Shouldn't've Said That

I’m starting to worry there might be something about my face which causes others to impart unto me dark secrets they wouldn’t normally share with others. Or maybe not. But a couple of recent events have led me to wonder. And they seem to involve eye-care.

It kind of goes back to my less than 20/20 vision. No-one realised I was short-sighted until I was about fifteen, which went some way to explain my lack of prowess with ball sports: I couldn’t see the bloody ball. I have been shoving contacts in my eyes since I was twenty, but prudently booked a quick check-up with the Camden branch of a well-known national chain of opticians. “You’re eyes are infected,” the optician said, having prodded around for a bit and squirted some colourful dye onto my eyeball’s surface, “well, your eyelids are.” Great, I thought, until I was informed that I couldn’t wear my contacts for five days until eye-drops had sped the infection on to recovery. This would mean wearing my glasses, unless I fancied spending the best part of week ignoring friends, talking to strangers I have mistaken for friends, falling down and getting run over. Which I didn’t. Although perhaps it wouldn't be too different to how I usually spend my weeks.

However, my glasses had rarely seen the light of day. I overwore my contacts and I was proud of it. I did not identify myself as a glasses wearer. Mostly because I only had an old pair of NHS specs whose ends I had chewed and whose lenses were scratched. Shamefully, I wore them to work, on the train, in the street and around the flat. I chose to go to the gym blind however, reasoning that although I had already achieved the pinnacle of embarrassment there, there was no point adding to it.

The resulting epiphany was I decided I had to get new glasses sorted out. Maybe I would need trendy media specs for my trendy media job. What I didn’t realise was that this would involve numerous trips back to the branch for fittings, trials, appointments, inquisitions and general catch-ups. I had the entire branch’s staff giving me feedback on how I looked in the majority of the frames on offer (before embarrassingly informing them I would be back after payday when I would actually be able to afford the blessed things).

But it was during one of the fittings that the overshares with the staff began.

“What do you reckon’s worth more, mate, a tonne of iron or a tonne of steel?”

I wasn’t sure what to answer. Was this some sort of science test? Had GCSEs returned and would I be expected to show my working out? “Erm, I’m not really sure,” I began tentatively, trying to focus on the matter at hand: glasses. “Maybe steel,” I ventured eventually, “cos iron is untreated.” I had no idea what I was talking about.

“And what about nickel?” he asked.

Flummoxed, I speculated further, unsure as to what aspect of my appearance might have suggested that I had any interest in metallurgy or commodities trading. “Why do you ask?” I said.

“Oh we’re just clearing out the basement.”

Logical enough, then. Turns out this is the sort of stuff kept under the shopfloor of your high street optician. You might raise your eyebrows or you might not care. Maybe it was just a bit of filler chat while we fiddled with my new frames. But then said trained optician begins recounting to me how he suspected the value to be about “six grand” and that he used to drive around with a mate’s truck and empty recycling containers of their precious nickel and steel cans and make a fortune selling everything on to scrap merchants. “We stripped Battersea Power Station down to nothing,” he went on, before finally pausing to ask, “You’re not a copper, are ya?” I answered truthfully that I wasn’t, withholding that part of me was contemplating shopping him to Crimestoppers. Not sure why he only asked that AFTER incriminating himself extensively.

The tales of recycling theft days were long and tedious and I was not sure what sort of responses were expected from me. I wasn’t exactly impressed. And to be honest, I wasn’t hugely interested. Awkwardly enough, I managed to tear myself away and pay and then leave, worried I might now risk going daaahn for a stretch for Association with Criminals or some similar bylaw.

But it seemed the overshare mentality was shared by his colleagues. My next visit saw an employee asking me for advice concerning her mother’s career in Asian banking, going so far as to disclose her mother’s salary and work history, as well as alluding to racism rife within the industry. Again, I stole myself away, disinterested and slightly embarrassed.

It’s one thing to make conversation, but there is something of an art in keeping things appropriate for both parties. Obviously, I’m a fine one to talk, divulging away about myself on this very page, but out and about, surely some finesse is required to prevent embarrassment, awkwardness and wanton self-incrimination...?

Meathead, Part II

So while it might seem fine to suffer life-threatening accidents in one’s own time, dealing with their consequences at work leaves a little something to be desired. The impact of the bench-press bar being dropped on my head left me with quite a shiner the following day. I had an imprint on my cheek below my eye, as if I had smeared on some purplish war paint before playing American football. This was going to be hard to explain to co-workers come Tuesday morning.

I managed to saunter in without too much bother, but was soon cornered in the kitchen by some inquisitors.

“Taken a knock to the head?” someone asked.

My formulated excuse was simple. I had slipped on some wet tiles in my kitchen, thanks to the slovenly lifestyle choices of my ‘stupid’ flatmates. I hadn’t just fallen over, but had spun into the air as if in some awful Hollywood comedy aimed at under-tweens and frat boys, using only my face to grab onto a kitchen work surface to decelerate my descent. Thusly, I had twatted myself.

But why the excuse in the first place? Vanity, I suppose. And also a dying hope to save some face, as it were. People at my work already thought I was stupid, so why give them further evidence of my stupidity in my private life? It would only add to my reputation as an idiot that I was such a weakling that I collapsed under weights in the gym. Slipping in water could befall anyone, no matter how muscly, and seemed the perfect cover-up.

I did however miss an opportunity to make the entire fiasco fully acceptable. Somebody put two and two together and asked the following question, “Were you drunk?” Although it was a Monday night, had I confessed inebriation, I would have enjoyed a little of legend status among the self-proclaimed office banter-mongers, hopping from desk to desk saying, “Ha, golly, Rob is such a legend – apparently he was wasted and smacked himself in the face with a kitchen worktop.” Not needing this validation, I replied, with a vague sense of honesty, that I was not drunk.

I have missed this chance previously when telling another colleague about the state of my IKEA bed. Namely, that all the slats seem to be falling through the frame at will, leading to my suspicion that the bed has been broken. “ Were you shagging on it?” was apparently the obvious question, and to me, the obvious answer was, “Er, no.” There was a girl in the bed but no conjugal thrusting shattered those slats. Had this been the case, I would have again achieved a big of ‘ledge’ status among the bored and the artless. Never mind.

