shhh…

“…really v:b, it was one of the best purchases I made that year and gave me the opportunity for contemplation and the space for me to decide how I can move forward in my life. Do it, you will not regret it.”

Okay…

The friend to who I can attribute the above quote may or may not have recall of that very small part of the much bigger and far more weighty conversation we had recently. And while my love & gratitude to & for you, friend, are both immense, today I took a day off from feeling that way.

Dick Dastardly
The original idea however, sounded good. Part of my road-to-recovery-from-a-crap-self-inflicted-personal-situation plan was, according to said friend, for me to make some big changes in my life and in this particular case, with a view to doing ‘more of what I wanted to do’. I repeat the last part of that sentence often to myself and try not to fall over and I’ve yet to succeed, to the point where if I were to carry out a poll among people who have known me for, let’s say, 10 or more days, where the only question was: “in order to fulfil his ‘road-to-recovery, etc’ plan, does v:b need to do more of what he wants to do?”, I absolutely guarantee that even the despots, living, dead or dying, from central America to North Korea, via some arse-about convoluted route through Africa, the Middle East, Islington & Hackney Norths, whatever part of the south-west of England the Rees-Moggs own, and all ballot-rigging points in-between could not guarantee the 100% negative result my poll would offer. Even the wispy-haired/borderline-baldy Professor Pat Pending-like chap on the BBC Election night programmes couldn’t get the prediction wrong, and he wouldn’t need a margin-for-error percentage option. To Hell with them all, I shall do ‘more of what I want to do’. You’re welcome.

So, acting on the suggestion my friend erm, suggested, I set out to find a place where one could spend a few hours away from anything you wanted to be away from, where no one knows your name, in order to find that opportunity for contemplation and the space (for me) to decide how I can move forward, next chapters, new me, move on, etc and the answer: a low-cost, members-only room option in a museum or gallery. Not much of a wow-factor going on there but one step at a time is wow-enough for those of us who have tried to play fast and loose with Life’s scrotum, and lost.

No children were harmed etc…
Diligent person I am, when I can be arsed, I researched the various options afforded (literally) to me. The obvious numero uno location in terms of view given from the ‘privacy’ of its members room was the Tate Modern on Bankside. 5 (4, Yanks) floors (stories, Yanks) above the Thames, and with a view-and-a-half across the river to St Paul’s and the City. All good so far. However, what I didn’t realise is that the room also happens to be double-up as a crèche, apparently, as does the (fabulous, it has to be said) terrace. Now if the parent & toddlers were queuing on the terrace to collectively jump off and see how they landed from 5 (4, Ys) floors (stories, Ys) then I’m sure I could live with the crowds, and therefore the cost would equate to value-for-money. Unfortunately, there was no jumping, no Derek & Clive moment. One for the teenagers there.

So, Tate Modern ruled out on the lack of fun factor. Other considerations and subsequent reasons not to join included The Southbank Centre (I then remembered an ex from 20 years ago using the place and I’m simply not taking that risk); The V&A (I’m not yet at death’s door); The Barbican (I seem to remember ‘asbestos’ being an issue at some point in the past, plus the 3 residential towers still offer a proper ‘9/11’ opportunity that has passed London by and I don’t want one of those things falling on my head, or the asbestos dandruff for that matter, not when I’m trying to sort that very same head out, tyvm). To cut a long and quite frankly I admit, dull, story as short as it can be, I end up making my choice based on proximity to tube station, and price: 2 minutes from my most-often used London terminus and a 50% discount for lying that other venues had offered a non-existent discount. For all my many failings I own (and that’s about all I do own), the one thing I don’t do (often) is lie. Manipulate the truth: maybe. Bury my head in the sand: undoubtably. Live my life in denial: all the time. But lie? Did I feel bad? Well yes, I did actually. Until today (I will get there at some point…).

A thousand Apples a day keep…
My ‘Club’, as I have decided to style the place as, is a famous & fabulous building, light & airy, with high atriums & towers, lots of intelligently-thought open space, restaurants & bars, numerous reading rooms & exhibition halls and, regrettably, thousands (really) of Hedgemonkey-esque students strewn over the floors like earthquake victims yet to be given famine relief and sheets-for-temporary-tents (OK, some are sitting on chairs at tables). And almost to a self-entitled snowflake, blame anyone but themself, offended by anything, non-binary or otherwise identity, everyone, almost without exception, has a MacBook of some design. Including me, natch. I also notice that other than students, the main genre of person is albeit in far, far fewer number than our future is, obviously, those of our past. Men in tweed jackets, ladies in Aran knitwear. Ex-professors, tutors and their knocked-up dinner ladies (maybe). And these people are cold. It’s mid 20s in new money and these poor souls are doing their best Emperor-penguins-in-a-huddle-during-an-Antarctic-winter-snow-storm routine. I also have an expectation of seeing a famous literary face among the crowd but all I see are students and old people. Quelle surprise.

