Interactive version of Oliver's Poetry Garret
London Memories
Friday, 28 July 2006, Blog 23
This is what I wrote in the London Garret late last Sunday night:
A very hard, sad and emotional weekend. My Beloved and I have been in the London Garret, trying to return it to a half-decent state (we are planning to sell it after 13 years). The young women who were living here until very recently have left it in a terrible state. I have never seen such an utterly filthy house. Nearly all the tenants who lived here seem to have abandoned much of their furniture and other worldly goods here, meaning the place is absolutely full of other people's clobber.
In the scorching heat it has been a hell of a weekend, trying to paint the kitchen, which was defaced into a grotesque turquoise and yellow colour scheme by a particularly obnoxious character who seemed to get the paint everywhere, despite having claimed to be an interior designer. Women who claim to be interior designers often hardly know one end of a paint brush from the other.
Much more than this, I am full of sadness and memories at having to leave this wonderful home.
I lived here with my family from 1993-1999, when we made the eccentric decision to move to a village called Cotesbach, in Leicestershire, where we rented a garret in Cotesbach Hall, living above old friends. However, I continued to live part-time at the London Garret, from 1999-2002, with three tenants, before moving out to move to the Lewes Garret.
With every lick of paint I have rolled or brushed onto the kitchen walls this weekend, some memory of those largely happy times seemed to return. In this house so much has happened to me.
Memories, memories, memories! Bringing my youngest daughter here from the Homerton Hospital where she born was one of the happiest days of my life. I also came back here when I took redundancy from my job as Television Editor of the Daily Star (and was almost mugged in a fight nearby on the way back from my leaving do, with £1,300 of expenses in my pocket. Only the intervention of kindly Kurds saved me from being stabbed).
While living here I started work for and returned after being fired by Dominic Lawson, from my news reporter job at the Sunday Telegraph. I also came back here shocked after 9/11, and a month later, having got married in Cotesbach in between, returned furious having been sacked by the shitty City PR agency I was working for (no great loss there).
I was often here during the five months of unemployment which followed.
At other times, staring of the great sash window of my bedroom, at the top of the house, into other people's gardens and homes, I freelanced for many publications particularly The Times, the Mail on Sunday, Time Magazine, and US News and World Report as London Correspondent, most memorably after Princess Diana's death in 1997.
I recall looking after my baby daughter while interviewing, over the telephone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, in this little room where I now sit typing this one last time. Mr Brown called me unexpectedly to talk about football, for a piece in The Times.
He had been on the way to chairing a meeting of European Finance Ministers in Brussels and the following day I read in the national press that some of those ministers had complained he was poorly prepared (possibly because he had been chatting to me!)
And then there was the time I requested an 'at home' interview with a famous actor. He said yes but insisted on coming to my home! This house.
But much, much important than all of this are the people whose presence still linger something in his 120-year-old house. The times I spent here with my Beloved and two wonderful daughters and our amazing cat Tonto (who had been with me since I was in my early twenties and died a couple of years ago).
And my friends who came here for various events when it was our family home: McJannet and Brian, DJ E, Chris, Mary, Stephanie, Belinda, Mike and Rachel, Julie, Christy, Jake to name but a few. Some I am not even in touch with any more.
Then there was the extraordinary period of friendship I had with the women who moved in after my family moved north in 1999. One of them, Ruth, came round today and yesterday. Of all the women who lived here since 1999, I would have to say she was the one I liked most.
Having heard from another former resident Emma, who was also great, Ruth, a professional cellist, learnt that we were going and came to pick up some stuff she had left when she moved out two or three years ago. It was strange seeing her again.
I liked her greatly as a friend, although, to be frank, I do not think she liked me quite as much. We would talk a fair bit and she proof-read my novel, which was largely written in the garret room that I writing this, but we were never exactly on the same wavelength.
Today I took a photograph of Ruth standing in the garden, just as had done when she had graduated six years ago (she said she did not remember me taking pictures then), and walked her to her car with some flower pots we have given her. I gave her a peck on the cheek and a hug and said goodbye, and could not help asking myself: 'Will I ever see you again, Ruthie?'
There is a sense that by losing the London Garret my Beloved and I will no longer have a stake in Stoke Newington or, indeed, in London. But what choice have we? We could not continue to run it after all the terrible problems we have had, and we are not coping well in the tiny Lewes Garret.
Just sitting here I am struck by memory after memory, of chauffeur-driven cars turning up to take me to guest spots on national television shows; of setting off to perform my stand-up set at countless comedy gigs including one unforgettable night at the Comedy Store; of the times I left for my own gig, Joe's Comedy Madhouse, which had remarkable runs at local pubs, particularly the Birdcage and Ryan's, and returning, far more often than not, triumphant after incredible nights of mad, mad entertainment.
I remember sitting here, while desperate and out of work, and swotting up about the Catholic Church, little knowing it would lead me into an extraordinary two-and-a-half years working for that great (and greatly flawed) institution, taking up to the heights of faith and depths of depression.
