We woke up the neighbours at 4am last Friday. If that wasn’t bad enough, we woke them up with Billy Joel. They said it was like water torture. I decided it was best not to ask them when they had actually ever experienced water torture to parallel the two. To avoid neighbourly wrath (‘this is a children’s area’), this Friday I gathered a modest clutch of friends for a music-free dinner before hitting a row of bars in Clapham.
We went to The Goat, which smells of chips and has sticky tables. We wove our way through the packs of drinkers, who were mostly male and moved back courteously when they saw my pretty friends (this is the only perk of having pretty friends).
We paused by a high table with only three seats. Whilst two men operated a simultaneous pincer movement on Laura and Kate, I slipped up to the bar. Drunken man wearing horrid shiny tie approaches: ‘I CAN’T THINK OF A SINGLE FILM WITH A FEMALE LEAD… CAN YOU??!’… ‘Wizard of Oz?’ I replied…. ‘OH YEAH – WELL APART FROM THAT I BET YOU CAN’T THINK OF A SINGLE -’ The conversation went on on a similar tedious theme, by the end of which my my eardrums were fuzzing, my face was covered in a fine layer of spit and I was further away from the bar than when I had started. It was now four people deep and I gave up on a drink.
We moved to a different bar. ‘ID ladies please’, we all rifled in our purses.. ‘do we really look seventeen?’ I asked jovially. ‘No’ replied the bouncer, but didn’t elaborate. There was a little more success here on the drink front, and after a couple of mojitos my friend Sophie called to tell me she was bringing Handsome Boy from last weekend to our flat for a nightcap.
S: You know. So you guys can. Catch up.
H: Yep, I get it Soph
S: Maybe he won’t be going home tonight. If you know what I mean.
S: Yes. I follow. See you in 10.
H: woooOOOoooo
S: Goodbye
Handsome Boy has nice hair and a body you can tell is good through his clothes. At 4am the weekend before, he had sat down in the detritus of the party to play the piano while I conducted Billy Joel with a wooden spoon. We sat on the sofa after the others had gone to bed, and kissed a little awkwardly. He went to leave, then hesitated and came back for another kiss, which I thought was a nice touch. Almost as nice as the piano playing and it didn’t wake the neighbours.