But back to my sore head. Throughout the next day I failed to be productive at all. This was, of course, no different to my usual professional performance, but only on this day I felt sick AND I had a headache. I later realised this might have been concussion. Having felt like a fool all day, I resolved that I was owed a day off and followed up with a sickie the morning after. Surely massive head injury had earned me a lie-in and some prolonged channel-surfing.

I’m not sure work were bothered by my absence. They were also slightly indifferent the best part of a month and a bit later when I handed in my notice. “It’s not for you, is it?” my line manager asked sweetly. Erm, not really. They were at pains to point out I did not need to see out my notice period, but I was clear that I needed to stay for at least one more payday.

I thought I might finally reveal the truth about my head injury once my departure was imminent. That I might confess that the purplish line that gradually turned deep brown before migrating up my face and circling my eye, leading to my resembling a boozer pugilist, was in fact down to my utter failure as a gym-user, rather than attributable to any comedy mishap brought about by my flatmates’ antipathy towards a tidy kitchen. But I didn’t.

Meathead, Part I

There’s something truly awful about going to the gym: the other people. I think it must be equally as bad for both sexes. Girls have to deal with skinny minnies parading around in tight leggings and needlessly flattening needlessly flat stomachs, while working up an unwomanly sweat in many a jiggling contraption. For the boys, it’s not much better. Chaps generally tend to go to the gym in order to get muscles. But then each gym is filled with characters so huge that intimidation is difficult to avoid. We skinny folk cower in the corner, while the fat lads get lost somewhere in between, neither group getting anywhere while the perennially muscular buffen up further still.

Nevertheless, I still occasionally get in from work, eat something disgusting and cheap, pull on a tracksuit and head out to the local gym round the corner from the flat. I’ll never be one of those monsters but it’s nice to blast away the cobwebs and manufacture some endorphins to see one through the rest of the week.

One of the things I hate the most is the bench press. This is where you lie down on your back on a bench and repeated lift a loaded bar above your chest. It’s difficult, everyone looks to see how much you are lifting and, in my particular gym, it is situated right in the middle of the floor. So while I quite like to slip in and work out inconspicuously, plucking up the mood to get on this device requires striding over to it as if declaring “Come and see how much I can lift!”

How much I can lift is, of course, not very much. It doesn’t help matters that my inherent dislike of intensive physical labour makes it difficult for me to bother to push myself enough to make any real progress. And before this descends into the vacuous bile that is weight-training discussion, I hasten to add that this is heading somewhere typically ridiculous.

It was a Monday, not long ago, and I was in the midst of being very disciplined about going to the gym. I approached the dreaded bench press with dignity and pride and proceeded to load up and get repping. I was determined to push myself and did more sets than normal. In addition, I was aware of one of the regulars ‘observing’ me via one of the mirrors. This was mildly offputting: people should be focussing on themselves as far as I’m concerned. Nevertheless, I pressed on, quite literally.

At the end of each set, the bar needs to be placed back on its rack. There are hooks to rest it on and the bar has to be lifted over and on to these. Whatever happens, you need to make sure you have enough strength left in you to do this because, if you can’t, there is nowhere else for the bar to go...

Holding the bar in its highest position at the end of the set, I decided I could squeeze out one more repetition, just to push myself that bit further. As I brought the bar down, I realised this was a terrible idea, akin to crossing the road without looking or opting to take a first job in the headhunting industry. Panic set in somewhere in my mind and my arms rushed to bring the bar back up before everything gave way and collapsed onto me. I managed to get the bar back up, feeling the muscles in my arms scream in protest.

But there was an unusual clunk as I realised I had pushed the bar up into the underside of the hooks instead of bringing it to rest on top of them. The last ounce of strength had accelerated the bar up into this underside with such force that it practically bounced off the hooks and began its descent towards me. My arms were again called to come to the rescue but they gave out almost immediately. They strained in vain, making little to no difference as I realised that a considerable number of kilograms of metal were hurtling towards my face. By considerable, I simply mean that it is more than anyone would want to catch with their head, not that I was shifting huge amounts.

I thought to roll the bar down my chest but as I went to move the bar, I realised it was heading for my neck and would only garotte me. Time slowed down, or at least my thoughts accelerated. Was I going to die? What would my skull look like crushed? Would it be embarrassing? I felt my eyes bulging in surprise as the one catastrophe I had always been determined to avoid was all set to befall me. From the depths, it occurred to me to turn my face. If I were to survive, I did not want a wonky nose.

This meant I was able to glimpse the unfolding of this cruel disaster in one of the gym’s distant mirrors. They come in handy for vain people wanting to admire their own gurning faces as they pump iron so there was no reason why they couldn’t serve to allow me to witness my own embarrassing death.

As the bar struck my cheek, I felt my legs sort of jolt up. I heard a slight crunch and detected a small seismic shift in the plates of bone forming my skull. The bar and its weights bounced up again as the atmosphere in the gym turned to one of emergency. I felt people’s attention drawn immediately. My arms worked to catch the weight and prevent it landing for a second time on my face. All the while I was staggered that my head had not exploded on impact like a smashed egg.

But the weight had been caught by something else. I became aware of the character who had been paying a bit too much attention previously. He had dashed over from his bench and grabbed onto one end of the bar, holding its weight off of me. Meanwhile, another regular, a ratty man with a pony tail and short shorts, had taken up the other side. Together they hoisted it off me.

I sat up, a bit dazed. Everyone was looking and I detected chuckles. It was indeed funny. Mostly because I wasn’t decapitated. Had I been, maybe the chortles would have been altogether less hardy.

I immediately thanked my two rescuers as sincerely as I could, trying to laugh things off in the process, which was challenging given the pounding sensation in the side of my face. “If you want someone to spot you,” one said, “you should just ask.”

“I’m think I’m done with that for now,” I explained.

They went off and I stood there, dazed, drinking in the mortification as people lost interest. Was I concussed? Was I in shock? I felt like there was a lot of adrenaline coursing through me. It was like falling off a horse: I wanted to flee the scene but I knew I had to get back on. It probably wasn’t the smartest idea as I really had no idea what was what or potentially who I was.

Later on that evening, I decided to go up to one of the rescuers who was still around and thank him again. Sort of addressing the embarrassment head on so it wouldn’t become an issue. Or something. I played the angle that I was sorry for taking such a risk in the first place.

