Last week, I signed up for Spanish classes. In Brentford. So I get there on the bus (I hate buses btw. Anybody out there hate buses too? Bus-haters unite. This guy here clearly loves them, weirdo.) and I was ahead of time and everything, so I could find the place and all and then! BAM! I was standing in something soft and I just knew that when I look down, the news ain't gonna be good.
My favourite trainers, covered in smelly brown ... you guessed it! Nooooooooooooo ... Dog poo!!! Nooooooooooo. Nooooooooo. Please tell me this isn't happening. Please. For heaven's ... This never happens to me. I swear, this has not happened to me in my entire life. Right there on the spot, my dignity was raped, murdered, hacked to pieces and disposed off in the bins. I just didn't want to keep on living. Duuuuude, it smelled so bad.
Moral of the story: Don't go to Brentford. And if you do, watch ya frikkin' feet.
In my last post, serious business was discussed. With the dreary weather out there today (15 degrees!), I figure it's time to lighten up and lift the mood of this city. Back to writing about sex it is then. You can't wait, can you?
The Girlfriend Experience is a hilarious documentary play that I went to see this summer at the Young Vic in Southwark. The playwright, Alecky Blythe, went into a real brothel in Bournemouth and set up microphones everywhere. Over a period of time, conversations of the prostitutes and their clients were recorded. The actors wear headphones on stage and repeat the lines exactly as they were said, with all the groans and coughs and pauses, which gives the explicit material a realistic dimension.
The brothel is run by a group of women who all seem to have a no-nonsense approach to their profession. They have bills to pay and their clients have needs. You feel for them. It's no different to your office job. They provide a service. What surprised me was the look of these prostitues. The women are not pretty, not slim, not even young. It reminds you that sex in the real world has nothing to do with Ann Summers and lad mags, that you don't need to have a flat stomach or perfectly manicured nails. It's almost comforting to know that men will pay for sex with women who do not look like Belle de Jour.
I laughed, laughed, laughed and during course of the play I realized that I am, after all, not quite as dirty-minded as I had thought. I practically grew up with Sex and the City, and have no problem talking about sex, penises, breasts, vibrators, etc. In fact I do so regularly with my girlfriends and sometimes the boys, to the point where often it makes me think that I should tone it all down a little and be good Catholic girl, otherwise no one will ever marry me and people will see me as an easy girl, which I am not. Oh boy, do I love playing hard to get.
But then, there is a client who phones into the brothel and asks for hard sports, code name for shitting, crapping, defecating, whatever you want to call it. Except, that's not all. He asks the prostitute if she could take some laxatives beforehand, because he prefers the really runny kind. It's people like that who remind me that I am indeed very normal, very boring in fact, as far as sexual matters are concerned. Water sports (peeing) are offered at the Bournemouth institution too, as is the full Girlfriend Experience, where the prostitute acts with a little more sentiment, a little gentleness, pretending that she is not being paid to do whatever it is that her client has asked for.
At one point, the owner of the brothel tells us that her daughter will be moving in to the building. "But it's all gonna be separate," she insists and proceeds to explain that her daughter is clued up as far as her mother's profession goes, "She is sixteen. She's not stupid, you know." Later on, the daughter's GCSE results are proudly shown and the scene where our brothel madam confesses that even whores can bring up children well is truly touching.
Disabled men are frequent clients of the brothel and the women working there have no problem with this, seeing them just as people with needs. "The only thing I would have a problem with is a colostomy bag," one of the women says. Because that is bodily fluids, you know ...
Overall, it was a hilarious evening. Very human. Bold. Almost touching, to see the softer side of the oldest profession, where women work together in a friendly and co-operative atmosphere, rather than the human-trafficking-forced-prostitution side of things. Loved every minute of it.
Watch this little YouTube clip about the making of The Girlfriend Experience:
"Your English is so good. I still sound like I came in the container yesterday! But I've been here five years. Five years!!!" the estate agent told me as I was driven towards another hell-hole house. It was one of the rare funny moments of my first-time house search in London. Most of it was plain exhausting, unpleasant and depressing. I was newly single, newly unemployed and newly homeless. All that in February, the worst month, cold and wet and grey. At least God is merciful enough to make it last just 27 days, or 28 if we're out of luck.
I really, really hate house hunting. Estate agents give me the creeps for more reasons than one. In London, it's so much more difficult because of the sheer size of the city. You could spend an hour going somewhere on the Tube for a house viewing, only to realize that you don't like the area at all and that, maybe, you should get the hell out of there immediately, before someone stabs you in the back/neck/stomach.
So ... if you just came in the container yesterday, I have great news for you: Lucie's Pocket Guide to Judging Areas of London, with useful rules of thumb, cut-out-and-keep version.
North of the River vs. South of the River If you have ever searched for a flatshare on gumtree.com, you will find that they divide their ads into two categories - North of the River, South of the River. Now, it might seem pretty odd, but you have just stumbled upon a matter of historical importance. The Lonely Planet London City Guide sheds some light:
"As well as being essential to the trade upon which London was built, the River Thames divides the city into north and south, a partition that has much more than geographical implications. The Romans designated the southern bank as seedy London of gaming and debauchery, and for almost two millenia since, respectable and cultured folk settled on the northen side while the outcasts lived in the insalubrious south. The potential of the South Bank has only been realised in the last decade."
