A Million Reasons for Wanting to Carry on Living

Yesterday we went to King's Place and saw some art:







Today, we wandered around Shoreditch and Spitalfields and saw a sheep living in a phone box. Had it no shame?!

Saturday: a Treasure Trail around Fitzrovia. The clues are found on things you don't normally notice, much less look at - lamp-posts, burglar alarms, pub windows, war memorials, street-signs etc. After we fail to find Lord Sebastian Snuggles, we meet Dave and Rebecca in the Coal Hole and on to Chinatown to a restaurant I've been to many times before, The Friendly Inn. It's still run by the same Yoko-Ono-gone-to-seed woman, and the food is still cheap, but there's food debris on the bowls, no paper in the toilets, the mineral water is warm, and the bill un-itemised (I'm pretty sure items never ordered were on there). Sad when a trusted place goes WRONG.

Somewhere else I've been to many times before does not let me down, The Gallery Cafe on Old Ford Road, which used to have a Henry Ford style menu of sandwiches or pasta, but now has expanded to breakfasts and Sunday opening. It's very full; I suppose E2 is the height of cool nowadays. When I lived in Bethnal Green (1995), the most fashionable place was Tesco. We walk up to Mare St and visit the Last Tuesday Society - a shop/gallery/museum like a more macabre version of the Museum of Everything. If you're a modern artist nowadays, sliced up kids' toys, skulls and taxidermy are the way to go. Here the stuffed animals go further than squirrels playing cards: winged cats and dogs hanging from the ceiling, a two headed snake, animal testes in a jar, lions at the dinner table and Marmoset monkeys having a chat, as well as drinks coasters made from rat and vole skins (heads intact). A real mouse mat. There's also Amy Winehouse's poo, used condoms from the Rolling Stones, a mummifield penis of a hanged man, dildos for hire (£10 an hour), but no used tampons from Kate Moss or pubic hair from Elton John. They're missing a trick, there. "It's like looking into the mind of a serial killer," says Dave.

To Greenwich (via the East London line, stopping off for lunch in the ever fab Mouse & De Lotz where some chattery Portuguese boys are learning a new word. "Chatney," one of them says, "No, chutney" says the other, imitating the server's norther accent) to go to the Planetarium, my fourth attempt to do so (the first time, we ran out of time, the second, I was too tired after cycling 'round the long way (via the Woolwich ferry), the third, it was sold out). But this time we booked in advance (ah, advance planning) and got to sit and look at pretend stars for half an hour. I'd pay £6.50 to sit in the chairs; they're so comfy that I have a little nap whilst learning that the zodiac stars are all at the same level (or whatever the science word is) as the planets, so presumably if astrology could have been invented around Mars, Venus, Jupiter etc (pity the poor folk born under Pluto), rather than random shapes that the Greeks made up - although it's a good job that the Hellenics named the star-shapes, otherwise they'd be the Golden Arches constellation and the Pepsico stars. Afterwards, we wander down the hill in the twilight and get the tube and overground back to Dalston via the Hanoi Cafe, the least hipster-oriented Vietnamese in Shoreditch, for summer rolls and tofu.



Sunday, we roll over to Euston to go to the Euston Tap, a tiny pub situated in a war memorial just outside the station concourse. Over to Martin's to watch some football match or other and to drink wine and eat chipstix. We play Boggle which turns out to be surprisingly educational. Lek, Gley and Kohen are now in my interior dictionary.

To the Dalston Lane cafe for breakfast which is a kind of greasy spoon for middle class people ("a greasy spork", quoth my boyfriend), i.e. you can get a full English without the horror of bumping into bum-cleavage showing Sun-reading builders. Indeed there were some LATFH in there talking about how caned they got last night in loud, moustachioed, ironically pullovered accents. Later, we went to the Farmers Market where David was conned into buying some raffle tickets by a precocious child (for the charity Timeline who want to put up a plaque where 160 people were killed by an air raid in Stoke Newington in October 1940). At the time, I mocked him for being a soft touch for precocious children (soft touch, not bad touching) but it seems that being kind leads to cake (I make a mental note). However, I'm not sure where they'll put the plaque, given that the road isn't there anymore and I don't think that cake should commemorate catastrophe (flapjacks, maybe), but I'm just glad it wasn't a meat raffle.



On Sunday, we go to Kensington Gardens to look at the Anish Kappoor mirrors:





One of them, viewed from over the Serpentine looks like a wormhole, about to suck in all of SW1 (although David thinks it's a large magnifying glass, ready to set fire to Hyde Park once the sun is at the right angle). People are more interested in looking at themselves, rather than the clouds).

