Uncovering layers of Oxford Street

The overhaul of Tottenham Court Road station to make way for the Crossrail project is seeing the urban fabric stripped back. The dilapidated Victorian corner blocks are being pulled down; expect a glass and steel replacement.

Most of the area is covered with scaffold and protective sheets, like a theatre curtain disguising a change of scene.

Dionysus chip shop has gone: no fish and chips this side of Holborn now.

And down on Oxford Street, Waterstones has been closed. The shop sign has been pulled down, revealing the long-forgotten Dillons bookshop chain. The mind is cast back to a time before the coffee shop and gourmet sandwich takeover, to the 80s high street, of Our Price, Wimpy, Woolworths and C&A.

Standing faded and unnoticed on London's most famous shopping street, it looks older than any church: the prehistoric world of retail before the internet; the high street before Americanisation.

I just like to travel on trains

I yawn.

Rotund Asian man, mid 30s, with Prince Naseem haircut: Are you tired?

Yes, a little bit.

I’m tired too. I’ve been travelling for 14 hours today, since 7 this morning.

That’s a long day.

Yes, a long day.

Where have you come in from?

Milton Keynes.

I hear Milton Keynes is interesting. Lot of straight roads, very modern.

Yes, it is very nice.

What did you do there?

Had a look around, went to a café for a cup of tea coffee.

And now you’re off to Wolverhampton?

Yes, I’m going to Wolverhampton and then I catch the train back to Coventry.

That’s a lot of travelling.

I like travelling on trains. Have you got a job?

Yes. In London.

I don’t need to work. My parents give me 350 a week so I don’t need to. Every day, I travel. I go out in the morning and don’t get back until they are in bed.

That’s great.

Yes, next week, I have booked to stay in Leeds for a fortnight, so I can travel around there.

I like Leeds.

It is my favourite city. It means I can go up to Edinburgh during the day, and come back to Leeds at night. Are you married?

No.

My parents want me to get married but I don’t want to. I just like to travel on trains.

welsh women on a train

Woman on train from Swansea to Cardiff sitting down with a coffee:

"That was a long way that was. Right down the other end. I went all the way up there and the woman behind the counter says to me, ‘can you come back in five minutes. I’m just setting up.’ I said, no, I’ve come all the way up the train for a coffee; I’ll wait here until you’ve done what you are doing.

"I waited there and asked for two lattes, and you know what she said, she said I couldn’t have them because the machine wasn’t working, it’d have to be instant. She pours me two coffees and says, that’ll be £3.40. £3.40! I said, You’ve only put coffee with water.

"I said I wanted a latte and you’re charging me for a latte and I’m only getting instant. She said a latte was £1.90."

"Outrageous."

"I know. And she was rude. Can I come back in five minutes? She could have just said, could you wait here while I set up, I’ll be with you in a minute, but no."

White van man

"That's what you get when you buy snide Sat Nav. It won't tell you where you need to go."
White van man to second white van man, Streatham

Ornette Coleman at the South Bank

The first thing I see is a youth's afro hair whipped up to look something approximating a 99 ice cream. He is wearing plus fours and breeches. His lady looks like Bonnie Parker.

That gives me hope. That puts a smile on my face. I am in amongst the freaks and the weirdos, the dreamers. The jazz fans. The jazz professors, too. Because we are down in that corner of jazz that is out there, vulnerable, that can be attacked from all sides and for which one can never offer a substantial defence. This is free jazz.

This is Ornette Coleman. The man who took jazz in a direction so outside the mainstream, so outside ordinary consciousness, that the reputation of a music that started in the dance halls of New Orleans never truly recovered.

His support act sets things up nicely. On they come in their little white turban/fez/hats and green gowns, eight of them, four playing drums, four playing Moroccan oboes. Those oboes come out like a squall, like a call to prayer across a muslim town. And the drums, the drums play in no rhythm I have ever heard, dense polyrythms, on and on, repetitive, remorseless until you enter a trance-like state. After some period of time, they exit stage left, still playing, heads bobbing, The Master Musicians of Jajouka.

After a needless break, Ornette is introduced. He ambles on, all 79 years of him on display, in a blue silk suit. His son is on drums, and an acoustic double bass and an electric bass make up the quartet. The sound that comes from his horn is instantly there, instantly Ornette. He has the ear for the tuneful melody, and an ear for distortion, he can play both sweet and harsh.

He has a free attitude to instruments. He has a sax, a trumpet and a violin by his side, and makes late decisions about which to play. He might pick his trumpet up, think better of it then lay it on his lap, and play his violin instead. And if you get the violin, you get a violent scraping over the top of his tight, tight band. If you get the trumpet, you might get a flourish, a suggestion of a tune, a small flight, and then an abrupt full stop. And if you get the saxophone, you might get anything at all.

