millionreasons | Half Term October 2006

Sunday 22^nd October: Over to Bethnal Green to watch some football match in a Proper East End Boozah with illegal Sky Sports (the second game feat. West Ham has been blocked, so the landlord recommends a nearby hostelry showing it), a ton of cig smoke, crab-sticks on the bar and a bloke who coaches a Sunday league team propping it up, whose underage drinkers sit outside sharing a shandy, rushing in whenever Manchester United score. The landlord seems very keen on us returning someday, possibly because 3 out of 4 of us were female and the man to woman ratio was about 15:1 within. Eat in the diametrically opposed poshe Dove pub, then back to Heike’s for homoerotic films in the guise of Kenneth Anger, Fassbinder and Nancy Sinatra (ok, camp rather than homo-y) and a documentary called Made in Sheffield about the halcyon S. Yorks days of the late 70s/early 80s. Disappointingly, the film doesn’t go beyond 1983 when, according to the opinion of the documentary-maker, everything went horribly wrong after ABC and Heaven 17 got chart hits. I would argue to the death that Don’t You Want Me is a better song than Being Boiled or Love Action and Shoot That Poison Arrow preferable to anything Cabaret Voltaire ever did. But hey I’m a(n ageing) popkid and avante-garde-ism does nowt for me. The scene ends in failure as the bands split up (excepting Pulp*), the record companies lose interest and Sheffield’s brief moment in the limelight is over. But no-one from South Yorkshire really expects things to go their way.

* Jarvis and his sister were on the commentary, even if no Pulp songs were shown. Jarvis’s sister is called Saskia. So much for Common People!

Wednesday 25^th October: To Wapping. Some years ago, my parents took me to a shopping centre called Tobacco Dock because they’d read about it in the Guardian, or something. It was half-empty and seemed at the time A Telling Example of the Failures of Capitalism. Anyway, what with shopping being less a hobby and more a way of life these days, I assumed that by now it would be full of Habitats and Monsoons and the like. I was wrong:- it is a ghost shopping centre. I peered into the windows and could see the vacant lots and where the food court used to be. Piped music was playing the Carpenters. It was very eerie.

I left and walked around to Reardon St which, like Oscar Wilde’s grave, is covered in messages to Moz.

Thursday 26^th October: Down to my old haunting ground Camberwell (for I used to float around ethereally when I was part-employed) to see erstwhile work colleague Mark Drinkwater’s photos at Kings College. I was invited to the private view, darling, but it was on a Monday and nothing speaks more of flopping out on the sofa in front of the Coronation St double bill than Monday. There were some photos of black dogs and what I thought were red abstracts but were actually scarlet, crimson and cherry coloured curtains seen from the inside. Standing on the stairs looking up at them, it felt very much like being in bed looking at the morning through the shades, wondering if the day would bring good or bad and being less than willing to find out.

Saturday 28^th October: Into town to, erm, look at fridges and things in John Lewis. Oh how I loathe (window) shopping in these hot, child-infested places. Never mind taxing SUVs, anyone with a pushchair that could double up as a snow-plough needs a Gratuitous Tax slapped on them right now. Anyway, we went because I had a free coffee token for the refectory and after we’d partaken of this, we hot-footed it down to Tooting to meet Jo, Richard and Rachael in The Kings Head before yummy curry at Kastoori, fireworks on the common (gunpowder shapes in the sky are like clouds; you can see all sort in there as the sky cracks and fizzes: daisies, planets, infernos, marigolds, snakes) and then the Wheatsheaf, which is one of those annoying pubs that doesn’t have a closing time, so by when we head for the tube it’s all delayed and it takes almost 2 squashed hours to get home. Still, at least there’s a bonus hour of free sleep although The Big Bad Dark is the incipient downside to that.