Jax and I had a tiff. The result of eight straight weekends of packing bags and galloping off to various corners of the kingdom on social errands- a wedding, the cricket-and-ale shindig in Shropshire, a book festival etc - had taken their toll. Like a weary married couple we longed for 48 hours in the comfort, or lack thereof, of the new flat, to sort out books and dust and the rest of the building work. Instead we had signed up for a friend’s Austrian-and-ski themed birthday party at his parents’ house in Berkhampstead. I was charged with sourcing costumes, a duty which I had completely ignored until last thing on Friday afternoon, and which had sent Jax, never a fancy-dresser at the best of times, into a tailspin. I had managed to steal a corset and skirt for myself from a theatrical costume cupboard at the final moment, but Jax was staring down the barrel of wearing her salopettes and a pair of sunglasses, distinctly sub-par for the amount of email preparations and reminders we had been given. We had trudged wearily off to the Mad World fancy dress shop on Old Street first thing on Saturday morning, where she had been forced to hand over fifty pounds for a child’s Bavarian dirndl and matching socks. Her luncheon plans had been cancelled and she demanded that we leave London earlier than the 6pm we had originally agreed. I had scheduled in a nap, which I was not prepared to sacrifice. She grumpily left the flat to watch the footie with Arty so that I could sleep and we were to meet at Euston station at the original designated time. Upon waking I saw that she had defiantly left two sleeping bags, the pop-up tent and the evening’s booze supply in the hallway. I called her on her mobile.
“Are you expecting me to carry all of this, plus my overnight bag to Euston station?”
“I couldn’t take all of that into a pub could I?” she retorted.
I hung up, guilty that I had let her down on the costumes and resentful that I was being punished. I lugged our portable accommodation onto the Tube and up to Euston. She met me at the escalators, all big eyes and silent apologies. She had already bought the tickets, plus two mini bottles of wine from Marks and Spencer. I silently apologised back and all was forgiven. If one of us were a man we’d have the perfect relationship. Although I suppose if I were a man I wouldn’t have wanted an afternoon nap and if she were a man she would have stayed to the end of the footie and been late in meeting me.
We changed on the train and laughed at each other’s outfits and drank the wine, excited again to be leaving London for a night. We got lost on the way to the house and ended up in Tesco Local in Berkhampstead, dressed as milkmaids, asking for directions. A lovely girl in a Corsa with her boss’ s dog in the back drove us up the hill and we arrived to find a huge Austrian themed marquee in the back of the garden, complete with a fake chalet frontage erected in the corner, and an Austrian bell-ringing society providing entertainment through the hog roast dinner. Everyone had made an effort with the costumes (with the exception of Sam who tried to pass off a green boiler suit as a bottle of Jagermeister) and I was thankful for Jax that she had spent the fifty quid. The family became the Von Trapps and played some traditional, and rather alarming Austrian music, mum on the accordion, dad on the fiddle, our friend Alex on trumpet and his sister on the saxophone. We all applauded, and drank the homemade punch rather too quickly. Harry had gone completely off brief and hired a Bungle costume (as in, from Rainbow). The DJ came on and proceeded to work his way relentlessly through Party Hits 1997 with classics such as Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, the Conga and the Macarena. We drank more punch and hit the dancefloor. Harry got caught up in his fake furry Bungle head and, temporarily blinded, fell backwards into the chalet frontage, bringing half of the guests and the chalet crashing to the floor. The DJ, quick off the mark, shouted down the microphone,
“Look! He’s literally brought the house down!”
And so it went until the last shot of Jagermeister had been drunk and the DJ played himself out with Ronan Keating’s When You Say Nothing at All. We abandoned the tent and hitched a lift back to London in a taxi with Sam and Harry. Bellies full of hog roast and punch we snuggled up in the cab and dozed to the ballads on Radio 2 as the first strains of sunlight appeared over the Berkhampstead skyline, tiff and effort having thoroughly paid off.
Sunday, 10 May 2009
Monday, 2 February 2009
Half a foot of snow today so the entire nation shuts down. I decide to join the day of enforced rest, despite the fact that I work from home. An air of wartime-cameraderie-meets-Christmas atmosphere is pervading the neighbourhood and I want a piece of it. The elements have spoken and the corporate machine falls as mute as the soft white snow outside our window. Except for Jax, who is finally confronted by the one negative aspect of living opposite her workplace and trudges sullenly across the road while the rest of London whoops and cheers in a ‘school’s out’ fashion.
I wave her off in my dressing gown and decide to take the day for myself. I realise that, off the back of a weekend and not really working in the first place this could seem indulgent, but I figure when I have children I’m going to spend at least 10 straight years thinking and doing for others, so I give myself a break. My plan is a day of personal productivity, a reduction of the perennial to-do list that saunters around the back of my head. First of all though, a shower. I have the shower, and discover a pot of rose and mint organic face mask in the bathroom cupboard. The pot asks me if I have stressed out skin. I do, I reply. And, it asks, do I expose my skin to free radicals such as pollution, cigarette smoke and the general wear and tear of city living? I do, I reply. Well then, the pot tells me, you’d better slap a thick layer of this on and lie down for ten minutes otherwise the impurities in your skin will fester and breed and you’ll look like ET by the time you’re 35. I do as instructed and stretch out on the new sofa. I flick on the new TV to pass the time and discover that ITV3, oh glorious channel that it is, is playing an early Nineties feature-length Poirot. And it’s just started.
I wake up two hours later to discover that the rose and mint has dried into a curd on my face. I have effectively sealed free radicals into my pores. I panic. My left cheek is bare, and I realise that a large lump of the curd is now smeared across the new sofa. I wash my face and notice a blackhead on my nose. I heat the kettle. I pour the boiling water into the sink and steam my face. Dizzy from sleep and the home made sauna, I squeeze at my face until the dot of black, followed by a small worm of yellow jumps out of my skin. It feels good. I carry on until the water in the basin is cold and my face is a series of red lumps. It doesn’t feel so good. It looks terrible. I re-heat the kettle and spend the next twenty minutes trying to wash and grind the curd out of the sofa. I give up and put a cushion over the offending patch.
I make a cup of tea and think about writing a to-do list. Instead I think about the Incredibly Fit, Slightly Older man that I met the previous night at Jax’s work drinks. He was hot, I was hysterically funny and suitably coquettish. I wonder if he’ll ask Jax for my number. I text Jax and ask her if he’s asked for my number. She texts back no. I sip my tea and re-enact the conversation in my head. He seemed keen. Maybe he has a girlfriend. He didn’t act like he had a girlfriend. Maybe he’s a womanizer. He didn’t seem like a womanizer. I text Jax to ask if she thinks he’s a womanizer. She texts back no. I'm now convinced he is a womanizer and text Jax to instruct her not to give him my number if he asks for it. I have a look in the fridge and find half a banana , a Kit Kat and two bottles of white wine. I eat the banana and the Kit Kat. I decide to look up the Incredibly Fit, Slightly Older Womanizer on the internet. Jax doesn’t believe in Facebook but Marky does and he’s got about 800 friends so the Womanizer is bound to be one of them. Bingo. There’s a whole album from a company cycling trip in France that summer. He is Incredibly Fit. I text Jax and tell her that she can give out my number if he asks for it. She texts back to say that she and the Arty Alpha were the only ones who made it into work and have spent the past half hour snogging on her desk.
I go for a wee. I notice that the bikini waxer missed two hairs and that they are waving about like flags in a storm. I spend twenty minutes looking for the scissors with no luck. I can’t pull them out. I stare at them for a while. I search for the scissors a bit more and give up. It is now 4pm and I haven’t even written the to-do list yet. I glance out of the window and see the children of Shoreditch having a snowball fight. Then I realise they are throwing snowballs at cars and passers-by. Then I realise that they are not snowballs at all, but parcels of dog shit from the curb covered in snow. They are playing Turdball. There seems to be an older kid as leader, the youngest one is the poo-collector (he has plastic bags tied on over his gloves), a couple of girls prepare the balls and the fat one with the good arm takes aim and lobs them at the unwitting public. It’s pretty funny actually. I’m quite impressed with the ingenuity. I wonder if Turdball could be Britain’s new sport in the 2012 Olympics - it is demonstrative of the East London youth community after all.
