Hungry, foolish and watching the Blood Wagon

I took Holiday. I went skiing. It was wonderful – it was my first time. I had almost been skiing so many times that it felt like I had already done it.

People who spoke to me before the trip sensed my cockiness and warned that real life snow was different to the snow centre in Hemel Hempsted, and I really, really tried to reign myself in, but I couldn’t. I hit the slopes with no doubt in my mind that I was a natural.

On the first day I went down a blue run with, what the chalet that night conceded, was “challenging visibility”. In my mind I was free-styling in the Alps in a blizzard – I was like nothing the world had ever seen.

I had a private lesson on the second day and the instructor said, considering I had almost no technique to speak of, I had a pair of the strongest legs he had seen. An awkward compliment – but I took it.

But I wasn’t fearless. In fact I had the fear of death in me.

I was prepped by ski-injured friends on the likelihood that I would end up in a Blood Wagon. The Blood Wagon is a coffin-like box on skis that takes an injured skier down the mountain. It looks like the skiing paramedics are carrying the dead. Sometimes there is a Blood Wagon and a helicopter.

At lunch when a helicopter passed above us as we sat jacketless with burnt lips in front of our omelettes, there would be a split second of silence as the sound waves peaked across the terrace.The whole lot of healthy skiers would look up and then nod and raise their eyebrows across the table.

I was quite aware of danger, and when I looked up at the helicopter or at a Blood Wagon I felt a cold sting.

Towards the end of the week, my bursting confidence meant I was getting caught out by the slopes. I choked on two. I had to take a black run on my bum. On the last day I abandoned my little group of skiing buddies, walked back up a red slope and took an easier route.

I ended as a decent skier in one piece and that was all – I wasn’t the best there had ever been, I was an average sporty person who had a go. But I absolutely loved it – I had been hungry to give it a go. I foolishly believed I was going to be brilliant, and I was aware that I might die. I learnt loads and worked out I have lots more to do.

Had I doubted myself, or not believed I COULD DIE, I wouldn’t have had the week I did.

And it reminded me of what I was like as a kid.

I truly believed I was going to be great at anything I tried. And most of the time that beginner’s confidence took me at least half way to doing whatever I wanted – even when I was awful at it.

The slopes with their equalising whiteness and the genderless outfits and the distance from home made me feel like a kid.

I played the violin for seven years without ever really knowing if the thing was in tune. Once, the orchestra conductor became so frustrated with a repeated wrong note – she asked us to stand on chairs and then sit as she ruled the correct ones out.

I was the last remaining person on the chair – standing as I remember – with my multicoloured glasses on desperately running my fingers between two notes, F flat and F sharp trying to work out which one the annoying conductor wanted. I thought she was being picky.

I reached my fairly narrow limit – but I had played in an orchestra and I learnt how to read music.

Other times it was different. I was sure I would be great at hockey. I tried to get some extra practice in before we started using my dad’s hoe and my brother’s cricket ball. I spent hours in the garden visualising my amazing passes as I smacked the red ball with the metal half circle designed for the soil. And I was good, I ended up playing for the region with girls who made the 2012 Olympic team and captaining my school.

I was hungry and foolish. And that was how I skied last week.

I watched Steve Jobs give that address to Stanford graduates again this morning. And this is what made me think of writing this blog.

Be hungry, be foolish and…know that you might die.  Ski – and it’s easier to imagine. I am going to concentrate on the Blood Wagon at the end of my bed.

Here’s the link to his talk, watch it:

The Rave

The Met put out a press release on Saturday –  three people had been hospitalised after taking bad MDMA. Two, then later, one, was believed to be in critical condition.

I’m in the office – I get sent out. Everything had happened the night before – but the hope is that someone in the area will have seen or heard something which will give us a lead.

When I arrive I can hear music coming from a warehouse – the party is still going on.

I walk up to some people outside it – the light is almost gone – so I talk to silhouettes.

ME: Is there a rave here?

RANDOM: Yeh

ME: Were some kids taken to hospital last night?

RANDOM: Go away, leave us alone.

The voice has come from the back of a van.

I say I am not the police and trail off. I am dressed in a long black coat, heels, and a smart outfit. I am clearly not there to party – I don’t want to say who I am – I leave mulling over my choice of questions.

 

I call newsdesk.

NEWSDESK: It’s still going on? Do you have rave gear and cash with you?

ME: No – I mean yes [if at all possible say yes]. Yes – I have my gym kit and it is a bit ravey – could we get a bloke to come down here with me? And money – yeh I had fifteen quid.

NEWSDESK: Where the fuck is fifteen quid going to get you?

ME: *fake laugh* I know, right – tell whoever comes to bring cash.

I am put out. Fifteen quid, to me, is a still quite a lot.

 

I park the car around the corner and pull my kit out of my gym bag. I’m wearing culotte shorts with black tights so I swap my heels for pink trainers.

