enlivened and hopeful for a summer of love and laughter and finally fulfilled dreams. That first week after the clocks change is the most magical week of the year.
I was working a nothing job that day, which paid only average money. A reality-TV star was filming his exercise video. We were in a studio located off a newly sanitised Carnaby Street. It’s all flagship sports stores now, surf brands and trendy trainers. More thought goes into the image on the front of the plastic bags than it does to war or peace or revolution or anarchy or any of those things, that don’t seem relevant any more to girls who like to shop and boys who like to watch football. Apathy and the end of conscription go hand in hand, at least that’s what my grandfather used to say. The only people that care are extremists. Protesting at anything these days seems at best disruptive, at worst showing off. Just shop instead. I don’t even protest at the interest rates on my store cards. Walk through central London on a Saturday waving a placard with a group of gypsies with dogs on bits of string? For what? The spirit of Carnaby, of fashion or punk or change, has become nothing more than a Daily Mail headline, a national ticking-off at the odd drug habit. Nothing is persuasive enough to sweep us up, up and away any more. The only counter-culture I’m interested in is the Benefit counter in Selfridges. That’s just the way it is. Some things change. Unless I want to picket Chanel to use fatter, shorter models because this impossibly young andimpossibly skinny ideal is starting to hurt me, at thirty-one and one hundred and forty pounds. But then I just look unattractive because I can’t keep up, because I’m not pretty enough or skinny enough any more. Better to just take a little longer in front of the mirror, spend a little more on powder and paint, and pray that nobody notices.
I had been propositioned three times already that day by the reality star, but each time he failed to realise that he had already met me, and only half an hour earlier had asked me if I’d like to do a line of coke and give him a quick hand-job in the ladies’ toilets. I politely declined both. He was a charmless farmer from Devon called Roger, devoid of all charisma, but who had been the least offensive of the fools shut away in a house for the winter. Roger won seventy grand and a couple of months’ worth of notoriety, but the car-crash kind. He was loved and hated simultaneously by the same people. His aftershave was so strong, he actually smelt like desperation.
So it had been a depressing day. When we finished at about seven thirty the sun was not long down, and the dark was still light. Somebody suggested noodles so we all ploughed down to Busaba Eathai on Wardour, and crowded around a table. Some of the guys were high already, but I was off everything but the booze, trying to clear up my act and my head. Ben had started leaving me disapproving notes about the little clingfilm bags he was finding in my jeans when he did the washing, and although the coke was rarely mine – I just always seemed to end up with the bag because I’ve never been a snorter, just a dabber on my gums, and you only need the bag for that – I didn’t want another argument. I didn’t want another spotlight thrown on the distance between us, and the different directions we were moving in.
We made our way through five or six or ten bottles of South African wine – the cheap good stuff. We crammednoodles into our mouths and felt early spring warmth in the chilled night air. I started to think about wearing open-toed shoes. I sat with the assistant producer, a tiny girl with dark hair and eyes who was up for anything as long as it involved laughter, and the public schoolboy A&R, obviously trying too hard to be ‘street’ in oversized jeans and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, but fun nonetheless. He referred to everything and everybody as adding value or not adding value. Thankfully I was
I was working a nothing job that day, which paid only average money. A reality-TV star was filming his exercise video. We were in a studio located off a newly sanitised Carnaby Street. It’s all flagship sports stores now, surf brands and trendy trainers. More thought goes into the image on the front of the plastic bags than it does to war or peace or revolution or anarchy or any of those things, that don’t seem relevant any more to girls who like to shop and boys who like to watch football. Apathy and the end of conscription go hand in hand, at least that’s what my grandfather used to say. The only people that care are extremists. Protesting at anything these days seems at best disruptive, at worst showing off. Just shop instead. I don’t even protest at the interest rates on my store cards. Walk through central London on a Saturday waving a placard with a group of gypsies with dogs on bits of string? For what? The spirit of Carnaby, of fashion or punk or change, has become nothing more than a Daily Mail headline, a national ticking-off at the odd drug habit. Nothing is persuasive enough to sweep us up, up and away any more. The only counter-culture I’m interested in is the Benefit counter in Selfridges. That’s just the way it is. Some things change. Unless I want to picket Chanel to use fatter, shorter models because this impossibly young andimpossibly skinny ideal is starting to hurt me, at thirty-one and one hundred and forty pounds. But then I just look unattractive because I can’t keep up, because I’m not pretty enough or skinny enough any more. Better to just take a little longer in front of the mirror, spend a little more on powder and paint, and pray that nobody notices.
I had been propositioned three times already that day by the reality star, but each time he failed to realise that he had already met me, and only half an hour earlier had asked me if I’d like to do a line of coke and give him a quick hand-job in the ladies’ toilets. I politely declined both. He was a charmless farmer from Devon called Roger, devoid of all charisma, but who had been the least offensive of the fools shut away in a house for the winter. Roger won seventy grand and a couple of months’ worth of notoriety, but the car-crash kind. He was loved and hated simultaneously by the same people. His aftershave was so strong, he actually smelt like desperation.
So it had been a depressing day. When we finished at about seven thirty the sun was not long down, and the dark was still light. Somebody suggested noodles so we all ploughed down to Busaba Eathai on Wardour, and crowded around a table. Some of the guys were high already, but I was off everything but the booze, trying to clear up my act and my head. Ben had started leaving me disapproving notes about the little clingfilm bags he was finding in my jeans when he did the washing, and although the coke was rarely mine – I just always seemed to end up with the bag because I’ve never been a snorter, just a dabber on my gums, and you only need the bag for that – I didn’t want another argument. I didn’t want another spotlight thrown on the distance between us, and the different directions we were moving in.
We made our way through five or six or ten bottles of South African wine – the cheap good stuff. We crammednoodles into our mouths and felt early spring warmth in the chilled night air. I started to think about wearing open-toed shoes. I sat with the assistant producer, a tiny girl with dark hair and eyes who was up for anything as long as it involved laughter, and the public schoolboy A&R, obviously trying too hard to be ‘street’ in oversized jeans and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, but fun nonetheless. He referred to everything and everybody as adding value or not adding value. Thankfully I was
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