In London

"When you're dead and in hell, you'll remember what I said," said the man with the megaphone and the dribble running down his chin on the short tube stretch between Sloane Square and Victoria. "Would you like to hear about Christianity," he'd asked, but that was where he stopped being polite. Our "no" ignored, he latched on and ranted on and on and on about the Lord while we almost double up with laughter.

I've come to love London through the eyes of friends. I denied myself its pleasures in the past, but the keys to the city are simple: a pocket full of money, and someone at your side who knows the place. Suddenly that big sprawl, the frightening maze becomes your best mate.

In three days I try to take it all in. Straight to Oxford from my flight, barely lucid, lunch in the Parsonage Bar chomping down succulent calf's liver on mash, washed down with a bitter ale. Replenished, we find out how to be modern, though we are not allowed to touch Arne Jacobson's sleek, sexy designs.

Later that day, I settle in Chelsea, in a bright room above the Cadogan Arms facing King's Road. The pub itself is a strange hole filled with anyone from paramilitaries to the snotty prematurely ancient 'rah-rah' crowd, served by young, ubiquitous Aussies.

More pubs, more food, a few hours in the Tate Modern, and I end up under the Waterloo Station clock to meet an old friend. It's five and a half years since we last met and we haven't changed a bit on the outside. In the "Queen's Jubilee", under a rainbow flag, I gulp down several John Smith's while we try to catch up on each other's lives and loves and promise to keep in touch this time. Then, running against the clock, I catch a black cab to make it to the gig in time.

Under the roof of the City's Spitalfield Market, the Grand Necropolitan Quartet fill a small stage to bursting. Coughlan having 'just arrived from Ireland, via Essex' quips he's 'mystified' as the people in the Republic don't seem to be celebrating the Jubilee quite so stringently... though he himself would of course be decking himself with bunting...

"Repent you fucking sinners," was the motto when the Fatima Mansions scourged the planet with their rage and their noise, oodles of caustic humour and just the littlest hints of gentle souls beneath the mayhem. Exquisite little moments were always just around the corner, Behind the Moon.

These days Cathal Coughlan's complex compositions are framed by cello and double bass, and the melodies speak beauty even if the mood's firmly on the bitter side of sweet, still interspersed with comic banter.

He slips with ease into a character obsessed with evil, consumerism - What's better than shopping? I know, SEWAGE! - suddenly sidetracked by the sight of that girl, THAT girl, the eyes in her were the colour of obsidian, set in skin the colour of chalk, slim graceful limbs like arrows in precise motion towards an ever unreachable target, THIS is the girl he says and he WON'T GO DOWN THAT GRAVEL ROAD, yet somehow ending up with the Ghost of Limehouse Cut.

Farewell to the city, from the venue we drive along the sweep of the Thames, a hundred million sparkly lights to guide the way. Here is the calm and quiet you wish for when you are rushing around in the bright sunlight, hopping on the tube, grabbing a quick chai latte, munching on a croissant, always trying to get somewhere in time. For what?

For getting there and sitting down, and joy. We're racing between moments of contentment, friends and laughter.

"I get asked a lot of questions because I'm notorious for my wisdom. People come up to me and they say, Cat-hell, what is love? [ ... ] This probably comes as news to you all, but love is impermanent. It doesn't matter if love is the unselfish giving between friends or simply something that three people do after a bottle of Tequila, and they're reenacting something that they saw in a porno film...

I grin, sip my drink. Wise men say. I still believe that some things last forever.