Until You Evaporate Into the Night

[commonpeople1]

Despite attending a "lame" fetish night at Slimelight on Friday, then not getting any sleep, tina found enough strength yesterday to get on a train from Walthamstow and come meet the actor who plays Kevin and I at Liverpool Street Station. Every Londoner was out and about after a smiley sun rose above the capital. She looked gorgeous as ever, although a little sleepy; we walked over to Brick Lane for the South African B-B-Q I'd promised earlier in the week, as well as a long-overdue catch up.

Afterwards, we grabbed some coffee and had a look at the stalls that sell overpriced crap by clueless Shoreditch designers. There seemed to be a vintage store every ten feet, which brought the shopper out of Tina and Kevin: soon he had a grey bag for his notebooks and pens, and she had a vest and a beautiful dark blue dress.



We visited Nog Gallery so Tina could check out their zines and art books; we ended up discovering a neat exhibition of darkly humourous etchings made by a Hackney artist called John M F Casey. They are quite beautiful - I believe he painted the wooden canvasses white, then black, then etched through them to create imagery of hellish horrors that would suit Tim Burton's living room.



We said our goodbyes to Tina around 4.30pm and went to Spitalfields Market to wait for tom. His girlfriend christa had planned for him a massive treasure hunt across London, and we were his almost-at-the-end-of-the-line stop. I had a pirate badge pinned to my bag which said "Happy Birthday to Me"; as soon as he found us, I removed it and he pinned it on his jacket. His task was to sing any of The Smiths' songs in their entirety, with no mistakes, so he could learn his next destination. He shocked me to the Moon and back by not knowing in full any of their lyrics. He stammered through "This Charming Man", failed at "Bigmouth Strikes Again", and was about to bomb on "Shoplifters of the World Unite" when Kevin told me to give him a break and suggest an easy one. So I suggested "How Soon Is Now?", which he murdered hurried through before making his escape. Remind me to never go karaoking with him.

We headed for Waterloo for a meeting with my old friend Kelly at the BFI Southbank. Juliette Binoche's paintings are being exhibited there as part of their "Binoche Season" and they are worth checking out if you are in the area. Her paintings are pairs that match her career's characters with the directors she has worked with. All of her self-portraits are infused with the personalities and physionomies of the directors that created them.

Kelly showed up with a gift for us, some french cheese, figs and lavender she collected from her house in France. We walked over to Soho's Curzon because the idea of watching a grim Icelandic thriller called Jar City on a beautiful September night seemed like a good idea. It was one of those films which could have easily been made for TV - a sort of Prime Suspect with detectives that eat goat heads for dinner and juggle their personal lives with their depressing work. The film had some wonderful aerial shots of Iceland but its main message seemed to be: DON'T LIVE IN THIS FUCKING MISERABLE ISLAND. Iceland's Ministry of Tourism should look into suing.



Outside the cinema, past 11pm, London suddenly seemed overwhelmed by crowds of horny, drunken louts from the 'burbs. Everyone shouted over everyone else, and cars honked uselessly at a traffic that was going nowhere. A gang of women dressed as FBI agents, the leader wearing bridal headgear, stumbled past us. Even the neon lights seemed brighter than usual, intense enough to burn your retinas. A nightmarish sight rolled into view: a red double-decker bus crammed with people, blasting "YMCA". The bus carried girls wearing glittery tiaras who were having a right hoot rubbing their boobs against the windowpanes for the benefit of the men on the sidewalk, their hands banging in the air as if the Village People were the ultimate rave experience. Some girls on the street felt compelled to join the fun by rushing to the windows and doing their own YMCA moves back at the partygoers inside. It only dawned on me to take a photo of this modern horseman of the apocalypse once it was pulling away - thus the shaky photo above.



Today, we took our iPods and newspapers to Vicky Park, bought some bagels and coffee and lay on the grass in full view of the sun. On the way back, we found this chest of drawers sitting on the sidewalk, not too far from our tower block. There was nothing wrong with it apart from its green snot colour (debatable defect) and food stains (solved quickly with a soapy cloth). It's going to sit in the master bedroom after it failed to look alright in the hallway, the sitting room and the dining room.



This little fellow approached us last week, when we were sitting on the lawn outside the Geffrye Museum enjoying coffee and slices of cakes bought at Broadway Market. dawnkitten made the mistake of giving it some of her carrot cake, instantly creating a friend who thought she was made of cake. I never saw a squirrel this upclose before; he was actually slightly intimidating. It didn't even flinch away from Kevin's paparazzi-style photography. Just look at that mouth. It wants to eat you. Yes, YOU!