He looked down at me. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I did the same thing when I was eighteen.”

I failed to mention that I was actually twenty-three.

Ignorance

The role of parents becomes increasingly harder to define the greater the number of years one has spent out of the family nest. A lot of my friends are simply bankrolled by their mothers and fathers while others use their homes as cheap accommodation and still enjoy bed and board at a bargain price.

Mine have been pretty hands off for a long time, occasionally helping out here and there but more or less happy to watch me make and resolve my own mistakes or to lend a hand when I crash and burn. The extent of our contact is a once-weekly phone call made by my mother during which we both fill each other in on the minutiae of our respective weeks. She knows I don’t want her judgment (disapproval) on what I have got up to, or I will simply withhold information, and I know how to sound interested when listening to stories about the neighbours’ new double-glazing.

A recent call did however leave me wondering what benefit these calls were having. Somehow, after exchanging tales of my friends’ more impressive careers and my sister’s more exciting social life, we got on to going through my monthly budget. Going through my monthly budget is like walking through a disaster zone minutes after a stampeding tornado has ravaged everything in sight and rendered all life meaningless. As soon as my money comes in, it flies off in countless directions. I am typically buoyed by the influx and allow myself a few frivolities, which generally result in the feast turning to famine with three weeks to go before the next pay date. It’s called being an idiot and it is a field in which I excel.

We went over my outgoings: gym membership, phone contract, internet, council tax and rent, among a wealth (or poverty?) of other things.

“Yes, your rent does sound quite expensive,” she revealed. I informed her that rent is generally quite expensive. “But I think you may be living in an area out of your price range,” she went on. Nice. A cuss on my socio-economic status.

“I’ve been living here for nine months,” I pointed out, “It’s too late to tell me that.” I don’t mean to paint her to sound like some awful woman – she is, in fact, lovely. Just a bit misguided with advice occasionally. We agreed in the end that I was probably better off living in a nice bit than getting mugged on a nightly basis in some hellmouth with no conveniently located tube station.

“Well, I’ll have to go now dear,” she said. “Are you sure you’re alright though, you sound quite sad now.”

“Maybe because we’ve just worked out that I’ll be strapped for cash for a long time yet,” I mentioned. “I was fine until you phoned...”

A career change was going to mean two things: no longer secretly hoping to fall under a tube train so as to avoid having to go into the office of a morning, and taking a massive pay cut if I was to do something remotely of interest to me. My foray into finance, albeit via headhunting, had shown me that I need to fill my day with dealing with firms that at least feel remotely relevant to my life. Had I had the luxury of not owing my college a shedload of cash, I would have gone straight into poverty-wage media. Now those debts were paid off and my tail was firmly between my legs from trying to do something I didn’t like, there was nothing to stop me being one of those trendy young things who get to wear jeans to work.

To my surprise, my career search saw a lot more takers than my previous attempts immediately following my degree. Getting through stage after stage by filling out application forms with an ironic tone or being rude in interviews seemed to lead only to success. But with this process ongoing, my attentions turned to ways to accommodate my new trendy media wage: a pittance in comparison to the heady days of, er, headhunting but I was determined to bite the bullet and tighten the purse strings if it killed me.

Luckily, the flatmates were surprisingly amenable to my suggestion that we could all save some money by renting out our fifth, spare room. As in, a fifth room which happened to be spare. Not the fifth of our numerous spare rooms. And so began Flatmate-Search 2008.

I decided to take the lead, having the least to do in my current job and also perhaps the most exacting standards as to what sort of people I would subject to my charming personality on weekday mornings (don’t speak to me and I won’t be horrible to you).

Carefully worded ads were placed, a photoshoot of the tiny, tiny room undertaken, preceded by clearing all the junk away that had piled up in there. We disposed of the former occupants’ post, found a new home for the vacuum cleaner and threw the rest over the edge of the balcony to the baying crowds below. We decided to specify that we were after a girl in order to prevent the flat from becoming too much more of a dirty pigsty than it already was.

Before long, I was sorting through emails, discriminating on misused apostrophes, embarrassing email addresses and assumptions of success in the process. We had a surprisingly high level of interest from French, Spanish and Italian girls, but did have to disappoint those who really couldn’t spell any English without errors. In retrospect, this sounds like abhorrent snobbery. Of course, everyone was given a fair chance and we met a number of these European ladies. I have been the linguistically incompetent foreigner in climes abroad myself and know how difficult it is not to come across as a stuttering simpleton even in a short email. But there has to be a line somewhere.

Within a week, we were gathered excitedly in the sitting room for the first round of prospective visitors. One French girl told us about her current living arrangements where her flatmate-cum-landlord would wait for her outside the shower to catch a glimpse of her in her towel. Another Italian girl asked if she could smoke in the room.

“No,” I said.

“Can I smoke out the window?”

“No.”

“Can I smoke outside?”

“No,” I said for a final time before showing her out rather swiftly. Obviously smokers deserve the same treatment as normal people, but I’m not sure which part of “We’re looking for a non-smoker” she didn’t understand. Probably the whole thing. When I wasn’t busy being the smoking-police, I was fielding idiotic questions. All too often we heard the same stream of useless blabber: “The room’s a bit smaller than I thought.”

“It’s exactly the same size as the dimensions we specified in the ad.”

“It’s a bit more expensive than I thought.”

“The price is, funnily enough, the same as it was on the ad.”

And other outpourings of speaking before thinking too numerous to bother typing out here. The power relationship in these informal chats is also difficult to define. The prospective flatmate needs to find out if he or she can bear to live with people such as us, and I’m sure a lot of people couldn’t. But maybe they should keep some things to themselves, such as not telling us that they are having to move because they argue too much with their current flatmates about washing up or because their landlord is kicking them out.

Nevertheless, a ray of light was found and everyone was happy. That was, until it was time to get the letting agents involved. Through this experience, I have perfected the skill of finally getting hold of people who systematically ignore their voicemail. I now only need to improve my performance in weaselling out of them what possible reason they could have to ignore me so shamelessly. Perhaps, just as the poor European girls we rejected would like to know on what basis we did so...

