August 23rd 2004 - August 29th 2004
Sunday Beans
Saturday gai lun jai
Friday Quinn
Thursday Marked out
Wednesday Cross5
Tuesday No-Lon
Monday Munched
Sunday 29th August 2004
Roughly once a week, I buy a bag of coffee beans from Starbucks. Yes, yes, I know - but they have branches almost everywhere, they're open from early till late, and I like to think their high turnover guarantees I'm not buying something that's been sitting on a shelf for several months.
There's another reason though, one that almost makes up for their relatively high prices - and its something you can try for yourself.
Pick up a bag of beans, hand them to the barristatron and say, loudly and clearly: "Thank you. I don't want them ground, and I don't need a bag."
I guarantee that (a) you will then be asked if you want them ground (or grounded, or grinded) and that (b) they will attempt to put them in a bag.
Yesterday's interaction was a new high:
"Thank you. I don't want them ground, and I don't need a bag."
"You want them grind?"
"No thank you"
"Not grounded?"
"No."
"OK"
[takes money, reaches for bag]
"And I don't need a bag."
"No bag?"
"No thank you."
[program-glitch pause accompanied by look of supreme confusion]
"What you want then?"
"Just the beans. Thank you."
Saturday 28th August 2004
Phrases that should be in everyone's vocabulary
Encouraged to learn Cantonese by his mother, Booth learned what Chinese clerks and typists thought of his father and his violent, telephone-throwing rages. "The Chinese staff called him 'mok tau' (blockhead)," he records. "I once heard a clerk call him 'gai lun jai' (chicken penis boy): the clerk must have assumed that, as I was my father's son, I spoke no Cantonese either."
Friday 27th August 2004
I do not, of course, know David Blunkett. And I need hardly add that I know nothing of Kimberly Fortier, the Spectator publisher with whom Blunkett has allegedly been having an affair. Slightly to my surprise, however, I do know (or more accurately did once know) Ms Fortier's husband, Stephen Quinn.
Back in the dawn of time, when I was a callow twenty year old buying media space for big advertisers, Stephen took me out to lunch a few times in his role as sales director for Vogue.
The Guardian describes him as 'well-liked' - which in my case translates to something stronger: I used to fancy him rotten.
Thursday 26th August 2004
Mark Thatcher? Arrested? That so made my week.
Wednesday 25th August 2004
Before embarking on the Odyssey that is my long walk home from The White Swan, it is of course necessary first to spend some time in The White Swan itself.
From the outside, The Swan is a classic gay pub - a formidable three-storey building with a featureless facade, its ground-floor windows long painted over: a deliberately minimal street-presence that indicates either dont-mind-me, or stay-well-away. (Whichever, it works: straight friends of mine who pass it every day don't even know it's there.)
You enter through a narrow doorway barred by a ticket-booth (£4 at weekends) and guarded on busy nights by two burly security staff who vet you through a small window before opening the door. It's the East End - even these days, you can't be too careful.
Once inside, the narrow space splits naturally at the cloakroom [1]: everything east of here (the dancefloor, the main stage and - in summer - the courtyard) opens only at weekends.Most Wednesdays, shortly after midnight, past the notice on the window advising 'Men Only Tonight', and following some sarcastic banter with Liam on the door, I head straight to the main bar [2].
Unlike other weekday nights here, when you can find yourself sharing the space with less than a dozen people, Wednesdays are always busy. The bar will be lined, often two-deep, with men, mostly in their thirties, many of them attempting to get served with what is patently not their first drink of the evening.
If I'm lucky, I'll catch the eye of Simon, the oriental barman, who'll acknowledge me with an inscrutably slight nod of the head and immediately begin pulling my pint with no further need of conversation. If not Simon, or ageless Paul, then one of the others, probably the one who can never remember what I drink but at least now cheerfully admits as much - slightly unjust given that I've long ago forgotten his name.
As soon as I have my pint in my hand, I gulp away the top inch or so. Partly from greed - I have, after all, been looking forward to this for several hours - but also as a purely practical move: the room gets even more crowded beyond the bar, and this is not a good place to spill beer over someone.
