Dance & Drink & Screw

Feeling Gloomy played Umbrella-ela-ela last night.[1]

That is all.

[1] OK, so it was the Manic Street Preachers' cover. But it was still pretty cool. I danced all night, with a little help from my friends. And I left an important part of my brain in a field somewhere in Hampshire, alright.

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!

I went to a Roller Disco last night. You could bring your own rollerskates or rent pink & white ones at the premises. They converted a music venue across the street from Hackney Empire into the rink; the DJ sat on the stage, playing funk and 70s music (with a liberal dose of 80s pop), underneath the glittering sign Guilty Pleasures while, through out the night, people skated, drank, danced and had their broken bones tended by "Skate Marshalls".

Kevin, Osmo, Anu and I were one of the first people to arrive. We watched the rollerskaters for a while - some keeping close to the barriers; others in the centre, showing off - before getting our own skates. One of my co-workers, Robin, arrived with two friends. We said hello and he told me he had never rollerskated before. Twenty minutes later, he fell right in front of me, on top of his rollerskates. They carried him into the back room and, later, Kevin saw him escorted out on a wheel chair.

My first song on the rink was "Flashdance... What a Feeling". It didn't take long for me to realize a few things about Roller Discos:

• If you see giggly girls holding hands on the rink, for the love of God stay away from them. These type of skaters collect people, holding hands with friends they encounter along the way until they are the equivalent of a tsunami, taking everything and everyone down with them.
  
• Also stay away from people in funny costumes or suit jackets. They may look cute but they are destined to spend half the night on their asses, staring up at the passing skaters as if they couldn't possibly be funnier. They seem to be on a mission to dislocate their shoulders for a laugh.
  
• 70s disco only makes true and perfect sense on a rollerskating rink.
  
• When falling on your ass (like I did), make sure you don't break the fall with your left arm and nearly snap it in half.
  

I kept hoping for the DJ to play Blondie's "Atomic"; I'd had that song stuck in my head all week ever since we planned at work to go to the Roller Disco. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. My favourite tunes of the night were Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough", Tiffany's "I Think We Are Alone Now ", The Trammps "Disco Inferno" and just about anything else that made me feel like a Studio 54 old timer.