I look down to see my jumper is in fact black mesh – I have a black top underneath. I take it off – you can see my bra through the mesh. I grab a hoodie from my bag with a zip up the front and a white bobble hat which was lying on my back seat.

Peter the photographer turns up. He’s 54. I go and sit in his car and we have a cup of tea he bought from MacDonald’s. He’s spent the day photographing a wedding. He is tall and slim and doesn’t look 54. He tells me about the inside of his car. He has set up curtains along either side. They draw across on a piece of string and there are slits in them so he can poke the lens of the camera through.

He looks into the back seat.

 “See those suit bags hanging up? There’s nothing in them. They’re just cover”, he tells me.

He says there is no way he is going in.

 

Shaun arrives. He is a very fresh faced, but quite experienced reporter. He has worked for an agency in Southampton for seven years and has just started at The Sun. He is actually a classic new breed tabloid hack – the ones that look the most respectable and innocent do quite well.

 

We leave Peter and head in as a couple. It is dark now. We walk down a path along the side of the building where a few people are standing in groups. The entrance is at the back.

We are in Beckton. This isn’t trendy east London, with Victorian warehouses packed close and pockets of studios and cobbled streets. This is a sprawling nineties industrial hinterland. It is all cheap concrete and corrugated spiked metal railings.

 

Inside there is a huge hanger-type room. On the left there are metal steps leading to two other rooms. Music is blaring from upstairs.

I am pretending to be fucked. I am clawing at Shaun’s arm and trying to look past everyone. I have no idea if I am blending in or going a little over board. I have a history of overdoing things.

In one scene as Abigail in The Crucible at school I was supposed to clutch John Proctor from behind  – around the waist – and say “I love you, John Proctor” as he stoically rejects me. Except I ran my hand down and clutched his crotch. I just felt Abigail was quite sexual and that is what she would do. I got into quite a bit of trouble.

 

Shaun and I get upstairs. The room has decks in it and rave lighting but there are less than 10 people in there. In the next room, which is dark and littered with piles of smashed things and rubble, there are about eight people sitting with their heads covered by hoods  – apparently asleep.

 

I lean on a window ledge and put my head down. Shaun bends over as if he is comforting me.

ME: I thought there would be more people.

SHAUN: Yeh, we are in, that is the main thing.

ME: We have to blend in and bide our time.

SHAUN: I think you can stand up now, no one gives a fuck about us.

ME: OK.

We stand together by the window. There is a leaflet lying there.

It says: “Do not buy or take drugs bought at this venue. Two people have nearly died from these drugs and are still in hospital!!!!!

“Say no!!! Don’t risk your own life.”

Shaun slips it into his pocket.

 

We speak to two boys dressed in onesies. One – who is about 18 or 19 jokes that his yellow onesie is better. He perches on the arm of the chair where I’ve lodged myself. He turns his back and talks to some people who are rousing.

We need to start taking photos. The million dollar shots are going to be the row of people zonked out AT THE SAME party where the kids NEARLY DIED.

Or a room of ravers off their rockers AT THE SAME party where two party animals took dodgy pills and later DIED – they might die, I think.

I have to turn the flash on. Shaun and I pretend to take photos of each other while trying to frame the row of hoodied ravers.

But every time the light flashed their way, someone raises their head or mutters something under their breath and I feel a rush of panic.

 

I ask a girl if there is somewhere to go to the loo. She leads me down some stairs into the back of the building and tells me to use the floor. The smell hits the back of my mouth. Everything is wet. It is pitch black and she flashes the light of her mobile across the scene.

I’m wearing new my gym trainers. I bought them specifically for use indoors. I feel a wave of anger as something hard softens under my weight as I walk away from where she has brought me.

 

Shaun and I decide to get out to get some air. The pictures so far are terrible and there are not enough people to get the wild party scene newsdesk wanted.  There is music and clumps of people, but it is dead.

There is a man at the door as we leave. Shaun puts his arm around my waist. I can’t help thinking he his using me as a shield. I feel another wave of anger.

MAN: You got a wrist band, guys?

ME: No.

MAN: How did you get in?

ME: We’ve been in for ages – we, like, walked in, ages ago.

MAN: But are you crew – are you setting things up?

ME: No.

MAN: Ohhh, so you’ve been here since last night?

ME: Yeh.

MAN: Hard core, take this.

He straps a wrist band on me – and one on Shaun.

MAN: Things will get going later.

So the rave hadn’t started.

 

We went out to the car. I’m cold. We drive off to find food. It’s 11.15pm and everywhere is shut. I want a coffee. I have human shit on my shoe, but I am in Shaun’s car so I just look straight ahead and hope some of it has rubbed off before I got in. I don’t think I can smell it.

We sit in a carpark and Shaun runs into a pub that says “eatery” on a luminous sign. They have stopped serving. He tries the Premier Inn and comes back with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream.

