iansie.com: blogadoon: little miss triumph

August 20th - August 26th 2001

Sunday Snakes and Ladders
Saturday Apparently
Friday Worlds collide
Thursday Swan-upping
Wednesday Gilda
Tuesday Little Miss Triumph
Monday Surrrreal

Sunday 26th August 2001

Given that I don't work nine to five (oh boy, don't I), Bank Holidays always come as a bit of a shock to my system. Sometimes pleasant. Sometimes not: oh God, not more partying, please.

But then again, I often discover I've slotted myself in to work through one or more of the holiday nights: doh, that's why no-one else wanted to work that day.

Sometimes snakes, sometimes ladders.

Yesterday was pretty typical. Bank Holiday Saturday, obligation to go out. But I'm working. And I'm tired. Plus, I look like a dog's arse. On the other hand, I spent the previous evening in, and not a drop of alcohol had crossed my lips for, eek, twenty hours. Go out, go home. What's everybody else doing?

Everybody else, it transpires over several phone calls across the evening, isn't doing very much at all. How I hate Bank Holidays.

What kind of of night do I fancy anyway? On a scale of one to ten, where ten would be an all-nighter at Trade with a dozen friends and a full pharmaceutical complement, and one would be a night at home with a can of beer and a porn video, I think I want something around a five.

If the shift ends when it should, and it looks as if it might, I could catch a late tube to the Spiral. Looking like a dog's arse. A three.

Or I could go home, bathe/shave/change and walk through the balmy summer streets to Up, which will be filled with cute men, none of whom will deign to notice me but that's okay, and the music will be pleasant and I could wear my new young-person's t-shirt. A six.

Did I mention how hot it is? Walking out of the air-conditioned office block is like stepping into... not a sauna, exactly, but something like. A crowded launderette, perhaps.

Nice weather for a stroll. But I don't want a stroll, I want a drink. And some totty too, ideally.

The shift has ended at a quarter past twelve, so officially I've missed the last tube. But, good news, the trains are delayed. But, bad news, if they're delayed much longer I will miss my connection, and be stuck on the wrong side of the river. A DLR train, from the station nearby, would get me within walking distance of home but I've probably missed that too. Or not. Snakes. Ladders.

I go back up the escalator and walk towards the elevated DLR station, where a train is standing waiting. There's no way I'll catch it but, ah, that's ok, it's going south. Oh look, there's a northbound one. I could catch it if I run. In this heat?

And then, as my transport options evaporate before my eyes, I realise just where I want to be: The White Swan. It's pretty nasty at weekends, but it's open till at least three. There will be tons of cheap totty. And I can walk home afterwards. Best of all, it has a courtyard, ideal for a summer's night like this. If it's open. A four, possibly a four plus.

That northbound DLR would have taken me right to its doorstep. Ah well. So I start walking.

And a very pleasant walk it is too, most of it alongside the river. I walk past Ian McKellen's and David Lean's. I take a diversion through Spert Street, just to imagine myself living with that address: "Spurt. Should I spell that?" I get to Narrow Street somewhere between one and half past.

The Swan is busy, but not rammed. No immediate sign of anyone I know, which is just as well given my dog's-arse-ness. I hand my bag in, get a drink and manoeuvre my way through to the courtyard which is open, and crowded. And before too long, I find a table to sit on. I drink my drink, smoke a cigarette, sigh a contented sigh.

Towards the end of my first pint, David the long-haired photographer appears in the doorway. I wave, he comes over, and we launch into a long and intelligent conversation about whether he'd be eligible for Kew Garden's latest funding round. He says I must come over for tea one day. (Very subtle, that 'tea': it says I like you but I don't want to sleep with you. That's cool.)

We cross back across the dance floor to get another drink, raising our eyebrows at each other each time we pass something cute. Then back to the courtyard where the first person I see as I come through the door is: Scally! Slightly the worse for wear and a long way from home, he's talking to Adam, of all people.

Introductions all round, and then up pops one of Scally's companions for the evening, the thoroughly delightful Robert. Who can come round and ornament my mantelpiece any time he likes. (But almost certainly won't. Unless he likes dog's arses.)

And so it goes.

Somewhere around three I start to stagger home and get half way to Shadwell before remembering my bag, still languishing in the coat-check.

Snakes. Ladders.

But overall? I'd give it a six.

Saturday 25th August 2001

It is the nicest day of the year so far.

Apparently.

Friday 24th August 2001

When worlds collide...

