Living for Disco

Flatmate has put this place on the market. Over-keen estate agents keep bringing doubtful looking people round to see it, mostly when we’re out. This is not a surprise, as I am aware from past experience that this is how property wheeling and dealing works.
Everyone does the same thing. They scoot through the house like a dose of food-poisoning, and then ask three standard questions:
“How far is it to walk to the nearest station?”
“What are the neighbours like?” (This is the only question at which I am forced to lie and say “They’re great. We hardly know they’re there” while desperately hoping that this won’t prompt a flurry of elephantine thudding from upstairs.)
“How old is the boiler?” This is a perpetual problem with houses in London, in my experience. You move somewhere and instantly the boiler packs up, costing you lost days of bitter cold, while you try and find a boiler expert who is available to come out any time this year and won’t charge you more than your mortgage to sort it out. Ditto washing machines.

Anyway, Flatmate is a complete neat-freak. The house is immaculate. Even the cushions have their place on the sofa. I like it - it’s soothing to come back to somewhere that is uncluttered and neat. My room, however, is mine. I’m not the tidiest person, but I have been making a concerted effort over the last weeks to keep it looking respectable. Yesterday I got up early to sort it all out and hoover it before the first lot of prospective buyers turned up for their lightning visit. Then I went out.

When I came back after a night of carousing and hobnobbing with celebrities (of which more later), I came home to find that she’d been in and made it tidier. As far as I can tell, this entailed taking the water glass from beside the bed, hiding my contraceptive pills so I couldn’t find them, and squaring the duvet up. Now, I fail to see how rearranging my already neat bedclothes and making the edges of my pillows paralle, could possibly make this house more attractive to buyers. I don’t mind if she asks me first. What really makes me mad is when I feel as if my privacy has been violated. It’s my bed! My room! I’d like to feel that I can leave a pair of dirty knickers safely hidden under the covers without fear of them being exposed to prying eyes before I’m ready. Call me a slob - I care not a jot.

You know it’s a special day when you have to scrape the frost off your bicycle seat before you embark on your daily commute.

It’s cold out there today, but beautifully brisk and clear. As I breezily cycled past Spitalfields market this morning, I sympathised with all the people outside ABN Amro who wait patiently for their daily caffeine intake from the mobile Mr Coffee (He’s so frothy - apparently). They all looked as if they had their heads in their own personal clouds.

I’m still churning inside. Yesterday all the waiting put me in such a state that at one point I managed to accidentally dribble down my front with no provocation whatsoever - not even a cup of tea or glass of water on hand to blame.

Here’s to a dribble free day, and an envelope for me sitting on my mat when I get home. Cross your fingers for me.

I have to go to the doctor next week, to get some jabs and some valium for the trip – one for my general health reasons, the other to save the sanity of everyone else on the flight with me.

I loathe my doctor. Just thinking about him makes me nauseous. He’s made me cry both times I’ve been to see him, and he refuses to either look at me or touch me (thank Christ). I think he hates women. Really. His voice on the phone sounds like a million slugs crawling down the wires. It slithers. My skin is still crawling from making the appointment just now.

Stupidly, once I realised that he was both incompetent and inhuman, I tried to change doctors. I didn’t realise that all the doctors in the Lewisham area (and believe me, I spoke tearfully and desperately to all 40 of them) are full up, and have waiting lists. Mine is one of the few that has spare patient places, and bitter experience has shown me why. What happens to people who can’t get a doctor? Do they spend their lives going to A&E whenever they’ve got a problem?

I’ve become resigned to this man now because I’m pretty healthy, and flatmate has put the house up for sale, so I’ll be moving soon. I’m not really very excited about next week though. I don’t know how he’s going to administer my tetanus shot without coming into physical contact with me. Maybe he’ll ask his grey and downtrodden receptionist to do it. In fact, I think I might prefer that.

I went out last night. BF and co. were playing at The Foundry, near Old Street roundabout, which coincidentally happens to be about 100 yards from my office. So off I popped to see what was afoot. And there was much.