“It’s the only thing they had, I bought it from the vending machine.” he says.

I take it and thank him. It’s not clear if we are sharing it or not.

He says he has some falafel left over from lunch.

We begin to write copy together on what we have seen so far. We haven’t got the pictures – the rave hadn’t started – there was no obvious deals being struck – but we wrote it large – it was aspirational copy.

 

I could feel a sense of dread rising about the prospect of going back in. My mesh jumper felt weird under the hoodie and I wanted to change.  The warehouse was so dark.  We waited until 1.30am then drove back.

I wanted to go in, snap everything and get out, and I told Shaun.

This time I was less bothered about looking fucked. I held Shaun’s hand and showed the men at the door my wrist band.

 

The place had filled.  There were a lot of men and boys. There were some very young looking girls.

The music was pumping so hard I could feel it in my throat. We went upstairs. The little room was packed now. We stood at the side of the room. There was a table were some people were selling beers from a massive barrel of cold water.

I started to take photos with my flash on. A man standing next to me leaned in and started talking gibberish. His face looked drunk and confused. He was talking to me as if we were sharing something incredulous. He kept muttering sounds, pursing his lips, shaking his head and raising his arms. I took photos and shook my head back.

A girl shouted out me to delete them.

HER: What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Delete those photos. You little bitch. Who are you taking photos of? Delete it. Let me see your phone.

Shaun told me to stop, that I was going to get stabbed if I didn’t stop.

I told Shuan, that this was the shot – without this there was no story.

 

We went back down the steps and I moved backwards and forwards like everyone else. I wanted to leave. The place was like hell.

Then I saw one of the boys in the onesies. He was about a metre from me. He was heading to the stairs, holding a plastic bottle. His face suddenly went into spasm, his legs buckled and he fell to the floor.

He was face down on the warehouse floor and his fingers were contorted and he began clawing at the floor. People danced. I bent down to him.

His body went rigid and began to pulse, one, two, three, four, five. There was a group pushing me away. They turned him over and he was dribbling, still rock hard, everything tense. I couldn’t see then.

My heart was racing, I could feel my hands shaking. Then: this is the story. I am here for this story.

He was being dragged off. I felt confused. I couldn’t be seen taking a picture. BUT THAT IS THE STORY, he could be the next victim of the bad batch of MDMA, I begin to follow the group carrying him out.

Shaun grabs my arm. “You’re being too obvious,” he said.

ME: That’s the story Shaun, you get one shot. You get ONE shot at things like this.

I had never seen someone fit before.The yellow onesie made it worse. He looked like a child. He had been clawing at the floor face down for about 10 seconds before he passed the limits of what I was expecting to see, and I realised he was not ok. Before my response switched.

 

We went upstairs again. There was a gang of men by the window where we had been at the beginning of the night. The light from outside caught the face of one of them. He was wearing a bomber jacket with a fur-lined hood. He was white and bald and lithe.

His face sparked flashbacks of a scene I saw on TV when a criminal brought his enemy to an empty swimming pool, then he put dogs in there.

I kept looking back at his face. I would look at other things and then go back and look at him. I couldn’t take my eyes of his angular lines and quick smile and huge mouth. In that place, with that music and that light, this man made my heart race with fear.

 

I tried again to get photos. We went down stairs and I just snapped everything. I wanted to leave. The story was there. We were watching people rave on, in squalor, the day after two people nearly died.

A boy collapsed in front of me. I thought I had seen evil incarnate, in a bomber jacket.

There were warnings about what had happened, and in the darkness, in the cold stench, it all mixed together into an acceptable place of exile.

We left.

 

Shaun said he didn’t take any pictures, because he was watching my back.

But it wasn’t enough. The next morning  newsdesk scrapped the story.

“Where were the pictures? Great copy, no pictures. Just bring in a good story this week and we’ll forget about it”, they said.

 

And there you have it.  I tried to get the story out there – so here it as at least. 

 

Benefits Street

I was asked to find a line from Channel 4’s hit documentary Benefits Street. That means watch the programme and find the strongest news in it and write a story.

As an indicator of what was pushing the viewers’ buttons I watched the Twitter hashtag #BenefitsStreet which was updating at a rate of about 100 a minute.

Within minutes Tweeters were attacking the residents with such vitriol it gave me that imploding feeling in my throat. The last time that was triggered was when I saw a frail little old lady struggling to drop a pound into a homeless man’s grubby polystyrene cup.

The programme focused on parents Becky and Mark, who have two young children Casey and Callum.

Neither work and it emerged that when Becky met Mark five years ago, she was on drugs and had taken heroin and crack.

Mark is cripplingly lazy, lazy in a way that made me want to hold him over a precipice just to see what he’s like when the survival mechanism kicks in.

People were tweeting that they should be put down.