Then over to Marble Arch to take part in the Second Annual Tanya's Birthday Picnic at Speaker's Corner. A bunch of police suddenly arrive enveloping about 20 morbidly obese Essex men in Asda jeans and white trainers. EDL? I wonder. EDF, Dave says. We move 100 yards away so the picnic isn't spoiled by people wanting it to be 1936 (pity that your generation's Moseley is more interested in porn and cars than fascism, eh boys?). The police are filming them (home videos?) and eventually escort them out of the park (well, they have to help their mates).

I film the sky, it's a thousand times more attractive.



We decamp to a warmer pub for mulled wine and get the 73 from outside of Selfridges where a crack team of elves is assembling the Christmas display. It looks like it's based around shoes and fake turf.

***
In other news, I am frustrated that losing blood each month seem to invariably equal filling up with snot. Does one bodily fluid replace the other? It seems rather unfair. Periods are an odd thing, I hate having them, but when I was an early teenager, I was very keen for them, when I was a late teenager, I definitely did not want not to have them, and in ten year's time, I am going to be very upset if I don't have them.

To the V&A with Dave's parents who are visiting for the weekend. We venture into the jewellery section where we get told off for taking a photo - of the shiny stairs - and where I make a virtual ring (you can tell that a future in fashion design does not await me). Interesting that the exhibition is merely the story of jewellery trends through the ages with no mention of blood diamonds or South African gold mines or fair-trade jewellery. I also like the reproductions room - the giant David, the Trajan's column, the over-wrought cherubs and angels - and the tiny Japanese house on stilts and the full frontage of a 17th century house in the architecture section.

We walk up to Sloane square through pretty Brompton mews and spend far too long in Peter Jones. Tourists never get this far; this is the John Lewis for posh people who're slumming it. One woman tries on ten cardigans, for each one she comes out of the changing room and shows it to her two daughters, the assistants and the (im)patient queue, until I want to remove her credit cards.

Later, we go out to eat rather nice food at the Daniel Defoe and then to our local pub for their 60s night. I like the Royal Sovereign, it's just this side of grungy with the pink hair & pink DM booted barstaff, the sweet roll up smell in the back yard, people eating pizzas whilst their sprogs run around, it's the sort of place your local should be; outside the rules of the chain-pub or the jurisdictions of the gastro-pub.



Sunday, we meet Rob and Aline in the Coach and Horses to watch some football match or other, although I abscond to go sit in the sandpit in Clissold Park (a place hitherto feared) with Charlotte, Did, their small restless child, and their Enfieldian friends Stu and Jo that later turns into a walk up and down Church St to look for "overpriced child wellingtons" which remain unsourced (although he did get a toy monkey) and then jugs of Pimms in Ryan's Bar and Dr Bike fixing Robert's bike on the common. Stoke Newington is pleasantly empty; I'd like to say the N16-ers've all gone off to Tuscany or the Dordogne but I know it's more likely to be Aldeburgh/Totnes/Broadstairs nowadays. Holidaying abroad is for the plebs. Once people from Rochdale have done a year in Provence, it's not worth going.

We were gonna do something exciting this weekend like go to a forest (hey, I'm easily excited) but Dave was suffering from cetirizine overdose and me from PMT-related stress or stress-related PMT, or both, which led me to believe I had glandular fever, rather than just a headache and a sore throat so we ended up staying local, wandering down to London Fields to visit the rival-to-my-work Broadway Market (I realised that to rebel at work all I have to do is take in a pot noodle in a Tesco bag) and sit in Lock 7 with coffee and cake. On the way back, we bumped into Allan and Lisa and I proudly showed them the free things I'd acquired from the mini Hackney festival taking place in the park (part of the recouping my council tax scheme) - some Hackney compost (traces of body parts and crack an added bonus), a roll of compostable bags, and some mugs from the give and take stall (anyone who wants a Hale and Pace biography or Soldier, Soldier on VHS is advised to go to the next one).

Sunday, we ventured to Regents Park to go to Camden Green Fair. On the bus, we devised a Green Fair bingo. Healing tent (check), vegeburger stall (check), Dr Bike (nope), Camden council stand with free teatowels (check), hemp clothing stall (check), facepainting (check and check), drum workshop (yep) and a jerk chicken and corn on the cob Caribbean BBQ. Weirdly, there were also very un-eco things like sweet stalls and a burger van and leaflets for strange looking Scientology-lite cults. Some people in gorilla costumes urged us to drink cider to save the apes. I considered drinking lager to save the dolphins or gin to save the tigers. Dave remarked that I looked afraid when the gorilla-people were nearby - I am frightened of out of work actors accosting me (the funniest ones were in the Custom House a few Open House Weekends ago. Their 18th century garb clashed with the 21st century computers).