He finishes the opening part of his set with a straight ahead swinging number that could have been out of the Ellington songbook (I don't know), and then on comes cock-sock-rock-surf-chili-pepper Flea, in black suit, skinny black tie and white trainers. First things first, the man can play, we know that, but in Ornette's group?

Yes he can. Okay, he plays the bass with arms wrapped around it like a surfing gorrilla, he can't contain his body from moving around, hyperactive, but he can play, mostly within himself, only letting off the occasional funk riff for which he is famed.

Back on stage come the Master Musicians and we are headed for a 20-minute African, jazz-funk collaboration. I saw Spiritualized and Sonic Youth 'collaborating' on that same Royal Festival Hall stage. They made a lot of noise, it went on for ages and I got so wiped out by the sheer droniness of it that I fell asleep. This started off little different, the sound was muddy and the two bands were side by side, apart. But after quite a while (we had some walkouts) they got it together, they found that jamming rhythm and it worked. They lost it and found it again, and those men from Morocco gave it up and it was all handshakes.

It got stripped down to a trio for the encore. It was a very sweet version of one of those songs from the Shape of Jazz to Come, just Ornette, really, a man with a saxophone and a soul playing it for love.

Father Bill, Uncle Tony

Kosovo: The approach road to Prishtina from the airport is somewhat daunting for the lily-livered foreign tourist. The rain is pouring down on the unmade road and armoured vehicles carrying pumped-up soldiers roll by, churning up the road surface. Cars come off slip roads at full pace, with drivers believing brakes are only to be employed to avoid certain death. This happens every hundred yards or so.

Our man from the UN: "I do not worry about myself, it is others I worry about."

He undercuts his argument by doing a u-turn across four lanes of traffic to get to a petrol station.

As we get close to the town centre, a Tarmac surface appears, traffic takes on a semblance of order and we take in the sights.

The first and most prominent sight is that of a handsome and wise man, covering the side of a huge office block. It is Bill Clinton, father of Kosovo. This, indeed, is Bill Clinton Boulevard. Plans to rename Prishtina 'Clintongrad' are just a populist manifesto away from reality.

After years of casual America-bashing across Europe, it is startling to see a US president receiving such acclaim. But the Kosovans are thankful. The deployment of US and EU troops in Kosovo in 1999 avoided the sort of genocidal frenzy that took place just a few miles north in Srebrenica, Bosnia. And not only that, the Kosovan people have had their nation recognised by the US, with the implication that they will be defended against Serb aggression.

Rolling along the road and there is a billboard poster of a silver-haired politician type, whom I could not quite place. I am informed that it is Joe Biden, the current US vice-president, who recently paid a visit to Kosovo.

And for those pessimists out there, it turns out that wonders never cease. In this parallel universe in the southern Balkans, even the much-maligned Tony Blair gets credit for his messianic zeal. The town of Peja has a street named after him.

On the tourist trail, Kosovo-style

Prizren, Kosovo: The wood-frame buildings look quaint and, well, touristy. The courtyard is pretty, with a well in the middle. This is it, Prizren's only paid-for tourist attraction.

The League of Prizren does not offer audio guides, or much English translation. But a floor to ceiling map of Albania in the entrance hall bridges any language divide.

The map is painted dark red, the colour of the Albanian flag, with the two-headed eagle from the flag symbolising each town. There is Tirana, half way down on the left hand side. Crane the neck up a bit and there is Prizren. It is well within Greater Albania as this map has it, which grants Albania all of Kosovo, plus a few slivers of Macedonia and Greece.

The main museum lays out the arguments simply for a foreign visitor. Here is a sculpture of a heroic chap with flowing moustaches, fez-like cap and a steady grip on his sword. Paintings show similar looking fellows laying waste to people, presumably Serbs, and maybe a few Greeks thrown in for good measure.

There is some correspondence from the late-nineteenth century between French and British imperial officers, musing upon the Albanian problem. Should they quell these feisty Albanians, ponders the double-barrelled Brit? His French colleague wonders where it all may end. The proper question, with the view back through 130 years, would have been to ask where it would all start, which was in 1914 up the road in Sarajevo.

The League of Prizren, whatever its cute surroundings and charming peasant costumes, falls short of being a tourist destination. The 1 Euro entry fee is far too little to make the ordinary western tourist comfortable. The old man in the museum is more reminiscent of a sentry than a genial old fella you might find in a National Trust home. It just does not have that heritage feel.

And for good reason. Our man from the UN heritage programme says that the place was torched by Serbs in the late 1990s, and subsequently rebuilt by Albanians. For some people, this will always be the frontline.