Life Less Literary

Saturday night… Dinner Party. First proper one in ages - Martha came over with her French chap Phillipe. Lovely to have the opportunity to cook again. I tried not to get too bogged down in accompaniments - in the past I have spent days cooking just because I wanted to make every side-dish as special (read: complex) as the main course.

We started off drinking sherbet (cheap, sweet sparkling plonk mixed with freshly-squeezed lime juice - gorgeous). Gill made the starter - a salad of smoked salmon, lettuce, tomatoes, mozzarella, black olives & artichoke hearts. The main course came from The Vegetarian Bistro - Aubergine and Fennel with Tomatoes topped with Cheese Custard. It was a gratin dish - layers of fennel, onion & tomato sauce alternated with aubergine, and topped off with a mixture of mozzarella, parmesan and egg that rose and crisped souffle-like. Along with this I served potato mashed up with the left over creme fraiche, and spring cabbage blanched and sauted in walnut oil.

For dessert we had a Nigella dessert special (she really is good at these - turning me into a domestic goddess already). Dried apricots, soaked & cooked in a cardamom-y syrup, split and stuffed with creme fraiche and then dusted with ground pistachio. Very middle-eastern tasting, sweet & scrummy.

’twas nice to do things properly - of course, might have been nicer to go even more over the top (I have some dessert wine somewhere that would have been a treat with those apricots, and an after-dinner cigar wouldn’t have gone amiss). But by the end of the evening, we felt well & truly stuffed & sated. Chatted for a while and then went to bed and… slipped into unconsciousness while half-way through massaging Gill’s shoulders.

Thursday night at Leo Burnett’s is traditionally party night. And last Thursday was the biggest yet - Regional Headquarters (the bit of the company that handles all the Europe, Middle East & Africa stuff) based their bash on the theme “drink your way around the world”.

Also traditional on these occasions is some free booze, but rarely enough to last beyond the first hour or so. Now, these RHQ guys got it right. Instead of blowing all their budget on costumes, props and scenery that would be all but invisible to the sozzled masses after the first quadruple sprit, they got in a cheap canvas silhouetted with the world’s favourite landmarks, a few plastic hats decorated with miscellaneous national flags, and a tanker-load of free booze. And what a selection. Spirits were rather over-represented, with everything from Polish vodka through Mexican Tequila and American Jack Daniels to Greek ouzo. All of the bottles were laid out on a table, with a small smattering of mixers, so a pour-your-own frenzy of large measures ensued.

My own personal tour didn’t stray much from the Americas, alternating between Tequilas (with salt & lime, of course) and JD & coke. In between these I would grab a white wine from the bar, perhaps to give myself the illusion that I wasn’t drinking too many strong spirits. By the end of the evening I was reduced to ouzo, as there was precious little else left (although the very fact that there was anything remaining by 1am was unique among Leo Burnett parties). I alternated the ouzo with large gulps from bottles of mineral water found lying around the office, in the hope that this would prevent me from dehydrating and perhaps keep me more sober than I might otherwise have been. What I didn’t realise that the ouzo and water were probably busy mingling in my stomach and causing more damage than I had anticipated.

The evening started rationally enough, with polite banter, the occasional quick dance, tipsy but not dangerous. And then at some point, possibly around 9pm although time soon became even more of an abstract concept than usual, the spirits did what spirits do, and everything became a bit of a blur. I remember losing my glasses on the floor somewhere (well, no, I don’t remember losing them, but I do remember looking for them), finding them sans lens, and scrabbling around to find the missing part. Eventually I realised that the shards of glass splintering into my hands and knees were probably all that remained of the lens I was looking for - my 2-day old £330 (although to be honest pretty naff) glasses, gone in a moment of madness. I hope my insurance will cover them, although I suspect not.

The next 4 hours or so are completely blank. That’s the majority of my evening disappeared into the same space where lost socks and biros hide. I am told that at some stage we were doing acrobatics to Elvis - I don’t remember this but the dislocated shoulder & carpet burns on my elbow hint that it may well be true. My next moment of consciousness came at around 1am, when the building emptied and I searched in vain for Tim, whose house I was supposed to be staying at. He was nowhere to be found, and so I telephoned him in vain, repeatedly hearing his voicemail kick straight in. I resigned myself to sleeping under my desk, and retrieved a large wooden cask of garlic bread which I munched while pondering my predicament. Then at some point I got hold of Tim - not sure whether he returned a drunked message (I wasn’t the only one to leave a drunken message for Tim that night) or whether I kept calling for as long as it took for him to tube it from South Kensington to Tooting. He was back at home, so I said I would catch a cab to Tooting Bec and meet him in the middle of the road.

Reluctant to abandon my newly found hoard of garlic bread, I searched for a suitable carrier for it. Eventually I settled upon one of the empy dustbin bags within the bin by my desk, loaded it up with stale crusts, and hailed a cab clutching my stinky prize. I arrived at Tooting to find Tim, as arranged, wildly flailing in the street to hail me down. Entered his house where again my memory becomes unclear, and slept on the floor under a randomly-flung duvet.