I start the to-do list. I have to get some more light bulbs, pay my National Insurance, put a wash on, call the Council about removing building waste from the flat, call my bank about switching my contents insurance. I give up, the boringness outweighs the productiveness tenfold. Instead I think about what animals all of my friends look like. Jax would be a rat, for example. Lots of people look like bears, and I can think of one who would be a rhino. I decide it’s best not to tell them that. I think about cleaning the bathroom and decide not to. Instead I spend a fruitful twenty minutes reading the TV guide and scraping dirt from under my nails. I decide to make some fairy cakes but then realise we have no flour. It’s too snowy to go to the corner shop.
Jax texts me and says the Incredibly Fit, Slightly Older Possible Womanizer texted her to ask for my number, which she gave him. I make sure my phone is charged and on and wander around it for a while. It’s still snowing. Jegs appears in the street wearing a dayglo 1980s one-piece ski suit. The kids go to throw a turdball at him, but he’s way ahead of them and threatens to chop off their hands if they do. He looks pretty scary in the one-piece and the kids turn their attention to the postal van skidding down the road.
I go into the art trunk with the aim of creating a collage and find the missing scissors. I go into the bathroom and lop off the two offending hairs, it is a relief. My phone beeps. It is the Womanizer with a quip about the snow and an invitation for drinks in Primrose Hill the following evening. The suggestion of waywardly caddish, old-school-cool Primrose Hill grabs my attention. I reply in the affirmative. Bikini line trimmed and date secured I am feeling terribly productive. Jax comes home, glowing and giggling from a day of office heavy petting. ITV3 are showing a repeat of the earlier Poirot so we take one of the bottles of white from the fridge and settle down with David Suchet, surely the coolest cad of them all.
I wave her off in my dressing gown and decide to take the day for myself. I realise that, off the back of a weekend and not really working in the first place this could seem indulgent, but I figure when I have children I’m going to spend at least 10 straight years thinking and doing for others, so I give myself a break. My plan is a day of personal productivity, a reduction of the perennial to-do list that saunters around the back of my head. First of all though, a shower. I have the shower, and discover a pot of rose and mint organic face mask in the bathroom cupboard. The pot asks me if I have stressed out skin. I do, I reply. And, it asks, do I expose my skin to free radicals such as pollution, cigarette smoke and the general wear and tear of city living? I do, I reply. Well then, the pot tells me, you’d better slap a thick layer of this on and lie down for ten minutes otherwise the impurities in your skin will fester and breed and you’ll look like ET by the time you’re 35. I do as instructed and stretch out on the new sofa. I flick on the new TV to pass the time and discover that ITV3, oh glorious channel that it is, is playing an early Nineties feature-length Poirot. And it’s just started.
I wake up two hours later to discover that the rose and mint has dried into a curd on my face. I have effectively sealed free radicals into my pores. I panic. My left cheek is bare, and I realise that a large lump of the curd is now smeared across the new sofa. I wash my face and notice a blackhead on my nose. I heat the kettle. I pour the boiling water into the sink and steam my face. Dizzy from sleep and the home made sauna, I squeeze at my face until the dot of black, followed by a small worm of yellow jumps out of my skin. It feels good. I carry on until the water in the basin is cold and my face is a series of red lumps. It doesn’t feel so good. It looks terrible. I re-heat the kettle and spend the next twenty minutes trying to wash and grind the curd out of the sofa. I give up and put a cushion over the offending patch.
I make a cup of tea and think about writing a to-do list. Instead I think about the Incredibly Fit, Slightly Older man that I met the previous night at Jax’s work drinks. He was hot, I was hysterically funny and suitably coquettish. I wonder if he’ll ask Jax for my number. I text Jax and ask her if he’s asked for my number. She texts back no. I sip my tea and re-enact the conversation in my head. He seemed keen. Maybe he has a girlfriend. He didn’t act like he had a girlfriend. Maybe he’s a womanizer. He didn’t seem like a womanizer. I text Jax to ask if she thinks he’s a womanizer. She texts back no. I'm now convinced he is a womanizer and text Jax to instruct her not to give him my number if he asks for it. I have a look in the fridge and find half a banana , a Kit Kat and two bottles of white wine. I eat the banana and the Kit Kat. I decide to look up the Incredibly Fit, Slightly Older Womanizer on the internet. Jax doesn’t believe in Facebook but Marky does and he’s got about 800 friends so the Womanizer is bound to be one of them. Bingo. There’s a whole album from a company cycling trip in France that summer. He is Incredibly Fit. I text Jax and tell her that she can give out my number if he asks for it. She texts back to say that she and the Arty Alpha were the only ones who made it into work and have spent the past half hour snogging on her desk.
I go for a wee. I notice that the bikini waxer missed two hairs and that they are waving about like flags in a storm. I spend twenty minutes looking for the scissors with no luck. I can’t pull them out. I stare at them for a while. I search for the scissors a bit more and give up. It is now 4pm and I haven’t even written the to-do list yet. I glance out of the window and see the children of Shoreditch having a snowball fight. Then I realise they are throwing snowballs at cars and passers-by. Then I realise that they are not snowballs at all, but parcels of dog shit from the curb covered in snow. They are playing Turdball. There seems to be an older kid as leader, the youngest one is the poo-collector (he has plastic bags tied on over his gloves), a couple of girls prepare the balls and the fat one with the good arm takes aim and lobs them at the unwitting public. It’s pretty funny actually. I’m quite impressed with the ingenuity. I wonder if Turdball could be Britain’s new sport in the 2012 Olympics - it is demonstrative of the East London youth community after all.
I start the to-do list. I have to get some more light bulbs, pay my National Insurance, put a wash on, call the Council about removing building waste from the flat, call my bank about switching my contents insurance. I give up, the boringness outweighs the productiveness tenfold. Instead I think about what animals all of my friends look like. Jax would be a rat, for example. Lots of people look like bears, and I can think of one who would be a rhino. I decide it’s best not to tell them that. I think about cleaning the bathroom and decide not to. Instead I spend a fruitful twenty minutes reading the TV guide and scraping dirt from under my nails. I decide to make some fairy cakes but then realise we have no flour. It’s too snowy to go to the corner shop.
Jax texts me and says the Incredibly Fit, Slightly Older Possible Womanizer texted her to ask for my number, which she gave him. I make sure my phone is charged and on and wander around it for a while. It’s still snowing. Jegs appears in the street wearing a dayglo 1980s one-piece ski suit. The kids go to throw a turdball at him, but he’s way ahead of them and threatens to chop off their hands if they do. He looks pretty scary in the one-piece and the kids turn their attention to the postal van skidding down the road.
I go into the art trunk with the aim of creating a collage and find the missing scissors. I go into the bathroom and lop off the two offending hairs, it is a relief. My phone beeps. It is the Womanizer with a quip about the snow and an invitation for drinks in Primrose Hill the following evening. The suggestion of waywardly caddish, old-school-cool Primrose Hill grabs my attention. I reply in the affirmative. Bikini line trimmed and date secured I am feeling terribly productive. Jax comes home, glowing and giggling from a day of office heavy petting. ITV3 are showing a repeat of the earlier Poirot so we take one of the bottles of white from the fridge and settle down with David Suchet, surely the coolest cad of them all.
Sunday, 4 January 2009
You Got Wheels And I Wanna Go For A Ride
With neither Jax nor myself in ownership of a car, we have had to take a lot of taxis since upping sticks from my friend Sam’s Brixton attic over to the new flat in Shoreditch. For the big move we managed to fit our entire portable property into an Addison Lee 6-seater (for out-of-towners Addison Lee is a taxi service that behaves in the same way that your mum did when you were 15. When you’ve had a bad date and you’re pissed and lost and stuck inside a lukewarm kebab shop at 3am you call them up, tell them what you can see from the greasy window and they come and get you. The primary benefit of Addison Lee over mothers is that you pay them in money instead of guilty penance and they never tell you that you were a fool to have gone out with that boy in the first place). And since doing up the flat we have regularly called upon them when laden down with lampshades, tiles, paint, and everything we thought would fit onto Jax’s bike. Which brings me to Jax’s bike. I am not a cyclist. I can’t get on with the things. The seat hurts my lady bits and I constantly feel as if I am going to topple into the gutter. Also I’m not good when responsible for determining the navigation and speed of a vehicle. I think it goes back to when I was 10 years old and the park ranger at summer camp let us all have a little go at driving the 4x4 round the field. I hit the accelerator instead of the brake, mowed down a fence and landed us in the sailing pond. Nowadays I can’t go above 5mph on a pair of skis, 50 in a car, and I’m not even going to mention the time I was allowed to steer my friend Aitch’s family yacht. The only positive thing from that incident was that the canoeist was young and had no family to support.
