NUC: Double Shot, Covent Garden

On this drizzling, miserable day I followed the unknown backstreets near the Strand to this dark green café. Unknown to me, that is; it's not exactly a wilderness. Alighting at Charing Cross had I ventured into Victoria Embankment to stare at some statues of people I did not know. Back on the Strand I saw a café which I took note of for another day. Towards Covent Garden I went, shielded from the rain by a hat that makes me look like a hobo (so I am told). As I was peering into a restaurant, I turned to see Double Shot staring me down. The awning was enough to get me in, very nice awning indeed. I hadn't seen an awning all morning.

Inside, it's kind of plush. Dark wood and green like a Mini. Long vertical mirrors bounce the light around,  and people sit around small tables or on armchairs. I am one of the armchair bunch, sitting on one of three armchairs in front of a small table. Rows of Teapigs tea stare down at me from a shelf fixed high up on the wall a yonder. The flat white I got isn't as smooth as others that I have come across, it's rather fluffy but still quite effective. The man who served it to me excelled at indifference. I sit listening to boring music, wondering whether I should stop writing this and instead work on the dissertation like I had planned. I sense a quiet resistance from my clouded brain and watch the people instead.

It seems to be a place for shoppers and business types, for refuelling between two small fashion stores or for an 'informal' interview. One cannot deny how pleasant it is, very convivial indeed, loungey with a touch of gentleman-with-a-cigar class. A man joins me on the adjacent armchair and reads the evening standard. Twenty minutes go by and then a vase with some small red flowers gets positioned between us. Sure, we both ignore this innocent gesture, but the romantic tension has been raised and we both know it. A wonderful accordion song takes over the radio.

NUC: Fork Deli, St. Pancras

It's quarter past five and Summer and I, whilst charging towards the epicentre of London, have fallen upon Fork Deli. We've been to the British Library. It was something of a role reversal as I had never been there and a Taiwanese person was my tour guide. There were certain access points for which I did not have the necessary clearance codes. At the entrance you just walk through and men in aviator sunglasses check your bags. After saying 'move along, sir,' a secretarial looking woman checks your identification: passport, drivers license, both are required. Then comes the retina scan, for which you have to look briefly at an advert for the London Olympics, and a fingerprint test which checks your library record throughout London's libraries. Any fines and you're out. They then ask that you remove any telecommunications devices and writing instruments, any revolutionary literature or movies in foreign languages, ask you to sign a declaration pledging allegiance to the crown and upload your location on Facebook... and you're in.

I fell at the literature hurdle. I waited outside and read Walter Benjamin while Summer attempted to get out some books. Unfortunately she failed one of the tests that is required for loaning books: she was unable to recite the numbers on the barcode for her library card while the staff threw screaming cats at her.

So we left and headed South, meandering through the pleasant streets that are commonplace around this My Fair Lady part of London. We ended up in here. I learnt some Chinese swear words and how to say 'I live in London.'

Allow me to indulge in some pompous language and say, oh how this café is a delight. We have a delightful raisin danish, and my coffee is fine, just fine. Fine meaning good, like 'the weather is fine'; not fine like OK. Summer's hot chocolate is 'too sweet'; she's a very difficult person to please. A quarter of the room is dedicated to shelves of stuff - Teapigs tea, bowls of olives, jams and peanut butter. I have managed to pluck a chilli and ginger recipe from the side which will no doubt serve as a bookmark someday, rather than mutating into a tasty dish.

The Flaming Lips is on the stereo. The room is never empty but never busy. The guy behind the bar is never overwhelmed and is quite the convivial gent. People sit in twos and talk about things. Try as I might I cannot hear what they are talking about, I guess its private. One might write a novel in cafés such as this, and if I lived closer and had the time and intelligence to write one then I would stop by here for that.

Box Junction: a review from the Northern Line.

On April 5th, The Wind-up Collective performed an immersive piece of theatre, Box Junction, at Camden People's Theatre. The play is set on a train, where the audience sit amongst the players. This review comes from another train, where I sat alone amongst the other midnight tuberiders.

The night is over and I'm on the train, bound towards home. I am listening to music through miniature speakers, ergonomically designed to fit an ear. The world before me takes an offbeat hue, coloured by the music I'm listening to. I look around. Six people sit opposite, four of whom have headphones. Like mine, they are all designed for ear-insertion, to simultaneously block out unwanted noise and deliver instead a noise chosen by careful selection from a music playing gadget. We are connected solely by this isolating practice.

