east of orange

On Friday, that’s Friday, the day of inebriation by anyone’s standards, I didn’t drink. Not a drop, nada. Zip. Instead I watched The Darjeeling Limited which, oddly, I’ve enjoyed more in hindsight than I did at the time, before reading voraciously and going to bed, all sober and straight. And shit.

Saturday I awoke, completely free of any malaise and set off in the warm sunshine in my white van for perhaps the last time to see Myfwt and load a bunch of her furniture into the gaping maw of the white and dropped her off at her sisters gaff where it was unloaded. This task was rewarded by a pub lunch with my brother, sat by the river we had a couple of pints and a burger and nattered about stuff as nature buzzed lazily about us and bits of tree landed in our beer and hair –it was lovely. We walked back in tee shirts and got thoroughly stoned on our return, a bit too stoned for comfort. After he wandered off looking all the worse for the charis I installed my new Orange Livebox which promised to delivery super speed broadband, it’s marginally faster than my old modem, the Orange cunts have sold me a fucking monkey.

I met up with Frank early evening and we trundled into town to meet an old mate who is due to be married shortly, having a pass out he was rather keen to fulfil drinking duties but Frank and I weren’t really in the mood, initially. After a few in a West End boozer, quite a few, we were there until last orders, Frank left us so Rob and I wandered into some dreadful nightclub populated by teenage cunts listening to the most disgusting music imaginable. By now a bit pissed Rob and I spent a good hour being thoroughly unpleasant about all and sundry sipping buckets of gin and tonic, I believe on one occasion we sarcastically danced, it’s all rather vague.

I managed to catch the last tube home and somehow returned home with some shopping I’ve utterly no recollection of purchasing, the evening ended at some point because I woke in up bed on Sunday morning dying of a bastard in my head. I ate some kippers with tea and toast and watched the start of the Grand Prix and following a horrific incident with Kovalainen hitting a tyre wall head on at 150mph and being briefly convinced I’d witnessed a fatal (he’s got concussion, that’s it) I headed of to the Eastend to visit a friend at a gallery near Brick Lane.

When I alighted at Whitechapel I was greeted with a very peculiar scene close to The Blind Beggar where George Cornell got his comeuppance. Rolling around in the gutter were a bundle of limbs and yelling heads, most notably a single arm was repeatedly pile driving a fist into the centre of this screaming creature. Convinced I was watching a stabbing I stood stock-still and watched, it’s not the sort of thing one sees on a daily basis, I surmised. I was intrigued by the outcome.

What I wasn’t expecting were that there were two protagonists; both female and the other bodies involved in the disruption were men preventing any further violence. This was easier said than done. The women were very cross with each other, and the language dear reader, well I shall spare you but it was jolly course, ‘come here you such and such, I’m going to kick you in the wotnot, you’re a prostitute (or words implying such amoral business) you is going down, you is’ They were both spitting and snarling and as soon as the incident seemed to calm, off they went again, pulling hair, biting and properly punching the fuck out of each other. I stood there with a fucking huge stonk-on, watching, just watching…

The gallery was shut (the website said it would be open) so unfortunately we wound up in an Eastend boozer for the remainder of the afternoon. The Eastend is very different to sarf London, whilst I am familiar with the latter, despite fighting crack whores, the Eastend does have a very pleasant edge to it, it seems much more inspired, the place is populated by some genuinely odd characters but the young hip types give it a most congenial edge.

Finally, I couldn’t finish today’s Piqued without a quick mention of Humphrey Littleton. On Friday a national treasure shuffled off this mortal coil and the world will be a poorer place without him. In addition to being a superlative jazz trumpeter he was possibly one of the funniest men to have breathed. I will miss him.