I am therefore primarily a walker. I like walking. You get your bearings and a sense of place, you see interesting sights, you don’t miss a turning because you’re going too fast to see the name of the road and it doesn’t matter which way you go down a one way street. Walking is for smart people. Of course it means that I am at least thirty minutes late for every appointment, social or professional, in my daily life but that’s by the by. Jax is a bike fanatic and she insists on turning up everywhere piously sweating with her plum coloured jodhpurs on, displaying an array of flashing lights and hi-vis vests and banging on about how she’s carbon neutral. I tell her, after the broccoli soup she made in our new kitchen last week I don’t think she’ll ever be carbon neutral again, she’s practically bovine if the aromas wafting from our bathroom are any kind of indicator. Seriously, never blend 10 flowers of broccoli with water, heat it and eat it. That’s not soup, it ‘s organic nuclear waste. Anyway, I’m not sure that cycling is environmentally friendly at all because it a) raises the blood pressure of every bus and car driver in Central London, who then take out their stress on their partners, who in turn get stressed and burn the dinner, which wastes food and uses up excess fuel, b) it uses up more C02 than necessary because every cyclist I’ve ever met dodges red lights and nips round vehicles, which causes motor drivers to have to slam on their brakes which uses up carbon. Or makes them carbon un-neutral or whatever the phrase is. And c) you have to oil a bike, that’s using up natural resources. And d) now I’ve got into this, cyclists bore the crap out of everyone in the pub by relaying their journeys, routes, the time they skidded on a grate in front of a number 73 bus and how much their tyres cost, which makes us all drink ourselves stupid which makes them drink themselves stupid until they’re too drunk to cycle home and end up having to put the thing in the back of a taxi to get home. And so it goes on in a vicious, self-righteous circle. Anyway, Jax loves her bike, I do not.
We had to visit Ikea in Edmonton to go and get those things for the flat that only Ikea seems to sell now that Woolworths has gone bust. Well, John Lewis sells them too but at three times the price and as we’d already gone way over the non-existent budget, we were looking for a cheap and easy fix. We had a lengthy conversation about transport for this epic, Zone 5 excursion, and decided to compromise with a bus there, followed by the mandatory Addison Lee back if we had too much to carry. At 5pm on a Thursday from Liverpool Street out to North London, public transport is misery. Awash with grey and forlorn commuters reading London Lite on their way home from the City, I wanted to throw myself under the number 45 bus rather than get on it. Oyster Cards, they’re depressing as well, from the fake cheery blueness of the packaging to the sad little bleep it makes when you swipe it to pay your fare; the succession of passengers getting on and touching the screen sounded to me like a hospital heart monitor. Bleep, bleep, bleep, went the heart and soul of London, until the number of commuters trying to get on increased to such numbers that I panicked the city was going to flatline. Anyway, we wrenched ourselves onto a seat and passed the time by talking about sex, which is always amusing in confined public spaces. It rained outside as we rode for 40 minutes and then the bus stopped and the driver shouted ‘everyone off.’ We could not see the big blue and yellow sign that promised unwaveringly to Make Our House a Home. The driver was non-committal. They’d changed his route over the radio and the bus was now out of service. We could wait for the next one in twenty minutes or walk a mile over the bridge and up the embankment, cut through the car park and get there on foot. We opted for the latter, then immediately regretted it as we crossed the bridge and found ourselves essentially in the middle of a very busy dual carriageway. The warehouse of cheap and easy home treats was beckoning us like a siren on the rocks and we could not reach her.
We stood for twenty minutes on the central reservation, and watched the next in-service number 45 go past and swing into the car park and drop off a load of middle-aged, heavy-weight women to the front door of the store. Finally we spotted a gap in the road and, now soaked through from the rain and promising ourselves a large plate of meatballs from the canteen, we sprinted like we were 14 years old in the county finals of the 50 yard dash. We made it and ran for cover into the lobby. The canteen was closed for refurbishment. We pushed on.
Jax got over-excited and started trying to buy plastic cutlery drainers that sit over the sink, and a bath rail. I reminded her that we don’t even have a bath. She then veered emotionally in the opposite direction when we hit the crockery department. She had had her heart set on Cath Kidston and Emma Bridgewater mugs and bowls and plates, but at 15 quid a pop, and bearing in mind we are struggling to finance toilet paper (those £50 light switches look great but they have a lot to answer for) we had decided against it, for now. Jax threw a tantrum. Ikea was shit. She wanted Bridgewater and she wanted it now. I walked away from her like a parent with a hysterical toddler, but then thought she might start trashing the display of sixties themed swirly plates, so I went back to calm her down. We managed to settle on plain white, and only 4 of everything, as they would be temporary until my plan to win the Lottery came to fruition. Then, in the living room department we struck gold with the most comfortable big fat armchair in the world, with a blue and white candy striped cover, the last on the shelf, to finish it off. We were over the moon, it would sit directly in the living room bay window, We would read our books in it while sipping tea and having the occasional nap, it looked Christmassy and Summery in equal measures and it came whole, not flat-packed. Jackpot. We hauled it onto a giant trolley and swerved it over to the checkout . Definitely too much treasure to carry on to a bus in the rain. I called our surrogate mother and they promised to send someone straight over.
The Addison Lee driver met us with a smile and a roll of the eyes.
“What on earth have you got here girls? We’ll never get that armchair in the back of this motor.”
We grinned at him like errant teenagers. The armchair fitted in, just, with a lot of panting and puffing from the driver. We told him our woes with public transport and how hungry we were with the lack of Swedish meatballs. He didn’t tell us for not eating before we left, he simply informed us that the Subway in the nearby retail park had Meatball Marinara sandwiches as their special of the day. How he knew this, I did not even care. To Subway we went and the three of us lined up Meatball Marinaras with Diet Cokes on the side. Back in Shoreditch the driver jumped out, opened the boot and took the armchair all the way up three flights of stairs and proudly into our living room. We tipped him handsomely and off he drove away into the night.
“Thanks Mum,” I whispered as I closed the front door.
I am therefore primarily a walker. I like walking. You get your bearings and a sense of place, you see interesting sights, you don’t miss a turning because you’re going too fast to see the name of the road and it doesn’t matter which way you go down a one way street. Walking is for smart people. Of course it means that I am at least thirty minutes late for every appointment, social or professional, in my daily life but that’s by the by. Jax is a bike fanatic and she insists on turning up everywhere piously sweating with her plum coloured jodhpurs on, displaying an array of flashing lights and hi-vis vests and banging on about how she’s carbon neutral. I tell her, after the broccoli soup she made in our new kitchen last week I don’t think she’ll ever be carbon neutral again, she’s practically bovine if the aromas wafting from our bathroom are any kind of indicator. Seriously, never blend 10 flowers of broccoli with water, heat it and eat it. That’s not soup, it ‘s organic nuclear waste. Anyway, I’m not sure that cycling is environmentally friendly at all because it a) raises the blood pressure of every bus and car driver in Central London, who then take out their stress on their partners, who in turn get stressed and burn the dinner, which wastes food and uses up excess fuel, b) it uses up more C02 than necessary because every cyclist I’ve ever met dodges red lights and nips round vehicles, which causes motor drivers to have to slam on their brakes which uses up carbon. Or makes them carbon un-neutral or whatever the phrase is. And c) you have to oil a bike, that’s using up natural resources. And d) now I’ve got into this, cyclists bore the crap out of everyone in the pub by relaying their journeys, routes, the time they skidded on a grate in front of a number 73 bus and how much their tyres cost, which makes us all drink ourselves stupid which makes them drink themselves stupid until they’re too drunk to cycle home and end up having to put the thing in the back of a taxi to get home. And so it goes on in a vicious, self-righteous circle. Anyway, Jax loves her bike, I do not.