At 7.30 the next morning my alarm beeped me into immediate wakedness. I leapt up thinking “where the hell am I?”, gradually realised, somehow located the kitchen where I downed a pint of water (cue for the ouzo to kick in again), and staggered across the road to the tube station. Still extremely drunk, I climbed on board a tube train, careening into the human traffic on the way. Spent a fuzzy & muzzy morning at work, eventually sobering up around midday, but at least I managed to avoid claiming that I would “never again” drink so much. Same time next week…

So glad that people notice. I didn’t realise I’d left my blog unwatered for so long, and
then I started to get blog pangs, and during the last week requests have suddenly started
pouring (OK, trickling) in for updates. I shall try my best. I love you all, but not as much
as I love myself. Obviously.

Wednesday night was gig night - much anticipated, much planned and prepared for, but all the

preparation in the world can only ever be a prelude. We were playing at the Grand, Clapham,

to raise money for the Red Cross. I was there in my capacity as bassist for two bands, Cathy Ray and Bone Turtle. Things started off

painfully slowly, as they always do at gigs. We arrived at the venue early (very early)

afternoon. Got excited over the mixed Victoriana/Art-deco/disco kitsch decor and 15-foot

high stage (gonna have to play with safety harnesses), ran around getting used to the place,

fiset up instruments & fiddled about with stuff & more stuff, covered my small amount

of hair with peroxide paste, got onstage and played through a few songs, washed of the

peroxide gunk after 90 minutes and uncovered hair like a tabby cat’s, mottled brown and

Duracell-orange, went off shopping for a quick release, plastered my hair down completely

with more (LOTS more) peroxide gunk, had a sound check, washed off the peroxide gunk,

discovered a head of hair that was custard yellow with tabby drop-shadows, met up with the

members of my other band….

Finally we got to play. First on Cathy Ray. Our first

gig in over 6 months, with only 1 rehearsal to tide us over, but we were tight as… no,

I’ll avoid the obvious comparisons… tight as we always are these days. It was fun playing

the old numbers, but there was no atmosphere - the audience was half-a-mile away. We tried

to throw in some comments between songs (or I did, mainly) as I’m always so aware of the

huge & painful gaps where audiences start shuffling their feet & getting awkward,

but the talking felt forced & painful. All in all, I know that we put in a good

performance, but it was far from what we are capable of, and because I didn’t have the

audience feedback I didn’t feel able to start boogieing and losing my inhibitions and

swinging swaying & swanking with the music, which in turn would have pushed it back to

the audience & made this whole kinda Princess Diana-style mental feedback loop of

intensifying emotional vibes. So overall, satisfactory but we know you can do better. Much

better.

Came off stage feeling incredibly unfulfilled. Knew that everyone who might possibly be

impressed by our music would have been impressed enough… just. Mark summed it all up. He

said, in a slightly embarrased (very wierd for Mark) sort of way… "Cathy Ray were great."

(….. long pause….. ) "but not that great". There’s nothing better than the truth.

Seriously. Pain is pleasure. Occasionaly.

(shit… just realising how drunk I am… writing on a Friday night on a lonely long

Sheffield-bound train again. This text is starting to disintegrate into mere words again…)

And then finally we had Bone

Turtle. A far longer set (18 songs, compared to the 6 of Cathy Ray), far more populist,

far easier for me, as I could hide at the back and just get on with it rather than

singing/speaking and exposing myself to possible ridicule within my own brain. I really

enjoyed myself, despite the odd (fairly minor really) cock-up and the fact that some of the

songs are really starting to bore me. It was pretty predictable good-time party-type

Commitments/Blues Brothers music (though, if I do say so myself, with a tiny bit of a

twinkle-dust crunch-funk magic touch). We were good. Damn good. And people got up and

partied, danced all around the stage (like to see them do the same for Cathy Ray), waved at

me and pulled faces. I got to feel good about the whole thing.

And then, 18 songs later, we came of stage, and the emptiness came back. Dunno quite how to

explain it. A sort of philosophical feeling, the type of which I’m sure there are words for

in German or French (euuurgh, what a horrible sentence). In German, it would be a crunchy

painful life-kills-me how-can-I-continue-with-this-pain type of word like Weltschmertz or…

shit, what was the other one, I dunno. In French it would be far more existential, like what

am I doing here, what is life all for,

do-we-really-exist-and-if-so-is-it-worth-going-to-parties type of word, like… shit,

somebody pass me one of those French philosophical terms quick, I know they exist. Ah well,

maybe it’s in the nature of the thing that words are not enough to contain the feeling.

Sorry, do I sound poncey. Ah well, it’s probably intentional.

So anyway, as I was very slowly getting around to saying, I came off stage and felt kinda

happy in some parts, at least as if I’d given it the best that I possibly could under the

circumstances, but also like… you know that song, “Is that all there is?” Well, that was

pretty much exactly it. So I spent the rest of the evening, drifting around, trying to latch

onto people without much success… had one or two really nice chats but never felt 100%

there. Still wanted more experience.

I ended up going back to JCs with Niina and Josh. Probably the best said about the lest. Or

vice versa. Or… sorry, do you follow me? Had a lovely time, but only because I was already

hell-bent on having a lovely time and… no, it was really nice company, but… bizarre. And

having had less that 8 hours sleep in total for the last 2 nights, and being well on course

to catch about 3 hours for this night, I finally threw in the towel and drifted off to the

sofa for a couple of hours snoring. Bzzzzzzz. That was probably the best part of the night.

But the rest of the night was nice. Or sweet. Or something.

If I ever know of anyone sentenced to execution, I’ll be sure n’buy them one of these tasteful cards from rtmark.