Those Cummerbund Years

[millionreasons]

"The Autumn always gets me badly, as it breaks into colours. I want to go south, where there is no autumn, where the cold doesn't crouch over one like a snow-leopard waiting to pounce." (DH Lawrence)

Leaving work on Friday, weighed down by weather and the lingering on of a malady that hung around my head like a chart topping, but irritating, song, I felt less like enjoying a busy weekend and more in the mood for curling up in front of the telly for the next 48 hours. On Thursday, I walked all the way to Finsbury Park Lidl because I'd heard from a source that there was a cheap supply of St Johns Wort; my previous supplier (Wilkos) having dried up. The source was wrong and I plunged further into pre-Autumnal gloom. I like to pretend that I love Autumn, the colour of nature, the sunsets, the purifying dark, the soft feeling in the air - the mellow mistiness - but really I fucking hate it. The warm stodgy clothes and food to make up for lack of warmth. The end of September and beginning of October is when synapses fizz and fail, I think about ECT with longing and finally, I turn to either drink or Scanda-style angst, introspection and a terrible fear of death.

But anyway, I went down to Balham on Friday and secured a supply of the Wort from Sainsbury's and saw my ex-colleagues, all of whom were very kind and invited me for school Xmas dinner, before scooting up to Elephant to see Heike perform in The Heard. Usually when one sees one's friends bands, one is there for moral support, but I would go to see this choral pop even if the Heikester left. A a choir who sing songs by chart bands that I have no interest in (The Klaxons, the Arcade Fire) would seem to be a novelty, but the sweet chorus of altos and sopranos mixed with beatboxing and rapping from Ty works astonishingly well. They do a version of Love Will Tear Us Apart with handclaps and freestyling (the disco-remix that should have been recorded) but the best song is the one the conductoress, Becky, wrote herself ("I'm about you"). She is a charismatic person who looks a little like Karen from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs but instead of fronting an art-rocking band, she formed her own choir.

Saturday, we took the Oxford tube (aircon, free wifi, room for those of us with legs) over to, um, Oxford. I always try to like Oxford and I do dig the hidden corners and corridors, but the town is always always stuffed with tourists and traffic and horrible chain shops and expensive cafes. We walk down the Iffley road, passing Amelia's old house, where David and I met (how very indiepop), and find a slice of alterna-Oxford on Maudlin Magdalen Road; no posh people in gowns on bicycles here. Eat at the hippy-ish Magic Cafe and then carry on down to Iffley Village where we are attending a wedding at the Hawkswell hotel. The ceremony took place on the Friday and this is the party for the friends. Black tie was the stipulated dress code and I realise that I have rips in both legs of my tights, but really no-one looks at ankles do they? There is cake and cava and a buffet and Swedish people and dancing to music for people who are between 30 and 35 (A-ha, Nirvana, Chesney Hawkes, Transvision Vamp) and Dave's university friends to talk to about growing beans in the back garden. I decide that I want to be Swedish (although I would obviously need a permanent St Johns Wort and Prozac drip): they are modest yet unapolagetic, strangely straight forward whilst at the same time having a playful imaginative sense, answering questions literally but talking about eskimos and reindeer and elk whilst doing so.

We get an on-time cab from City Cars back to the Oxford Tube stop where, as luck would have it, the previous bus is a coupla minutes late, so we hop on and are back to London in no time, or at least in time for the last 73 from Marble Arch.

Sunday over to Highbury for, after the last wedding of the year, the last barbecue of the summer at Alice and Steve's house, featuring the usual suspects, plus a Lancet survivors support group. I tried to tell a Madeline McCann joke that I’m not sure people got and drank most of DJ’s cava before starting on the rum and cokes, cheated at jenga, helped in the virtual construction of engineering works, ate a lot of burgers and mini-eclairs and persuaded a pregnant person to drink a tot of rum. I am a terrible person. But I have cheered up.

*

I thought the other day that I have never seen a convincing transvestite. And then I realised that I wouldn’t notice if I did see a convincing transvestite.

Other random thought: Caribbean cafes often sell goat curry and jerk chicken. But never chicken curry and jerk goat. In fact I’ve only seen goat on offer in a curry. Where is the roast goat, the fried goat, the braised goat? I think that I need to know.