We had to visit Ikea in Edmonton to go and get those things for the flat that only Ikea seems to sell now that Woolworths has gone bust. Well, John Lewis sells them too but at three times the price and as we’d already gone way over the non-existent budget, we were looking for a cheap and easy fix. We had a lengthy conversation about transport for this epic, Zone 5 excursion, and decided to compromise with a bus there, followed by the mandatory Addison Lee back if we had too much to carry. At 5pm on a Thursday from Liverpool Street out to North London, public transport is misery. Awash with grey and forlorn commuters reading London Lite on their way home from the City, I wanted to throw myself under the number 45 bus rather than get on it. Oyster Cards, they’re depressing as well, from the fake cheery blueness of the packaging to the sad little bleep it makes when you swipe it to pay your fare; the succession of passengers getting on and touching the screen sounded to me like a hospital heart monitor. Bleep, bleep, bleep, went the heart and soul of London, until the number of commuters trying to get on increased to such numbers that I panicked the city was going to flatline. Anyway, we wrenched ourselves onto a seat and passed the time by talking about sex, which is always amusing in confined public spaces. It rained outside as we rode for 40 minutes and then the bus stopped and the driver shouted ‘everyone off.’ We could not see the big blue and yellow sign that promised unwaveringly to Make Our House a Home. The driver was non-committal. They’d changed his route over the radio and the bus was now out of service. We could wait for the next one in twenty minutes or walk a mile over the bridge and up the embankment, cut through the car park and get there on foot. We opted for the latter, then immediately regretted it as we crossed the bridge and found ourselves essentially in the middle of a very busy dual carriageway. The warehouse of cheap and easy home treats was beckoning us like a siren on the rocks and we could not reach her.
We stood for twenty minutes on the central reservation, and watched the next in-service number 45 go past and swing into the car park and drop off a load of middle-aged, heavy-weight women to the front door of the store. Finally we spotted a gap in the road and, now soaked through from the rain and promising ourselves a large plate of meatballs from the canteen, we sprinted like we were 14 years old in the county finals of the 50 yard dash. We made it and ran for cover into the lobby. The canteen was closed for refurbishment. We pushed on.
Jax got over-excited and started trying to buy plastic cutlery drainers that sit over the sink, and a bath rail. I reminded her that we don’t even have a bath. She then veered emotionally in the opposite direction when we hit the crockery department. She had had her heart set on Cath Kidston and Emma Bridgewater mugs and bowls and plates, but at 15 quid a pop, and bearing in mind we are struggling to finance toilet paper (those £50 light switches look great but they have a lot to answer for) we had decided against it, for now. Jax threw a tantrum. Ikea was shit. She wanted Bridgewater and she wanted it now. I walked away from her like a parent with a hysterical toddler, but then thought she might start trashing the display of sixties themed swirly plates, so I went back to calm her down. We managed to settle on plain white, and only 4 of everything, as they would be temporary until my plan to win the Lottery came to fruition. Then, in the living room department we struck gold with the most comfortable big fat armchair in the world, with a blue and white candy striped cover, the last on the shelf, to finish it off. We were over the moon, it would sit directly in the living room bay window, We would read our books in it while sipping tea and having the occasional nap, it looked Christmassy and Summery in equal measures and it came whole, not flat-packed. Jackpot. We hauled it onto a giant trolley and swerved it over to the checkout . Definitely too much treasure to carry on to a bus in the rain. I called our surrogate mother and they promised to send someone straight over.
The Addison Lee driver met us with a smile and a roll of the eyes.
“What on earth have you got here girls? We’ll never get that armchair in the back of this motor.”
We grinned at him like errant teenagers. The armchair fitted in, just, with a lot of panting and puffing from the driver. We told him our woes with public transport and how hungry we were with the lack of Swedish meatballs. He didn’t tell us for not eating before we left, he simply informed us that the Subway in the nearby retail park had Meatball Marinara sandwiches as their special of the day. How he knew this, I did not even care. To Subway we went and the three of us lined up Meatball Marinaras with Diet Cokes on the side. Back in Shoreditch the driver jumped out, opened the boot and took the armchair all the way up three flights of stairs and proudly into our living room. We tipped him handsomely and off he drove away into the night.
“Thanks Mum,” I whispered as I closed the front door.
Friday, 28 November 2008
They Make Your Bed, You Lie In It
The beds arrived! Jax’s antique sculpture from the Petit Auberge in outside of Paris finally made its way across the Channel intact and my solid pine number turned up on the back of a transit from Chiswick. They were delivered in the late afternoon, to much huffing and puffing on the part of the delivery garcons and much tea-making and biscuit-serving from me. By the time Jax returned from work at six o’clock we had a pile of metal and wooden bed parts in the middle of the living room, and a melange of English and French van drivers engaged merrily in the sharing of hot beverages and motorway cafe comparisons. They were the living and breathing embodiment of the phrase European Union, and almost brought a tear to my eye. Jax ran around in a state of excited agitation and asked the hommes if they would be able to stick around and help us to put the beds up, at which point they all departed quicker than you could say "deux pain au chocolat and a pork pie por favor."
So the simple pleasure of sleeping solo was deferred for yet another night as we realised we did not own any tools with which to erect our long-awaited chariots of slumber. Bob the Builder had left his tool-kit behind but it was so comprehensive and state of the art that we couldn’t even work out how to open the lid. Jax was irritated, and took her frustration out on my poor bed, currently in pieces and looking vaguely like a funeral pyre stacked up on the floor. She was, frankly, derogatory. She said it was plain and a bit dull and not what she’d expected from me with my overtly chav-glamour Essex roots. I told her the French superiority complex of her uptight and overpriced bed had rubbed off on her. We both pouted for a while then went next door and climbed onto the mattress for what would hopefully be our final night of cohabitation.
The next day was Saturday and Jax was once again in a state of hyper nervousness. She spent 30 minutes buffing and shampooing in the shower, a record for a girl who can’t sit through a cartoon without getting bored. I put this erratic behaviour down to the fact that we were expecting a visit from her colleague and friend Marky (he’s allowed the ‘y’, he’s under 25) and, guess who? The Arty Alpha. The pair of them were coming round under the pretence of helping us to paint our skirting boards. I say pretence because clearly the whole thing was a charade to get Arty and Jax in close proximity together outside of the workplace. Skirting boards was Jax’s idea. I told her the subject didn’t really scream sex, but she’d become fixed on the notion that skirting boards had the right balance of weekend social interaction without seeming desperate. Jax had invited Marky along as Arty’s wing-man which presumably meant that I was hers. I warned her that Darren the Ridiculously Fit Plasterer, now moonlighting as our painter, would get annoyed if we messed anything up, but I was dutifully ignored. It seemed that my authority in this house holds no water where the potential pulling of boys is concerned.
Jax emerged from her bedroom in a vest top and ruffle skirt. I asked if the plan had changed and we were now going for brunch at the Wolesley. She disappeared back inside and came out only marginally improved: a vintage shirt and skinny jeans. Arty Alpha was clearly keen to impress as well; I answered the door to him in, well, a vintage shirt and skinny jeans. He was clutching four lattes in a cardboard holder and a selection of pastries from the organic food hall down the road. And he was early. We all stood in the living room looking at each other. I put the kettle on to break the ice and watched the pair of them through the haze of steam like an East End mother keeping an eye on the kids. Arty got nervous and unpacked the pastries, then proceeded to talk us through each one. There’s a limit to how much chat three people can maintain about baked goods, but we did pretty well until at last the doorbell rang and Marky turned up on his bike, clad cap to shoe in sweaty lycra, and made a beeline straight for a Fair Trade hazelnut scone.
