Chapter 8

Friday 13th February

I have a rare day off from work. I spend an hour or two in bed hiding under the duvet, afraid of the Friday 13th curse striking me down. Then bad news: my favourite band Queens of the Stone Age (pictured left) are splitting up. I wait by the telephone to console Hugh Johnson who must be as devastated as I, but the phone never rings. I spend the remainder of the day seeking solace by regrouting the kitchen floor.

Saturday 14th February

Valentine's Day. Tomoko gives me her card: a heart-shaped design cut out of a calender depicting shoal of fish. I give her mine, purchased from Safeways yesterday after doing the shopping. Kylie's has not arrived. It must of got lost in the post again (probably Parcelforce were in charge of delivery.)
In the evening I cook a romantic meal for two: beef bourgignon with a bottle of Calon-Ségur.

Sunday 15th February

Tomoko's friends come from dinner, both peripatetic travellers loosely based in Thailand, she from Osaka and he from Norwich, not that those cities have much in common. They lead an alternative lifestyle, migrating from one idyllic retreat to another, discovering new spiritualities and massage techniques along the way. It is something I considered after graduating: spending twelve months in an alternative universe raving on a beach, but somehow I ended up teaching English in the suburbs of Tokyo instead. I am a bit perturbed when one of my Norfolk-born guest suddenly becomes fixated by my door, admiring its grain and workmanship. To me the door is a £9.99 job from B&Q, but I allow him to caress the fixture whilst making a mental note not to spend too long in Thailand, should my travels take me afar.

Monday 16th February

Early morning call from Michael Broadbent MW. I always feel slightly nervous when I speak to him. He reminds me of my stentorian grammar school headmaster, a congenial chap unless you got the wrong side of him, upon which a bullet of chalk would be expelled on your direction. Fortunately, thus far I have not upset the doyen of fine wine, except when I mispelled "Barbaresco" in a fax and I duly received punctual admonishment for MB. I was surprised he had not graded the fax and sent me to detention in Saint James' Street.

Tuesday 17th February

Great Britain. A country that gave the world Shakespeare, Newton, Dickens, Farraday, Churchill and Lennon. What do we get from our Antopodean cousins?
Peter André re-releasing "Mysterious Girl".

In the evening I meet the girls for a belated birthday meal at the wonderful Deca restaurant, home of the best set meal in London. Erika is late and time is ticking away. We have to order by 7pm. Vik makes an emergency phone-call, only to find that Erika is trapped inside Liberty's department store by an army of fluffy cushions and arrives ten minutes later laden with pink silk cushions. I would love to tell you that we discussed the current political situation in Iraq or whether the visa restrictions curtailing the influx of Eastern European immigrants is detrimental to the economy. Alas, the conversation was rooted in Reality TV and whether Peter André was the best contestant in "I'm A Celebrity..." We depart without learning one iota of useful information that could enrich our lives. In fact, considering that our brain cells have already passed the point of rejuvenation and are declining inexorably towards geriatric insania, we depart Deca less intelligent then when we went in.

Wednesday 18th February

Trying not to succumb to Channel 5's "Back to Reality", a kind of regurgitated reality TV show featuring the most odious Z-list celebrities known to man. No, I will not resort to watching such banality, life offers more productive pastimes e.g. philanthropy.

Thursday 19th February

Watch "Back to Reality" on Channel 5. It's brilliant.

Friday 20th February

Tonight is bitterly cold. I think I am suffering S.A.D. In the evening Tomoko and I go to the Institute of Civil Enginneers or "ICE" to give it its "street" name, for another splendid wine-tasting through CECWINE. The twerp next to Tomoko manages to spill most of his glass of Chateau Margaux onto the carpet, which he vainly tries to hide by rubbing it deeper into the tweed. Still, if I was carpet, I would rather have a First Growth spilt on me than Blossom Hill.

Saturday 21st February

It is my belated birthday drink with London friends and tonight we rendezvous in Brixton for a pizza and copious amounts of cheap, trashy wine. No tasting notes tonight my friend. Despite Brixton's gentrification in recent years, the walk down Coldharbour Lane can still induces a sense of fear similar to that experienced by American GI's in Vietnam.
But I would rather live in Brixton than Royal Tunbridge Wells.
I drove there a couple of summers ago expecting an idyllic country hamlet full of thatched cottages and quaint public houses serving Sunday roasts using locally produced ingredients. I wanted to impress my new girlfriend (Tomoko) with my appreciation of the England's rural heritage. Instead there was a Safeways, an indenti-kit shopping centre and streets with the atmosphere of a morgue. Even the "Pantiles", supposed home of unique rural boutiques and colonnaded antique shops was about as interesting as an empty car-park. After an hour searching for something, anything vaguely stimulating, we departed vowing never to return.

Right where was I? Oh yes, pizza. Though this time I am adventurous and opt for the over-cooked pork with enigmatic vegetable topping. By the time we leave, both Tomoko and I were beginning to feel the effects of too much house red and we continue drinking at home. I foolishly open a bottle of Baileys in a futile attempt to finish the bottle. I fail and fall asleep on the sofa.

