Power corrupts us as we tour the Houses of Parliament, jazz revives us as we stay late at Ronnie Scotts jam session…..

Who wouldn't be impressed and overawed by the gothic splendour of the British Houses of Parliament?

Elena and her best friend, Tamara, visiting us from Arkhangelsk in Russia, and myself have joined one of the tours organised by the Palace of Westminster for those interested in the history, architecture and political origins of the Mother of Parliaments.

We are greeted by the enormous emptiness of Westminster Hall, so vast it seems almost to be open to the elements, but as your neck strains upwards and around the ancient timber roofing and surrounding stone walls introduce themselves and ask you to bow in reverence to their antiquity - they have stood since the eleventh century on this spot. Kings and Queens have been made and unmade here.

Shuffling slowly inwards, we are made humble by soaring perpendicular vaulting which rises up from slightly parted holy hands, the fingers of which touch gently together in prayer as sublimely as in any cathedral in Christendom.

But all is adorned by gold leaf and the Kings and Queens of the past are raised up as idols, so we' re reminded that it is in the service of mammon that these stones were set up over us.

And Kings and Queens and the greatest nobles are but human, which means that biology rules even they: The glorious Royal Robing Chamber has a secret closet in which The Queen, when she visits to open Parliament, is able to evacuate that which unites her with us, and St Stephen's Chapel, when it was used as the chamber of The House of Commons, had a screen behind which Pitt the Younger dashed in order to throw up after an excess of port wine the night before. Having 'yielded up his malady' he returned to the debate, perhaps with less eloquence than usual.

The story of British democracy shows it to have been a slow, corrupt and painful process. This beautiful building is propaganda in stone and art. Charles II was a greater traitor than any commoner - only a King could have done the deal he did with Louis IV of France whereby in return for a subsidy he promised to hand England over to France and abolish the House of Commons!

Ah well, he was only human, and he was a bloke, and he was broke. Like a lot of us, he just couldn't handle money but he loved wine, women and song, and they don't come cheap. Kim Philby was a commoner but he was another great traitor, and he wanted to give us to the great Dictator of the Proletariat Mr J Stalin. Busy in this work, he too showed an excess of zeal towards women and wine, befuddlement from which probably led to his blundering off to Moscow for the rest of his days just before the British establishment were about to offer him a pardon and a pension.

Marx was completely wrong - it is not class, or class struggle, which is the motor of history. It is human nature and the struggle within it between the kindness instinct and the passionate urgings of ambition. These two wrestle each other as we stagger through life.

There is, of course, some ambition which we can't do without. Einstein's kind, or any great artists' kind, especially jazz musician's kind. We ended Tamara's visit with an evening at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club's late show.

Three of the young artists there were known to me from our days with Hot Dog Jazz, which we set up to promote young jazz talent. They are still young - 20 - but boy have they grown. They were good then, but now they are brilliant. Jazz is humanity expressed spontaneously, the kind and the cruel, but the kind always wins because you can't make jazz without listening to your fellow artists and even to your audience, and you can't do anything with what you hear unless you are sensitive to the soul, so at least for the duration of the performance you are expressing the hope of mankind. I'm serious.

So thanks be to Ruben Fox on tenor sax, Mark Kavuma on trumpet and Shane Forbes on drums, and a great pianist and bassist whose names we have lost, for being a part of that which will save us all. And thanks be to Ronnie Scott's Club.

Rolling down to Richmond, big hearts, beer bellies, smiles and tears......

The wind and rain are back again, which is a shame, as we are rolling down to Richmond, heading for the river and a garden party, and to see some of the life on London's Riviera - a Riviera of rain and cowering under canvas in the riverside bars and cafes.

Richmond is posh, pale and under permanent occupation by the British propertied class and their retainers: their servants, shopkeepers, accountants and nannies. There are occasional forays by small platoons of  the sporting class, mostly big beer bellied rugby men and their biggish suicide blond (they dyed by their own hands) girls. They love a rugger bugger on a wet afternoon.

But life everywhere has the same currents carrying it along, some sad, some happy and many in between. We were to be caught up and propelled along on these when we finally trundled into Richmond on the train from Waterloo, which had bounced and clanked past the bizarre and weird architecture of south London.

Architects must have been given south London as a playground and told to have fun. They put up their living machines and workplace spaces and retired to their traditional georgian townhouses and country cottages, rolling in cash from a clientele too timid to say No! We will not live or work in this monstrosity!

In The White Cross, a beautiful pub on the river down Water Lane, untouched by a modern architect, we are served by Abbi, bright and cheerful, all the way from Redcar in the north-east of England. She has a smile as wide as London and a heart that seems as big and open as the open cast mines of her native town (but much prettier, of course).

Some people radiate warmth and uncomplicated happiness, no matter what turbulence churns away in the depths, and Abbi seems to be lovely in this important way.

Standing by the bar, struggling to be seen because she looks a little like a lost child, is Nadja.

She is from Brazil, via Huddersfield and Halifax. Her accent is Portuguese and Yorkshire, which is arresting until you get used to it, then it is always prompting a happy surprise from an unexpected northern vowel in the otherwise sonorous latin melody.

Nadjia was unhappy that night.

She was alone, stood up unavoidably by friends, and had been unlucky in love.

Strange, because she is very attractive, has the sensuality of the  warm south, and a deep Christian loyalty that yearns to be married and have children.

We hope and believe she will find her man, and that the young cad who dumped her will get his desert.

Chivalrous London men, where are you?

The wind blew harder and the rain spat down, but we had to head off for the ill fated, by the weather,  garden party across the river.

On our way, we encountered a craftsman at work in one of the boathouses.

He was carefully lacquering a traditional clinker built rowing boat and we could breathe the loving care and attention he was devoting to the work.

Mark Baragwanath is his name, and the boathouse is owned by Mark Edwards, MBE, the man who built the Queen's barge Gloriana for the Thames Diamond Jubilee last year. How it rained and blew that day too!

Britain is safe when men like these are hard at work in our boathouses.

We got to our garden party in the end, and when we did, man, that joint was jumpin' and jivin' and so were we!

The propertied classes have one thing in common with the underclasses - they know how to throw a bloody good party!