Between shots of Becky and Mark we saw two drunks teaching a five-year-old how to make a can of Lynx function like a blowtorch. The five-year-old’s mum then tells the camera that he knows what a spliff is and that “at first” he thought that cannabis was broccoli.

These two facts – the Lynx and the broccoli –  were my “lines”.

But really I wanted to write about Becky and Mark.

It was heartbreaking to watch them.  Becky is seen at the end of her tether with the children. She looks like an Irish famine victim. She looks like the girl I imagine when I hear Ed Sheeran’s song “The A Team”. The house is in turmoil. There is no sense of control. They are constantly in a state of panic – behind in their rent, fearing that social services will come and take the kids away, sleep deprived, bored, anxious, and extremely poor.

When Sure Start – a government funded agency which helps with parenting  – come to help it’s like an angel has visited. They get hyper Callum to bed. They set boundaries. They sleep. Becky and Mark share a joke.

Mark tries to get a job –  and lands a role door-to-door charity worker on 100 per cent commission. I have done that and lasted 3 weeks, and I was getting £7 an hour.

He is not a bright man, he has clearly been offered no guidance or set no examples by his parents – he has no concept of work. He was somehow deemed a failure as soon as he stepped into the adult world and he never believed he was anything more.

But he believed in Becky. In one scene, Becky, her eyes flicking from the interviewer to a spot in the distance, tells us that Mark saved her – without him she wouldn’t be there.  He was the one that got her off drugs.

And then, as if the script were written Mark describes their love like a flower that has grown, and blossomed and could die. He wonders if there will be new buds for them.  

But Becky is the star of the show. She is trying so hard I wanted to cry. She tried heroin at 15. She was a child then.

We see her cook Mark a meal after he returns home from one of his days knocking doors  and it is as if they  reached the Elysian Fields of domestic bliss. She is so proud of the cubby 20-year-old on the sofa gobbling a plate of supermarket bought Indian there is no doubt she must really love him.

And love – that is what we see. They love their kids, they love each other. The brutality of the public on Twitter was terrifying.

It conjured a image of that homeless man spitting in the face of the little old woman as she handed him a pound, hunched and hopeful. 

Beyoncé

I have bought Beyoncé’s album. I am one of the million fans who did it. I had a look at her ‘tasters’ on YouTube and I thought they were great. I was in bed messing with my phone. All I had to do is tap in my Apple password to complete the transaction and PAM! There she was in all her glory.

It’s a lot to take in. I know as much as most dads about Beyoncé. I don’t follow her on Tumblr or Instagram. When I heard she had banned unofficial photographers from her Mrs Carter Tour I thought she was a dick. She married Jay Z and had a baby who is called a colour and … that’s it.

But if I ever have a kid – as soon as I suspect they have stopped telling me the full story about their sleep over at Blabla’s house – I am going to give them this album. I will say: “darling – watch this and talk about it with your mates and don’t be mean to people”.

It is a meditation on being a kick-ass woman. A woman who fails, is jealous, wants to have sex, is gentle, angry, rude, hot and self-conscious and wants a baby, wants marriage. It’s like watching a better version of that bit in Superwoman where she comes out of the water with dry hair. It’s like seeing someone burst into out of the water and grasp for breath.

Reviewers have said loads already. The song Flawless captures the essence of the whole album. It features part of a speech delivered by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Beyoncé shouts out: “I took some time to live my life, but don’t think I’m just his little wife, don’t get it twisted, get it twisted, dis my shit, bow down bitches, bow, bow bitches. I’m so proud, bow down bitches..”

Then it switches to part of Chimamanda’s speech:
“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller
We say to girls: “You can have ambition, but not too much
You should aim to be successful, but not too successful
Otherwise, you will threaten the man”
Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage
I am expected to make my life choices
Always keeping in mind that marriage is most important
Now, marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support
But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage
And we don’t teach boys the same?
We raise girls to see each other as competitors
Not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing
But for the attention of men
We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are
Feminist: a person who believes in the social
Political, and economic equality of the sexes.”

And then Beyoncé, again, with her foul-mouthed a-bit-rappy self-congratulatory words – ripping the piss out of people who don’t admit to the work that goes into flawlessness – whatever that is.

But just three tracks before this, Beyonce gives us Rocket, which begins with a … ahem… stirring… “Let me stick this ass on you, show you how I feel, let me take this off-ff..”.

It is quite simply a song about getting some. It makes no excuses. It is slow, the video features Beyonce rolling around pleasuring herself with close up shots of her bum, her crotch and her face in a state of ecstasy. There is just one half a second clip of a man, but the point is, she is having a GREAT TIME. And I think that is great. We need more of that. I don’t think that video is just made for blokes at all.

Then there’s Jealous. But it is not about the “other woman” – it is about her lover not keeping his promise. It is about guilt, and confusion.

But my favourite is Mine, which opens with Beyonce sitting in white like a classical goddess, then in silver, then a clip of mad dancers on a beach and then her, hairless, painted in white walking across a desert. It’s about the obsession you get you like someone too much. When you are up shit creek. It’s haunting. And BRILLIANT.