Ain't Gonna Go To Work No More

You have to be at work all day so you might as well do something that doesn’t make you want to contract explosive food poisoning just so you can achieve a day of escape. As my mum depressingly says all too frequently, “You spend a large part of your life at work.” I first realised I hated my job several weeks after I started, but I didn’t realise I had realised I hated it until several months later. I found it hard to understand why I was in such a bad mood every morning, why I spent Sunday evenings filled with dread and why, on finally arriving home at the end of the day, I didn’t really recognise who I was. That last comment sounds a bit odd, but I was so bewildered by my first months in the office environment that my personality died away as the day wore on. By half past five, I would have completely lost my sense of humour and all ability to recognise jokes, as well as struggling to string together any halfway decent sentence that might pose any interest to any of my long-suffering flatmates.

Just after Christmas, I had given up mentally. Each day was to be survived, with hometime the only thing to aim towards. I completed my duties as required, but hardly clamoured for the extra work that others lusted after in order to gain good standing among the office’s important people.

“I think I hate everything about my job,” I told my mum on the phone.

“Yes, I thought it wasn’t right for you when you took it,” she said sagely. Right, great, so the whole time she waited for me to realise my mistake, simply so she could wade in with some quality ‘I-told-you-so’ statements and thereby prove that even though I had moved out of the family crotch, I was still a lost child.

I knew I never really wanted to do headhunting, but I thought it would be a good wage and a good start. To compound the mistake, I chose financial headhunting, just to ensure that what might simply have been boring was also strangely incomprehensible. Whenever anyone tried to explain financial aspects to me, I would switch off uncontrollably, becoming distracted by their socks or their fingernails, wondering what they had for breakfast or thinking about what I had had for breakfast. Other times, a bizarre mist would spread in my mind, paralysing all processes of memory formation and forcing me to fall back on my god-given ability to blag.

I could go on and on about the things I didn’t like but there’s no point being depressing. I vowed that I would enjoy the wage just until I had paid off the money I owed my college, then I was out of there, possibly smearing my dirty business on the walls as I waltzed out.

But having already decided to leave, it became even harder to at least look like I was performing. My behaviour deteriorated, I read online papers and Wikipedia in small, discreet windows on the screen, emailed friends at the same rate as normal spoken conversation, stared into space, learnt the Tube map off by heart, wrote to-do lists, doodled in pads, sat in the toilets playing games on my mobile and offering to make cups of tea every five minutes.

A partner I was working for pulled me into a room. “I’m just wondering where your head’s at, Rob.” Aargh someone was on to me. My head had just been reading the Wikipedia entry on the tiny Polynesian state of Tuvalu and now I was going to have to bring the blag like never before.

“What do you mean?” I asked, all innocence and incensed expressions. The kick up the arse kept me going a little longer and saw a bit more effort made begrudgingly. Then the grad scheme began to fall apart around us. The crumbs of the credit crunch had tumbled down to our level, business was slowing, partners were greying and I still wasn’t interested. My role in the firm became more freelance instead of being attached to a team, which meant I more or less reported to no-one. I worked on a project for six weeks and did nothing the entire time. I also completely got away with it as people just weren’t expecting such brazen dickheadedness from anyone.

Meanwhile, I was out most lunchtimes meeting recruiters, all the while making my own applications to any job where I might be able to wear skinny jeans and trainers and not have to shave. In other words: media. The recruiters proved useless, either harassing me about wholly unsuitable jobs, making me sit maths tests the moment I came into their offices or doing nothing at all besides displaying inferiority complexes that my field of recruitment was more prestigious than theirs. Recruitment’s recruitment and it just wasn’t for me.

Bagging an offer was an amazing feeling, as was dashing out of a company meeting to take the call informing me. I returned to that meeting unbearably smug and proceeded to neck as much free wine as possible in private celebration while everyone else squinted at tiny profit figures on the plasma screens. Pressed for a start date, I geared up to hand in my notice, coming in as the second grad to jump ship.

“I’d also like to resign,” I informed our lovely line manager.

I had barely finished the sentence when she broke into a relieved smile and asked, “It’s not for you, is it?” Fair enough I suppose...

Fowl-Spotting

A boring day at work is not well followed by a commute during which people repeatedly try to kill you. Nevertheless, I have got used to taxi drivers attempting to knock me off my bike and even chortle inwardly when I realise that their wing mirror really did just speed past my handlebar at a distance of mere inches. But where cycling really falls down concerns British summertime: pissing rain. Cycling in drizzle is not so bad, but when each torrent that lashes down in your face, smacking your skin like the crack of a whip while your freezing wet feet frantically rotate as fast as they can to escape the ongoing nightmare, the prospect of meeting death under the wheels of a Hackney carriage becomes a tempting alternative. Such was last night’s journey home: an idiot in a helmet and sunglasses (to keep the water out my eyes, not just for being a poser) moistening at speed under cats, dogs and buckets of rain while waiting glibly for the lights to change. It’s not London’s fault it rains, and I’ve been soaked in a number of the world’s major and mediocre cities, but at that moment, I hated the place.

So when lunchtime today found itself bathed in modest sunshine, I took the chance to spend some quality time with London: I went for a walk in St James’s Park. Having already spent my allocated hour making and eating food, as well as conspicuously trawling the internet while getting tuna all over the keyboard, I decided to throw caution at my work’s face and head out for another hour.

Not long after I was standing on the bridge over the lake, watching tiny ducklings bobbing for food. I had become a simpering OAP and was carrying on as such in public. Although, in that park, it’s not really the public, but tourists and out-of-towners, and they don’t count. A family were orchestrating photos in Gujurati while Spanish students debated how on earth the ducklings managed to get out the water, given the lake’s kerbed edge. The edges of my work shirt probably figured in their holiday snaps, remnants of some weird bloke loitering in the way. Oh well, they would be back on planes bound elsewhere before long and our crossed paths would be untangled – a slightly melancholy reflection, given I was quite literally just gawping at a duck.

I walked one lap round the lake. And I mean I actually walked, at leisure, not the usual hasty hurrying and scurrying that normally characterises my day-to-day pedestrianism in London. I wasn’t even plugged in to music as my earphones have demised. But this isn’t about to turn into some description of an epiphanical moment when I realised that the pace of modern life was holding me down or that, yes, after all these years, I really did want to be a nun. Nothing of note happened.

