Sunday 5 February 2012

Street Life

Yesterday I had a very full Mathew St experience. This time last year I was actually working in Mathew St, bringing glamorous cabaret and vintage chic to a largely indifferent,sometimes actively hostile,population. Of the many eye-openers during this period,several stand out. I had not known that rats get up so early in the morning, or that sane-looking office types start drinking at lunchtime on Friday and do not stop drinking until the early hours of Sunday morning. Or that it was possible to exist on fried lard and lipgloss, and yet maintain a figure which one is perfectly happy to display in two pieces of tinsel and a thong. And that,of course, was just the boys.
Many, many marvels.
Saturday was marginally more sedate at first; I was embarking on a Memory Lane "Not Just Vintage" Fair, in the rather lovely premises of the club that used to be "Rubber Soul". To this end, I had assembled twelve crammed bags of satin and shiny retro things, plus a clothes rail. The Giant Boy is a massive help on such occasions, being possessed of a sunny temperament and huge muscles. As it was silly-o'clock, he was also still asleep. I phoned my cab people and requested an estate car and a driver of more than usually sanguine personality. Instead I received a grump in a hatchback. "You will never" he proclaimed "get ALL THAT in THERE".
There are many statements issued by my co-punters in this vale of tears we inhabit that irk me. "Refer to Card Issuer" , "Your Call IS Important To Us" "Internet Explorer Cannot Find The Webpage" and "The Trouble With YOU is.." being but several. However, when someone tells me I can't do/think/drink something, a ferocious and probably rather infantile bit of my brain wakes up and drives me towards a place of  insane stubbornness. "You are now entering Insane Stubbornness" reads the sign.
So I got all that in there, and off we went.
Mathew St was tranquil in the early morning;only a few dedicated pissheads were to be seen bothering brave Norwegian tourists, and the body count was low.
The GB and I unpacked, unfolded, arranged and hung a series of delicious garments and shimmery jewels. Then he realised he was awake, and promptly went to sleep on a banquette. I had to revive him with a bacon sandwich, wafted under his nose in the manner that  burnt feathers and sal volatile might be ministered to a fainting Grand Duchess. And it was cowingly cold..the club managers had decided that it wasn't financially viable to put the heater on as, and I quote,  "It's a very big building". Queerly, it was hot as hell in the toilets, appropriately in the basement, so various stallholders headed off there for a warm when they had lost feeling in their feet, and ideally, their sense of smell. I decided to stand in the doorway with a fag instead. And that was how I saw the untoward goings-on going on in the doorway next to Vivienne Westwood.
"Gosh!" I ejaculated. The barmaid smoking next to me looked on, unimpressed. "Just imagine, they will be old enough to drink in here in a few years" I said to her. She shrugged in a world-weary fashion." We threw them out of here an hour ago" she said, stubbing her cigarette out in a lumpy pool of sleet.
There is a certain camaraderie generated by these occasions. All we dismally deep-frozen entrepreneurial types helped each other, in ways far too goody-goody to relate. As the Giant Boy had baled out to visit a dubious pool hall, I was left with masses of very heavy bags, no taxi, and heavy rain. Three angelic types magicked up a cab, and loaded me and my dripping bundles into it.  I was exhausted, aching, and poorer by . £30.00, but I shall do it all again next Saturday because I have no sense and no choice.
Many young yet bald men were shouldering their way through the sleet, with nothing more than a packet of cigarettes in their shirt pockets to keep them warm. Young women who had learnt how to walk on seven-inch heels stalked the greasy cobbles , wearing dresses made from clingfilm and with their wood-shaving blonde ringlets unwinding lankly as the rain sheeted down. Everyone was yelling happily at each other; some revellers attempting to eat chips despite a downpour that had already seen several plastic trays of burgers meet a watery end.
It was 4.30 on a perfectly foul winter's afternoon, and Mathew St was just getting going.

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