I’ve never been anywhere like The Foundry before. For those not in the know, Hoxton, the area in which I work, was once the place to be seen out and about if you wanted to be part of the trendy set in our great capital. So I never came here. I haven’t got an asymmetric hair-cut for starters, and frankly, if you’re not in the running for a Jarvis Cocker looky-likey competition, you’re on a hiding to nothing anyway. I still have palpitations about going out round here in case I get arrested for wearing clothes without rips in.

BF and co. were on at about 10, so we went for some dinner, and moseyed on back at around 9ish to see what was on. We’d missed the main event – the lead singer spent the rest of the gig floating around the front of the stage in a white silk dress, wearing white pancake makeup and a blonde beehive wig, and dancing as if her legs were being held up by beanpoles. Occasionally she’d throw herself into a frenzy of Irish dancing a la Michael ‘Riverdance’ Flatley. The first thing we saw was a very odd duo – I didn’t catch the name.

There were two members. The main man looked as if he’d spent his life trying to look like a miserable version of Terry Nutkins from Animal Magic. He played a combination of instruments, one of which involved him waving his hands about between two metal sticks to make a screeching sound. The other one involved lots of knob twiddling, and the finale came when he put a pink child’s welly on his hand and stamped it up and down the keyboard, eyes closed, head thrown back in an orgy of self-expression. His band mate was wearing a pair of trousers that kept falling down round his bum. He was playing a cello, after a fashion. Mostly it was just irredeemably awful noise – the proverbial thousand monkeys attempting to recreate Mozart on a thousand electric keyboards. I couldn’t stop laughing. I know I shouldn’t, but it was so horrendous, I couldn’t help myself.

I kept looking around to see if anyone else had noticed how bizarre the whole thing was, but no, they applauded, and off he went to smoke a giant bifter at the table, accompanied by his three mates. These blokes, all of whom were wearing trousers that showed their underwear, were clad in an arresting combination of women’s hats. They’d been out to the organic food shop nearby, and come back with some corn crispbreads and a lump of cheese, which they proceeded to eat at the table. I swear it was like some horribly twisted WI tea party.

Then on after them was a very intense girl with a brown bob, who sang intense versions of Nina Simone songs as if she was the only person in the room. She came back a bit later, during the final act (Australian in curly wig and sunglasses, screaming rock songs about wombat sacrifices in Victoria) to do a bit of intense headbanging.

But the piece de resistance was an act called John Callaghan’s AutokaraokeThere’s nothing I can say that can do this man justice. He was brilliant. He went through a blinding variety of clinging dresses, and ended up wearing half a suit, but he started off the act inside a cardboard box on which were 2 painted ping pong balls for eyes, a sponge with a slit in it for a mouth, and a stuffed babygro. I enjoyed it immensely. We ran into him on the tube on the way home, and he was telling us he’s had the box for years. It’s in pretty good shape, considering.

I still think BF and co. were the best though. But then I would.

On my cycle route into work, about three minutes from my house, I have to pass by a series of advertising hoardings.

For some reason, Spearmint Rhino, the UK’s premiere Gentleman’s Clubs apparently, has decided that the Lewisham male is the ideal demographic for an advertising campaign. Thus, daily, I am invited to partake in the delights of my own personal lapdance, while 12 foot high luscious lovelies beckon alluringly from behind the railway bridge.

They’ve changed the ad this morning, and now a rather generously endowed girl in a fluffy white bikini gazes down at me with her come-to-bed eyes. “Come to Lapland”, she incites. I imagine that the place is lit up with Christmas lights, bedecked with fake snow, and full of fur un-clad women promising things that would make Santa blush.

I’d quite like to go. I’ve never been to a lapdancing club before – I’m curious as to what it’s like. A friend of mine got briefly, but expensively, addicted to them once, and it was an education for me, I can tell you. I don’t think I’d be welcome though, unless I shoved a pair of socks down my pants, and went in drag. Oh well.