However, I did notice a chap of similar age strolling anti-clockwise to my clockwise. As we passed a second time on the other side, I checked myself as I began to think him odd for his aimless walking, because I was doing the same thing. I had probably looked at him derisively for his NHS specs and ill-fitting shirt, but then I realised I was wearing NHS specs and had an ill-fitting shirt. So I stopped feeling superior, if only for a second. Here was a kindred soul. Perhaps a refugee from a different office hell.

I vowed to bother putting my contact lenses in more often and to cease this wasting away so as to fit my shirt better. I’m not being kindred souls with a speccy git in a school shirt.

When Your Life's In A Mess

Blah blah blah London. It’s easy to see why the regionals get angered with so much of our media being focused on that bit what you see on the opening credits of Eastenders (and then the West as well). But one of the things about living here is that you occasionally have to leave to go to another part of the country. A friend’s 21st drew a couple of us out of our safe Oyster card zones, bus-bound for Liverpool. With the train lines currently being upgraded for leaf-on-track-resistance, we saved ourselves some quids by plumping for five and half hours of National Express hospitality and luckily, being the most annoying people on the bus ourselves, had a very pleasant journey.

We were also treated to a night out in the city. I saw girls flash their boobs in bars for cameras and leggy blondes wearing catsuits. Maybe this goes on in London, I’ve no idea, but if it doesn’t, it should. We staggered around between bars for the required number of hours, finally leaving a club and emerging into a scene straight from ‘When Binge-Drinking Britain Goes Wrong’. One friend insisted he would only walk to the taxi with his trousers round his ankles while local residents were more interested in our group’s lone ethnic minority, who had both ‘Estelle!’ and, more worryingly, ‘Tina Turner!’ caterwauled at her from a variety of boozed-up gentlemen. We joked that maybe they would shout out the name of any black person: ‘Trevor McDonald!’ or ‘50cent!’ These sorts of interjections would earn a punch and a stab back in London, but the Liverpudlians were all so friendly that we simply put this down to innocent enthusiasm rather than torch-wielding provincialism.

Where things really got silly concerns our journey home. Not only did we have the privilege of a stop off at Stoke-On-Trent, but we soon wound up stranded in Birmingham following motorway closures and missing drivers. There is little more tedious than middle-aged men swapping motorway horror stories and playing one-upmanship with knowledge of alternative A-roads, so I will keep things brief. But suffice to say, Birmingham bus station was awash with both lashing rain and lost busloads of passengers. We sat twitching nervously on the bus, eager for an explanation, until it transpired that taxis, yes, taxis were being laid on to see us the rest of the way to Birmingham.

We were soon squeezed into vehicle akin to a Scouts minibus with some fellow beleaguered passengers, chuckling along in a Britons-in-the-Blitz spirit as an argument erupted audibly in the next taxi between two equally snooty young ladies. We wanted to stay and watch but were soon on our way… into stationary traffic on the motorway. There we sat and sat while iPod batteries ran out and wills to live expired. It rained, it got dark, we got hungry, tired and bladders swelled for the lavatory. You can’t really fit a commode in an eleven-seater without demanding people do away with certain social mores, such as weeing in private, and so the misery was compounded.

Hours later, we were crawling on the Kilburn High Road into London, not having eaten since breakfast. Fair enough, we were not experiencing famine, but we were being exposed to every international cuisine of delicious food imaginable while trapped in the cramped confines of our taxi: there was Abyssinian, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Bangladeshi, Italian and every type of fried chicken. It was a hellish punishment out of an Alanis Morrissette song or a Greek myth and by the time we had directed our Birmingham-dwelling, non-English-speaking driver to Victoria station, it was past eleven. We had left at three. When you only get two days for a weekend, you can’t help stacking up a bit of resentment at spending a meaty chunk of it in motorway inertia.

Nevertheless, the adventure had its moments, including watching a girl drop her laptop off her seat and seeing the shocked faces of fellow passengers caught mid-fag break as the driver moved the coach along and they thought we were driving off without them.

The trip also allowed some savouring of that self-righteous feeling of going back in time when leaving the South East: “Oh look, a Wimpy Burger,” and “Why does the MerseyRail smell of peanuts?” Coming back to London had essence of homecoming about it, of slotting back into the rut I have scratched out for myself and I sat pensively contemplating this as the Tube bumbled along up the Northern Line: here was home.

There To Meet

I used to think the garden at my parents’ house in Surrey was small, mostly because the surrounding gardens were all so large, that our little patch of lawn seemed to be ringed only by things you would keep at the far end of sizeable property chunk, smugly out of view of the actual dwelling. Compost heaps whiffed, horse flies flew forth from trash piles and bonfires billowed noxious smoke from burning branches across our drying sheets. Nevertheless, it now lives on in my mind as a patch of heaven.

Living in a flat means no garden. Not even a balcony, unless you count the rusting shell of a fire escape which juts from the kitchen door, still harbouring, after ten months, the rotting junk we cleared out the flat’s every nook and orifice on moving in. I suppose I could fashion a chair out of the recycling box, crack open a tinny and stare out yonder over the scene: a scratty row of garages, a ventilation shaft from the Northern Line, a number of patronisingly primary-coloured council blocks and there, behind the tree, a Camden streetsweeper simultaneously weeing and drinking a Fosters.

Luckily, being a stone’s throw from Hampstead Heath means I have thus far avoided such a vista. But even this happy proximity can be cause for complaint. Whereas at my parents’ I can roll down the stairs in my boxers and be on the grass and in the sunshine within moments and whereas, at college, each quadrangle had a lawn meaning you were never far from a green space, getting to the Heath needs to be an orchestrated experience. Alternatively, I can sit and pose in the shade on the pavement at any one of the cafés downstairs, sipping a bargain £18 coffee for the privilege.

What I’m jabbing at is that with a garden, taking the sun is a split second wish which can be fulfilled a split second later. Without one, getting to the Heath or nearest green space often involves a level of kerfuffle akin to making a purchase in Primark on a Saturday afternoon. Nevertheless, many’s the time we have found ourselves making the most of all the Heath has to offer. Apart from the cruising.

One weekend, after many phone calls and organisational emails, a crowd of us met for a picnic. The sun was coyly toying with its first summery weekend of the year and we picked a spot near the Hampstead Ponds from which we could marvel at the constant stream of visitors in estival clothes and ladened with hampers and wine bottles marching along the paths like an invading army. Within view and earshot were a large group of large Beryl Cook-esque Hispanic ladies, guffawing in Spanish and drinking beers.