Three hours later and the skirting boards were finished. I will allow myself 65% of the credit for this, Marky 35%, as he wasted a lot of time waving the paintbrush around and talking about his next film project. The shirt-and-jeans duo were useless - constantly at the kettle and in deep discussion about whether to have grey or green grout in the shower room. The Alpha part of Arty came to the fore when he spotted our pile of wood and metal and he immediately volunteered himself and Marky to erect the beds. I managed to restrain myself from making the obvious erection/bed joke by stuffing a homemade cinnamon whirl down my throat. Another hour later and the boys were only halfway through the first bed, sweating over a wrench and some nuts (again, verbal restraint of the highest order on my part) and Jax and I were spectating with a bottle of Rioja, when the doorbell rang. It was Darren the Ridiculously Fit Plasterer on a surprise visit to drop of some wall paint. We showed him the skirting boards, which were drying in the hallway. He told us we’d done a beautiful job. Then Jax told him the boys had come to help us and he started finding lumps, bumps and irregularities all over them. I sensed a clash of the Alpha males about to unfold. Darren puffed up his chest and marched into Jax’s room to take a look at the new men in the house. He snorted at the work in progress, pried the wrench from Arty’s hand and proceeded to put the entire thing up in eight minutes. Then he went into my room and did the same with my sturdy pine. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d peed around the beds. Alpha and Marky took the high road and thanked him for his help, but we could tell they were fuming. It was all very entertaining. Darren put the slats on my bed and hauled the mattress on top. I was ecstatic and jumped up and down like a kid on a trampoline. Then we realised Jax’s bed had been delivered without slats. We checked the delivery note. She had paid £400 for a bed frame. Just the frame. In fairness to her, Jax managed to keep herself under wraps admirably. I could tell she wanted to yell swearwords out of the window at passers-by, smash some car wing mirrors and kick a cat, but in the presence of the three males, she simply shrugged and said she’d pop out for some the following day. Darren left in a blaze of testosterone-fuelled triumph and Arty reclaimed his masculinity by showing us how to do pull-ups off our exposed joists. Then we went to the pub. We drank seven bottles of Pinot Noir between us. Marky and I planned the creation of an award-winning cult movie and Arty and Jax flirted cautiously with each other and made a date for the following week to an exhibition.
Back at home that night, with oestrogen levels restored, I went into my room and caressed my new bed, ready to climb in and have sweet dreams at last. I popped my head in next door. Jax had moved her bed frame into place, and put the mattress into the gap left by the missing slats. It was a sorry sight. She apologised for calling my bed plain and dull. She said it was a wise choice, unlike her burnished gold, wobbling antique frame. I told her that her bed was lovely and that we should name it the Savoy, because it was decadent and old-school and currently under construction. Mine would be the Long Boat, big and solid and steady.
That night we lay side by side in the Long Boat, and decided that as a girl chooses a bed in life, so she chooses a man. Mine was going to be big and rugged, strong and reliable. If Arty turned out to be like the Savoy, I asked, would Jax mind? She pondered this for a while, then said she didn’t mind if he was a bit wobbly sometimes, as long as he wasn't missing any slats. A fair and reasonable request, I thought.
So the simple pleasure of sleeping solo was deferred for yet another night as we realised we did not own any tools with which to erect our long-awaited chariots of slumber. Bob the Builder had left his tool-kit behind but it was so comprehensive and state of the art that we couldn’t even work out how to open the lid. Jax was irritated, and took her frustration out on my poor bed, currently in pieces and looking vaguely like a funeral pyre stacked up on the floor. She was, frankly, derogatory. She said it was plain and a bit dull and not what she’d expected from me with my overtly chav-glamour Essex roots. I told her the French superiority complex of her uptight and overpriced bed had rubbed off on her. We both pouted for a while then went next door and climbed onto the mattress for what would hopefully be our final night of cohabitation.
The next day was Saturday and Jax was once again in a state of hyper nervousness. She spent 30 minutes buffing and shampooing in the shower, a record for a girl who can’t sit through a cartoon without getting bored. I put this erratic behaviour down to the fact that we were expecting a visit from her colleague and friend Marky (he’s allowed the ‘y’, he’s under 25) and, guess who? The Arty Alpha. The pair of them were coming round under the pretence of helping us to paint our skirting boards. I say pretence because clearly the whole thing was a charade to get Arty and Jax in close proximity together outside of the workplace. Skirting boards was Jax’s idea. I told her the subject didn’t really scream sex, but she’d become fixed on the notion that skirting boards had the right balance of weekend social interaction without seeming desperate. Jax had invited Marky along as Arty’s wing-man which presumably meant that I was hers. I warned her that Darren the Ridiculously Fit Plasterer, now moonlighting as our painter, would get annoyed if we messed anything up, but I was dutifully ignored. It seemed that my authority in this house holds no water where the potential pulling of boys is concerned.
Jax emerged from her bedroom in a vest top and ruffle skirt. I asked if the plan had changed and we were now going for brunch at the Wolesley. She disappeared back inside and came out only marginally improved: a vintage shirt and skinny jeans. Arty Alpha was clearly keen to impress as well; I answered the door to him in, well, a vintage shirt and skinny jeans. He was clutching four lattes in a cardboard holder and a selection of pastries from the organic food hall down the road. And he was early. We all stood in the living room looking at each other. I put the kettle on to break the ice and watched the pair of them through the haze of steam like an East End mother keeping an eye on the kids. Arty got nervous and unpacked the pastries, then proceeded to talk us through each one. There’s a limit to how much chat three people can maintain about baked goods, but we did pretty well until at last the doorbell rang and Marky turned up on his bike, clad cap to shoe in sweaty lycra, and made a beeline straight for a Fair Trade hazelnut scone.
Three hours later and the skirting boards were finished. I will allow myself 65% of the credit for this, Marky 35%, as he wasted a lot of time waving the paintbrush around and talking about his next film project. The shirt-and-jeans duo were useless - constantly at the kettle and in deep discussion about whether to have grey or green grout in the shower room. The Alpha part of Arty came to the fore when he spotted our pile of wood and metal and he immediately volunteered himself and Marky to erect the beds. I managed to restrain myself from making the obvious erection/bed joke by stuffing a homemade cinnamon whirl down my throat. Another hour later and the boys were only halfway through the first bed, sweating over a wrench and some nuts (again, verbal restraint of the highest order on my part) and Jax and I were spectating with a bottle of Rioja, when the doorbell rang. It was Darren the Ridiculously Fit Plasterer on a surprise visit to drop of some wall paint. We showed him the skirting boards, which were drying in the hallway. He told us we’d done a beautiful job. Then Jax told him the boys had come to help us and he started finding lumps, bumps and irregularities all over them. I sensed a clash of the Alpha males about to unfold. Darren puffed up his chest and marched into Jax’s room to take a look at the new men in the house. He snorted at the work in progress, pried the wrench from Arty’s hand and proceeded to put the entire thing up in eight minutes. Then he went into my room and did the same with my sturdy pine. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d peed around the beds. Alpha and Marky took the high road and thanked him for his help, but we could tell they were fuming. It was all very entertaining. Darren put the slats on my bed and hauled the mattress on top. I was ecstatic and jumped up and down like a kid on a trampoline. Then we realised Jax’s bed had been delivered without slats. We checked the delivery note. She had paid £400 for a bed frame. Just the frame. In fairness to her, Jax managed to keep herself under wraps admirably. I could tell she wanted to yell swearwords out of the window at passers-by, smash some car wing mirrors and kick a cat, but in the presence of the three males, she simply shrugged and said she’d pop out for some the following day. Darren left in a blaze of testosterone-fuelled triumph and Arty reclaimed his masculinity by showing us how to do pull-ups off our exposed joists. Then we went to the pub. We drank seven bottles of Pinot Noir between us. Marky and I planned the creation of an award-winning cult movie and Arty and Jax flirted cautiously with each other and made a date for the following week to an exhibition.
Back at home that night, with oestrogen levels restored, I went into my room and caressed my new bed, ready to climb in and have sweet dreams at last. I popped my head in next door. Jax had moved her bed frame into place, and put the mattress into the gap left by the missing slats. It was a sorry sight. She apologised for calling my bed plain and dull. She said it was a wise choice, unlike her burnished gold, wobbling antique frame. I told her that her bed was lovely and that we should name it the Savoy, because it was decadent and old-school and currently under construction. Mine would be the Long Boat, big and solid and steady.
That night we lay side by side in the Long Boat, and decided that as a girl chooses a bed in life, so she chooses a man. Mine was going to be big and rugged, strong and reliable. If Arty turned out to be like the Savoy, I asked, would Jax mind? She pondered this for a while, then said she didn’t mind if he was a bit wobbly sometimes, as long as he wasn't missing any slats. A fair and reasonable request, I thought.
