Oh lord. I've been trying desperately to break my
over the past couple of weeks. It shouldn't be that difficult. I have lots of free time, and I have what should be plenty of
two weeks ago. So I'm going to cheat, and up my nodecount not only by
, but by daylogging an email I just sent to a friend. It captures
Hey Colin,
Well, first of all, you have to understand one thing. I don't live in London. Well, I do, kinda. But really, I live in my apartment. I haven't left here in days - ever since we got an internet connection, I haven't had a reason. I don't have a huge social network built up yet, and I don't have any money neccesary to build one. Which is a pain in the arse really. But soon, soon.
I'm not a total hermit though - the girls are keeping me sane, along with the human traffic they drag through here. To describe them:
LEISHA : hot, cool, party girl, but pretty chilled, big-time smoker, kind of person you stay up until 6am having big heart-to-heart conversations with.
BECKY : hot, cool, crazy, caustic, party girl and a bit nutty, kind of person you end up hanging from a chandelier with at 6am, with a bottle of Buckfast in one hand and a policewoman's helmet in the other.
Kinda a fire and ice thing, y'see? Works well, especially as they seem to be able to swap roles at will - I've had some good chats with Becky, and been pretty drunk with Leisha. They're definitely joint holders of Best Looking Person To Ever Live With Bernard award. Whether either of them will get the coveted Coolest Damn Person To Ever Live With Bernard prize remains to be seen (that's held by you my dear...oh, sob, the emotion!). Largest Breasted Flatmate Of Bernard is still firmly held by Mulkabu.
Their boyfriends are also incredibly cool. Justin (Becky's bitch) is charmingly henpecked, but is a real solid good guy, who insists on buying his own beer. Danny is a damn fine dude, who trumped Justin by insisting on buying his own Playstation 2, making anything he ever does okay by me (he even bought one of those stands that you can sit your PS2 upright in, which makes no improvement to the performance, but looks bloody cool).
Beer and Playstation have been my life for the past couple of weeks. Well, that and job-hunting. It's a slow, arduous process. People keep calling me at obscene hours of the morning (who the hell is awake at 11.15?!?) and asking me stupid questions. It's all very encouraging and everything, but I have yet to so much as sit an interview. According to some of the timescales given to me by these people, I won't be interviewing until at least November. Which means I'm not going to see a paycheque until possibly December. Scary.
But I'm okay for cash, and I have this months rent. And I've occasionally given the finger to my bank balance and gone out and reminded myself of why the hell I'm living in London. I went to a press night of a play in The King's Head - a tiny place in Islington that my sister's done some work for. It was a one-woman show based on the life of Vivian Leigh, written by and starring William Shatner's ex-wife. I'm not making this up. It was actually amazing - really compelling and really funny, with a really bitchy script (some great lines - "all the girls on the set loved Marlon, but I thought him a bit, well, mumbly"). Afterwards, we hung out with some journalists, actors and other arty types. A really old guy with a grey ponytail and a big bushy beard sat down beside us, started guzzling the free wine and telling amazing (if wholly untrue) stories about World War II. I thought he was a deranged tramp. Turned out he was one of the most respected directors in London, and had given Richard E. Grant his first role.
Last Saturday week, I met up with Richard and Marina (who live in Oxford, meaning that they're slightly too far to see on a daily basis). They took me to a goth club, also in Islington, called Slimelight. I had totally expected to find myself in Fibbers - dank walls, with teenagers wearing too much eyeliner drinking snakebite 'n' black and shuffling morosely to an interminably long mix of "Temple Of Love".
Oh, was I surprised.
Certainly, there was a downstairs part that fit that description (but even then with so much more conviction than Irish goths). But man, the upstairs room was amazing. First of all, anyone trying to tell me that that music was goth can kiss my ass. It was dance music - hard, grinding dance music, but dance none the less. Every now and then, when the dj thought no-one was listening he'd drop in some rap and garage samples. As if to prove my point, he even played Higher State Of Consciousness.
And there weren't no pale kids trying to to read Emily Dickinson in the corner neither. It seemed more like a fetish club in there. By the end of the night, I had seen so much leather and rubber and PVC and vinyl and chains and whips and fishnets and thongs and smudged mascara and mens legs poking though skirts and crotch-high boots with nine-inch heels and so much god damn sweaty, exposed flesh on so many gorgeous people, I had seen so many people frantically flee their inhibitions that when a guy in a dog collar and leather underpants came up to me and asked if he could have a cigarette for his mistress, I didn't even bat an eyelid.
Dude, it was amazing. I didn't even dance much, I just talked lots and smiled even more. By the time we left, it was after 7. The music was still going strong - all zombie-ish, which I could have happily done for another six hours. We got the first tube home instead though. Angel station at 7am on a Sunday is the most amazing thing in the world. Underground, it's a huge, white, sterile, pristine tunnel that looks like it was designed to be a set in a Kubrick film. The only people there are grumbling middle-aged Indian men on their way to work, and giggling goths still trying to dance off the remainder of the last nights drugs. I stood there smiling, trying to buy as much chocolate from the vending machines as I could before the tube arrived.
I like it here a lot. I'm glad I came. Now if I could just get a goddamn job...
B