We played Frisbee. Harmless enough, until I managed to gouge out half my wrist skin on a sharp edge. My friend’s daughter was incredulous that someone could draw so much blood with a Frisbee, in spite of my explanation and reconstruction of the rapidly spinning disc tearing up my flesh like a combine harvester in a field as it spun past my open hand and up my arm. Left with wounds suspiciously resemblent of self-harm, my only solace came from watching some girls with muffin tops having their dispoable barbecue put out my a Heath ranger, their offers of a free Tesco-value chipolata falling on deaf ears as they were ordered to extinguish. This in fact did remind me of college, where the porters would rock up and confiscate any item with which someone might be observed to have fun within the hallowed gardens: frisbees, balls, Pimm’s. The worst part was that we were dobbed in by the gardeners so frequently. On the Heath, the rangers tear around in tiny trucks and so are able to cover more infractions per minute than on foot.

Next on the agenda was a dip in the Mixed Bathing Pool. I looked at my open wound and hoped any nearby rats were decent enough to get out of the water to go to the toilet. Apparently you should pay to swim in the pool, but everyone just walks past the ticket machine, ignoring it as if some elderly relative. The enclosure was crowded with laddish blokes and foreign students. We ditched our shoes and clambered onto the pebble-dash jetty where the lifeguards stand. A dipped toe confirmed the water temperature as ‘inhumane’. My flatmate stood on the steps up to his knees and then got back out. I took his place and slid in at once, eager to get the process over with, gasping with eyes a-bulge as the icy brown water rose up my body, each inch a ballshock worse than the one preceding. I floated there treading water before bobbing off as one by one my internal organs shut down. My flatmate had reassumed his position on the steps, edging slowly into the water, only for some ‘lad’ in the pursuit of ‘banter’ to begin splashing him with vigour from the side and showering him in oafish handswipes of chilly chilly liquid. It was a situation in which screaming like a girl was the only option and flatmate gamely followed protocol.

The ‘lad’ lost interest and my flatmate dived in, the pain barrier having been broken. We later remarked that said ‘lad’ never managed to man up enough to get in the water and felt suitably self-righteous as a result. Another friend joined us and we sploshed around among the ducks, the swans and the floating detritus: fowl down, tree seeds and the odd lifebelt, to which I clung intermittently to stave off asthma attacks. I was obvioulsly no longer the swimmer I had once been and was utterly exhausted, hopping out after less than ten minutes with shrunken everything and chattering gnashers.

As an out-of-towner, it has been eye-opening to see the Heath as it really is: a place for everyone. Ugh this is getting a bit sentimental, but I have a point. Normally, to the outside, tabloid-reading world, the words ‘Hampstead’ and ‘Heath’ conjure up ideas of rummaging in bushes and lost MPs. In my experience, it’s all family outings, couple holding hands, dogs gallivanting and lycra-clad joggers running.

We’ve taken to dashing up there with the Aerobie of a weekend. Fewer sharp edges on which I can take my own life. I did however once throw it so hard it sailed off and eventually came into land in an unsuspecting pram. Suspecting infanticide, I cringed from afar, only to realise with joy that the baby was having its bottom wiped on a nearby changing mat. Another time, we were in a clearing of lawn, flanked by other groups of bare-chested young men throwing around Aerobies and kicking footballs, smugly aware we had the biggest Aerobie I hasten to add. A male tourist was walking past, chaperoned by some sort of local. Taking in the scene of me and my friends, he enquired of his guide, “Oh, is this the gay area of the Heath?”

I chuckled inwardly. Some people should stop reading tabloids.

TV Debut

There are not many advantages to working for a beginner’s wage in a very posh area. Every morning when I am emitted from the hot bowels of Green Park tube, I become acutely aware of my relative poverty and subsequent shabby appearance. In cooler weather, the expensive suits on display made a mockery of my off-the-sales-rack M&S number, while during the deep-freeze of winter, successful business men displayed their wealth in impressive coat format, while I shivered under some tiny corduroy mistake I got off eBay five years ago for three pounds. My shoes were also no solace, a scuffed pair of imitation leather shufflers that I’ve had since the days I used to push trolleys round the car park in Waitrose Cobham, the equivalent of free school dinners to everyone else’s double burger with extra chips: four hundred pound brogues.

Making matters worse is my walk past both The Ritz and The Wolseley. I may as well have propped myself up on a crutch and held out a tin cup for coppers, though my bad shaving and terrible hair, both my own fault, no doubt exacerbated by prolo appearance.

But for all the raging snobbery, it’s nice to be in a posh bit: fewer tramps, swankier cars and gentlemen’s clubs with polished brass exteriors. Some days, while traipsing home, I could smell the cigar smoke in the air. So too could the Ethiopians who had been polishing the brass since dawn. I may not have wealth, but at least I have youth. While scraping their fortunes, these finance types have grown fat and haggard, which no amount of bespoke tailoring can vanquish. I can skip by, an impudent imp with no money, but also no cash-getting wrinkles. I tell myself they look at me jealously, but they are probably frowning at how the soles of my shoes are peeling away.

Come summer, and I am in a better position. In the sunshine, the less you can wear, the better. The real earners swelter behind expensive neckties and crystal cufflinks. I roll up my polyester trousers, cast off my elastene socks and give serious though to slipping out of my ten-pound work shirt and searing my pasty parts under the midday sun while lounging on the grass in beautiful St James’s Square.

Every bright lunchtime, this haven of fauna amid Georgian townhouses and angry taxis fills with office workers clutching bags of nosh from Eat, Pret and Itsu, mingling on the lawns with tattooed builders working in the area. Us grads have taken to ambling down there, albeit with cheaper food brought from home in trusty tuppaware, and rubbing sweaty shoulders with the West End’s rising stars in hedge funds and executive search. I may lack the required signet ring to fit in with the crowd, but my twelve quid white rimmed aviator sunglasses from River Island at least mean no-one can see the shame in my eyes. And it was indeed this yoof-fashion eyewear that prompted the latest surprising development to fall into my lap.