I first met Louise in the early stages of my second long-term relationship, as Geoff gradually introduced me to all of his friends, including the people he went to college with.

Over the span of our relationship, he and I saw Louise break up with her boyfriend, take up with another, and move her life to live on a barge under a bridge. When Geoff left to live in Kuala Lumpur, Louise and I remained firm (if physically distant) friends, conducting our relationship largely through lengthy phone calls in which we exchanged news, advice and fond exasperation at what whiffs of gossip reached us from KL.

We've weathered considerable storms together, each of us starting - and then abandoning - our own businesses, each of us moving considerable distances (Norfolk to London, Shadwell to Rochester), each of us ageing as disgracefully as we dare.

And we've each established wide new social circles for ourselves in the process.

Louise's life seems bounded largely by the proto-bohemian community of the marina where she lives, and the local party people scene: all-night raves in deserted cement works, evenings invested in drug-fuelled diddling on complex music software, days spent setting the universe to rights over endless cups of camomile tea and feminine solidarity.

My life, in contrast, increasingly centres around a loose-knit gang of aggressively gay men who hold down hard jobs by daylight and invest what's left in sex, and drugs, and lots of alcohol in late-night West End bars.

I've been to a couple of Louise's parties, mixed with many of her friends, and a nicer, more accepting bunch of people you couldn't hope to meet.

Louise, on the other hand, has not had much experience of my necropolitan lifestyle. Understandably enough. She's no tee-totaller but she has to stay sober enough to drive herself home at the end of the night. She's no prude, but even I find our antics and conversation slightly scarey.

Plus, of course, she's a woman, and a single, straight woman at that - a rare commodity amongst our crowd.

I was, then, especially delighted, towards the end of an evening spent installing software on Louise's new I-book, to get a message from Andy late last night, calling me to join him and Guy at the Spiral around midnight.

Although they were plainly already very drunk, and despite the fact that I knew Andy had his mother's funeral to go to the next day, it seemed as good a chance as any to mix it up a little, especially at the Spiral where I was pretty confident that we could make the space our own if need be, Thursdays being traditionally a quiet night.

Well maybe quiet isn't quite the right word.

True, there were only a dozen or so people there. But I'd forgotten about the karaoke, and hadn't asked Louise how she felt about listening to teenage lesbians singing off-key. Guy has yet to learn that, when the music is loud, the secret of coherent communication is to decrease the distance between your mouth and someone's ear rather than steadily increase the volume of your conversation. Andy's laugh can vibrate corrugated iron at fifty paces. And at least two of our fellow drinkers were disastrous ex-shags of mine.

But because Andy and Guy and Louise are my dear and close friends, and because I trust my judgement in these matters, and because, really, what's to lose, I decided to relax, sat back and let the three of them get on with it. And it was great: unforced, friendly, somewhat incoherent, nice.

Let's do it again, some time before 2050.

Thursday 23rd August 2001

Would one of you Guardian-readers be kind enough to check the printed version of today's article about blogs with the on-line version? There seems to have been some radical editing:

"There are two ingredients to a successful blog. The first is an individual prepared to share their lives and to do so in an interesting, funny or bizarre way." The second, it appears, is a secret. (And an individual who has lives? Sybil has a blog now?)

Note also: "The first is MelissAGoGo for instance crams a functioning chatroom, webcam and weblog into a very small page..." Excuse me?

And if anyone can explain how these damned articles always seem to select blogs that none of us have ever heard of, that would be cool too. (My theory is that it's the journalists' blogger friends who draw their attention to the phenomenon in the first place, but that is no doubt just sour grapes.)

Anyone that was intrigued by my piece on David Sylvester last week might want to keep an eye on BBC2 tonight: Matthew Collings presents 'A Tribute to David Sylvester' at 2320.

Dan Flavin show opens at the Serpentine tomorrow, hurrah.

I see that the window-title for Patrick's pleasing ego-teasing tribute is (coincidentally?) 'I want a positive role model', a pop/pop/pop pop-music reference that I actually understand, for once. And it reminds me that we heard this Pet Shop Boys song played at The Vauxhall last Sunday, the first time I've consciously heard it since our visit to Closer To Heaven three months ago. Making a come-back, is it?

"Caroline Reid, aka Pam Ann, bitchy trolley dolly extraordinaire, still holds a torch for the glamorous days of travel. Pam, possibly a former conquest of James Hunt, berates most of the audience (or "economy class"), saving her worst for a hapless BA employee who refused to give her name.