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
The Boys Next Door
Being a resident of Shoreditch has its benefits; we’re in Zone 1, we have a thousand brilliant bars, clubs, restaurants, art galleries and shops a stone’s throw away and the area is one of the only in London to still retain a slight anarchic edge. A graffiti artist has taken to decorating the building site boards that have been put up around the new Conran hotel construction at the edge of our estate with comments like ‘All a brick wants to do is get laid’, and you can walk to the corner shop in pyjamas, hair curlers and Wellington boots and no one bats an eyelid. The downside however, is that every night, even Mondays when it’s raining, the oddballs, dealers, pimps, winos and addicts come wiggling out of their holes and seem to take up residence beneath our bedroom window. It’s bad enough that Jax and I are still sharing a mattress on her floor, but to make it worse, we’re not even getting any sleep. After 20 minutes of fidgeting, rearranging, closing the window and opening it again, we finally drift off and some lunatic from the wrong side of the tracks comes sauntering down the street and starts prolonged yelling for Christopher.
The drill is a two-tone whistle, repeated three times. We may be middle class but we’re not stupid. It’s a code. And every knocked-up, dropped-out, ground-down weirdo in the neighbourhood knows it. If no response is forthcoming we get a yell of “Chris-to-pher!” followed by more whistles. As far as we can work out Christopher lives in the block opposite us on the third floor, There is a red light in his room and an alarm on his window. These are not good signs. We have never seen Christopher but we hear him regularly as he takes his visitors between 11pm and 6am each night. Sometimes we get a gruff, “Who is it?” Other times, when he’s had a long day and the triple whistle comes at dawn accompanied by a desperate female cry of his name we get a “F*ck off you slag.” It’s delightful I can tell you. We’re thinking about making a documentary. The other morning when all was quiet on the Eastern front, I peered out of the window to see if I could garner any more information about our salubrious drug-pimp based his curtains, when I clocked a very camp, 60-ish year old guy wandering down the street in nought but a pair of tight Speedos and some sandals. He made his way to the corner shop (which sells chicken, sweets, whole frozen fish and chalk in case you ever need it), emerged with a copy of the Sun and disappeared round the corner.
Inside the flat, developments were happening apace. Peter the Carpenter finally came down with his son from Suffolk for 24 hours to fit the handmade kitchen. We made sure they were looked after; biscuits, croissants, and a bottle of red wine to enjoy at the end of the job. We cleared off to a friend’s house and left them to get on with it, providing two sleeping bags on Jax’s bed, fresh pillowcases and instructions on how to reach us if they had any questions. A long day on Friday, a good night’s sleep and half a day on Saturday should have done it. We waited with excited anticipation. The phone rang on Saturday lunchtime. It was Peter.
“Alright girl?”
“How’s it going?” Jax asked, barely able to conceal her excitement at the thought of actually being able to prepare fresh food.
“Oh girl I can’t finish the job can I, got a terrible head.”
“What’s the matter Peter, do you suffer from migraines?”
“Oh no girl not migraines. What happened is, the boy’s never been to London has he? So we went on a little break yesterday afternoon, quick pint, and we got carried away. Went a bit mad on the drink we did, Big Smoke and all that. Came in about 3am, and then we drank that bottle of wine you got us. I feel so awful there’s no way I can carry on with it now, anyway, got a wedding back home in a couple of hours so we’ve got to leave or the missus’ll have me.”
Back at the flat, and Peter and Son had managed two cupboards and half of the sink. They had left cigarette butts and a can of Stella in the half-sink, open biscuit packets on the floor, a copy of the Daily Star in the toilet and they had spilt wine on the sofa. They had also clearly flouted the sleeping bag arrangement, as both our rooms were a mess of duvets, pillows, a suspicious looking yellow stain on my fitted sheet and the lid off of Jax’s face cream. A pair of Ben Sherman boxer shorts languished on the floor of the shower room. Fearing that the pair had spent the evening in one of the local pound-in-the-pot strip clubs, or worse, Christopher’s, and brought the party back to our beloved home, we promptly tore off all the bedding and rushed it to the launderette. Peter returned a week later, enthusing about the women of the night in our local area as he finished the job. A welcome knock at the door tore me away from his anecdotes. It was none other than the old camp dude, although thankfully this time he was wearing more than just Speedos. He introduced himself as Jegs, our upstairs neighbour, and warned us that he and his partner were throwing a little soiree that evening and that it was likely to descend into Celine Dion karaoke at a loud volume. I thanked him for notifying us, closed the front door and stood in the hallway, listening to Peter waxing lyrical about strippers’ plastic heeled stilletos, and wondering if there are any normal men left in Shoreditch.
The drill is a two-tone whistle, repeated three times. We may be middle class but we’re not stupid. It’s a code. And every knocked-up, dropped-out, ground-down weirdo in the neighbourhood knows it. If no response is forthcoming we get a yell of “Chris-to-pher!” followed by more whistles. As far as we can work out Christopher lives in the block opposite us on the third floor, There is a red light in his room and an alarm on his window. These are not good signs. We have never seen Christopher but we hear him regularly as he takes his visitors between 11pm and 6am each night. Sometimes we get a gruff, “Who is it?” Other times, when he’s had a long day and the triple whistle comes at dawn accompanied by a desperate female cry of his name we get a “F*ck off you slag.” It’s delightful I can tell you. We’re thinking about making a documentary. The other morning when all was quiet on the Eastern front, I peered out of the window to see if I could garner any more information about our salubrious drug-pimp based his curtains, when I clocked a very camp, 60-ish year old guy wandering down the street in nought but a pair of tight Speedos and some sandals. He made his way to the corner shop (which sells chicken, sweets, whole frozen fish and chalk in case you ever need it), emerged with a copy of the Sun and disappeared round the corner.
Inside the flat, developments were happening apace. Peter the Carpenter finally came down with his son from Suffolk for 24 hours to fit the handmade kitchen. We made sure they were looked after; biscuits, croissants, and a bottle of red wine to enjoy at the end of the job. We cleared off to a friend’s house and left them to get on with it, providing two sleeping bags on Jax’s bed, fresh pillowcases and instructions on how to reach us if they had any questions. A long day on Friday, a good night’s sleep and half a day on Saturday should have done it. We waited with excited anticipation. The phone rang on Saturday lunchtime. It was Peter.
“Alright girl?”
“How’s it going?” Jax asked, barely able to conceal her excitement at the thought of actually being able to prepare fresh food.
“Oh girl I can’t finish the job can I, got a terrible head.”
“What’s the matter Peter, do you suffer from migraines?”
“Oh no girl not migraines. What happened is, the boy’s never been to London has he? So we went on a little break yesterday afternoon, quick pint, and we got carried away. Went a bit mad on the drink we did, Big Smoke and all that. Came in about 3am, and then we drank that bottle of wine you got us. I feel so awful there’s no way I can carry on with it now, anyway, got a wedding back home in a couple of hours so we’ve got to leave or the missus’ll have me.”
Back at the flat, and Peter and Son had managed two cupboards and half of the sink. They had left cigarette butts and a can of Stella in the half-sink, open biscuit packets on the floor, a copy of the Daily Star in the toilet and they had spilt wine on the sofa. They had also clearly flouted the sleeping bag arrangement, as both our rooms were a mess of duvets, pillows, a suspicious looking yellow stain on my fitted sheet and the lid off of Jax’s face cream. A pair of Ben Sherman boxer shorts languished on the floor of the shower room. Fearing that the pair had spent the evening in one of the local pound-in-the-pot strip clubs, or worse, Christopher’s, and brought the party back to our beloved home, we promptly tore off all the bedding and rushed it to the launderette. Peter returned a week later, enthusing about the women of the night in our local area as he finished the job. A welcome knock at the door tore me away from his anecdotes. It was none other than the old camp dude, although thankfully this time he was wearing more than just Speedos. He introduced himself as Jegs, our upstairs neighbour, and warned us that he and his partner were throwing a little soiree that evening and that it was likely to descend into Celine Dion karaoke at a loud volume. I thanked him for notifying us, closed the front door and stood in the hallway, listening to Peter waxing lyrical about strippers’ plastic heeled stilletos, and wondering if there are any normal men left in Shoreditch.