“There’s a massive sculpture in the square,” one of our jollier colleagues had informed us, “Fancy coming along for a gander?” I had to admit to not being interested in any highbrow art during my allocated lunch hour, but said I would more than likely be there anyway, doing my best to sustain heatstroke among tempura rolls and Greek salads. Turned out a Jeff Koons behemoth was residing on the grass prior to auction at nearby Christies. I had never heard of him and immediately accused my colleague of being a racist pig.

“What’s that big pink thing?” a fellow grad asked me later, we being the only two to escape to the square that lunch time. I smugly reeled off artist and information as if a general expert, much to their indifference. We were more excited to spot a TV crew, a boy with camera and a girl with boom, going from group to group, apparently gathering comment on the statue. Behind my aviators, I seethed fierce jealousy that we had not yet been approached, pretending to listen to my friend talking. Why were they asking the couple with a baby? They had a baby in the way and were clearly idiots! Why were they asking Woman With Book? She shook her head nervously because she knew it was our bloody turn.

Only after losing interest did they bound up, as if making the most of a veritable scrape of the barrel. “Hi, we’re from Richard & Judy and we’re asking what people think of the statue today.” They made Richard & Judy sound either like some sort of evangelical church that sends out missionaries among bored office cattle or like a far away place where people with inane questions come from.

“You’ve asked me before,” chirped my friend, confessing this was not her first time to be voxpopped for the show.

The boy and the girl were two of the nicest people I have ever encountered and clearly well trained in the art handling fame-hungry cretins such as ourselves. We had to stand with the pink sculpture in the background and describe our thoughts on it, all without turning to look at it. It’s funny how when you’re told not to do something that a compulsion to do so overpowers your every rational thought. Nevertheless, they assured us we were doing well and would make it onto the show that evening. I remember calling the sculpture “pink and shiny” and my colleague likened it to “intestines or haemorrhoids”. We thought we were hilarious and the nice boy and girl were happy to let us think they agreed.

Next we had to guess its value before opening up a pre-prepared golden envelope for the camera which revealed the true price of the artwork: a Tesco-value twelve million pounds. We did our best impressions of salt-of-the-earth outraged British consumers and I made embarrassing dad jokes before signing release forms and saying goodbye to the lovely crew while wishing they were our new best and only friends.

My friend immediately rang her mother to get our broadcast Sky plussed as we dashed back to the office to gloat and receive ribbings from jealous podfellows. Our genius aired just after five fifteen. I was still chained to my desk waiting to go home, but I received a text from an old friend not seen for years, asking what the devil I was doing working on the telly. As if.

I dashed home on the bicycle in time to catch my small screen adventure on Channel 4 +1, stopping only to notice that J from Five was basking in the sunshine on a bench immediately in front of my flat. While reheating beans, I willed Richard to stop gabbling over Judy until they finally showed the montage of clips in which I featured. I can’t have been on the screen for more than four seconds; my nose was a funny shape, my skin pale, my shirt creased and my voice strange. I bloody loved it. And then that was that. Back to banality. Nevertheless, it was enough to add a frisson of glamour to my tedious days. Imagine if I’d been on something higher end than Richard & Judy, maybe had a ten minute slot on Pebble Mill or something.

A flatmate soon arrived home and I fired my news at them: “Come and look out the window; J from Five is on our bench and he’s been talking to a tramp for the last hour.”

“I don’t know who J from Five is…”

“Oh. Well guess what – I’ve just been on Richard & Judy.”

“Wow,” he said, “That really is news!”

Pesach

For most young people, moving to London is not simply a case of seeking out a swanky pad, wallpapering it to taste and then inviting all and sundry round for a flatwarming. Very few people can afford their first place alone and so to split rent, we embark on flat-sharing. Most of us gain experience of this in our uni towns, bickering about washing up, getting burgled and never buying loo roll. At college, I was lucky enough to be given a room with cleaner for the duration, though I did take part in a spot of sharing while living in Germany and got to see all the conflicts and conflagrations played out in beautiful Foreign.

In London, we were three flatmates with five rooms, having secured our ramshackle palace above the shops in Belsize Park thanks to one of our number’s decisive cheque-writing. The fifth room really lacked space enough to squash a spider, let alone swing a cat, so we endeavoured only to fill the larger fourth room. Our Gumtree ad posted, the popularity of our location saw our first prospective making contact within four minutes. We met a number of people and eventually found someone perfect, having been incredibly picky with the applications, turning down people for being called ‘Deano’, for playing the guitar or for describing themselves as ‘mad’, as well as those who professed that their friends would also describe them as ‘mad’, which everyone knows translates roughly as ‘boring’.

“I’m Jewish but I’m not really practicing,” our new addition had said when we met her for drinks one evening in Angel. As open-minded young people, this was a complete non-issue for us.

So several months later when I found myself sitting in my lounge wearing a yamukkah and chanting ‘Dayenu’, I began to wonder what we had let ourselves in for. I am no maverick when it comes to organised religion. Never christened or baptised, much to the chagrin of my only grandmother, church was where you had to sing carols at Christmas or watch coffins containing elderly relatives borne aloft by jittery oldtimers while someone’s toddler screams in the back row because the oppressive stench of death is getting on their wick. My mum had used the local Baptist church’s Sunday school as a babysitting service. During my year abroad, a friend wanted me to see an impressive church in her home town of Speyer in Germany. Having been to Rome and concluded that if you’ve seen one church, you’ve seen 'em all, I was less than interested. However, I was pleased at the provision of a sink in which to wash dirty hands - quite refreshing on a warm day. This was then pointed out to me as the ‘Weihwasserbecken’ or holy water font. Whoops. Her family were particularly amused by this story that evening, asking innocently how old I was at the transgression, expecting me to simper that I was five or six. They cleared their throats of embarrassment when I explained unashamedly I had done it that afternoon.

Our flatmate explained that Passover was the biggest event in the Jewish calendar and given that her family were in South Africa, it would mean a lot to her for us to join in. “Don’t worry,” I said, “We done it in RE.” I never go anywhere on a Saturday at the best of times, partly to avoid embarrassing drunks (such as myself) and mostly to preserve funds. Our flatmate crocheted us each a little skullcap, which I had thought was called a ‘chutzpah’ until the very last minute. A friend had to pin it down to my curls as it kept slipping off after my late arrival at the ceremony.

