New Year’s Eve 2007
Compared to the others, the central line is deafeningly loud. It’s hot and crowded inside, and I’m itching in the same clothes I’ve worn for the past two days. It doesn’t matter though, because it’s New Year’s Eve and I’m happy- I think. Actually, I’m aching too (shouldn’t have tried to sleep sitting up), and this isn’t how I’d like to be spending my day. I’m alone again, and like an alcoholic waking up with a hangover, I realise that I’ve acted like an idiot. Again. What would Josh say?
Josh- I pissed on Heijbroek’s Bassoon says:
Sigh.
Yeah. That’s exactly what Josh would say. I worry sometimes that he secretly hates me, but I’m fairly sure everyone hates me secretly, so it’s not a problem. I just wish he’d retaliate to the short jokes occasionally, because it just makes me feel like a dick otherwise. He is very short though- I half expect him to start singing like an oompa-loompa every time I see him... Josh definitely hates me secretly.
This journey is taking longer than I’d like, and I’m up against the doors. I dig out the silver brick that I call a phone and hit the power button. The aerial and monochrome screen makes Josh call it retro, while the scratched surface and electrical tape holding it together makes Stevie suspect it came from a cereal box. To me this phone is a novelty, and now I only keep it as a reminder of those cherished moments; moments of the most perfect and blissful thoughtlessness. I don’t think there’s really any other justifiable reason for owning a phone where the time taken for the address book to load can be measured with a calendar. Fortunately (or perhaps worryingly), I’ve phoned Stevie so many times that I now know the number off by heart. Stevie is just about the only person I ever need to phone, so it’s more like a direct line to a very personal help line than anything else ( just to avoid confusion later, Stevie is a girl. No, I don’t think it’s a contraction of Stephanie; yes, I think that is the name on the birth certificate. Stop asking).
No service on the tube. I should really learn to remember that, instead of once again looking like a fool in front of the intimidating strangers. I’m assured that no one talks in London, apart from the nutters. Provided I have people to embarrass, I am one of those nutters. Most of the time any stab at conversation will just result in an awkward stand off that lasts until one of us gets off, but occasionally you’ll get a lovely Nigerian called Gilbert. This is I think, an apt metaphor for life.
Time passes. What happens next isn’t important, because it concerns another person. I resurface later, by the fountains near the tube station. It’s ten to eight, and I’m freezing. I’m sitting on the low wall that makes up the side of the fountains, my back to the railings, watching the people swarm through. I’m alone now, exactly as I always think I want to be. My neurosis demands I find meaning in this, so I start a tally. I greet everyone I can, with a nod or a wave, and see how many respond. Nothing can destroy your faith in basic human decency like New Year’s Eve in central London. Being alone gives me a depressingly honest view of my situation; I become solipsism incarnate. In case you haven’t noticed, I have quite a romantic vision of my own psyche- this however does not protect you from an hour and a half of cold weather, bad music and abuse. I ride it out, knowing that I would have wimped out if I’d had anywhere else to go.
Eventually it’s late enough for me to justify taking the same train back to Mile End. This time I find a seat, only to find myself in a perverse staring contest with two Goths. Until I saw it for myself, it was impossible to imagine a cowboy hat and eyeliner on the same man. It looked like he had some kind of wasting disease he was trying to hide. Badly. Soon enough, the train pulls into Mile End, and I hop off it, eager to get back outside. Climbing the steps, the slow and insidious chill of the last night of 2007 creeps up on me, snaking up my spine and numbing my fingers. It’s nice.
Finally coming up to ground level, I find the tiled cave that is the entrance to the station crowded with people, most of them drunk. Being the easily intimidated sort, I went to the least threatening person there- the monstrously inebriated tramp. Contrary to popular belief, tramps will not slit your throat with a rusty knife if you go near them. This one mumbles incoherently for a few minutes and offers me a drink from his bottle of Jack Daniels and something delightful that I christen a “floor fag-end”. I decline both, and in an attempt to feel like a superior human being, I go to the halal fast food shop nearby and buy him some chips and chicken. The obstinate bastard refuses, and I give him a pound out of sheer awkwardness and put the chicken down beside him. Crossing the street, I attempt to phone Stevie and Josh. I get the ominous reply that they “will be there soon.” Once again I’m waiting in the cold, feeling for all the world like Raskolnikov in Petersburg.
The aforementioned couple are as good as their word walking down the darkened street towards me like the title sequence of a “heart warming romantic comedy”. One set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future by the looks of things. So now there are three of us, and I’m laughing again. Stevie dyed her hair pink recently, but now most of it has turned blonde, making her look like a walking advertisement for battenburgs. Josh is still short, and I make the fatal error of mocking shariyah law’s unfair treatment of blind people in an area mostly populated by Muslims. I don’t think anyone heard it, but accidental racism costs lives. If I never post here again, it’s either because I don’t have the dedication to blog, or far more likely, I have been kidnapped by extremists who want to cut off my head streaming live to youtube. (That would be quite cool actually. I should add it to my list of things I want terrorists to do to me. ...No, I don’t want any of them to do anything like that.)