J’arrive
Knowing that most penguins that David Attenborough narrates on survive, and that the numbers of shark, whale or seal attacks aren’t particularly high in this part of town, my consideration lessens, somewhat. I take an escalator up one level (I haven’t seen anyone but me do this – everyone else walks the 5 steps) and then (really) walk up another level (as a member I am somewhat disappointed the escalator doesn’t take me to my seat), I then reach a door with the sign ‘Members, Patrons & Friends (only)’. Great Expectations (arf)… which last for all of 3 seconds as, for a reason I’ve yet to fathom, there was no door person on hand to offer greetings & farewells to the Club’s ‘Members, Patrons & Friends (only)’. Maybe the door attendant was carrying out some important academic research for one of the ‘Ms, Ps or Fs (o)’. In the absence of the Club’s custodian-of-the-keep, I retrieve my newly-presented members card, looking for the swish electronic door card-reader to grant me access via a swish of my exclusive members card.

See you next Tuesday (depending on where I live)
Eventually, I work out that if I push the door, it opens. The recovery plan is working, obviously. Oh well, at least I am away from the peasants below. I take stock of my surroundings. For the record, no one, official or otherwise, gives a shit about my presence here. Plus ça change. So, I find myself (that’s never going to happen, is it) in a room – there’s a surprise given it’s called the Members’ Room. The official gumpf makes no call to the Patrons & Friends– we are all now simply ‘Members’. Which reminds me: an associate once asked me that if, hypothetically, a club offered me either ‘Town’ or ‘Country’ membership, and I lived in a rural part of the world, I would take the Country membership. So, when I got around to informing him that I am now a Country member, he would then reply, ‘ah yes, I remember’. Hilarious. But probably not wrong, in many respects.

The Members’ Room actually consists of three rooms grouped together. It makes the place no more grand. The first room has a bar at the far end, and seating for around 30 people in a 2-3 seat coffee table & chair arrangement. The second room has the same coffee table & chair deal plus a leatherette bench thing going on against each wall, seating again around 30. The third room, the Quiet Room, is larger than the other rooms, with a centrally-situated rectangular wooden table with 14 chairs and a few power points built-in to the table, and a number of the 2-3 seat coffee table & chair arrangement. The room can also host around 30 people and has a large but difficult-to-see-out-of-window along one side. All in all, the three rooms combine to create a busy, yet hushed, well enunciated, middle-class at worse, environment. I have no idea what I’m doing here but here’s to a place where I can be productive & positive and be my home-from-home, when not at home (obviously).

(Coust)Eau no, or Star Warzzz…
I take a look around, then decide to setup camp in the Quiet Room. There’s no talking, per se, but the bloke next to me has some sort of nasal condition that makes me do a double-take looking for the entire Cousteau clan in full get up, along with the bloke from Star Wars. Across the table I then espy an attractive, bookish-type looking woman in the same age range as me, give or take, smiling at me. I smile back. This is more like it, an (obviously) educated, intelligent woman I can converse with, witty asides and the like. I lean down to my bag and take out my laptop, with the pretence of looking as though I’m about to get all creative. It took, I guess, 5 seconds to carry out this operation. Upon my return to the desk, my bookish-type woman of education has closed her eyes, opened her mouth and I see numerous instances of the letter ‘Z’ coming out from said mouth (and nose, it must be said). And she’s not quiet with it, which meant I wasn’t quite with it. Obviously, SCUBA man doesn’t want to be left out of this oral and nasal orchestral jamming session. Classic FM it was not, let me tell you.

Shirley you can’t be serious (impress me here, Dear Reader, go on…)
I relocate to one of the other rooms and take a seat. The woman next to me has the appearance of a timid, bookish, church-mouse like, shy, Anne-of-Green-Gables type, and I offer her a reassuring & welcoming smile. It needs to be said now that I didn’t take membership of this facility just to smile at women. I’m more than capable of glaring at them too. Single, you say? The real Anne of Green Gables was, for the record, Canadian. This new version of AoGG has, apparently, just arrived into the country. I know that she has just arrived into the country from the United States of America (imagine my surprise…) as I (well, we all did) hear this when she proceeds to make a very loud call on her mobile in an otherwise very quiet room. SCUBA man and Ms Zeducated can no longer be heard in the background to the naked ear.