No man is an island said John Donne. If only he was. Indeed he tries to be. We get close; we attempt to make small planets of ourselves with our own self-centres of gravity. From there we try to control the amount of traffic threatening to burst though our atmospheres, only to land on us and steal our resources. 'Just as the planet still circles around its sun yet at the same time rotates on its own axis,' said Freud, 'so the individual partakes in the development of humanity while making his own way through life.' We cut off the realm beyond with earphones and faces so impenetrably stern that only a fool would broach them.

My protective coat of music is brutally pierced and ripped by a young drunk woman, one of a group of young drunk women who are attempting to keep balance as they stand at the end of the carriage. She gesticulates with lunges, her whole body used to emphasise whatever point she is making. Her shrieks break through my blanket of musical security when the song takes a dramatic step back into a more solemn, quiet moment. The faces of those sitting in front of me are despondent and glossed over. The tube is an inescapable necessity which delivers them home; it doesn't really count as a part of their life. But the drunk woman is addressing them, addressing us, addressing me.

I look up and half remove one of the two headphones. 'I want to sit down,' she says - 'Oh,' I reply. With callous indifference, I replace my headphone and throw a knowing glance at the man opposite, victorious. My song ends and in the gap before the next one I get an idea of what's driving the passions of the young drunk woman: '1,2,3,4,5,6... Twelve men! And none of them stand up to let us sit down!' The imminent critique of her observation was no less than a biting indictment of contemporary western society. Yes, as we demonstrate, the chivalric construct of the civilised gent has fallen beneath the rug of history, as has, as she succinctly demonstrates with her language and exposed arse cheeks, the corresponding construct of the dignified lady. To whom do we mourn, I wonder?

In unison, everyone in the carriage who has music playing in their ears racks up the volume. Once again we are alone. But this isolation we willingly force upon ourselves is not enough, for soon we realise that it is ourselves we find ourselves alone with. If there's anything worse than other people's company, it's our own company. The problem with ourselves is that we internalise the baggage handed to us by the baggage handler of society, and we're not content until this baggage has been categorised and safely compartmentalised in an appropriate manner which makes this baggage understandable. Until then, the outside world keeps on bugging us. Problem is, this process never ends.

So while drunken social critic woman concerns herself with the end of recognisable civilisation, epitomised by her inability to find a seat, I have my own issues. Right now I am seething over the audacity that the pub - the Bree Louise - had to charge me £4.50 for a Kronenbourg, the most middle-of-the-range beers, and then to imply that I was somehow out of place in questioning this. Not 'London prices,''rising inflation,' nor a 'need to lower the deficit' will suffice to excuse this particular scandal. I was cheated, and it ground away at me deep within.

Yes, we all have problems. And this reminded me of the tube ride I had taken earlier on this night, somewhere between Camden and Warren Street. Twenty or so people boarded an innocuous train in Camden People's Theatre, after being invited on by a small group of choreographed commuters. I've been on this train before, I thought, twice perhaps. The first trip etched a mere scratch in the theatrical landscape compared to the cavern carved out by this journey. It was confusing and disorientated, ad libbed and full of primal urges. The second trip had all the urges, now under a small amount of control and slipped in between poetic moments of reflection. This third trip has moved on again, and become a more mature accomplishment. It's as if we've gone from tram, to tube, to steam engine, on the quality scale.

We sit anonymously on the train and the same old eyes wander and glaze over, as is customary on public transport. But into this banality erupts self-doubt, self-conscious sexual urges, rejection, domination, paranoia, exclusion, and liberation. Innocent passengers might find themselves victims of these outbursts; the rest watch on with a mix of amusement and anticipation. The resident busker/minstrel picks on the unfortunate characters until he gets whipped up in the story himself.

Now it's grown up, Box Junction needs to be taken a bit more seriously. It might need to package its polemic slightly differently, more subtly perhaps, or more succinctly, to avoid implicating the unfortunate commuters of this world who have no control over the fragile and pathetic situation that has been bestowed upon them. And what about the fact that the creatures you come across on the tube are far more feral than anything dramatised in theatre? Immersion in reality is where the real confusion starts. Box Junction makes you think, though, about these places that are so banal so as to ordinarily escape our attention, but which seem to epitomise our condition, and somehow expose a brutal truth about us. At which point are we most real I wonder: around the dinner table with our family, or squeezed into a tunnelling worm under the city, pressed into an armpit?

