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.