A woman from the North London Mosque gave me some literature about women in Islam and invited me to the mosque open day. I really need to get me a "I'm an atheist, leave me alone" t-shirt. I also bought some London honey, some raw chocolate ice cream, and two tickets for the tombola which garnered me two (2!) prizes - some Co-op chocolate and a chick-lit book which I donated to the Books For Free stall which looked a bit like a library 10p sale after a give and take day. We passed Finsbury Park which was stuffed full of plaid shirts and angry fringes for the free Rage Against the Machine gig, and now, 6 hours later, with the doors and windows shut, I can hear Killing In The Name Of. I curse all you people who bought it.

Saturday

Trip sunnily down Upper St for the first iced coffee of the season. Hello trees! Hello birds! Hello glorious hot sun! We go around the corner to the Crafts Council which has on an eco-clothing exhibition which is interesting, if a little worthy. I’m tempted to write in the guestbook: “I only buy clothes made with the blood of 3^rd world children”, but fear that they may be able to trace handwriting and anyway, all my current summery clothes are charity shopped or clothes swapped. Afterwards, we head to the Nobody Inn to watch the Liverpool/Chelsea match with Heike (birthday girl), Jo, DanJ, Alan, Heike’s parents and later, Alice and Steve and Tanya. After 6 hours or so, we get bored and move onto Suruchi which I remember as being a nice place to eat, but severe indigestion makes me think otherwise, afterwards.

Sunday

Because it’s St George’s Day, we go and have a full English fry-up (veg version) in the Worker’s Café in Islington. Because this is Upper St, the caff is run by Turks and peopled by non-workers. Well, non-proletariat workers anyway. We meander down to the farmers’ market and then onto the Estorick Gallery, starting to wonder if we’re in a Time Out Sunday in North London article.

The problem with art galleries is that they’re always full of couples with kids in pushchairs being warned to be quiet because this is an art gallery and old people in fleeces standing in front of the pictures. Anyway, we wander around the Morandi exhibition which fortunately also contains artists whom the curator considered influenced by him; Morandi himself favoured beige portraits of bottles, which gets a little yawnsome after a while. Rothko can get away with one theme, a hundred variations, Mr M can’t. I prefer the Futurist exhibition upstairs - big bright canvases of specious political meaning. There’s a photograph of the gang of five about to go off to the First World War. Dave asks if they had rayguns instead of rifles. I notice, delightedl,y that was one of them was called Balla. A mystery solved by a Sunday afternoon art trip. Smashing.

Weekend things. Saturday, we went to the penultimate day of the Dan Flavin pretty lights installation. It was lovely to look at but I doubt that I would have paid full price had we not ~cough~ borrowed a friend’s membership pass. With all those apocryphal tales of cleaners throwing out art from modernist galleries, I did wonder if the handyman might try to attach the exhibits to the ceiling. There was also a talk about the science of fluorescence but I firmly believe that one’s reaction to art is far more important than rational explanation.

Another thing I wondered, tangentially, was if cinemas in poshe suburban areas have theme nights. So the movie-goers would turn up wearing purple for Ladies in Lavender, or in gardening clothes for The Constant Gardener. Then I remembered Calendar Girls and got quite squeamish.

In the evening we went to one of my very favourite places, Jai Krishna in Finsbury Park, where the cheap prices are reflected in the lack of white-starched waiters, décor or even piped music. You have to write down your order and take it to the counter and use the same plates for starters and mains. Needless to say the pumpkin panir or chana chat or avial or dai vada is delicious.

Sunday was Fosca rehearsal near Old St. I’m not sure if our collective hair is asymmetrical enough to practise near Shoreditch. Anyway, we have 3 new songs, one is goth-pop with a funk workout in the middle, another is Sarah-ish although that might be because the title makes me want to sing I Don’t Think It Matters and the third is Orange Juice covering a McCarthy song (my descriptions, not the original intentions, I presume).

The world premiere performance will be Thursday 13^th April at the Windmill in Brixton.

Afterwards Tom gave Dickon and I a lift back to NoSho (North of Shoreditch). They were claiming that Jon Bon Jovi was the Frank Sinatra for the eighties (my words, not the intention).