Some of the words are:
“Oh my mind, I’ve passed my bedtime, no rest in the kingdom, alone in my place, my heart is away, all I can think of is, we should get married, we should get married, let’s stop holding back on this, and let’s get carried away.
“Stop making a big deal about the little things, cause I got big deals and little things, I got everything I’m asking for but you.”

Nice. She wants to own him. I marry myself off to every man I feel passionate about. I actually brought myself to tears on a run once thinking about how beautiful I would look in a white dress marrying a man I had met two months before.
But the title of the song is written in fire at the beginning, so I think she’s telling us the whole thing is a bit dangerous.

There are 17 videos on there. One features her daughter – Blue. One is about death. Another one is called Pretty Hurts – which is about – well, yes. Another one is about getting drunk and wanting sex.

But I watched them all and I feel like I was in the presence of the best kind of woman. It is an insult to say she is unapologetic about who she is. She is positively exploding with happiness.

She told MTV what the “message” behind the album was. I was disappointed because I would have rather it was argued about, like the Bible. But it is good.

She said: “Growth. Love. Happiness. Fun. Enjoy your life, it’s short. That’s the message.”

Girls need to do that more. And she has just given is 17 reasons to sit on the sofa, with a beer and contemplate exactly how we can. Buy the album.

TESCO

I coined a phrase as I stared into the distance with a lot of important ‘things’ to do – knowing that I was going to drink the beer left over from last weekend.
I thought: “Ah. Yes… that’s it! My soul is broken”.
Moments before the realisation I had left Tesco in a rage. One of those weird rages that I have seen other people have and I shuffle away. At best I purse my lips, raise my eyebrows and look at someone else who is doing the same. I have never thought. Yes! That woman is SO right for shouting at the man in the cheap supermarket outfit.
So there I was, aged 29 with dinner items and a bottle of white wine. They asked me for ID. I looked at the lady and smiled and said “I’m nearly thirty” in my best adult voice. She looked back blankly.
Her: “I am only doing my job”
Me: “I don’t understand, human to human, look at me. Do I look 17?”
Her:” You need to look more than 25”.
Me: “Get the manager”
The manager, randomly, was kneeling down right beside her, so he just popped up from beneath the counter, which was weird.
I wasn’t sure if he needed background or whether he had been listening.
Me: “Do you – ? I’m trying to – “
He nodded to show he had followed.
Me: “I am not in college, I am not at school, I am on a day off, from work, and I am 29, ask me for my date of birth.”
I have had this before, recently. But it has been on days when I am singing Jason Derulo songs in my head and, usually buying drinks for something imminently fun, so I nod and put the drink back.
Manager: “I’ll give you a compliment miss – you look mid twenties.”
This sent me into the rage. It made no sense to me. And my broken little soul was about to have its last hurrah before crashing out.
ME: “Mid twentites?”
HIM: “I’d have put you at 25-26”.
ME: “Wha?”
HIM: “But my colleague is right, we require ID, she is just doing her job.”
ME: “You are ridiculous. And I don’t mean you as the manager I mean you as a man. You are admitting that it is a compliment to say I look 25 and then telling me that I do not have the proof that I am older than 18. You need to think for yourself – you are RIDICULOUS –
HIM: “If there was someone checking outside –
ME: “You are FUCKING stupid – forget it, just forget the whole thing.”
I then walked away from the self-service till, leaving all my shopping, that I really, really needed.
There was a little group of people watching all this. I was shaking. I’m not saying this has never been done before. But it’s a shocker when you are the leading lady.
Then I came home and stared into the distance. I wish I hadn’t said “fucking stupid” I wish I had said “you are shameless”. And I wish I had said so much other stuff. I wish it hadn’t all been blurted out. But there were reasons.
And I had not patience or gratefulness or love left. I’ve had the beer. I just have to wait for the resurrection…

I have discovered Desert Island Discs Podcasts from the sixties and seventies! The 35 minute recording takes me all the way home in my rattley little car.

It is EXACTLY the same format as today. The same “and how would you fair all alone?” the same “which takes us nicely to your fifth track, what will that be?” but these people are dead or very much on their way out.

Their stories begin with things like, “I made my debut in 1910 in a concert hall in Warsaw”. But is sounds like is was recorded yesterday.

Liberace is on there! They guy from the film who made his young lover have a chin implant so that they would look alike.

They interviewed Lauren Bacall, who married Humphry Bogart when she was 20.  I have only ever seen her picture, in that dated shot of her in the  40s, all eyes and hair and that skin-type that doesn’t exist on women anymore.

Lauren .. the eyes…

And suddenly there she was. Talking about ‘Bogie’ and how she made it, and going for screen tests and later withdrawing from Hollywood – about filming with Marilyn Munroe. It was as if it had all happened in the nineties.

