Piers, what’s on your mind?

Piers, what’s on your mind?

What is on my mind…? I was ill this week which took me out the loop for a couple of days and it got me thinking about connectivity. One of the things about Portobello Market in. the natural connectivity it’s the agora of the Greeks, where everyone goes down to tests the temperature, find out the price of eggs and just find out what’s going on. It also got me thinking a little bit about the loss of connectivity, as a result of the lock downs and the pandemic, how there were… I could see in my line of thinking there were connections I used to have through the portobello market. Real life mediums not online mediums, media I should say sorry… and there are connections that are being dropped, a bit like synapses in the brain being lost. And that got me a little bit, I don’t know… depressed.

So what’s the solution for you?

Well. I’m afraid the solution like everything else is to just get your finger out and keep on plugging on, uhm. I mean talking about connectivity for instance, we’ve just started a couple of new connections or we’ve picked up a couple of old connections actually. One is with the Irish cultural centre. We did our first show with them the other day and… you realise that going back in a room with someone, chatting …even if your there conducting a radio show rather than getting on with your normal life then it… you can, you can re-establish those connections. So we… take the radio for example, we’ve re-established our connection with the Tabernacle, we’ve re-established our connection with the Irish cultural centre. They’re connections which have changed in many ways, as a result of being disrupted for eighteen months. Bit the important things is that you have renewed them you’re moving on and as we all know all creativity comes from connections of ideas of random talks of odd things you say, so that’s a positive.

Definitely… and do you think this is about reconnecting after covid or reconnecting after the split and polarity of society post Trump?

Well that’s interesting. The polarisation which manifested itself in Brexit and Trump uhm has root going back that go back way before the pandemic and the covid lockdowns. The only way to heal those polar opposites and confrontations which have obviously in many ways have been allowed to fester in eighteen months of only online contact. The only way to overcome those challenges is to remake the small connections, the connections with your neighbour, with your friends, with the people you meet in the market, with the people you do show about Irish culture with. And if you concentrate on building the individual blocks and worry lees about attacking the macro problems, challenges then slowly you find you’ve moved towards a solution.

www.portobelloradio.com

Live, hosted by Isis Amlak, Greg Wier and Piers Thompson, is a vibrant 120 minutes of current affairs, community banter and local music. This Youtube live stream boasts a symposium of human rights, philosophy and chaos; all supporting human rights, the planet and of course an abundance of local talent, representing a counter-culture of north Kensington – the birth place of some of the best of British culture and armchair revolutionaries.

Watch every Friday between 16:00 – 18:00 at: https://bit. ly/37TmmML or check socials at www.portobelloradio.com for live links, playlists and trivia.