So. My new toy is a Tascam DR-05X, a hand-held audio recorder that I bought specifically to record ambient sounds. I used to have a much higher-spec Zoom H4n, but managed to leave it behind in a rehearsal room or after a gig or somewhere. Reader, many, many are the things I’ve left behind, but that was a sore one, because it was pricey.

Anyway. The Tascam’s a lot cheaper and does a decent enough job, at least so far, and I fancied recording some urban sounds when I was down in London recently. First of all though, partly because I wanted to test it out, and partly because I wanted to take pictures of the sunset, I took it up Blackford Hill, near where I stay in the inner Edinburgh suburbs.

To be honest the sunset pictures were disappointing. Either I could get the city spread out below on one setting, or the sunset in its full glory in another, but not both. The

birdlife up the Hill, however, gave a lovely sunset chorus. It was very peaceful up there, and a good preparation for a long journey into one of the world’s busiest cities.

Click on this link to hear what I heard – this was amongst the trees coming down the Hill, where the wind noise was quieter.

Then, the next morning, I set off for London. My ultimate destination was Greenwich, where I was attending a conference. However, my nephew Jonny had very kindly taken time out of his day to show me round Lloyd’s of London, the centre of the UK’s – and to an extent, the world’s – insurance industry.

From King’s Cross I was able to walk across to St Pancras to get a Tube train to the appropriately named Bank station, in the heart of London’s financial district (which of course, they call the City). Don’t you love the sign – remind you of Monopoly, or is that just me? Great sound of the train howling into the next tunnel here. I didn’t twig why Bank was called just Bank until, getting the Tube back from there, I looked up and saw I was outside the Bank of England.

The City, of course, is the City of London, as opposed to the City of Westminster (don’t ask me, it’s an English thing). Just along the road from the Bank, I found the Lloyd’s building, and paused to record the sound of money (listen right to the end to hear a man getting excited about something. Probably a big deal).

Inside, once I’d been bagged and tagged, Jonny took me on a tour of Lloyd’s, which is quite the place. Originating in an area which was a den of coffee and gambling houses near the then working port of London, the insurance business originated with folk gambling on whether a ship made it back from the high seas or not. Mind you, you could probably have got pretty good odds on them not making it back in those days, what with the pirates and all. However, at some stage that evolved into people insuring the ships and their cargoes and the rest, as they say, is history.

Incidentally, you can probably get a more accurate, detailed account of Lloyd’s and its origins in Wikipedia. Much has moved on, but much stays the same – the so-called ‘Lloyd’s Names’ have long gone, but business is still done round hundreds of tables for six. They even keep a modern day equivalent of the register of ships that have gone down this week, and still – much more occasionally – ring the bell when some stuff has gone down in the world that affects insurance.

That’s the bell there, at the top of that wooden tower thingie. Came from some Dutch ship in around 1800 (this is an impressionistic piece: look it up if you feel the need). I didn’t think it was fair to manufacture a major catastrophe just to record the sound of it.

I’ll not trouble you with details of the conference. Suffice to say just over a day after my trip round Lloyd’s I was again negotiating the labyrinthine transport network to get to King’s Cross, that London landing point for hopeful Scots on the make since (consults Wikipedia) 1852. And their departure point when, like me, they’d had enough of the bright lights and wanted back to where the curlews sing.

I have no idea whether there are curlews on Blackford Hill. It just sounded good.