NUC: Caffè Vergnano, Charing Cross

Today I went to London's Tin Pan Alley to buy a plectrum. I met my trusty plectrum hunting comrade, Summer, had a salami sandwhich and went to peruse some guitar shops. The first had a welcoming young man - 'Hello!' he said, 'feel free to play anything you like.' A ukulele was as adventurous as we got. The next shop had a walking talking stereotype running it: long hair but balding, jean jacket and man-jewellery. He pulls a guitar off the wall, extends a leg onto a chair, and retunes the strings at a rapid pace, talking to us all the while: 'Today mate, second hand electrics, hundred-ten pounds; 'cept these, eighty-nine, and the Squires, ninety-nine. Now if you're willing to push out for a more top-notch high-grade instrument, I could direct you to the...'

On we went to Caffè Vergnano. Strictly speaking it's a small coffee chain, and so it is written about with some hesitance. You can't locate the specificity of a certain style or aura when the same place is reproduced in a whole variety of locations, but Vergnano isn't yet global, and does have something that makes it distinctive. I would say, however, that the chainness of this café is exemplified by the vacancy in the eyes of the women who work here. They're happiest when talking to each other, which they continue to do while they robotically take my order.

I get a mocha. It's brutally thick, such is their trademark. They have a very nice silver coffee machine on the bar. It looks like a Dalek, after a good scrub, reprogrammed to work in Wonka's chocolate factory. Summer has a hot chocolate which is too sweet for her. They think they can handle it, but rarely can in my experience. I remember how the chocolate beat Alex from Singapore a few months back. But for every person beaten there is a convert. A few months ago, I converted a sceptical James to the ways of the mocha. 'You people with your art seminars, pseudo-revolutionary ideals and cappachapchini coffees,' he would say with disgust. Not after he met the Caffè Vergnano mocha. There was no going back for James, who is now in a sanatorium in Poland hoping to combat his mocha addiction. We all wish him the best.

Summer and I sit in the corner, sharing a ham and cheese croissant flattened by a toaster into a 2D version of its previous, plump self. We practice Chinese and talk about our misgivings and anxieties about dating humans. Outside, the unceasing passage of endless people continues. They're undeterred by the greyness of the clouds of the futility of their condition: Londoners powering through the absurd, with stiff upper lips at the ready.

Vergnano is nice but lacking any meaningful character. It's clean-cut, black n wood, very dignified. I like the cups. They sprinkle an 1886 on your coffee in chocolate. Do I like that? 'What you're doing there is you're drinking an advert, ain't ya, shithead,' as Super Hans eloquently put it.

NUC: Café Rio, Goodge Street

Today Summer and I went to the Goodge Street vicinity to develop some photos and exchange the language of Chinese with the language of English. The Holga camera that I recently procured from a Hong Kong-based camera dealer took some great photos, up until the moment at which I dropped it whilst administering a hug to a close friend. The exact moment when this hug happened is documented by the camera insofar as all photos taken post-hug ended up as black as my soul.

In brighter news, Summer and I, after failing to get into one fairly trendy looking café, ended up here at the more down-to-earth Café Rio. The lady who welcomed us in could not have been more accommodating. She shuffled a table a few inches for us, even though this wasn't really required. She gave an indecisive Summer ample time to consider the variety of cakes on offer. We got a bouncy banana cake and some good-looking coffees delivered in elegant cups, with a complimentary biscuit. (See pic above for proof). My coffee looked a bit like tea, but it was good.

I learnt how to ask a question in Mandarin. I brought with me a notebook which came all the way from Malaysia given to me by Chris a few months ago. The Chinese characters on the front state a very powerful kung fu move. Inside I write down the things I learn in Mandarin, using a bad self-styled phonetics. Then we talk about Abba, the Beatles, and our dissertations. The table next to us had some kind of dried past embedded into it, like a preserved relic in a case in a museum. Something tells me that the real pasta that they would serve up would be a fine thing. Other occupants of this small and busy room have meals - it's lunchtime - and they look good (the food and the people). This is one of those places that needs no posturing or gimmicks, it just humbly goes about its thing in its friendly Latin way.

Worth Noting: the Placard Parade

It's been a year or so since the big March march in London (named the 'March for the Alternative'), in which thousands of people people attempted to show the strength of support against the coalition government's impending programme of cuts and austerity. These people - along with many others elsewhere - were not convinced that the programme would give the promised 'growth,' the 'holy growth,' as it were, that we are told to pray for. And, just as some primitive civilisations would sacrifice humans after a natural disaster, our economic disaster (also deemed to be natural) would be saved by sacrificing the (loosely defined) working class and public ownership in general.

