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.

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.