Living for Disco

Well, what do you know? The day managed to come good, and though a late starter, it got it’s head sorted out and delivered the goods.

My mate came over, and we went to Greenwich for a cup of tea. Fortunately, this involved getting out of the car on Blackheath, and walking through Greenwich Park, which is very lovely. Particularly in the dark. In Greenwich Park there is a large hill. If you stand at the top, you can look out across London, and what a sight it is.

Canary Wharf was lit up like a Christmas tree. It’s awesome. It dominates the skyline from this part of London, and even on a Sunday night there is obviously things happening over there. If you pan across the horizon, you can see everything from Big Ben to the London Eye. Traffic zooms around, like a million tiny fireflies each on its own unfathomable mission. Jets fly low across the sky, already on their descent into Heathrow, and their headlights strafe across the clouds in sync with the changing note of the engines as they bank. Rising up from this carpet of lights is the distant roar of traffic, the sound of a multitude of lives being lived all at once. It is exhilarating. I felt like a goddess, standing and watching my creation come to life. When you see the big picture London, it’s a place to inspire you and make you glad to be here.

I love going out and about with this friend of mine. He looks at things differently to most people I know. We can potter about, looking through obscurities in car boot sales and odd little markets, and I’ll always find something I would never have looked twice at normally. Last time we did that, I ended up with a Poole coffee pot, which I don’t use, but which I love. This evening we pottered about Greenwich Market, riffling through velvet curtains, admiring dining tables, looking at second hand books (”True Crime Diaries - Read about daring and horrifying murders through the eyes of the perpetrators!”). Then on the way back, we got locked in the park. The police had to let us out, once we realised that anti-climb paint actually means ‘get extremely and irredeemably dirty paint’.

To round things off, we went for a quick drink in the pub opposite my house. I never go in this pub. It worries me, frankly. They serve hideous vinegary red wine in half-pint glasses. Last time I was there the publican’s two year old daughter was under the next table, licking the ashtray. It’s always full of grisly men in dirty jumpers. As we sat with our pints, we noticed a rather ancient looking man staring goggled eyed at the titty poster above the fag machine. Transfixed he was, mouth agape.

So now, I’m sitting here, feeling much more cheery, waiting for 4 Weddings and a Funeral to come on TV, so that I can throw things at Andie MacDowell. All round, a perfect end to a strange old day.

This is one of those days - do you know the ones? - that begin with a pffft and deteriorate. Things are disjointed and jerky. They sky is ever so slightly the wrong colour, and everyone’s voices are too loud. I sat in front of a woman on the bus today who was relating an obviously hilarious story to someone over her mobile phone in Cantonese. The only word I could make out was ‘chicken skin’, and I recognised that only because she kept saying it, over and over again. I’m going to be dreaming about chicken skin tonight, I can just feel it.

My mobile phone has been misbehaving, and all my contacts from the letter N onwards have disappeared. I have them stored in my PDA though, so that’s ok…. except that no! I wrote them all down wrong. The writing recognition system has changed all the numbers, and in my overenthusiasm and blind trust of all things technological, I didn’t check. So I couldn’t meet my friend for lunch today, as planned, because I couldn’t call her, and there was no point in expecting her to call me, because that’s not something that she does. So my friends are restricted to the first half of the alphabet, which is a shame. I can’t call Steve, or Polly. Tine is lost to me forever.

My hair has finally turned a corner and gone into full ‘insane bag lady’ mode. The growing out era has reached the howler epoch. It’s madly curly, and refuses to listen to the hairbrush, even though it clearly knows best. Bits of it are sticking up in odd directions, and the damp weather has made it frizzy beyond the salvation of my Charles Worthington sleeking serum, or whatever it’s called. I will have to wear a hat for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t help that every woman I’ve seen today has been fantastically well groomed, and looking gorgeous. Grrrrr.

I just washed my beautiful and expensive cashmere jumper in the 40 degree wash by mistake. It is now the size of a postage stamp. It won’t even fit the Christmas angel I have sitting in my room, waiting for its Big Day.

Also, I can’t turn my head to the left or right, because I’m recovering from a nauseating headache - ‘a bastard behind the eyes’ as Withnail so accurately described his. Except mine’s not a hangover, more’s the pity. It’s more or less gone now, but it’s made my neck seize up, so I’m lying in bed, feeling decidedly unbeautiful, undertalented, cashmere jumperless and generally sorry for myself, trying not to make any sudden movements. Flowers and chocolate to this address please.

I’m hoping that I’ll wake up tomorrow and not remember today at all. It’s been a disappointment. It’s the kind of day that could have done so much, but instead it chose to underachieve. By this evening it may have pulled it’s finger out and put a bit of effort in, but by then it will all be too late. It’s time will have passed, and it will never get a second chance.

I have to go now, and get some clothes on, try to tame my hair, and neck a couple of nurofen before a lovely friend from the beginning of the alphabet comes over. We’re going to Greenwich for a mosey around. We might go to the cinema. I hope my head will stay on, and not fall off and bounce down the road into town, shocking the punters at Cafe Rouge. I think I need more nurofen. And some cotton wool.

*sigh*

I’ve just got home. It’s taken me over an hour – usual time 45 minutes. This is because I had the bright idea to take a different route home. I did it on Friday (by accident), and it was all ok, so I didn’t think that I would have any problems. I got lost. Twice. Cycling confusedly down dark, unlit back streets behind the Old Kent Road is not my idea of a good time. By some miracle (it certainly can’t be my inner compass – I don’t have one), I found my way onto the OKR and whoosh, off I went.
God only knows how I found the right way on Friday night. At 2 am. Pissed. I obviously have a guardian angel.