Sunday 22nd February

Wake up with a large headache. During the day I realise that the excess of alcohol has damaged my immune system and an ominous sore-throat means a nasty cold is due. I vegetate on the futon waiting my demise, which arrives promptly at 4.30pm.
I am now officially ill. Phone parents to extract sympathy.

Monday 23rd February

Definitely ill, though I foolishly go to the work since I am no scrimshank. I become awash with guilt when I telephone the office to express my sincere regret for being unable to attend work (cue cough.) The trouble is that remaining in bed all day is a tedious experience even if I am at death's door. Staying under the duvet makes me feel as if I am incubating all the germs around me. I prefer to suffer at work and pretend that all I have is a minor cold.

But my head is producing and incredible amount of glutinous mucus (sorry to go into details, it is what us hypochondriacs do.) I wish I could manufacture money as abundantly as my cold can produce snot. Where does all this viscous liquid come from? Is there a special organ that whirrs into motion once the body is infected with bacteria, a gland whose raison d'etre is to produce copious amounts of snot? If so, what is the point? When God designed the human metabolism, did our sapient Holiness invent snot as an amusing whim? How the hell am I going to taste ten vintages of Gruaud-Larose tomorrow evening? He did not consider the dire consequences of that did he?

Tuesday 24th February

God must have read my diatribe yesterday and my sinuses have cleared sufficiently for the Gruaud tasting tonight.

But let God send telecom provider "NTL" to eternal damnation! NTL generously decide to debit my account two days prematurely and send me overdrawn (and I thought those days finished after you graduate...how naive was I?) I receive a "friendly" call from the bank to notify me of my indiscretion and I detect a smug tone in his voice. I make a mental note to close down the account as soon as I win the Lottery.

Wedneday 25th February

"Still Ill" as Morrissey would say. My maladies are compounded by the ineptitude of the London Transport system: train cancelled (probably could not find the keys), Victorian Tube station closed (too many commuters...what do they expect at 8.30 in the morning?) and the buses in gridlock. It is completely shit.

When I lived in Tokyo I used to walk down to the platform at Tamachi station and survey the multitude of parallel tracks, probably twenty or so, the furthest reserved for the bullet trains and the closer ones for local services. The trains were so punctual that they would sequentially traverse my view with pin-point accuracy every morning: i.e. bullet train from the left, then an orange train enter from the right, two local services from the left travelling side-by-side etc. The efficiency was breathtaking to behold, the Tokyo train network operating like a giant Hornby train set. I kept expecting the Flying Scotsman to hurtle past in a flurry of steam at any moment. The only assured fact with the London system is that your train will always be grafittied and late. Thanks to the cogs falling off the transport network I am forced to traipse into work through sub-zero temperatures.

By the time I sit at my desk, the sonorous voice of reason tells me to go home and capitulate around noon. After an hour of sniffling at home I switch on the TCM channel to watch an awesome Bette Davis act everyone offscreen in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. I particularly admire Errol Flynn for occasionally forgetting he is supposed to be the fated Earl of Essex and lapsing into an American accent.

Thursday 26th February

Sick day. Feeling crap. I cannot even arise from bed to watch "Trisha". Yes, it is that serious. I have a double dose of flu and ennui. I decide to watch the Godfather Part I on DVD to take my mind off my cold. It works and for three hours I am watching perhaps the greatest ensemble performance in cinematic history. The film ends with Diane Keaton having the door shut in her face, just in time for me to flick over to see if anything has happened in Neighbours since I stopped watching in 1992. No, Lou and Harold are still there, the "Marlon" and "Al" of Ramsey Street.

Friday 27th February

Time for some literature and at lunchtime I purchase: David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas". I have two favourite authors, the aforementioned Mitchell and Haruki Murakami, two authors whose books audaciously scythe through history, philosophy and the evolution of mankind; fusing existentialism with the minutiae of everyday life joining the dots between disparate points in time and place and probing the causality of life (a bit like this diary). Once you finish either one of their epic narratives, you feel that they have elucidated upon ideas too grand to contemplate in day-to-day life, unlike this diary, which simply clarifies which deals are on at Burgerking and which reality TV show I am addicted to.

In the evening I hold a tasting to celebrate the completion of the chateaux profiles on the wine-journal. Ten wines acquired cheaply during the post-Xmas bin-end sales ranging from a Lynch Bages 1966 to Gruaud-Larose 1994. There is a lot more work involved in these tastings than appears on the surface: checking all the bottles, making sure nobody absconds at the last moment leaving you at a financial loss and so on. But the evening is a great success, despite our embarrassing failure to identify more than two or three wines off the shortlist, which leads to accusations of my mixing up the bottles. The conclusion is that when it comes to blind-tasting we know bugger all.

