The first step was always to find a good corner. This applied to street musicians (such as myself) and also, according to my good friend Lucy Price, prostitutes (such as Lucy Price, formerly). It probably also applied to fish and chip vendors and most sorts of people begging for money/food/work - but I wasn't acquainted with any of the former, and wasn't comfortable interrogating any of the latter about their techniques, so I couldn't verify the truth in this.

Finding a good corner is harder than you might think. The corner needs a certain amount of foot traffic, but not so much that people will get jostled if they try to drop a few coins. Most areas that have a lot of pedestrians also have a lot of automobile traffic, but there can't be so much of the latter that the music gets drowned out. The choice corner will also be in an area rich enough to have a nice percentage of people who can manage some generosity, but not so rich that everyone will just give you dirty corner-of-the-eye looks while adjusting their fur stoles and commenting to each other about how 'people like that ruin the scenery.' And so on.

My favorite corner as far as pure aesthetics go was the one by the fountain near St. Alexis. Today, however, my long-time aquaintence Charles Banister was there already with my longer-time aquaintence Sebastian. They were sitting on the edge of the fountain, both in the same hunched over smoking position, legs ridiculously elongated and crossed at the ankles. I watched them for a bit from across the street. Sometimes Charles and Sebastian would exhale simultaneously and two wiry spires of smoke would fly into the air, while, also simultaneously, the fountain would spurt up a coruscating little plume of water. It was very strange.

I considered playing the fountain corner anyway, but I've recently had this urge to flee whenever I'm around Sebastian. Although I felt bad about running away from Sebastian, I still decided to go to the opposite corner of the St. Alexis block instead. St. Alexis is a monstrosity of a church; it takes up at least an entire city block, if not more, counting all of the outbuildings. But I liked the southeast corner nearly as much as the fountain one. There was a huge tree there that no sane city planner could have possibly chosen; it was the most hideous example of plant or fungal life I have ever encountered, barring perhaps certain species of mold. Horribly ugly, yes, but it gave a mystical aspect to the place that you don't often see in London.

Standing under the tree, I opened my creaky old violin case and picked up my instrument, bracing it on my knee to tune it. I laid my case open at my feet, and, tightening my bow, commenced playing an old tune that ninety percent of the population seems to love (but, for some reason, the other ten percent hates viciously).

After playing a few songs, I began to notice a crowd amassing by the church doors. That itself wouldn't have struck me as odd, but there were no church services going on, and the crowd didn't seem to be the usual church-going group - it was predominately young adolescent girls, some standing on the sidewalk, others sitting on the curb, still others leaning against the shady building - but all of them looking quite agitated.

I walked over to one of them, violin in hand, and asked as politely as I could muster, 'Pardon, what's going on here?'

She brushed her too-long bangs out of her eyes and squinted at me. She said in rapid, hushed tones without pausing once for air, 'They say that the Beatles are at this church something about a press conference I dunno why at a church or in this part of town and I don't care really as long as - oh! look!'

She shrieked and took off at a mad dash to the door (along with the other girls), which had opened a crack. They were presumably hoping for a glimpse of one or all of the four boys.

I stumbled. I turned around to see who had pushed me - and there was a veritable wall of adolescents rushing toward me.

'Holy shit!' I yelled. I was going to be trampled to death unless I found somewhere to take shelter from the crushing mass of teenagers. Fortunately, I spied one of those underground staircases; I'm not certain how to describe it - a pit perhaps six by four feet underground, containing a stairway whose upper step was flush with ground level, presumably leading to some lower level of the church.

But there was a wrought iron barrier of sorts (along the longer side of the pit - presumably to prevent people from falling to their doom below) and a gate secured with a nasty-looking and enormous Master lock (on the shorter side - presumably to prevent people from breaking into the Sacred Church Basement) to be wrangled with. I summoned all of my agility and leapt over the barrier, violin still in hand, but not before kicking my case into the pit before me. I managed to let myself onto the stairs with some grace, but at the last moment my free hand lost its grip on the railing and I slipped, falling with a thump against the wooden door below ground, just after my case ricocheted into it with an equally loud thump.

I heard a voice from behind the door yell, 'What the hell was that?' as the door squeaked open.