Life was so thoroughly rich here. It is hard to express what I feel now. Today my Beloved had two gentlemen come round to pick up our perfectly good redundant furniture to sell at a healthy profit in their shop. They entered and were abusive from the start, saying 'You only want to give us the crap', 'you should be paying us', and 'you are taking the mick' and the like.
We were enormously, unbelievably good-humoured, and they started to load their van with our valuable, free goods. They had made it clear that they would not pay us for anything.
So, my wife, understandably, changed her mind about them taking the most expensive item - a really good sofa bed. We would give it to Oxfam instead. However, the Pikey men had started to load it onto their van. I told them we needed it back because my Beloved had had a change of heart, and they went ape shit.
'She is a miser,' said one oik. He went on, very bravely in my opinion, to call her a scumbag and evil. He could have been a dead man.
The elongated streak of piss started telling me, seriously, that I should beat my wife: 'Give her a couple of slaps - that's what these women need.' 'A couple of slaps always does them good,' he added, in his Dublin brogue, putting the bog into Irish and doing that fine nation a grave disservice.
They were like Mr O'Reilly from Fawlty Towers without the charm.
Conversely, there are great people around London N16. I know I shall miss the London Garret more than I could ever miss the Lewes Garret or the Leamington Garret.
The house looks beautiful now, for the first time in several years. It was a killer getting it back to this state. In the heatwave, I painted like crazy on Saturday afternoon and evening to get the first coat of paint on the kitchen walls by 8pm.
I wanted to finish by then so I could trek over to the Notting Hill to see my friend Steven Alan Green on the occasion of his 50th birthday.
I managed to get there by 9.30pm and Steven was on great form. He lives in an interesting little flat on four levels, decorated with framed posters from classic films. I had had no idea what a movie buff he was. As the party got going, Steven was a marvellous host, introducing everyone every time a new person joined the party!
I talked to a very pleasant girl called Kate who works at the local video store and has also started doing a bit of stand-up. I also chatted to Huw Thomas , most probably the most decent man in comedy. For many years he used to be the compere at the Downstairs at the Kings Head, in Crouch End, north London, and always had a warm smile and kindly and encouraging word for even the least promising of acts (such as myself).
I said this to him and he said he had made a big effort because he had been appalled by the way many comedy promoters abused comedians.
I told him about the Oliver's Poetry website and he was full of enthusiasm for it and wished me well. When Huw finally goes, people who knew him will say to each other: 'He was a good man.'
I also bumped into the surreal comedienne Shelagh Martin who I had known a decade ago. Her conversation - about her boyfriend and maps - sounded suspiciously like a stand-up routine!
And, of course, I talked to Steven whom I like very much. One great thing about him is that, although he comes from Los Angeles, he takes a peculiarly British approach to his flops - celebrating them to the point of making a career out of it.
When he first played my club, Joe's Comedy Madhouse, in 1997, he had a corking act, full of pathos, with an introduction on the lines of: 'This is Steven Alan Green's last night in show business.'
The audience loved the idea that they were seeing the last of something, after a long and disastrous run. (He kindly played the leaving do for my last night working for the Catholic Church, in 1994, when the two worlds of comedy and Catholicism collided in an amusingly ugly manner).
Steven also infamously lost his shirt promoting Jerry Lewis at the London Palladium (Lewis did not go on stage). Steven wrote a comedy show about it, and is now exploring other ways of using this fantastic story (which I do not think I am allowed to write about). All this snatching victory from the jaws of defeat is marvellous!
I thoroughly enjoyed the party, had a few glasses of red wine and a beer and caught the last tube and last bus back to Hackney by the skin of my teeth. On the underground, I took up my usual position next to an inside carriage door, enjoying the breeze on my hair through the open window. A couple of pretty girls in the carriage on the other side kept tapping me on the back or touching my hat as a laugh. Every time I turned round, they would fall about laughing.
I joined in the fun, tapping thme on the shoulder while the track whistled beneath us. We shook hands through the partition and I took a couple of photos of them. They were nice girls living every moment.
Back at the London Garret, I entered in the darkness and was reminded of how beautiful the house had been at night when we lived there as a family.
My Beloved asked me to go down and check the door lock had snapped to - just like she always used to - and we slept again in the middle bedroom.
For years now I had thought of it as Ruth's room, pink and cluttered, but lying there last night, I suddenly remembered it as my room and recalled how I would lie awake at night beside my Beloved and stare up at the jets circling the metropolis high above and wish I was up there in the sky. Another tier of London memories.
That reminds me of setting off from Ecuador from the house and returning a lot of Indian goods which my wife and elder daughter put on in the kitchen. A funny image.
After my family left at around 8.30pm tonight, I carried on tidying up for around half an hour or so and then went out onto Stoke Newington High Street to clear my head (the smell of paint does not agree with me).
I walked to the White Hart, which is now a trendy DJ bar with good sounds. I remember going there often on Sunday nights in the late 1990s when an old Irish guy ran it and, much to his annoyance, the Irish country bands he booked would sometimes try to play Republican songs (he would have none of that).