The coffee table was decked out with Seder, there were Haggadot for all and the TV, for once, had been switched off. I had begun things with a faux pas by sitting myself down on a spare stool and grabbing a spare glass of wine. There were awkward inhalations of breath all round. At the ceremony, a glass and a seat are kept free for the prophet Elijah, should he return, and I had plonked my arse straight down on his seat and was about to quaff his finest red plonk. I imagined a berobed and bebearded individual tapping me on the blasphemous shoulder and saying in a deep voice, “Excuse me but that’s my seat.”

We then proceeded with the ceremony but in a sort of Diet Passover version, having heard that the real deal goes on from sundown till the early hours. We dipped bitter herbs in salt water to remember suffering, but it was quite tasty. Wine was poured here and there, biscuits broken and hidden and a story read out, which we all took to varying degrees of seriousness, with some gushing in the multiculturality of the moment and others giggling like choirboys.

It was something I would never have had the chance to witness at home, Surrey’s greatest minority being people who live in caravans. Nevertheless, my disassociation with all of the major faiths can be attributed to my lack of comfort when it comes to group chanting. I just feel a bit silly. So after shouting out ‘Dayenu’ for the fifteenth time, the novelty began to wear off and I remembered why I had embraced heathenism. Things drew to an end, all were self-congratulatory and I marked the occasion with, “Does anyone mind if we watch Britain’s Got Talent?”

Rickshaw?

Another way to get home after a well beveraged evening is to take a tuk-tuk. At least, I think that’s what they’re called. Maybe it's a rickshaw? The West End of London is crawling of a weekend evening with handfuls of shouty men calling to passers-by to see if they need a cycle-cab to take them anywhere. They seem to mostly be empty as the pedal around, with the occasional amused tourists jiggling around with the bumps in the road.

I had met an old friend after work on a Friday for a catch up. We were meant to be joined by a number of others, but in the end were ostracised like two old losers, perfectly content in each other’s company. She had been on it since four, working in a slightly more liberal and celebratory office, but I soon caught up. In Soho, we stopped briefly at a pub, where she got us a drink each. “Two sambuca shots,” she said to the barman as my jaw hit the floor.

In another pub, the surly pint-puller was not impressed at our handing over ten pounds with, “Get us anything you like.”

“Yeah, but what do you like?” he barked.

“Anything!” We ended up with two vodka and cokes.

In a swanky gay bar, I shelled out for expensive cocktails and then was determined to rely on youthful good looks to get the next two for nothing. Back at the bar, I slurred, “I want two more drinks but I don’t want to pay for them.” A very obliging barman without any sleeves told me to sit down before canvassing the clientele on their willingness to get our drinks in, before ending up covering our costs himself.

And all this before climbing into Mohamed’s tut-tut. Mohamed was from Kurdistan and became our best friend for the journey from the bottom of Soho to Tottenham Court Road. I kept asking if he couldn’t take us as far as Belsize Park but it seemed he was not keen to sweat through the ascent to Hampstead. Nevertheless, it seemed to take ages. I remember poking my head out the rain covers on Regents Street and caterwauling at others that I had been kidnapped. Eventually, my bladder took over and Mohamed made a pit-stop while I went to find a lavatory. I vaguely remember popping into a closing restaurant and asking to use their facilities in my most polite tone. Their point-blank refusal was met with me spying a sign to the toilets and following it down a subterranean staircase. But then I found myself standing in the middle of their kitchens. The doorstaff found me and told me that if I didn’t leave, they would call the police. I saw no downside to my mischief: “That’s fine,” I said, “But can I use your toilet first?” I was shoved out the door and only returned to the tut-tut after finding a pissoir outside.

Mohamed eventually managed to deposit us at our destination. Later, we were worried we hadn’t paid him, but a credit card statement revealed we had, which led us both to remark how impressed we were these contraptions have EFTPOS abilities. At the night bus-stop, another Londoner came to our aid, after spotting our difficulty working out which number to take home: a tramp with a Mohican and a ghetto blaster. Our gratitude was repaid by sharing our journey with him and sitting at the front of the upstairs on the N5, singing along and aloud to his tunes and also trying to encourage the other passengers to join in, which they, understandably, mostly refused. The next morning, we were thoroughly ashamed of our behaviour and relieved not to find the tramp under the bed. I have since seen him looking after rats in some shrubbery by the Royal Free Hospital: perhaps a vision of myself in future years…

Night Hike

It seems my brush with dangerous home-journeying following excesses of partying and partaking has taught me nothing. At the end of spring, a college friend was throwing a belated flat-warming at the pad he shared just over in Archway. I took the bus there with some friends from West Hampstead and we even helped out some lost-looking New Zealanders, pointing them in the direction of the house party they were trying to find and agreeing that if either party, theirs or ours, proved boring, we would swap over.

The college contingency was thankfully small and we were able to stretch ourselves a little, getting to know ex-girlfriends of work-colleagues of flatmates of friends. We chuckled at the American frat-party style white-rimmed red cups on offer, until someone mentioned the unutterable words: beer pong. Far be it from this blog to turn into some binge-drinker’s guide to banality, I will go so far as to say that a combination of my poor throwing skills and our opponents’ accurate arm saw me swigging back large servings of beers and ciders. For those with class, beer pong involves lining up two sets of cups like bowling pins at either end of a table, with teams taking turns to throw a ping pong ball into the opponents’ cups and thereby forcing them to drink the contents. Hardly relative to London or exemplary of my time here in itself, but what happened next smacks of my ridiculous lifestyle.

Towards midnight I was verging on worse for wear and thought it best to make an exit for the sake of all involved, more as a precaution than anything else. The girls were being slow to galvanise and I soon caught wind that maybe they had not finished conversing with some of the chaps there. I was too late for buses and assured the host that I was happy to walk home.

Archway to Belsize Park should not take long – maybe half an hour.

I don’t think I got home till half past three, which means I spent hours wandering in some sort of twilight abyss. The bus route I planned to follow eluded me and I kept just taking right and left turns at random, at one point reaching Kentish Town and realising I’d gone too far south by a long way indeed. I may have staggered through estates and trespassed through gardens, tripped over kerbstones and bumped into lampposts. My feet were sore and I was very tired the next day; my attempt to get to bed sooner had failed entirely, with my friends possibly speeding past in a taxi while I hiked on. “Yeah you seemed oddly determined,” the host had said later, “but I thought I’d better just let you get on with it.”