Wed
10-Sep-2003

brick lane festival

Matt and I had a really nice day at Brick Lane festival today, having got up rather late after our respective nights out pilling and tripping. We were strolling up Brick Lane through the merry throngs sampling kormas and buying bubble guns and saris, and were approaching 93 Feet East and that bar on the left with the big courtyard. We could hear as we were approching that they were doing Latin American style music in the courtyard, as they were last year, and Matt joked that perhaps we would see the mushroom people there again, like last year. We both had a funny feeling about this though, and amazingly, when we rounded the corner of the courtyard, there they were again, just by the stage, grinding away in their improbable seventies shirts and big sunglasses and bizarre, yet middle aged, haircuts. The woman with the baseball cap didn't seem to be there this time, but the fairly fat man who dances very slowly was.

Even stranger, there was a new addition to the strange gathering, a very short, very dark-skinned, balding Asian woman, dressed in a long black robe and stood with her head cocked to one side staring strangely at the crowds on the street and smiling enigmatically. She looked EXACTLY like Yoda. I can't begin to explain how Yoda-like she was. Marvellous.

After we'd gone up and down Brick Lane, pausing to check out some bhangra at Allen Gardens, we had a delicious lamb dhansak and a nutty chicken thing. And naan bread. It was so lovely!

fabrizio's farewell dinner

Matt and I went round to have a last dinner with Fabrizio, Francesco and Maximo at Francesco's new flat in Finsbury Park last night. It was really nice. Francesco made huge amounts of lovely food, and we drank beer and wine, and then smoked gear, and they took some Es, and people started dancing to tacky music, stories were told of when someone waxed someone else's crack, and so on... Great fun! I probably only appreciated the three of them properly last night, on the eve of never seeing them again. Especially Francesco. I think it's different as he becomes less unfriendly and vicious when you sit down with him for a good period of time, but I did realise that to some extent I didn't like him before because of his incredible campness. Which is bad. I like his campness now. I think it's fabulous! And Fabrizio and Maximo are so cool about it, as one should be, certainly not allowing it to colour their opinion of him anyway. Sad to see their fellowship split up at last, though I'm sure Fabrizio will return to London from time to time. And perhaps we'll visit him too!