"It's a pretty limp hour, more of a five-minute sketch stretched to its absolute limits - a bit like the Aeroflot fleet. But as high camp goes, this display of a woman impersonating a man impersonating a woman... is as flamboyant as the audience..."

- review from Edinburgh in today's Indy

(And if you think that dismissive, compare and contrast with their trail for "Charles Fleischer. Gilded Balloon II 23.30. An evening of comedy from the man who is best know as the voice of Roger Rabbit.")

After a couple of hours at the A Bar (most satisfactory, despite the fact that the front room has now become a store cupboard), I hot-cabbed it across town at midnight to the White Swan and the celebration of seventeen years of Amateur Strip Night.

Seventeen years... it hardly bears thinking about.

The main stage area, which is usually only open at weekends, had been pressed into service for the evening and the place was pretty packed, though I was mildly surprised by the lack of familiar faces (Where was Louis? Garry? Wayne? The Boys Who Let Me Watch?)

I spent a few minutes chatting to David the photographer - mostly, I admit, because he'd surrounded himself with a coterie of model-boys. ("Oh, those guys? I've known them since Paris...")

Paul, the glass-collector, whom I'd always assumed to be a Lithuanian mute, made a tiny speech and presented Jimmy with an suitably naff bouquet; the cute Asian bartron engaged me in some mildly erotic word-play; a long-haired buffed-up Gladiator clone revealed an improbably large appendage. And a good time was had by all.

(One day, one day, I will vituperate about Jimmy and what a truly vile master of ceremonies he is. But not today.)

Wednesday 22nd August 2001

Regular readers of Swish Cottage, Overyourhead, or Minkered will be aware, all too aware, of the weekly ritual that is the Retro Bar Pop Quiz.

Regular readers of Blogadoon will be aware that I turn up too. I think of my contribution as an exercise in self-discipline, a kind of Zen hair-shirt: the current core team is Shaun, Darren, David and Jonathan and if they're quorate I'm not even allowed to speak to them for the duration of the quiz (maximum team size is four and the rules are very strictly interpreted).

So mostly I spend my time buying drinks, staring at the prettier competitors and generally doing my best imitation of somebody who was born knowing the answer to everything but is just soooo over this competitive thing.

On the rare occasions when the team is one short, I am allowed to join the huddle. Sadly however (given that 'Pop' as in 'Pop Quiz' apparently started in 1980, just about the time I stopped listening) even as a team member most of my energies are devoted to looking as if I know about bands that I not only have never heard, but have never heard of.

The rare question about the 80s bands that I do know (Cure, Stranglers, Pets and umm) gets urgently whispered by some other team member before I've even worked out which of my 'Best Of..' albums it comes from. On the even rarer occasions that a credible answer just pops into my head by instinct, nobody is listening anyway. Or, if they are listening, they giggle.

So mostly I spend my time at the Pop Quiz wishing I knew the sign-language for "You sad anoraks."

Once in a blue moon though, QuizMs Wendy slips in a question about, say, musicals. Expectation, hope, bewilderment and despair flit in rapid succession across three faces. And then they remember that, hang on, we have a fourth team member here somewhere.

Such as last night. A big-money night. A night when Darren was absent in Southampton and Jonathan was absent with a cold. A night when Wendy wanted to know what movie these songs came from. This song being 'Put the Blame on Mame." And three faces swivel towards me like harbour searchlights searching for a U-boat.

Now, I know it's not that Mame. And I know it's not a big musical number, but rather some kind of cabaret episode, some song sung in some dim lit boite by some femme fatale in a long frock, with the hero regarding her over the top of his cigarette. And I know that it's not a black singer, despite a pretty passable imitation of Billie Holliday. I'm thinking... film noir. I'm thinking... Glenn Ford. I'm thinking... Buenos Aires. I'm thinking... a lot or erotic by-play with a pair of long white gloves...

And I whisper "Umm, I think it might be Gilda."

And because they've got no better ideas they write it down. And it's right. And we win. And we're each thirty quid better off. And we go off to BarCode to celebrate. And I feel vindicated. Again.

Tuesday 21st August 2001

I put my book down, shoved the duvet to one side and went into the bathroon for a pee.

As I pressed the handle to flush, something black and shiny, with spikey bits sticking out, fell off my head and into the rushing water.I jumped about five feet in the air.