Skip forward, and we’re all back at Mile End, getting on the train. Josh, Stevie, Stevie’s many friends, and me. It’s slightly awkward having only tenuous links to everyone but Josh and Stevie, but entertaining nonetheless. Once on the train, I pitch my new concept for a hard hitting drama to Sinéad, a crime serial revolving around a private investigator called Square. It’s set in St Petersburg, where the misanthropic and jaded Square solves crime while trying to stop his raging alcoholism tear his personal life apart. This drama belongs to the family of shows which use the name of their protagonist as the title of the show, where aforementioned name also happens to be an ambiguous name. The hook in Square is that not only is he the best Private investigator in Moscow, he’s also a dancing bear. Yeah, I bet you weren’t expecting that, were you!?
...
...
... Well Sinéad likes it. Then again, I’d spent the last week talking to her about paedophiles, revengecest (A contraction of revenge incest. If you haven’t seen Oldboy, go watch it), the merits of genocide as an art form, and gameshows which invariably featured all three of the above. All of this was facilitated by the wonderful, wonderful internet. I’d like to take a moment to thank the internet, facilitator of the most twisted and extravagant malevolence known to man. Thank you internet!
Where was I? Oh yeah, a train. Again. Real life should have scowling emoticons, just so I can somehow express my discontent about taking the same journey for the umpteenth time today. Maybe... I dunno, something expressive that looks like an emoticon, with a nose and eyes and ears, but it wouldn’t be a fixed expression, it could change shape to suit your mood. Ah well, I’m sure something will be invented at some point. Before my thoughts can come to their logical conclusion, Stevie grabs me by the sleeve and drags me off the train along with everyone else. It’s dark and wet outside, but no one cares. I’m being led along a dark street in a city I barely know by people who are, for the most part, complete strangers to me. Is this a situation normal people allow themselves to get into? If it’s not, they’re missing out. Reaching the millennium bridge we make the singular discovery that the rain has made it possible to slide along the bridge like you were skating. Walking becomes skating, skating becomes race skating, and before we’ve reached the other side, Josh and me are in direct competition to see how far we can slide with a run and jump. Given the choice, I would spend New Year here on the bridge. Instead, we all end up on the south bank, pushing through the crowds to try and get a better view for when the fireworks come. As the clock drags closer to midnight, it gets more and more crowded. Eventually it becomes so packed there’s barely room to move, but this doesn’t stop a massive black man and his girlfriend shunting through the crowds, coming to rest in front of me and Josh. It’s funny, and I decide to make it known to Josh. I lean over to him, putting on my best “offended daily mail reader” voice and whisper to him how rude it was of that man. Unfortunately, what was intended as a whisper must be yelled out above the noise of the crowd, and instantly this massive, tough man is staring at me, and he has the eye of a killer. I hastily shout, in a higher pitch, that it was just a joke. Later Josh will inform me that if he’d had a knife, he’d have stabbed me himself. Ho Hum.
There’s something singularly peculiar about being in a city on New Year’s Day, when the fireworks have gone off and people are looking to make their way home. It’s a bit like a cross between a final fantasy game and the apocalypse. Let me explain- it’s like a final fantasy game because you have to go everywhere by foot, and you get occasional random encounters with drunken mobs. It’s like the apocalypse because there are absolute throngs of people taking to the street, people scream to be let off the crowded busses at their stop, and because IT’S LIKE BEING IN A FUCKING FINAL FANTASY GAME. At one point we actually have to run beneath a makeshift tunnel formed of scaffolding to avoid a massive fight moving slowly up the street. I half expected a timer to appear in the top right of my vision. Eventually, after crossing the barren wastes of Midga- I mean, after crossing the barren wastes of London, we make it to Liverpool Street. Why are we at Liverpool Street? To get “Beigels” of course. Stop looking at me like that, it’s how the shop sells bagels, and it’s a perfectly reasonable proposition to spend an hour and a half on packed busses that swerve desperately through the chaotic streets. I should be terrified, the closest I’ve come to this before is a sleepover in Slough. I’m not though… I’ve fallen off the cliff and I’m flying. Caught in the stairs up to the top deck, above me a man speaks Russian into a phone rapidly, and I delight in recognising the occasional word or phrase. Hooray for Pimsleur teach yourself Russian and all five lessons I could be bothered to take. I’m flying, but one stray glance at Stevie brings me crashing down. I’m reminded for a moment of reality, of what an idiot I am. When I’m alone I’m introverted and depressed. Can’t talk. I love being around these friends, in the time I have, but I act like such an idiot. It’s like everything all the thoughts I have when I’m alone, all the connections, they come tumbling out when there’s actually someone to talk to, and it doesn’t matter if it’s my friends, or total strangers I talk to. I get loud and obnoxious and over-bearing and self obsessed (honestly, I’m always self obsessed, but when there’s no one to talk to, it doesn’t show) and worst of all, selfish. It might not seem like a sin to talk to strangers, but when I do it, I embarrass Stevie. It’s not just thoughtless, it’s diabolical after she’s done so much for me. Sad as it may sound, she is my best friend, a rare star in an otherwise black and empty night. I need to do better, for her and everyone else foolish enough to associate with me.
All that’s forgotten when we get back and Josh makes himself a bowler hat out of bread. Midgets in pastry headwear are something everyone should experience at least once. Once per week if at all possible.
And that’s it! That is, kind and patient reader, my first “proper” blog post. It’s a far easier way for me to introduce myself by telling you a quaint little story about my New Year, than tell you who I am. My name doesn’t matter; no one really wants to hear my ambitions; my hobbies are not worth the hard disk space they’re written on. Only people who operate who live in the real world deserve to talk about that. I exist there, but I live on the internet. Live on the internet... Wouldn’t be a bad name for a blog.
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quixotic