And Arthur Rubinstein, the classical pianist born in 1887 – a womaniser and a friend of Picasso. He says in an argument with the Spaniard he asked him if he got bored painting the same thing every day. Picasso flies into a rage and says “every day my mood is different, every day is new. How can you be such an idiot?” YES. This is helpful.  We are all a bit like Picasso.

Artur and Picasso!

Rubinstein married a Polish ballerina, had an affair with an Italian Princess and ran off with a 33 year-old when he was 90. THAT is tapestry. I wonder what the tabloids would have done to him. His luxury item (you are allowed one) was a revolver.His family were murdered in the war. He said he couldn’t go and play in Germany. He is funny, brilliant and so alive on that podcast. He’s dead though. 1982.

There are so many on there; you can listen to Ed Milband (recorded on Sunday) and then pull out playwright Terence Rattigan who died in 1966 and chose a 1928 recording of the Harrow school song because he is on there. He was gay and hid it from all but his close friends and died in near obscurity in 1966 – two years after the recording.

 

This film is based on Rattigan’s play.

They are the best stories I have heard in years. They are big, bright, brave stories. Go and listen! 

All this for four lines about a pair of tits?

An Italian friend came to visit London this weekend. I barely had time to see him. I only had one night off over the weekend and I was going to a work leaving do.
So we ended up taking a cold sunny walk in east London on Sunday before I started my shift.
We have been friends since I was 23. When we met I had peroxide blonde short hair, a lip piercing and was going out with a man who had dreadlocks.
My friend and I met in an Italian nightclub and hit it off. I was living in Bergamo at the time. We kept in touch and he came over to Manchester to study a year later.
He went back to Italy, and I went off to Cardiff for my post graduate course in journalism.
From this point on we have seen each other every November. He comes to London to see friends, this year for the tennis, and he will call me and we will meet.
I was dressed for work on Sunday. After we hugged and turned towards to street to find somewhere to eat, we began to talk about work.
It was so sunny, we were on Colombia Road in Hackney where there were people selling six oysters and a pint for £9. The crowds were in clumps of oversized jumpered woollen-capped hipsters.
I kept having flash backs. The first, of the night we had met. I had gone to Milan with my boyfriend. We had driven there, drinking in the car on the autostrada.
The club was busy, there were hundreds of vespas lined up outside. It was a hot night. We skipped the queue because someone knew someone.
I meet him because I took the hat off his head as I stood at the bar, drunk, and then waltzed off with it. He came and took it back and that was it. Here we were, years later.
We sat down at a table on a side street and ate some bagels. He was telling me about his trip to China for work. He offered me a cigarette. He said he had been told to cut down is drinking. I thought he looked older – no, he looked stressed.
The year we were in Manchester, we had gone to the fireworks in Victoria Park. There was a fair, and we had gone on a ride that looks like a spinning spider – so you swing in a little car attached to another arm which is swinging. We went on. I cried with laughter. I couldn’t get over the sheer joy of the vuu__UM vuu__UMM of each turn. My friend, who is … portly kept shouting “thank god I’m on the inside! You would be squashed to death!” And the lights all appeared to stream together as this thing span around.
He told me he still lived with his parents. He was looking for a house. He said Italy wasn’t in such a bad state as the papers made out.
He asked me how I was. He said I looked tired. We got up and a group of German students shuffled around the table we left.
I said I was still on the night shift. But that I was now on this tabloid and that it was good, I was on more money.
I ducked into a shop to get the paper, to show him my name.
My only contribution was a picture caption about a z-list celebrity who had been jumping off a boat in Spain with her boobs out.
I gave him the paper open on that page, which was very near the back, before I had to go. I was proud of it.
He was telling me that I don’t contact him any more.
He stopped and looked at the page, then at me.
“Is that it? All this, for four lines about a pair of tits? Jesus,” he said.
We hugged and he got on the bus.

Ask And The Door Shall Be Opened

I’ve upped my game people. I shifting on a national tabloid which actually means I knock on less doors, and when I do it tends not to be Joe Bloggs.

But I am still working nights and have started buying herbal tablets to help me sleep. I hope it’s all worth it. We shall see.

I got my car nicked. The white Nissan Micra, N reg, 1996. The back light held on with duck-tape, the whole thing like a wise old man’s face full of dents and lines.

I had parked it outside work, on the street in east London and I came out at three in the morning to find another, bigger, better car in the space.

It’s a strange feeling, to have something disappear on you. I didn’t doubt where I parked it – I knew it had been nicked from 50 metres away.

I rummaged for the keys in my bag, and they weren’t there. I thought  back to the moment I went into work: I had been rushing. There was a coffee, a gym bag, a work bag, a coat, fumbling door shut, grab the coffee – I was sweating  – and walk. The keys had been left hanging in the lock.