The Old Kent Road is shabby. There’s no other word for it. I used to think it would be a bit cheap, as it’s only £60 on the Monopoly board, but I had no idea it would be quite as unprepossessing as it is. It’s one of those places that never looks nice, not even in summer. It’s a long dual carriageway, running from the Elephant and Castle (grimness beyond grim – don’t go), all the way to New Cross Gate, with Peckham (shootings on a regular basis) on the right and a long bank of industrial estates and business parks on the left. There are a couple of big grimy pubs – the Old Kent Gin Palace, now The Red Cow, being probably the most famous. MacDonalds, KFC, Toys R Us, hoardings, adverts, empty car parks, run down shops and grey lace curtains. It’s fucking depressing.

Now I know that a lot of people probably don’t feel the way I do about it, but I can’t help it. For me it represents apathy and stagnation, a lack of will to live or to make the most of life. I’m not saying that the people living near or around it are like this, but that if it was a person, it would sit in front of the TV in a grimy tracksuit, drinking Special Brew, eating day old pizza, chain-smoking Rothmans and swearing at its kids.

And this evening, while I was cycling down this road to nowhere, I saw something that made me feel miserable in the most bitter kind of way: a large man in a greasy blue anorak, wandering aimlessly down the road, with his head most of the way inside a family sized bucket of KFC. I don’t know why I felt so sorry for him. I’m not going to say “Far be it from me to judge”, because that’s what we do, isn’t it? We judge people every day, without even thinking about it, and we judge ourselves as well. He may have been just really hungry, and in a hurry to meet some friends. He might have been having a sneaky chicken leg before taking the whole lot home to his (extensive) family.

But something about him seemed so lonely, and so lost. I got caught up in wondering who he was, where were his family, what he was doing? You know sometimes when someone you see strikes you, and you start imagining their life, and what they do all day? (It’s not just me is it?) It didn’t seem as if he had anyone to go home to have dinner with, not even himself. I felt sad for him, because for some reason, he looked as if he was unloved. I thought of all the people I love, and how I never want them to feel that way. It made my heart feel slightly colder.

Anyway, for some reason he stuck in my head, and I feel a little melancholy this evening. And from now on, the Beast and I are going to go down our normal route, round the roundabout that, until recently, smelled of flowers, and down through Deptford, with it’s market and it’s fruit, veg and fish shops, where people shout to each other in the street, and someone always seems to be having a laugh. It’s a little shabby too, but it’s cheerful and it feels like home.

Today marks the end of World War I. It also happens to be the day on which Yasser Arafat died. Two momentous things ended. Maybe (and I know this is a contentious thing to say), maybe now there is hope for a peace between Palestine and Israel. I say this not because I think Arafat necessarily stood in the way of peace, but because now the Israelis are deprived of their main excuse not to go to the negotiating table with Palestine. It could be that the new leader may be able to make real inroads to Israeli policy, and as well as the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, they will withdraw from the West Bank, and maybe even tear down that monstrous wall. Somebody should. Or perhaps it marks the beginning of descent into deeper conflict and a divided Palestinian state. It’s a scary time.

Today, here in London, is also a beautiful day. My cycle ride this morning was lovely. The sky is a gorgeous fragile blue, the sunshine is touching everything and making it more attractive than usual. Including the nice little piles of glass that litter the roadside, one of which was responsible for my puncture on Monday. They glint prettily in the sun, and make me wonder just how many car thefts occur in Bermondsey every day? It must be a hell of a lot to make all that mess, I can tell you.

I almost didn’t cycle in today; I have a hangover. I went out for a drink with a friend I haven’t seen for ages. It was meant to be just a quick drink, but you know what those are like. My last memory is of sitting in the pub, with a HUGE glass of red wine, ranting about George W Bush, while my mind was thinking “Gosh, I didn’t know I was so eloquent”. Words were falling from my tongue in an unadulterated stream. Usually I would be clicking my fingers, going “er, um, what’s that word, you know the one… mmm, gah”, and thereby losing all the impact of the terribly profound and important statement I was making. Last night I was spewing out erudition in whole sentences. I was so proud. Can’t remember any of it now though. Maybe I was possessed by the spirit of a political analyst.

Things that have gone wrong already this morning:

*Big spot. On my chin. Just like the one that has set up home permanently on the end of my nose. Perhaps its teenage children have grown up and found a new place to live. Perhaps I should start blasting them with Clearasil, before they have a chance to procreate and populate my face with little zit colonies.

*Puncture. Half way to work. I had to leave the Beast in Bermondsey. I very much doubt it will still be there on my return, particularly as I now don’t want it to be stolen, after spending my month’s beer money on making it better.

*General poorness not helped by having to buy tube ticket. General sense of wellbeing not helped by having to travel on stinky tube, full of gormless city drones, all plugged into their i-pods and reading the Metro.

Ok, so it’s not all that bad really. The beast burst outside the only tube station on my route, which also happens to be next door to a bike shop. A spot is a spot, not the plague, and as the BF said when I was bemoaning said spots/hair in terrible growing out Albert-Einstein phase, “Don’t worry babe, you’ve got a guaranteed shag”. Quite.