Mon
22-Mar-2004

green tea

After a delicious Polish comfort food meal of Ema's - a thin soup, followed by chicken and potatoes with this mashed vegetable, apple and horseradish sauce - Matt made us some green tea. It was so good. Green tea always reminds me, in a Dharma Bums kind of way, of the power of simple drinks and simple sensations. I've just about reached utter saturation with food and alcohol at the moment. I can feel a fast coming on!

horticulture

Enjoying the sunny weather yesterday, Matt and I walked to the posh garden centre on Warwick Avenue in Little Venice to buy oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, mint, and four little primrose plants. These have been planted in our little strip of dirt in our yard and hopefully the god of urban gardening will bestow his blessings upon them...

engagement in the white hart

On Saturday, I got back from Devon, shaved Matt's hair with the trimmers so he's got a round little head now, and then we both headed out to the White Hart on Drury Lane, where Ceri and Sam were celebrating their engagement. It was a bit of a Zim event, with Charles, Steve and Graham there, though we were vastly outnumbered by loads of the couple's friends from their universities.

Steve and I had a mustard fight, and he got mustard all over my jeans, the bitch. Bright yellow it was. Though I then wiped lots of it on this random girl's beautiful white fur coat. I don't think she was too pleased about that. Luckily I was too drunk at the time to feel guilty.

On the way home, I had the fabulous idea of having a bite to eat, so Matt and I popped into China Town for a very late night meal. We finished around one in the morning, and realised that we didn't have enough to pay, nor cards with which to withdraw money. Doomed! Washing dishes! Triad won ton human soup!

We phoned up Michal, who at that moment was with Ema about to leap on a bus home from Oxford Circus. They took pity on us, and travelled across Soho to give us £10. Having paid off our good natured Chinese hosts, we fled home to drink tea and collapse in bed.

un chant d’amour

Matt made two lovely lychee cocktails when he came home, with little lychees on sticks, and we watched Un Chant d'Amour, by Jean Genet, a short film made in 1950 about lots of bored soldiers lying around in the cells of a military jail, dreaming of gay frolics with each other in the grass and flowers of home.

It is very carnal and raw, and feels like it is reacting to society, rather than to lots of gay interest groups, so unlike 'gay' films now it was able to be straightforward in depicting homosexual desire. It is very sweaty and dirty, quite unlike the happy robotic smooth bleached sex of modern films. There's lots of soldiers frustratedly rubbing themselves up the concrete walls, masturbating and dancing, while a guard watches them through peepholes, simultaneously aroused and disturbed by their sexual behaviour.

hotel barcelona

Me and Alex mostly slept on the train on the way to Devon and arrived at Taunton a bit shellshocked by it all, but we perked up by the time we were at Tiverton. Rachel picked us up from the station and we headed back to the house. There was Alice - shorn of her hair and looking very silly! It all felted up after too many baths without combing or using dog shampoo, or something like that. At any rate, it all had to come off. She looks more like a terrier now, than a ball of cute fur, and her head looks more bat-like, and you can see her teeth and mouth more easily. She's still totally psycho though, so you can tell it's Alice.

Anyway, we said hello to Chas, lay around chatting for a bit, then Alex opened some presents and we ate a Winnie the Pooh birthday cake. Later on, Josh got back from school, and we all headed off to Exeter for dinner at the marvellous Hotel Barcelona.

Hotel Barcelona was pretty cool. From the outside it's a large, converted, former Victorian eye hospital in nice red Devon stone. Inside it is all extremely funky, with 1950s decor, lots of brown, cool lights, old posters, luxuriant sofas, dark wood, and an atmospheric club and cocktail bar. The restaurant, Café Paradiso, goes for the Mediterranean-style wood-burned oven fare. We ate pizzas, soups and heavy chocolate puddings. It was marvellous!

this is the end

Thursday night saw the beginning of Alex's birthday with some jolly clubbing fun at The End. A group of us gathered in De Hems on Macclesfield Street for some Dutch beer first, including Andy and Jo, Tom P, Kate and Vangelis, of all people, who's in London for a week before heading back to Greece. After this Abbie, Dan M, Alex, Matt and I headed over to the club, fortified by a dash of speed in our last beers, to meet with Michal, Kornelia, Dan N and Ema outside, and then Jamie and Mark (Piglet) inside. The club was great fun, as it is when there're lots of you gathered there. The night was rather drug-fuelled, with amusing lines of k in bathroom antics and much dancing.

We got back to the house around half four, and carried on with the drinks, drugs and foolish chatter. Some Ally McBeal was watched, as well as some Bill Hicks, and various people gradually passed out, or at least lay down. Abbie, Michal and both the Dans kept on going like Bats out of Hell, notching up an impressive set of red wine stained lips. Matt got up after an hour's dozing around eight to go to work, while Alex and I got a couple more hours 'sleep' before rising.

Abbie, Michal, Dan M, Alex and I spent a couple of hours in the pub at Marylebone Station, before Alex and I headed off to Devon for more marvellous birthday fun.