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
The Aga Saga
Not having a kitchen is starting to take its toll. Takeaways on our knees surrounded by dust is just depressing and the trips to the pub for club sandwiches are getting expensive, not to mention wildly unhealthy. I haven’t prepared so much as a bowl of cereal in over a month and I’ve taken to buying a 50p chocolate croissant from Tesco Local on my way to work each morning. Jax and I discuss the situation on the mattress one night. We agree that we’re both looking a bit rounder than usual, and that being single and fat is a definite no-go. So we have now put ourselves on a strict sushi and smoothie eating plan. I think Jax spearheaded this campaign because she’s got a bit of a crush on a tall and lean Arty Alpha who she works with at the ad agency (she goes for the skinny ones, I go for the big ones; I couldn’t bear the thought of a boyfriend fitting into my jeans). She’s entirely oblivious to the crush of course, but he appears in every other sentence at the moment, and apparently he’s just so funny, and so talented and I’ll never guess what he did in the office yesterday... I give her a knowing smile and then she denies the whole thing in an outraged and disgusted fashion. She’ll keep this up for another couple of weeks, and then we’ll move into the sending-random-amusing-but-clever-texts-quite-late-at-night phase I should imagine.
Anyway, the kitchen. It is being hand made by Peter the Carpenter in Suffolk and seems to be taking around the same length of time as the Sistene Chapel. He rang Jax and promised her for the fifteenth time that he would come soon and fit the thing. Jax, at the end of her tether, with nowhere left to negotiate (she paid him in full upfront, but we don’t talk about that…) said she expected to see him on the 12th of Never. Peter the Carpenter found that highly amusing and said he loved a girl with a sense of humour. I took the phone from her and hung up as I sensed she was about to use the ‘C’ word.
Bob the Builder, however, has been right on schedule, and won’t stop for anyone. He came round this morning as planned to hook up the beautiful, proud and haughty Aga, which was meant to be the centrepiece of the room, for baking scones, warming hands and creating the ‘cottage’ part of our Urban Cottage theme. But hooking up the Aga will now never, ever happen. Because the Aga runs off of gas and electricity, and when we bought it we thought it just ran off gas. We told Bob it was just gas. So Bob dutifully hooked up a gas pipe, hid it behind the plastering and under the reclaimed floorboards from the Cambridge college and left just one discreet nozzle poking out in the designated place in the kitchen area. To fit an electricity pipe now, this far down the line, would require many hours and much expense in ripping out all of the tiles, two kitchen cabinets and half of the floorboards. We don’t have any extra hours and we certainly don’t have any extra money. The Aga was purchased many months ago, stored at Jax’s ex-future-in-laws for an embarrassingly gratuitous eight months, during the break-up and beyond, and was carried up three flights of stairs by six men a few weeks ago. It has been a complete pain in the backside and now it won’t even work. It’s a vicious, superior and withering piece of kit and we now want it out of the flat as soon as humanly possible.
It doesn’t care, it’s just sitting there, laughing at us, as if it always knew it would never lower itself to the function of actually being cooked on. If this Aga were a person it would be Keira Knightley; beautiful, irritating, pouting across the room with no intention of ever mucking in. Bob tried to break the news gently. Jax made to throw herself out of the window but he managed to catch her in time. I was inclined to let her go, to cleanse her soul of the unending frustration and heartache that this flat is causing. One final jump from the third floor, onto the hard concrete below, to succumb to the will of the Refurbishment, to accept that the house always wins. I asked Bob if we couldn’t just use the gas part, and ignore the electric hot-plate section in question. Perhaps we could use it to store clothes, I suggested. When he had finished laughing he departed to the corner shop to buy a Twix and give us a moment to reflect.
Tonight we boycotted the sushi and smoothie and sloped off to the pub for yet another club sandwich and chips and a bottle of wine. At about half past nine Jax’s phone beeped. It was a random amusing and clever text from the Arty Alpha. An interesting turn of events. Jax grinned and pushed the bowl of chips over to my side of the table.
When we came home, Keira was smirking at us, one eyebrow raised in mocking derision, so we kicked her. We felt better. Then we took her picture and put her on Ebay. We’re hoping that she ends up with a domestic slattern who fries cheap, greasy potato waffles all over her expensive body and never wipes her down.
Anyway, the kitchen. It is being hand made by Peter the Carpenter in Suffolk and seems to be taking around the same length of time as the Sistene Chapel. He rang Jax and promised her for the fifteenth time that he would come soon and fit the thing. Jax, at the end of her tether, with nowhere left to negotiate (she paid him in full upfront, but we don’t talk about that…) said she expected to see him on the 12th of Never. Peter the Carpenter found that highly amusing and said he loved a girl with a sense of humour. I took the phone from her and hung up as I sensed she was about to use the ‘C’ word.
Bob the Builder, however, has been right on schedule, and won’t stop for anyone. He came round this morning as planned to hook up the beautiful, proud and haughty Aga, which was meant to be the centrepiece of the room, for baking scones, warming hands and creating the ‘cottage’ part of our Urban Cottage theme. But hooking up the Aga will now never, ever happen. Because the Aga runs off of gas and electricity, and when we bought it we thought it just ran off gas. We told Bob it was just gas. So Bob dutifully hooked up a gas pipe, hid it behind the plastering and under the reclaimed floorboards from the Cambridge college and left just one discreet nozzle poking out in the designated place in the kitchen area. To fit an electricity pipe now, this far down the line, would require many hours and much expense in ripping out all of the tiles, two kitchen cabinets and half of the floorboards. We don’t have any extra hours and we certainly don’t have any extra money. The Aga was purchased many months ago, stored at Jax’s ex-future-in-laws for an embarrassingly gratuitous eight months, during the break-up and beyond, and was carried up three flights of stairs by six men a few weeks ago. It has been a complete pain in the backside and now it won’t even work. It’s a vicious, superior and withering piece of kit and we now want it out of the flat as soon as humanly possible.
It doesn’t care, it’s just sitting there, laughing at us, as if it always knew it would never lower itself to the function of actually being cooked on. If this Aga were a person it would be Keira Knightley; beautiful, irritating, pouting across the room with no intention of ever mucking in. Bob tried to break the news gently. Jax made to throw herself out of the window but he managed to catch her in time. I was inclined to let her go, to cleanse her soul of the unending frustration and heartache that this flat is causing. One final jump from the third floor, onto the hard concrete below, to succumb to the will of the Refurbishment, to accept that the house always wins. I asked Bob if we couldn’t just use the gas part, and ignore the electric hot-plate section in question. Perhaps we could use it to store clothes, I suggested. When he had finished laughing he departed to the corner shop to buy a Twix and give us a moment to reflect.
Tonight we boycotted the sushi and smoothie and sloped off to the pub for yet another club sandwich and chips and a bottle of wine. At about half past nine Jax’s phone beeped. It was a random amusing and clever text from the Arty Alpha. An interesting turn of events. Jax grinned and pushed the bowl of chips over to my side of the table.
When we came home, Keira was smirking at us, one eyebrow raised in mocking derision, so we kicked her. We felt better. Then we took her picture and put her on Ebay. We’re hoping that she ends up with a domestic slattern who fries cheap, greasy potato waffles all over her expensive body and never wipes her down.
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Running Water
Two weeks into our new life in Shoreditch and I am starting to feel the same rage my mother used to express midway through family camping holidays. ‘Going rough’ is all very liberated and organic in theory, when discussed over a large glass of rioja on a plush sofa in a friend’s centrally heated home. But, as in my youth when we would find ourselves stranded under sodden muddy canvas with dog shit on our shoes and the nearest pub a forty minute car drive away, the postmodern glamour of slumming it wears off after about three hours.
Fourteen days have passed and it feels as if Bob the Builder has made no progress at all. He has of course, but not anywhere that it makes an iota of difference to our comfort levels. The skirting boards are in. Whoop. I’m still sharing a double mattress with Jax on the floor, her antique bed from France having sunk on the ferry at Newhaven and me having had more thwarted dates with bed vendors on Gumtree than a middle-aged man trying to get laid on Dating Direct: they all advertise themselves as sure things and then they don’t return your calls. Our single life of careless liaisons and romantic misadventures has temporarily stalled. Even if we had our own beds and managed to lure a chap back to the building site, it’s not like we could hang a hat on the door to warn each other of the impending liaison. Because we still don’t have doors.