Saturday 28th February

'Tis the joyous jubilation of Jude's birthday, an annual bacchanal on the dipsomaniac calendar. She is one of my oldest friends, a relationship cemented when she heroically trekked like Scott of the Antartic through blizzard conditions from base camp in Loughborough to my student hovel in Coventry in order to join me for my 20th birthday. She was the only person to risk her life making the hazardous journey across the Midlands and I cordially expressed my gratitude by chucking a Birdseye "Crispy Bake" under the grill, since any viande that met the criteria of being both golden and crispy represented the apotheosis of my culinary skills.

The night is divided into three acts: eating, singing and dancing. The first kicks off at "Bertorelli's" in Soho, an Italian restaurant with a cocktail bar conveniently parked upstairs. It is immediately apparent that tonight I will be cast adrift in a sea of oestrogen since the ratio of women to men is 6:1 and that the consumption rate of Pinot Grigio will support the Italian wine industry until 2006. Whether these two facts are connected is uncertain. I am seated next to the solitary other male named Graham, an fiery Scot who, like many of my tartan friends, speaks with machine-gun articulation, omitting vowels as if he is reading out a text message. I encourage him to accelerate his speech so that it will surpass the speed of light, ergo time will begin to slow down and I will comprehend exactly what he is talking about. The final bottle of wine is ordered approximately seven minutes before karaoke is due to commence, though we succeed in polishing that off with scarcely a blink of an eye.

The karaoke box lies next door in a labyrinth at the rear end of a Japanese noodle bar. We order fermented grape juice so appalling that urinating in it would improve its flavour, a hypothesis untested to the best of my knowledge. Japanese karaoke and the bastardised version adopted by Western civilisation are very different animals. In Japan you can immerse yourself in the dulcet tones of a melancholy Karen Carpenter ballad or a plaintive "Yesterday" that would bring a tear to Macca's eye. The Western version involves getting tanked up on cheap booze and belting out "Wake Me Up, Before You Go-go" or in tonight's case, "Guns 'n Roses". Jude's unique take on "Paradise City" redefines music. Imagine Axl Rose with his testicles clamped in an industrial vice. Mankind was spared when Jude's career trajectory veered towards her marketing rather than heavy metal. Leave that to "Vixen". It is riotous fun and paves the way for the final Act set on the dance floor.

We cross Frith Street to a dingy threadbare subterranean dive that is only three quid to get in, so we know what to expect: a dance floor the size of a snooker table, beer soaked furnishings, a whiff of cheap detergent in the air and lavatories so vile that even bacteria goes elsewhere for its ablutions. It is perfect. We storm into the club alongside a crack troop caterwauling northerners on their hen party celebrations, an army of hauternecks and kinky boots on a mission to party. United by hedonism and utilizing our collective experience of living a large percentage of our lives making daft shapes on the the dancefloor, we get booties moving and hips a-swingin'.

The 80's classics follow a predictable pattern: Tainted Love (tick), Lovecats (tick), Holiday (tick.) As a DJ, you learn the Pavlovian response to particular songs and massage the crowd into a climax. Yes, it is like foreplay and it often has an equally messy ending. I walk over to the booth to make a request and am aghast, ashamed and enraged to discover no Technics 1210s. This imposter simply inserts CD's and presses, "play". Sacrilege. Where is the art in that? I spent hours mastering the scratch-mix of Prince's "Kiss" into the "Murder Mix" of Dead Or Alive's "You Spin Me Round". This charlatan is simply playing choice cuts of greatest hits compilations. I give him the evil eye that only a DJ could recognise but he fails to register my disdain.

Anyway, where was I?
Oh yes...everyone is as pissed as a newt drowning his sorrows after a failed long-term relationship and the revelry snowballs into the wee hours. As a taken man, I am a voyeur rather than a participant to the animalistic rituals of boy chasing girl and vice versa. One lad with unfashionably elongated sideburns pinned to a black wig of hair is the achetypal lecherous twat, flittering from one drunk lass to the next, seeking easy prey and another notch on the bedpost. Like a moth round a candle he spends hours gyrating his loins in the forlorn hope that a member of the opposite sex might respond in similar libidinous fashion. The whirling casanova whispers into their ears that he is Greek/Italian/Spanish, which means that he probably from Luton.

Who would be so foolish as to succumb to his charms?

One of our party is snogging the lothario from Luton. A fleeting, unintended kiss later and she turns round aghast, mouthing "what the hell am I doing?" She seeks refuge in the ladies whilst the indefatigable Mr. Loverman asks where the hell she has disappeared to?
I bite my lip so as not to answer that she is committing suicide in the Third World loos. He starts getting tetchy and when my friend returns, the gyrating loin springs back to life as if it has a mind of its own.
There is only one course of action. She finds someone else to snog.
It all becomes quite confusing, every time I turn round one of my female friends is chatting to a different guy and I am losing trek of who is with whom. Time to leave and I escort Jude from the club to put her safely in a taxi, whilst I find the night bus home to deepest South London.