Thursday Morning I bike into The Riverside Rooms and at 10am meet Mary King in the Royal Festival Hall Foyer  for a catch up coffee. Mary has just returned from New York working in Harlem – she’s a dynamic force in song.  While Mary was in New York  I gave a workshop for her  group PULSE. It is a collection of eight people of all ages and races. From the first second that I walked into the blue room to teach I felt an energy of dynamism and fun from PULSE. I have two criteria for my workshops a) we work hard and  b)  we have fun . Never was it as evident as in this workshop. And here for the first time I see the work they ahve produced - Mary brought it in to show me - and it is outstanding.

Pulse will be performing on 11th December and I must be there. Whenever I give workshops I prove one major point to new writers. Inspiration is not something you wait for. It is something that you call. You draw it down from the sky or you draw it out of your spirit.  We spend half our life learning how not to respond to it and the other half wondering where it is. The artist does not have this dark inhibiting luxury that leaves human beings wide open to be moulded into receptacles for advertisers. Mary King is a force for good, an original, and one can feel her presence in the building.   We finish at about 11.15pm    

We end the meeting on a ramble which is always a good thing and I learn of the three K’s – reasons for an artist to do any job “The three K’s darling” says Mary raising an imperious eyebrow with imperative twinkle in the eye “ Kash Kudos or Kicks” Mary then takes me through them, each a reason to do a  job. "There is a fourth" she says “Kanucky”.  Mary should smoke. She would suite a cigarette in a gold cigarette holder. And she would only ever smoke Galouise!  We laugh and wave goodbye. Mary will be sending me the students work. I’m going to Blow it up and put it on the walls at The Riverside Rooms. . Martin calls on the phone and is heading over in fifteen minutes to meet and discuss stuff.