And the shower is still not plumbed in. It is sitting in the wet room, all white tiles and grey grout and sexy green slate flooring, tempting me like a siren on the rocks: you can look but you sure as hell can’t touch. Every morning it’s the same. One of us dresses while the other guards the door from Lee the Pessimist and Darren the Ridiculously Fit Plasterer. Actually it’s Lee more than Darren who tries to catch a glance. Not surprising I suppose; Darren probably has a harem of wives back at his semi-detatched in Plumstead, just panting for him to return home and utter the words, “It’ll be a couple of hours before that goes hard so don’t touch it just yet.” (he was talking about the plaster in the hallway but he managed to send us into a minor frenzy; we were hungover and had been watching a Jude Law movie on my laptop so I suppose our reaction wasn’t surprising.) Lee on the other hand, has the advantage of youth over Darren, but none of the charisma, chat or physique, so he seems to satisfy himself with Nuts magazine, the News of the World and peering round the doorframe in the mornings asking if we want a cup of tea. We always decline. Then, each morning, is the Building Meeting. Jax writes copious lists for these meetings and reads them out to our team of three like a General marching into battle. Every day Bob tells her that her expectations are too high, that most people spend a year renovating a property, and that it’s one small step at a time. Jax nods gravely, eyes welling up. She doesn’t really do small steps, and certainly never one at a time. I am more realistic. I ask for a door. There is normally some sort of showdown, followed by a consolatory cup of tea and a Hob Nob, and Jax thanks everyone for working so hard. Then we both go off to the gym to use the shower. I get gift points every time I swipe into my gym. I haven’t been on the treadmill in months but I am told today that my daily shower visits mean I am now eligible for a free Clarins facemask. I nearly weep with joy on the gym receptionist’s shoulder. It’s the simple things that affect you when you’re trying to build a house, I tell her.
Working late tonight, I arrive back at the flat at 9pm to find Jax, Bob, Lee and Darren sat on pots of paint in the living room lit by tealights, stonkingly drunk. It’s a big day, Jax tells me. The boiler is in, the water is running and it’s hot. I pause. Does this mean what I think it means? I go to the wet room and stroke the pipe leading from the achingly trendy industrial showerhead all the way down to the tap. I turn the dial. Water comes gushing out. It is warm, now it is hot. I am overwhelmed with the purest, most ecstatic form of joy, an emotion I haven’t felt since I scored my first and last hockey goal from the left wing in the C Team under 16s County Finals. I leave the water pouring and run back to the living room. Bob looks like a proud father. Even Lee the Pessimist is smiling. Darren the Plasterer is truly plastered. He puts a hand on Jax’s knee. She doesn’t move it. They are all grinning up at me.
“What?” I ask.
“Did you notice that not only can you shower, but you can shower in private?” Bob replies. Lee looks slightly glum at this point.
I go back and look again. There is a door, on a hinge, that opens and closes. I move around the flat, gloriously opening and closing each door to each room. It is a truly tremendous day. Darren is seven Stellas down and in the mood to show off. He asks Jax if she’d like him to accompany her for her first shower, gives her no time to answer, throws her over his shoulder and carries her into the wet room. Bob, Lee and I cheer and follow in a kind of conga line. Everybody dances into the shower. I realise at this point that I am sober, so desist from the group bathtime and stand back to watch. They all hop around for a few seconds then Bob accidentally hits Jax round the head and she, being mildly claustrophobic and incredibly drunk, begins to panic. The men pile back out and give Jax room to breathe. We all whoop and cheer again to keep the spirit of the party going. Darren realises that it’s late and his missus won’t be happy. Lee is feeling a bit queasy and Bob says he’s getting too old for too much fun. They change out of their wet work clothes and into their civvies, give us both a kiss and wobble out of the front door. Jax and I bed down as usual on the floor, but this time we close the bedroom door, and dream of hot showers in the morning. One small step for Bob, one giant leap for the girls.
Fourteen days have passed and it feels as if Bob the Builder has made no progress at all. He has of course, but not anywhere that it makes an iota of difference to our comfort levels. The skirting boards are in. Whoop. I’m still sharing a double mattress with Jax on the floor, her antique bed from France having sunk on the ferry at Newhaven and me having had more thwarted dates with bed vendors on Gumtree than a middle-aged man trying to get laid on Dating Direct: they all advertise themselves as sure things and then they don’t return your calls. Our single life of careless liaisons and romantic misadventures has temporarily stalled. Even if we had our own beds and managed to lure a chap back to the building site, it’s not like we could hang a hat on the door to warn each other of the impending liaison. Because we still don’t have doors.
And the shower is still not plumbed in. It is sitting in the wet room, all white tiles and grey grout and sexy green slate flooring, tempting me like a siren on the rocks: you can look but you sure as hell can’t touch. Every morning it’s the same. One of us dresses while the other guards the door from Lee the Pessimist and Darren the Ridiculously Fit Plasterer. Actually it’s Lee more than Darren who tries to catch a glance. Not surprising I suppose; Darren probably has a harem of wives back at his semi-detatched in Plumstead, just panting for him to return home and utter the words, “It’ll be a couple of hours before that goes hard so don’t touch it just yet.” (he was talking about the plaster in the hallway but he managed to send us into a minor frenzy; we were hungover and had been watching a Jude Law movie on my laptop so I suppose our reaction wasn’t surprising.) Lee on the other hand, has the advantage of youth over Darren, but none of the charisma, chat or physique, so he seems to satisfy himself with Nuts magazine, the News of the World and peering round the doorframe in the mornings asking if we want a cup of tea. We always decline. Then, each morning, is the Building Meeting. Jax writes copious lists for these meetings and reads them out to our team of three like a General marching into battle. Every day Bob tells her that her expectations are too high, that most people spend a year renovating a property, and that it’s one small step at a time. Jax nods gravely, eyes welling up. She doesn’t really do small steps, and certainly never one at a time. I am more realistic. I ask for a door. There is normally some sort of showdown, followed by a consolatory cup of tea and a Hob Nob, and Jax thanks everyone for working so hard. Then we both go off to the gym to use the shower. I get gift points every time I swipe into my gym. I haven’t been on the treadmill in months but I am told today that my daily shower visits mean I am now eligible for a free Clarins facemask. I nearly weep with joy on the gym receptionist’s shoulder. It’s the simple things that affect you when you’re trying to build a house, I tell her.
Working late tonight, I arrive back at the flat at 9pm to find Jax, Bob, Lee and Darren sat on pots of paint in the living room lit by tealights, stonkingly drunk. It’s a big day, Jax tells me. The boiler is in, the water is running and it’s hot. I pause. Does this mean what I think it means? I go to the wet room and stroke the pipe leading from the achingly trendy industrial showerhead all the way down to the tap. I turn the dial. Water comes gushing out. It is warm, now it is hot. I am overwhelmed with the purest, most ecstatic form of joy, an emotion I haven’t felt since I scored my first and last hockey goal from the left wing in the C Team under 16s County Finals. I leave the water pouring and run back to the living room. Bob looks like a proud father. Even Lee the Pessimist is smiling. Darren the Plasterer is truly plastered. He puts a hand on Jax’s knee. She doesn’t move it. They are all grinning up at me.
“What?” I ask.
“Did you notice that not only can you shower, but you can shower in private?” Bob replies. Lee looks slightly glum at this point.
I go back and look again. There is a door, on a hinge, that opens and closes. I move around the flat, gloriously opening and closing each door to each room. It is a truly tremendous day. Darren is seven Stellas down and in the mood to show off. He asks Jax if she’d like him to accompany her for her first shower, gives her no time to answer, throws her over his shoulder and carries her into the wet room. Bob, Lee and I cheer and follow in a kind of conga line. Everybody dances into the shower. I realise at this point that I am sober, so desist from the group bathtime and stand back to watch. They all hop around for a few seconds then Bob accidentally hits Jax round the head and she, being mildly claustrophobic and incredibly drunk, begins to panic. The men pile back out and give Jax room to breathe. We all whoop and cheer again to keep the spirit of the party going. Darren realises that it’s late and his missus won’t be happy. Lee is feeling a bit queasy and Bob says he’s getting too old for too much fun. They change out of their wet work clothes and into their civvies, give us both a kiss and wobble out of the front door. Jax and I bed down as usual on the floor, but this time we close the bedroom door, and dream of hot showers in the morning. One small step for Bob, one giant leap for the girls.
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