Wild Generalization no. 1: North and West Good, South and East Bad To extend the above a little, some people suggest that postcodes starting with N and W generally represent nicer areas than postcodes starting with S and E. Just don't say it in front of anyone who lives in either S or E, because they will either stab you, punch you or gang rape you. (Case in point!) Exceptions prove the rule.
Shit, this took some guts to write. Sorry, S&E people.
The Kebab Rule of Inverse Proportion My friend A. once said, "The quality of an area can be judged by the number of kebab shops." Totally spot-on. Just take a walk around Shepherd's Bush, then Richmond. Count the kebab shops, compare the rental prices. You get what I mean?! To state the absobloodylutely obvious, we are talking inverse proportion here. And because I love maths, I drew a pretty little graph for the visual learners among you.
Good Neighbours, Bad Neighbours Would you prefer your neighbours to be described as Flourishing Families, Prudent Pensioners, Aspiring Singles, Asian Communities, Settled Suburbia, High Rise Hardship or Inner City Adversity? The ACORN geodemographical classification system, based on Census data, can tell you who the majority of your neighbours are. The categories they use are listed here.
To view the full neighbourhood profile for a given area, go to the UpMyStreet website and type your postcode into the "Your Location" box on the right-hand side. Very, very useful stuff.
Wild Generalization no. 2: Council Estates = Trouble "It's not so simple, because you can have a perfectly decent middle-class area, leafy suburb kind of thing, and then there will be that one street where people are literally dealing crack out of a telephone box. And then you walk another 100 metres further and it's perfectly okay again. It all depends on the location of council estates," said my colleague once, who is a very smart lady, and who was born and bred in London. So take note.
Gentrified? Who are you kidding? People who can't afford to live in nice areas and subsequently move into trouble areas tend to refer to their neighbourhoods as gentrified. What they really mean is that their local council finally installed street lighting and CCTV cameras, so the Police can at least see it when you are being stabbed in the back. Unfortunately, the Police are generally too scared to come to these sort of areas. My best advice is, smile for the cameras because tomorrow morning all London commuters will see you on the front page of the Metro. TimeOut recently published a list of these gentrified up-and-coming neighbourhoods. It's here. I'm not really convinced.
If all else fails, look at the Crime Maps The Met Police has made a Google Maps mashup that allows you to see the level of crime in your area. Look, here: http://maps.met.police.uk/
May London be a good home to you, and may you never become a Met Police statistic or a Metro front page. Amen.
Where to have a quiet drink on a Friday evening? A place where you will actually be able to hear what the other person is saying. A place where no one will spill beer on your skirt. A place where there are no maggots in the beer, or in the toilets.
Voilà! Presenting the Royal Academy of Arts. On a warm night, their courtyard is just about the most glamorous, but quiet, place to be. Think foutains, think full moon, think saxophonist playing outside on the street. Think location, location, location - Picadilly, right opposite Fortnum & Mason. Does it get any more glamorous than that? And the best thing - no one is there. They have a little bar outside, which serves white wine, red wine, rose, champagne and Pimms. Go for the champagne because everything else is served in plastic cups. The sweet, sweet icing on top - it's outside, so you can even smoke.
And we sat there, two girls, one bottle of wine, two cups, a packet of American Spirit cigarettes. You know that bit in Sex and the City where Aidan and Carrie are standing outside next to some fountain, and Carrie is wearing a white dress and Aidan is wearing a tux and he pesters her to marry him? It felt like that kind of a place. Very New York. Very Evening-at-the-Met. Very not-London-at-all. Except no one was asking me to tie the knot, so I inhaled American Spirit and enjoyed the evening in peace. It might have been the last warm summer evening for a long time in this city. I can smell the winter creeping in. No wonder all my friends are leaving.
All my friends are leaving. Two years ago, everyone was moving to Europe. Now, everyone is flying off to Brazil, Mexico, China, Australia, Botswana, California, India ... The bad news is that all I'm doing is attending leaving drinks. The good news is, I have a lot of bars to blog about! Friday was leaving drinks with S. She wanted to meet at Green Park and I thought, cool, it's on the right Tube line and all. S. is a very fashionable girl and she likes to go to fashionable places.
We entered May Fair Bar, right opposite Nobu. It was packed. We looked around. We left. "It's full of fat middle-aged men and hookers," I said outside, loud enough for the bouncers to hear me. "How do you know they're hookers?" S. asked. "I just know." And I do. They might be dressed like businesswomen, but believe me, they are not. I am a businesswoman, so I know. I just know.
The Verdict: Don't go there. Unless you belong to that sort of crowd, in which case, don't come to my blog.
P.S. Even the review on allinlondon says, "I think a lot of women in there were professionals." Gotta love the euphemism.
The brothel is run by a group of women who all seem to have a no-nonsense approach to their profession. They have bills to pay and their clients have needs. You feel for them. It's no different to your office job. They provide a service. What surprised me was the look of these prostitues. The women are not pretty, not slim, not even young. It reminds you that sex in the real world has nothing to do with Ann Summers and lad mags, that you don't need to have a flat stomach or perfectly manicured nails. It's almost comforting to know that men will pay for sex with women who do not look like 