Practising my deft crowd-surfing skills - a gentle palm on the flat of someone's back, pint held head-high, watch your feet, don't rush - I squeeze and wriggle my way to one of my favoured positions [3].
And: relax.
I've always maintained that, for the hour or so after midnight, this space is one of the cruisiest rooms in London: young Docklands-based professionals dressed like East End casuals, government-supported slackers wearing whatever designer knock-off's new on the market, or down the market, and a hard core of seasoned geezers who've seen all and done most - all of them definitely up for a quick mid-week shag, as long as it's only a cheap mini-cab ride away.
The strip contest itself, when it eventually starts, is really just an excuse for this crowd to coalesce, ostensibly jostling for the best sight-lines but actually more interested in exchanging hungry glances with each other: people come mob-handed, but when they talk to their friends, they're always looking over their shoulder.
When the compere, usually one of a favoured shortlist of four drag queens, teeters up onto the extended podium that serves as a stage, the crowd thickens: more than twelve feet from the dj booth behind it and you'll see nothing, less that six feet and you're just asking to be ritually humiliated. ("How old are you, dear, if I may ask?... So what do we think, people, higher or lower?")
After three or more contestants have strutted their stuff, the winner is decided by popular acclaim. It's a fickle process: looking too much as if you really need the £100 prize-money will work against you, whilst claiming that your drunken friends bullied you into it can often work wonders. Here as elsewhere, being young and cute does no harm, but don't assume that looks are everything: I've seen forty year olds who weigh sixteen stone applauded to victory, just to punish some young pup who showed signs of ideas above his station. (Full-length bathroom mirrors have a lot to answer for.)
By this stage, with less than an hour to go before closing, I'll have drifted from [3] to [4] and back again several times, taking on a couple of pints in the process, spotting the people I know and selecting which ones I wish to talk to.
At weekends, when the dance floor is choked with party people, this wandering takes on a more defensive colouration: from the the back bar [5] I head to the far corner [6] where The Dane is often waiting, but a posse of straight drunk office-girls and their handbags drive us back to [7], where can I can get a good view of the cute teen with the funny hair dancing with what is surely his dad, but then the leering attentions of a middle-aged man who fancies me a great deal more than I fancy him propels me to [8], where I can smile indulgently at silly shirtless boys on podiums to either side, mimicing the moves to the songs they've watched over and over on the video, and then falling over. Them, that is, not me. I still have some dignity, even at two in the morning.
Last orders are called, the last cheesey record is played and then the lights come on - there's no better way to clear a room full of queens than expose them to the full glare of reality.
Nine nights out of ten, I'll have reclaimed my coat by then, smiled fuzzily at the security guys and pushed through the door into the cold night air - heading, one way or another, for home.
Tuesday 24th August 2004
Ten months ago, I wrote about a film crew shooting footage during Amateur Strip Night at The White Swan, and how a friend of ours featured, albeit marginally, therein. I suspect what they were shooting became 'Ny-Lon', which premieres on Channel Four tonight. Should you care.) [Postscript: Or not. Thankfully. Hated it.]
Monday 23rd August 2004
I don't speak Norwegian, as far as I know, and I've only seen press reports of the theft of two paintings by Edvard Munch from an Oslo art gallery, so I can't be entirely sure of how one pronounces the name of the artist.
I'm fairly certain that 'Monk' with a very strong North Country accent, comes closest. I'm entirely confident however that my colleague's (just possibly ironic) decision last night to rhyme it with 'bunch' is not correct.
Be that as it may, I do have one piece of information to offer, gleaned either from some expensive art journal or some cheap movie. Why steal such readily identifiable pieces, when their very popularity ensures there's no way to sell them afterwards?Because all big-time crime bosses, of whatever nationality, like to keep a bargaining-chip up their sleeves, against the time they're finally nicked for tax-evasion or whatever, and can then turn round and murmur 'You remember that Leonardo/Van Gogh/whatever that went missing a few years back...?'
......previous week