Media coverage was extensive and debates were had concerning reckless behaviour (although, not by politicians, but by protesters) (and not by police, but by protesters). The days pass and the media lose interest. The bills pass and one is left questioning why we bother marching. Protesting is, as is often said, one of the precious 'rights' that we have in this liberal democracy of ours. Such people who say this usually follow it up with 'but with these rights of freedom, come responsibility.' Responsibility to ensure that the actions we take don't actually go as far as to actually be threatening. It is indeed our right to protest, under certain conditions at certain times, through certain routes with certain clothes. 'This way, you can protest, we can ignore it, and everyone's happy.' Life goes on, and events like this become mere memories.

Some students from Goldsmiths College collected as many placards from the day as they could. This became the Save Our Placards projects, and plays with the physicality of these potentially political objects. The name itself is a slogan imitative of those that appear on placards. Perhaps it is an attempt to possess some kind of authority over the way we collectively remember these events, or to address some kind of problem concerning the conventional cataloguing of such memories in a supposedly neutral discourse.

The media tend to forget things once the initial rabble-rousing has sold enough papers, or gathered enough viewing figures. With this decline in their interest comes a sort of acknowledgement that the matter is now less important, that it doesn't need to be addressed. Thus, Syria matters; Bahrain less so. And a few days after the top flight of the Conservative party comes into question concerning its dealings with big ugly money, contextualising the recent budget, the agenda changes to focus on a more tasty story about pasties and the upper classes. Apparently even pasty scandals can't bring our government into disrepute. Our attentions and passions seem to be so carefully manipulated, and its the same with the legacies of things like protests - their significance, meaning, ownership.

The Placard Parade challenges this media tendency, but also works through it by producing a media-interest event, in producing a spectacle which is politically attractive to sympathetic publications (the Guardian) and is playfully provocative. It invites a slightly confused involvement. We set off in small groups - I was with two others - along the South Bank, over Blackfriars Bridge, along Victoria Embankment, back across the Hungerford Bridge. The small group was somehow remarkable, somehow amusing. It intermittently punctured the normative landscape, unsettling it with signs (in the literal and linguistic senses) that cause alarm: Politically-motivated individuals are upon us, they're dangerous and/or annoying! They should get off their high horses. So how would these hippies run the country? What gives them the right to tell me to 'wake up'? Why don't they get a job and get on with it? There will soon be riots. Where are the police? (Read the patronising reflection of last March's protest by Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan for an example of this type of reaction).

But without the usual strength-in-numbers we were somewhat pathetic, apparently having lost our comrades, now outnumbered and swamped by tourists, families, people enjoying the sun, people running for trains... The publicity of a huge march gives people a clear-cut choice to either be in it or not, to be involved or detached, to be in the kettle or watching the news while the kettle boils. But these lines of division are today averted, we are amongst an unremarkable cross-section of society, not channelled down a prescribed route by the police. They find us confusing; we find us confusing. What is this - A protest? A homage? A vigil of sorts? Are we keeping the fight going or accepting defeat? 'What are the cuts'? 'What's happening to the NHS?' Indeed, perhaps nobody really knows.

We're invited to question the protest, the established modes of going about it which are tried, true, and harmless. The slogans we pick and their supposed force or arbitrariness - it seems we might as well chant whatever comes to mind. Is it our lack of conviction in an alternative or an inability to gain a distinctive voice within political discourse which makes our demands seem hollow?

On another level, something else is at stake. The placard parade's critique of the institutional recollection of events extends into a critique of the management of the events themselves. Save Our Placards seeks to situate the anti-cuts discourse into areas in which it sits uncomfortably. The parade presents itself as 'not quite a protest' but is yet not innocent. As such, a route was indeed agreed, along with a time and a warning by the police not to widely advertise the event.

Save Our Placards have also approached other institutions. At the Turner Contemporary, a commemorative exhibition was to be shown in the Nothing In the World But Youth. However, at the last minute the exhibition was cancelled. Having made the agreement with the gallery long before, one might understandably wonder why the plug was pulled and put down to a rather tedious health and safety excuse.

The project continues, and it's managed to get into a different exhibition in Cornwall. It serves to question the documentation of anti-government projects, the political and economic alliances between institutions and the tactics used by protesters themselves. Ultimately, I think it continues to invite us to imagine new methods of protest for an age in which the lines of division are more complex than was previously assumed.

Check out Save Our Placards: http://www.saveourplacards.blogspot.co.uk/