Fortunately, the evidence was still there to be examined when I landed: a feather from the duvet.

The news that Nikolay Soltys, 27, is on the run in California having killed his wife and four other relatives appears at the bottom of page 11 of today's Independent.

However, in the Telegraph (the on-line version at least), it is the number two story.

Why is the Telegraph making such a big deal about the story? Nothing to do with the fact that Soltys is an immigrant, surely?

Sister Marie Angel WOULD LIKE EITHER HARPER COLLINS OR CHATTO AND WINDUS TO CONSIDER PUBLISHING A SELECTION OF HER BOOKS and I think we can all identify with that.

Few of us, however, have taken the radical step of booking newspaper ads to make our demands that clear. Sister Marie's enormous ad in today's Independent reveals that she is A VISIONARY MYSTIC WHO HAS LED THE LIFE OF A SOLITARY HERMIT FOR 30 YEARS so perhaps we can forgive her for not knowing that WRITING EVERYTHING IN CAPITALS is one sure way to get yourself marked down as a nutter. (Violet ink works, too.)

The 31 book titles she lists repay considerable further study. THE CHANGING FACE OF OF A VISIONARY MYSTIC FROM AGE 15 TO 55 sounds fun as does (A CHILDREN'S BOOK) THE INDOOR CATS CLUB FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS!!! (WRITTEN AS A STORY FOR A WALT DISNEY STYLE ANIMATION FILM)

MIRACULOUS RICHES (THE LOTTERY MIRACLE! THE NUN WHO WON) is a novel suitable for a major NEW BRITISH FILM. And watch out for MYSTERY GIRL FROM ANOTHER WORLD (A Musical) Lyrics sent to Lloyd Webber.

I think my favourite, though, has to be THE BUSINESS PLANS OF A CLAIRVOYANT MYSTIC (Book sent to BOSSES OF NAT WEST BANK, HQ).

SHE HAS WRITTEN TO POPE JOHN PAUL II TO COME TO LONDON AT TOP SPEED FOR AN EMERGENCY COUNCIL AT WESTMINSTER ABOUT HER SERIOUS COSMIC MESSAGES but I have a better suggestion.

Sister Marie needs a blog: LITTLE MISS VICTORY. LITTLE MISS TRIUMPH!

When a former leader of the Conservative Party writes to the Daily Telegraph to declare her choice in the current leadership ballot, you can bet your last bottle of Bollinger that every word has been very carefully vetted.

Note, then, Mrs Thatcher's ringing declaration that, in the event of a Clarke victory. "Time and again the Conservatives would be exposed as either hopelessly split or deeply cynical."

The threat she perceives is not that Clarke will split the party, or make it cynical - but that he will expose the pre-existent splits and cynicism.

I look forward to the obvious headline: Thatcher admits her legacy: division and hypocrisy.

Monday 20th August 2001

Aspects of the weekend which feel as if they were part of an extended dream sequence but probably weren't:

Printing out a quick sly copy of the CSS2 manual at the end of a work shift and finding it was 307 pages long.
Turning up at the carefully-memorised party address a little late and knowing that you've got it wrong because it's so quiet.
Removing a rain-wet shirt in a roomful of queens and being, shock!, slightly embarrassed by it.
Pulling on a kindly-offered replacement t-shirt and thinking "Not really me, but it'll do for here."
Searching high and low for the original shirt.
Wearing somebody else's t-shirt all over London for another eight hours.
Three control-freaks arguing about what to write as a dedication in Soulful Divas on the top-deck of a juddering double-decker bus: "No! Watch my lips. Happy. Birthday. Darren."
Being french-kissed by a bulldog, and thinking of Anne Widdecome.
"No, he's not in Southampton; he's on a plane to New Zealand."
Watching a man who knows I fancy him wave goodbye with the hand that wasn't busy clutching the guy he'd just met on the tube.
"Have you seen the Jubilee Line interchange at Westminster?" "Yes - it's so male!"
Being told you have the most acid tongue in London and not being able to remember having said anything at all, let alone anything bitchy.
Guy, dancing.
The Almighty remix of Tainted Love
"This music is giving me a sore throat!"
Guy sticking his hand up my arse and then waving his finger in everybody's face, crying "Ooooh, it really stinks!"
A man leaning against the railings outside the Vauxhall Tavern displaying a crutch that looked as if it had a bowling-ball stuck down it.
Dame Edna turning to me and saying: "But what we all want to know is - why did you cut your hair??"

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