I also dropped into Ryan's where downstairs many of the best of Madhouse gigs were held. I thought it was closed at first because all the blinds were so thick, but, inside, it was packed with very drunken young people, cigaretting their way to an early grave. My throat feels sore as a result.
Church Street has changed beyond measure since my Beloved and me moved to the area in 1990 just before our first daughter was born. It is so much posher and more gentrified. The same process is happening on the High Street now, although the large Turkish, Cypriot, Kurdish and Irish communities mean its character has not changed as much.
Looking out of the window I have portholes to so many lives here. I used to do this on a nightly basis while waiting for my car to arrive to whisk me to my thankless overnight shift at CNN TV. So many lives, so much happiness (and unhappiness).
I glanced out a few minutes ago and saw a couple making love in one window. I went back to typing and now I glance again their light is out.
In other windows, people are brushing their teeth or standing staring into the night, up at the stars. Perhaps, like me, they are reflecting on their lives here. What it all meant. I have started a poem about leaving this lovely place. Apart one about the Madhouse, I think it will be my first London poem.
It is very, very late now and I must log off this laptop, leave this garret window and go downstairs to sleep on the sofa bed. (Sofa, so good!) I will not sleep well, I know.
Paint gives me nightmares and the whole experience of being here again, as it was when we first lived between these wise old walls, is almost too sad for me to take.
These are my London Memories - a great chunk of my life, and other people's lives in Stoke Newington. Everyone has their own memories of a place, only some of them overlapping.
It is right to move on but the good times here I could not and shall not forget. Black Out
Flashback to Wednesday, 10 May 2006
5.45pm. Lewes Garret, the clock bathed in bright sunlight. Hot outside.
I cannot fully express how screwed I feel. I blacked out last night drinking with my photographer friend and his charming girlfriend. I don't think anyway bad happened - they were still on talking terms with me this morning. However, I simply do not know. There is a bad gap in my memory.
We had a couple of beers at her house and then they took me to the local pub in Meriden where three more pints were quickly consumed. We returned for a curry and a bottle of red wine. Then she produced a bottle of brandy which the two of us caned. Boy, was I smashed!
No amount of pills could make that hangover go away. It was blue murder! Why do I do it? My back is as painful as its ever been. I have got to get my head down for an hour or so to have any chance of recovery.
7.15pm. Fading sun on Big Ken. Beautiful but a lot cooler. Lying down for an hour has done me a lot of good. My back still aches like effery but the headache is gone.
I finished The Story of O - I had forgotten how deeply perverted a tale it is. Superbly written profoundly kinky. Pauline Reage, or whoever really wrote it, must have a warped mind to come up with all that stuff.
I have found the last set of painkillers for the back which is very bent at the moment. It seems to slant to the right and is hard as a board.
I got incredibly drunk last night just to escape the pain. For a few happy hours I did not even think of my wretched back. Unfortunately it has made it worse.
My friend's girlfriend struck me as a lovely person. They have a strange history which was explained to me. He went out with her when she left her first husband many years ago. Now she is doing it again after her second marriage has collapsed.
Her relationship with the current spouse is bitter. She said he came back from a work trip abroad and got absolutely drunk on the plane. A friend, who picked him up from the airport, telephoned her with this wondrous news.
So she said, 'Put him into a Travelodge to sober him up and he can come back in the morning.' Unfortunately the friend took him instead to a mutual female friend's house in Leicester. The pal was away, but that night, according to her, her husband had sex with his best friend's wife.
'How did you know?' I asked.
'I could just tell by the way he skipped up the steps looking so happy,' she said.
This I found rather shocking. Unfortunately, rather than not doing it again and simply denying it (the best strategy that the husband could have taken because it would have been hard for the wife to have verified her suspicions, and, eventually, she would almost certainly have given him the benefit of the doubt and forgiven him), she says her husband continued to visit Leicester and shag his mate's wife until his mate caught them at it!
A violent brawl resulted, and the mate telephoned her to say: 'Did you realise your husband is having sex with my wife.'
Shortly afterwards, she said her husband telephoned.
'He was all sweetie-pie with me,' she said, 'so we had a general chat and then I slipped into the conversation, "by the way your best friend has left a message saying he wants to meet me to talk about you shagging his wife".
The husband apparently responded: 'I wish I could have told you myself.'
Amazingly, after living with her husband for a couple of months, the mate's wife kicked him out and begged forgiveness from her husband. Now they are reconciled. But my friend's girlfriend did not take back her husband. My friend showed me a beautiful 50-year-old Leica he had bought in India. It was a bit like my 1961 Kodak but with split screen focusing and an amazing lens. I took some photos with it. The shutter release felt beautiful.
The brandy was the big mistake. If we ever meet, do me a favour and don't offer me spirits. They are a killer. I will end up like Peter Cook or my old Daily Star colleague Mike Housego - with my organs pickled.
We drank about a bottle of brandy. I blacked out and cannot remember what was discussed or happened, what time I went to bed in the spare room. That's horrible. I hate memory loss because I have a great memory and it really disturbs me.
My friend's girlfriend had a very warm personality - a Coventrian with a heart of gold. I think her husband is stupid to have lost her.
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