Not at all bad. Mind, after Shambles comments about how at least this time we wouldn't be upstaged by Jeffrey Archer getting banged up, like the last time something like this happened, what do I see on the newspaper hoardings coming down: "Giant Asteroid on Collision Course with Earth".

Anyway we got in a few songs and tunes, though they wouldn't let ordinary people like us into the private do with Billy Bragg and the MPs in the cellar. But Billy came out and did a bit of stuff with us for the medua, picking on "I fought the Law" as his theme song for us to do with him. A bit defeatist. So Shambles switched it to "Time to make some changes", which is effectively the same tune anyway, but better words.

One of the policeman around was said to have told someone he played the uilleann pipes, and wished us good luck - and another to have asked if we could sing any Rebel Songs.

After we split up I drifted into the national gallery, and chanced upon a free concert of wind instruments, by students from the Royal College of Music. Whether they had a PEL I wouldn't know. And there was a free Braziliand Salsa Concert down in the crypt of St Martins in the Fields. So there is still music around, if you know where to look for it.

But walking back to the station I passed pub after pub, and one cafe and eating place after another - and it occurred to me that, though they differed enormously, they all had one thing in common. No live music.

In fact the only live music I heard was down in the underground - two really good buskers, a white bloke with a fiddle and a black bloke with a guitar. And no sooner had they started playing when up came the London Transport man, and apologetically ordered them off. And then on the train, the sound of a melodian, and it was a very young girl busking, and not at all bad, considering she was having to lay single handed with a paper cup in the other hand for the money, and not much of that.

It struck me as very appropriate that in both cases the music was illegal. Like most music in the Land of Hope and Glory.

Oh yes - and as I was walking down to the Red Lion, passing the Household Artillery sentries in their horses, what do I see lying in the road in front of me. A dead rat. You couldn't make it up.