*BRAND SPANKING NEW AUDIO QUACK!*
I had thought my nights in Brixton were long behind me, but last Saturday I found myself amongst the shipping containers of Pop Brixton, shouting my food order over the deafening dance track.
“THE HUMMUS WRAP!”
“What?”
“THE HUUM MUUS WRAAAP!”
I had been invited by my former housemate, Pete, to his birthday drinks in our old stomping ground. ‘A bit of a blast from the past …’ he said, shyly in the Facebook message. A blast from the past indeed. Ten years have gone by since we lived in that terrace house in Stockwell.
There were four of us in that house. Me, Pete, Big Bro Joe (read about him here), and Dan who I had nicknamed Park Life, due to his love of English rock bands. When Definitely,Maybe started blasting from his bedroom, we knew he was getting ready to hit The Common. Pete also liked music, but it was bands that nobody had heard of.
“Would you like to come to a gig with me?” he’d asked on weekly basis.
“They’re called Parisian Dodos, kinda drum and bass. Kind of reggae. Kind of pop.”
His film collection was no better. Occasionally, he tricked the house into a movie night, and the four of us, plus a girl trying to impress Park Life, would be squeezed onto the sofas for three hours watching some 70’s Korean action film.
Our temporary family began in 2014. The city was gin-obsessed, and all the flat white-sipping millennials had made base south of the river. We’d cram on the Northern Line on the weekdays, and then cram into The Northcote on Friday nights. The first summer day of the year, saw everyone spread out on The Common, dizzy from bottomless Prosecco. There were endless gourmet burgers to try, Autumnal tag rugby matches, and late night bars where you make a two hour solid friendship with a marketing girl, who’s name you’d soon forget. I wanted to capture it all, stuff it into a jar and label it The SW Days. That’s when I began writing That Bloody Mary.
Along with Bloody Mary reviews, I wrote stories about our house share. One where Park Life and I had stumbled down to Brixton Market to cure an Honest Burger craving. As we munched our hangover away, we saw a pretty blonde with a backpack on. Park Life had a thing for blondes – still does I think.
“I’m not sure about the backpack,” Park Life said . “They’re a bit…” he pulled a face.
“She can take the backpack off. It would be like a… Dora the Explorer strip tease.”
He contemplated this for a second, then knocked on the window, and held up his number on a napkin. The backpack blonde sitting directing below us, squinted, giggled, then looked sad as she mouthed, I have a boyfriend.Then made a sad clown face.
Another failure I wrote down, was the trapping of the house mouse using Lindt chocolate and a box. The mouse was too wise for this, and eventually he/she met its fate with a pest controller. The majority of the stories in the blog though, told tales of us rambling the southern boroughs of London, without too much worry of what the future holds.
Like all house shares, things weren’t always...ideal. There was the fifth housemate to bear – football. If they weren’t watching it, they were talking about it, and if they weren’t talking about it, they were playing it on the Xbox. Our poor red sofas had black patches from the FIFA binges and endless matches.
I had attempted to make the place more homely with blankets and cushions, but the collection of sticky whiskey bottles, the hanging wires, and the ironing board which was permanently out, meant I was fighting a losing battle. I thought they would get bored of FIFA, but after two years the game was still going strong. I don’t think they noticed I moved out.
Ten years on, and we’ve all left London apart from Pete who has moved in with his lovely girlfriend. She can just about tolerate his offbeat DVD collection. On the way to Pete’s birthday drinks, I took a detour down our old road. The house hadn’t changed a bit; the random palm tree was there, the stubborn gate was open, and the blue velvet curtains were still hanging in my bedroom window.
Suddenly, the front door swung open, and a twenty-something year old woman, bundled in a black North Face coat came out. She ran down the steps, through the gates and headed towards The Common.
THE QUACK 