Let Me Take You By The Hand is an x-ray of life on the streets today: the stories in their own words of those who work and live in our capital.

In 1861 the journalist Henry Mayhew completed London Labour and the London Poor, a sprawling, four-volume account of life on the streets and on the skids.Beggars, street entertainers, stalls selling a variety of food, clothes and second-hand goods, thieves and the sex trade are all still predominant.

We learn about how building site sub-contractors find work and of the shift patterns of hotel doormen, of the inner workings of Billingsgate market, the logistics of selling caramelised peanuts and how “Delia” subsidised her law studies by giving out free magazines. Across successive chapters, Kavanagh charts the tragic slip from Big Issue seller to begging, to stealing, to destitution, to sex work and drug abuse. Eric had the privilege of meeting two great jazz masters, both of whom changed his life: Miles Davis and his godfather, Sonny Rollins. Taking Mayhew's book as inspiration, Jennifer Kavanagh explores the changes and continuities by collecting and mapping stories from today's London. I have read the book in large chunks, stopping every now and then to absorb what I’d read (and also when other books – and life – needed attention) and I’m glad it has taken me this long to read it because it has stayed with me even during the times when I wasn’t actually reading it.

The premise of the book is that the author simply talks to many of the people she sees on the streets of London and asks simple questions about who they are, what they are doing. Even so, there’s no doubting the skill that Kavanagh has deployed in getting people to talk candidly to her. Richard Derecki is an economist and governance expert who has worked for the 10 Downing Street strategy unit and the Greater London Authority.

His new CD entitled "From the Borough of Kings" is on Positone records an was voted one of the best cds of 2014 on several jazz list www.Blue” is a song about a love that is persisting in the discomfort of the person experiencing the emotion. The precarity faced by this new workforce would also be familiar to the street-sellers of Mayhew's day.

Through it all did you spare a thought for the Big Issue seller, the pop-up coffee stall holder, the nightclub security guard, the Covent Garden magician or indeed any of the Londoners who make a living from or on the streets of London? He knew exactly what I wanted to say, but I was really struggling with how I was gonna finish this second half of the track, you know, “Where do I go with this?There is powerful testimony too from those for whom staying in what should be safe and secure hostel accommodation became a living hell of crack dealing and random violence. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer.