lovely, look, it's The Kings Road Brigade wearing Nouveaux Pauvres t-shirts, and gurgling down magnums of Cristal - Krug and dangerous. That lemon meringue light and bubbly washing about the rosy tongues and finely-sculpted molars. Hark! Honky-tonk bells bowed and vocal cords stretched like a Winchester Goose, a packet of Mayfair and clanking gold chains shouts, “Give no quarter!” I adore all of this colour, and revel in sharing the night air of 8.674 million dreams. So, there I was, in Soho, bursting at the seams for this life, like a plump drunk bunch of cherries hanging heavy on the lobes of a dazzling debutante.