So when I ran in and the security guards offered to “double check I hadn’t parked it anywhere else” I felt bad when I thanked them and watched them wander off into the black street.

Then, the police: “OK miss, is there any CCTV in the area?”

Me: “Ummm… no…. no. No, I think that bit is just outside the camera area.”

The car is worth perhaps £150. I bought it for £50.

Two days later I get a phone call from the police. They had located the car in an underground car park in Shadwell, just around the corner form where it was nicked. I head straight there, but I don’t have my spare key. I just wanted to see it.

It was parked in an above ground car park. There was a bunch of teenagers hanging around it. There was a sonic the hedgehog smoking a spliff drawn on the front bonnet.

KID: “That your car?”

Me: “Yes, yes, it is, and the police know about it, it was nicked.”

KID: “How’d you nick that then, how would you get in? Notin’s smashed innit?”

ME: “Yes, the keys were in the lock.”

There are about  10 of them. Some of them are smoking. A lot of them have their hands in their pockets and they are not looking at me. They nicked it. It is oozing out of them.

ME: “If you fucking touch that car again you are dead. The police know.”

KID: “What? Don’t know who nicked it”

ME: “Yeh well, I’m a reporter at the XXX and I need that car. Go find something to do rather than fucking up my life.”

I am angry. But I leave. I come back the following evening with the key and the car is gone.

A few of the kids are on the street. We are beside a fish market that stinks. It’s quite a mild evening, but it feels as if there are too many smells in the air. It is a tight warm bubbly rubbish smell.

I sit on the curb and look at the kids.

ME: “Where is my car?”

KID: “Don’t know, they drove it off.”

Another kid arrives and they all start speaking Urdu together. Then one of them spots the Om sign on my necklace and asks me about it, I tell him where I got it. He turns to the other kid and says something else in Urdu.

KID 2: “Ok, let me smoke a cigarette, first. What will I get?”

KID 1: “He knows where the car is.”

KID 2: “Yeh, it’s in Shadwell Gardens. What will you give me?”

ME: “Twenty quid. Take me there now, twenty quid and a packet of Bensons.”

Off we go. The kid starts to show of as we are walking there. He talks to people he knows on the street. He says something to a woman at a bus stop who he tells me is his mum. He high-fives a corner shop man who is having a massive carpet delivered as we walk past.

And there it is three streets away, with a parking ticket on it. I get in. Then he gets in. He says he wants “a go”.

I want to get out of the car park as soon as possible, before anyone else comes and destroys my so far successful recovery mission, so I say yes, the kid relaxes.

KID: “They messed with the wrong person innit. You’re alright aren’t you. I mean thing is I think they tried to sell it but it’s such a hunk of shit no one wanted it. I mean not even for £50. It’s the worst car I have ever seen. I used to have an Audi.”

ME: “How old are you?”

KID: “Sixteen. I bought it last year but I got caught driving it.”

I asked if he was just going go round nicking other people’s stuff for ever. He asked me about my job. He said he was clever at school, but then he started “messing around” and got a criminal record, and now he has no GCSEs. He asked for another go.

There was McDonalds and spliff butts in the back seat. and the smell was making me feel sick. I said no. I told him to get out. I gave him my email. They had nicked a bag with my favourite dress in it from the boot. I told him if he could get that back I would help him do something that wasn’t nicking other people’s cars. He said he would.

That was it. I drove off and I could see him in the windscreen mirror walking away and pulling out his phone. 

The woman who lived in tonnes of rubbish

THE only reason I ended up on this story was to avoid another one. I was sitting in my white Nissan Micra in Kingston. The story I was on had collapsed and my boss wanted me to “bob” up to Hanger Lane were a gas leak was causing tailbacks. I was hot. My shins were sweating and I felt weak. That might tip me over the edge.

I spotted my escape route on Twitter. A local reporter had tweeted a link to a story about a search for a woman who may be trapped in her house under tonnes of rubbish she had hoarded over “many years”.

I read it again. I thought “HOARDER CRUSHED UNDER TONNES OF RUBBISH COLLECTED IN HOME” or something catchier – but I saw a belter.

I rang desk, suddenly quite energised.

“Yes. The Newham Recorder published online an hour ago… the police and fire services are still looking I think…. In east London…we don’t know – she many well be dead…61…shall I head? I just think, in the light of this the gas le-. Sure. Leaving now.”

Done.

There was a demolition company there when I arrived. And a photographer from the Newham Recorder and lots of neighbours.

Inside the house it looked like a dump – industrial, stale, deep, homeless rubbish was spilling out of the windows – the ceiling had collapsed which is why neighbours raised the alarm.

The demolition men were wearing light blue boiler suits that made them look like forensics.

The Met Police had gone and there were a two community support officers looking on.

This would be a brilliant reporter exam. ASSUME  NOTHING. I could literally be dealing with a pile of shite. Search and rescue would surely still be here if she was under there?

