The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown at The Lexington

My list of "must see" bands is sadly reducing as we all get older so I was delighted to have another opportunity to see The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. 

The venue this  time was The Lexington in Islington, a place I had walked past many many times but had never visited before, so that was something to look forward to too.

Another bonus was that despite having walked all around that area when working by Kings Cross there were a few roads that I had not ticked off on my CityStrides Life Map, either because they are dead-ends or simply because I was not mapping my walk when I had been that way, so I spent an hour or so before the gig filling the gaps. That was another fifteen streets completed.

I even had time to grab a coffee and a sandwich from the local Pret before heading to the pub and in the pub I had time for a pint of Black Sheep Bitter before heading upstairs for the music.

I was quick enough upstairs to get to stand right next to the stage, something I had not managed to do with Arthur Brown for a little while. That let me take a few close-up pictures like this one.

The performance was much like the ones I had first seen in Lewes in 2023 snd twice since then. It had a lot of songs that I did not know, as well as several classic that I did, all of which were presented very theatrically. Obviously Time Captives was my stand-out song as it was entry into the crazy world of Arthur Brown way back in 1973.

It was another great evening and to cap it all off it finished in time for me to get back to the Grey Horse in Kingston for a couple of pints of The Naked Ladies.

I have walked 20% of Greater London

I used MapMyWalk to record each of my exploratory walks and CityStrides to summarise them all in one place. 

CityStrides also tracks the number of roads that I have walked on each town or city. Of most interest to me are the totals for each of the London Boroughs (I have walked every street in three of them) and the total for Greater London overall.

I have just completed 20% of Greater London. This is in terms of the number of roads walked (7,964 of 39,362) rather than, say, total distance.

The map below shows where I have walked and, more depressingly, those I have yet to do with some large areas hardly touched (there are a few gaps where I did not map my walks, such as the top section of London Loop).

My vague plans is to keep plugging away and to use every opportunity to walk new roads. For example, I have been to Royal London Hospital a few times recently and have walked quite a few new roads around Whitechapel and Stepney,

While walking 20% of London is some achievement iy is only fair to point out that I am only 4th in the CityStrides leaderboard and those ahead of me have managed 27%, 31% and an astonishing 68%. I do not expect to catch any of them.