Comments

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

It was our pleasure! We must hang out soon. I hope T enjoyed the rest of the evening. xoxo

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Saw your email... sounds great! I'll check with Kevin on which dates he's available for hire and then I'll get back to you. :-)

[moveslikegiallo.livejournal.com]

That is a totally acceptable message to broadcast about Iceland. It IS miserable! ;)

A treasure hunt sounds like the best idea ever.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I kept thinking of you guys and your recent holiday there. I think Iceland has now officially dropped to the bottom of my list of "places to visit".

[dawnkitten.livejournal.com]

I know - I thought he was going to jump on my neck and try and eat me. Just proves squirrels are rats with better PR :) (and a bushy tail, ofcourse).

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I always thought they'd look cute and huggable up close, but oh no!

[dawnkitten.livejournal.com]

Yeah - me too - and those teeth!! *reaches up to protect neck from marauding squirrels*

[naturalbornkaos.livejournal.com]

Man, you sound like you had a GREAT weekend.

Free furniture is awesome. I got my current coffee table the same way (someone left it on the street in Holloway with a "Please take me home" sticker on it, so I did) and it's served me brilliantly for nearly 3 years now.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Yup, it was a lovely weekend! I hope you guys had a good one too, discounting that car trip.

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

We feed squirrels at our window and back door. HWMBO (my bf) buys peanuts by the peck, it seems. They will take them out of our hand or in a jar lid on the windowsill. Sometimes they sit on the windowsill and consume their nuts, or take them away to eat on the back fence, or bury somewhere. We have Daring Squirrel, who has a notch on her left ear, and who will come in the house and beg, and Fierce Squirrel, who chases Daring Squirrel away to get full access to all the nuts, and Shy Squirrel, who hangs out under one of our bushes and whom we have to feed by putting nuts under the bush. There have been others in the last few years but I fear they have succumbed to cars in the road or foxes.

HWMBO takes a little vitamin pillbox to work filled with peanuts and feeds squirrels in Regents Park. He also worried about what will happen to Daring, Fierce, and Shy when we go on our holiday to the Far East next month.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Have you or your boyfriend ever seen red squirrels? There was something in the news recently about their disappearance from England thanks to the grey ones.

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm aware there are no red squirrels in the London area. There are only a few places where they're around now: the Isle of Wight is one.


The difficulty is that red squirrels are smaller than the grey ones (imported from America) and they are susceptible to squirrelpox, which grey squirrels are not particularly affected by. So wherever the grey ones live, the red squirrels die out.

re: please help yourself

[(Anonymous)]

I love it when people do that. Good for the planet, plus you can get some really useful if not lovely furniture with a bit of character unlike anything you can buy in a store. It reminds me that humans do good things now and then - even if it's only leaving unwanted things on the sidewalk for other people to make their own.

Re: please help yourself

[yllyan.livejournal.com]

er oops that was me - didn't realise i wasn't logged in...

Re: please help yourself

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Hehe! :-)

Yeah, I agree: people do good things and we shouldn't underestimate the value of things found on the sidewalk. If I had more DIY skills, I'd strip the paint off this chest of drawers and repaint it, or use some nice wood varnish.

[kinnikinnick.livejournal.com]

Oh, you have a nice style of spending the weekends. And I'm falling in love with your style of writing :).

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you. ;-)

[noondaydemon.livejournal.com]

Truly great to see you guys! So glad you scored that lovely bureau xx

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Sweet bureau, sweet weekend with friends. :-)

[desayuno-ingles.livejournal.com]

I love your weekend wrap-ups!

And I love that chest of drawers. Strip it and get it back to original wood. Easy enough, if messy.

Also, I like the blurry bus photo, it's most interesting than it might have been just clean and bus-like.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I wish I had taken a closer shot of the bus. It was hilarious inside.

It's a shame we have a flat with carpet otherwise I'd be tempted to strip the chest of drawers. Perhaps next summer, when the weather is nice, we can take it outside (yeah, right!)

[desayuno-ingles.livejournal.com]

Haha, I know exactly what you mean with that - I've had projects I swore I'd do and just can't be bothered with. I should throw everything out but for some reason can't bring myself to do so.