I went up to the photographer. I am from a better paper, so I can ask him whatever I want. My paper gets dicked on by all the other nationals, so I gave it my best.  

He “just didn’t know” if she was in there and said he’d got a few shots of the rubbish. He was nice, but he kept on looking at me during lulls in the conversation.  He kept his face forward and just moved his eyes.

Night fell. He left. The demolition men left. The PCSO were no use. Neighbours said they had no idea that the house was like that. The woman had lived there for 30 years, maybe more. She was well dressed. Some said they had seen her doing her makeup on the corner of the street in the side mirrors of cars, but other people said that was untrue. She had no family. She was quiet.

She left the house early in the morning and she would walk, and then turn and look at her house, then walk a little further, and turn and check it was all OK, then walk on, turn, before she finally went round the corner to get the bus.

“If she is dead, I feel bad, we should have done more to check on her,” one neighbour said.

I got ready to leave. She couldn’t be in there.

Then a chubby woman in a long skirt walked in front of us. It was her. Back, as it turned out, from a few days spent with friends in Lewisham.

She saw the tip. She began to shake. Her neighbours went to her.

 “My house. My house. My house,” she said.

A community support officer took her arm as she tried to get in the door.

“I’m sorry, I was away, I was away. I’m sorry,” she said.

They ushered her into a police car. She just looked like a normal chubby faced woman – I would have put her in her 50s.

I needed “a full chat and pics” – my boss’s expectation battered against my eyeballs  – did I have a headache looking at her?

I had been standing with a neighbour, let’s call him Dave Singh. He was the perfect mix between a pleaser and a lone wolf. On this night, he was my game changer.

I had tried to take a few photos with my phone as she returned. But they were awful. I could barely life the camera as she stood at her door.

She was now sitting in a police car. The PCSO said I couldn’t talk to her.

Dave: “You want a decent pic and chat, don’t you, reporter, you are not here because you are bored.”

I nodded and pursed my lips, looking blankly into the distance. She was in the police car.

Dave: “Will you give me 50 quid if I help you?”

Me: “yes”

Dave: “I’ll give her a cup of tea and ask her some questions, you get near and you can hear”.

Genius. This is exactly what we did.

Cold, the bastard cold

It has been so cold over the last few months. Every job I have been sent on begins with a wave of dread. Just a creeping fear of the cold that makes me loiter at the exits of tubes pretending to myself that I am working out which way to go, or nipping into corner shops looking for a sugar hit, or cigarettes, or something to relieve the fact that I have lost my gloves for the nth time, that it is zero degrees, that it is a Tuesday evening at 8pm and that once I do hit my target, I will be asking them to tell me about – more often than not – the death of a family member.

I’m not going to lie – it has been bleak. My Italian friend called me the other day in a fit of confusion about the weather. It had broken him. He works as a guitar teacher and travels around London to his pupils – much like I do –  to the unknowing  subjects of the next story.

“Fucking hell, I can’t do it. I can’t. The snow was sticking to my face,” he said.

“It was only my face, everyone else seemed to be fine. My eyeballs! My eyeballs! Fa van culo! Questo tempo di merda! How do you do it? You are crazy. It is APRIL, APRIL! We are in our sunglasses at home…”

It went on. I put the phone on loud speaker and continued to tidy my room. I agreed.

I did a story last week. It was terribly sad. A dad died suddenly of shock when he realised his house has been burgled of everything. He just keeled over in front of his three sons, breathed heavily, made some strange noises and died.

He had rung his wife at work moments before and told her that they had lost everything.

Off I went to Croydon to speak to the wife the day after.

I had the dread. It was so cold and Croydon – transport wise – is weird. There is a lot of walking around generic suburban streets.  As the light falls and people are scurrying into their homes, and the sky is suburban grey, and the snap shots into living rooms are of scenes that remind me of home in Birmingham –  central London seems like another world.

It just takes someone to tell you that you are a filthy intruder – that you have no compassion – on nights like these – to send you a little over the edge.

I rang the bell of the house. I could see lots of people inside. The moment when someone opens the door my face has to say something that isn’t revolting.  Do they want straight talking or sympathetic? Do they want  you to dictate what you want or to express a wish that they might want to take you up on..?

But this was the best possible outcome. The door opened and a man smiled. He smiled!! They led me in. It was Sri Lankan family and the local community had come to the house to be with the family. They were talking about the man; they wanted to talk about the man who died. He was wonderful –a great friend – generous – he had heart problems. His son spoke to me – surrounded by his friends – about the moment they walked into the house. He cried. The man’s wife cried. I told them I would do my very, very best. I meant it. I was sad.

They thanked me for my time. I thanked them for theirs. The house was warm.

But the weirdest thing of all is that I am writing around advertising space, and the bits in between have to be riveting first and foremost.  So, actually, now I think about it, what I did was go back to the office and write the best 450 words for that space between the ads.