Agog at AoGG
In addition to the call, AoGG has now lifted her toes from the floor and has started to, and I appreciate this probably isn’t the correct medical term for the action, ‘nervous tic tremor’ one of her legs. It’s like she trying the get into the beat of an extremely pacy drum & bass tune. Whatever the correct medical term is, it’s bloody annoying. The glaring starts. She smiles at me. Clever. In addition to the drum & bass beat bouncing off the floor and walls, AoGG now starts to ‘rattle’ the ice in her drink and the effect is akin to if she were playing the tambourine and having a fit at the same time. Whilst still talking at a rate of decibels on her mobile.

Then, to add further insult to injury, and I know this particular thing is only my problem and that I require some sort of therapy/counselling treatment to cure me but nonetheless, to add to the already impressive level of annoyance brought upon by the timid, bookish, church-mouse but now loud & irritating AoGG, she has a fresh drink delivered to her table, and then pours liquid from the bottle in that ‘glugging’ way. This is my ‘nails-scraping-down-a-blackboard’ equivalent and I make no exaggeration here but when I hear that ‘glugging’ sound, I really do want to take the glass bottle used for the ‘glugging’ from the perpetrator, smash it against the nearest wall, then very forcibly lunge the broken bottle into the perp’s face, and then their face into the wall. And then hurt them. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Now I really don’t make a habit of listening to other people’s phone conversations as I really don’t care much for other people. However, here I had no option. It has been established that AoGG, still talking loudly, has some issue which will necessitate in police involvement, with people that have that Ivy League let’s-use-forenames-which-are-really-surnames (e.g, Frasier, Niles, Colquhoun, Crawford, etc). I am also rather perturbed to discover that the person who she’s having to have the police escort for has the same (fore)name as mine (and, for the record, it’s not an Ivy League style forename).

Her final (on her mobile) words are along the lines of “Felix asked me to call you as the builders want to arrange a time to pick up their tools and I should have some cash with me but the police will be there as protection”. WTF? “Tooti” may also make an appearance but it’s not clear in what capacity but AoGG doesn’t want him/her/it there, apparently. But the overriding message here is that Felix doesn’t want AoGG to go alone and the police will “keep the rival factions apart”. The woman has police protection too, ffs. Anne-of-Dock-Green-Gables, if you will. Another one for the teenagers there. To show how serious this all must be, now her 2nd leg joins in the twitching act. Personally, I’m grateful I kept my thoughts about her to myself, given that she probably has MI5, CIA, Mossad etc on her side. I couldn’t even get the backup of a door person.

So, after 30 minutes of plod-informing, deal-making, Felix, Tooti (I’m not here to make any ‘fruity’ link), stinking feet, shouty conversation (and note that 30 minutes of listening to someone’s conversation seems a lot longer that 30 minutes) I simply love the fact that she then apologises to the person on the other end of the line for ‘burdening you with everything’. Apology accepted, lady, as some blue-collar type in your home country would have called you. But as Julian Lennon almost once said, it’s is a bit too fecking late for goodbyes (well he does on the 12” import rare groove version which I own). The dice have been rolled. I hope the police come out shooting.

The phone call now over, AoGG needs another project to annoy us members with. Every 90 seconds or so she takes a look in the _exact same spot_underneath one of the leather bench seats for a power point. She does this 8 times (I miss my train waiting to see when and how this ends, really), and finds nothing. Well, that’s what I thought, at least. On the 9th visit under the seat, she ends up plugging the power lead into a socket. Felix must have paid the builders off.

I pack my bag, slightly incredulous of the afternoon experience I’ve just (of course) experienced. My head is still full of the ‘glugging’ sound so my temper is foul. All I hear is a cacophony of ‘glugging’. The Berlin ‘Glugging’ Philharmonic Orchestra have taken residence in my head and have been told that if they stop ‘glugging’ they will all die, as per Dougal in the Father Ted episode ‘Speed 3’. I also hate the word ‘glugging’.

Maybe I should have stuck with the hope of seeing if the parent & toddler lemming jumping Olympics into the Thames ever took off (literally). Finally, on the very off chance that you are stupid enough to not work out my location even with the very obvious references, and more pertinent here, just in case AoGG ever gets to read this page: WE WERE IN A BASTARD LIBRARY.

I take my leave from my Club and join the central London rush-hour for some peace and quiet.