The Worst of Ghosts
Surreal Girl dragged me to the theatre tonight. Given it was All About My Mother at the Old Vic, there was not too much dragging. Diana Rigg and Mark Gatiss trying to reinvent Almódovar’s movie as theatre was always going to attract my interest.
Due to circumstances beyond my control – including a rush hour without suicides and London Underground deciding to run without a hitch for once – I arrived on The Cut nearly 40 minutes before we were due to eat at Livebait. This bit of London used to be my patch. As a child it used to qualify as the most common escape from Essex. As a teenage ligger, the Church of England estate my maternal family had lived in since the 1930s was my home.
It was round this way that I first learned the meaning of South London suss and urban hoodoo. First learned to talk my way out of attempted mugging, got a grounding in street savvy that has helped me get along everywhere from Southwark to Split. England made me and area around The Cut was one its classrooms.
Tonight I did not want to revisit my history. I had no wish to glimpse myself at 19, all fearless optimism and unfocused hunger. I wanted to be off the street, away from even the rumour of temporal shades. Besides, it was too cold for waiting on corners or crossroads.
This left me with the Englishman’s traditional final refuge – the pub. The drinking dens of my youth have gone, eradicated by a wave of gentrification. Some like The Mitre have been demolished, others had their names taken, victims of identity theft that leaves a traditional rough boozer an acclaimed gastro pub easily able to blag its way into The Observer.
I nursed a half pint of the dark stuff in The Anchor and Hope, thinking back to a time before it became a haven for gaggling yuppies. The night a chair was thrown across the room, the mirror behind exploding like an eighties pop video effect as the missile arrived. Remembering when its only concession to food was cheese and piccalilli sarnies.
Come six, I met Surreal Girl outside Livebait, opening the door to another memory. The last time I had eaten there it had been with a journalist friend and the famous actor he was interviewing. Whenever I see someone eating crab, I get an image of Ray Winstone.
Maybe it was the crab cakes or the bread and butter pudding, but I left the restaurant in a better mood. I even felt like showing Surreal Girl where I had lived on Greet Street. If the 19-year-old me had looked down and into the future, he would have seen us laughing. I was no longer worried about what had once been.
Hubris. Pure hubris. As soon as we entered the foyer, I saw the worst of my past, the worst of ghosts floating up the stairwell. I could have turned and left, but I will be damned if I let any duppy get in the way of a good night out.
The past hold lessons as well as pain. One I learnt long ago is you can banish with laughter. Even before Dame Rigg brought the house down with the line: “I haven’t sucked cock in 30 years,” I was smiling. By the time we headed back into the night, I was only thinking of a future featuring a nice cup of tea.
Due to circumstances beyond my control – including a rush hour without suicides and London Underground deciding to run without a hitch for once – I arrived on The Cut nearly 40 minutes before we were due to eat at Livebait. This bit of London used to be my patch. As a child it used to qualify as the most common escape from Essex. As a teenage ligger, the Church of England estate my maternal family had lived in since the 1930s was my home.
It was round this way that I first learned the meaning of South London suss and urban hoodoo. First learned to talk my way out of attempted mugging, got a grounding in street savvy that has helped me get along everywhere from Southwark to Split. England made me and area around The Cut was one its classrooms.
Tonight I did not want to revisit my history. I had no wish to glimpse myself at 19, all fearless optimism and unfocused hunger. I wanted to be off the street, away from even the rumour of temporal shades. Besides, it was too cold for waiting on corners or crossroads.
This left me with the Englishman’s traditional final refuge – the pub. The drinking dens of my youth have gone, eradicated by a wave of gentrification. Some like The Mitre have been demolished, others had their names taken, victims of identity theft that leaves a traditional rough boozer an acclaimed gastro pub easily able to blag its way into The Observer.
I nursed a half pint of the dark stuff in The Anchor and Hope, thinking back to a time before it became a haven for gaggling yuppies. The night a chair was thrown across the room, the mirror behind exploding like an eighties pop video effect as the missile arrived. Remembering when its only concession to food was cheese and piccalilli sarnies.
Come six, I met Surreal Girl outside Livebait, opening the door to another memory. The last time I had eaten there it had been with a journalist friend and the famous actor he was interviewing. Whenever I see someone eating crab, I get an image of Ray Winstone.
Maybe it was the crab cakes or the bread and butter pudding, but I left the restaurant in a better mood. I even felt like showing Surreal Girl where I had lived on Greet Street. If the 19-year-old me had looked down and into the future, he would have seen us laughing. I was no longer worried about what had once been.
Hubris. Pure hubris. As soon as we entered the foyer, I saw the worst of my past, the worst of ghosts floating up the stairwell. I could have turned and left, but I will be damned if I let any duppy get in the way of a good night out.
The past hold lessons as well as pain. One I learnt long ago is you can banish with laughter. Even before Dame Rigg brought the house down with the line: “I haven’t sucked cock in 30 years,” I was smiling. By the time we headed back into the night, I was only thinking of a future featuring a nice cup of tea.
Labels: All About My Mother, Livebait, Ray Winstone, The Cut
posted by David at
11:59 PM
9 Comments:
Oh David, this is such a beautiful post, especially the last paragraph.
That sounds like a really nice evening. I often have a hard time revisiting places I went back when. Things change so much and too often I come across those sudden memories that punch a little too hard.
Fabulous evening. Like a lifetime lived in a few brief hours.
So that's where you learned to escape a mugging.
I'd give my left nut to hear Diana Rigg say that.
... and the rest of the post was just as evocative. A glimpse at a little corner of the world I'll probably never know.
As said "you can never go home again"...and for many reasons I guess thats a good thing.
Sounds like one of those amazing nights to me...one's that often come the older one gets.
Ditto on all the Rigg comments. She had me in her web the very first time I saw her.
Nice piece, David. The Cut was where I was introduced to the delights of Pie and Mash. Can't say I was overly impressed whatsoever when I bit into the pie and saw the pinky beef mixture within. Later on, when I got the taste, I became a regular at Harrington's in the Wandsworth Rd. Used to buy flowers from Buster Edwards at Waterloo Station. He drove a Roller and lived in a council flat just over the river.
Once a week a bloke from the Cut came round to take orders for dodgy goods. He could get you anything you wanted and he was a lot cheaper than Argos.
Milla – Thank you. I think I am only ever unintentionally beautiful and find the idea that someone finds beauty in my words a pleasing wonder.
Z – Yes, some memories hit far too hard. Thursday certainly delivered a Bruce Lee one inch punch.
RF – Yes, that’s where I learned it. One of its many valuable lessons.
Sonny – You are not the only one. If they had used that as the advertising strapline, there would not be a spare seat in the Old Vic.
FN23 – In the last couple of years I have lost every home and yet found my place. It sometimes seems as if the future echoes back to create the present, just as the past plays a role in generating the now. We walk between those two unknowable worlds, become the hinge between them. To try and live in the past or future is to make yourself a shade and frankly, I would make a bloody useless ghost.
33 – Never got the pie bit myself. Loved the mash and the liquor, could never get to grips with the eels or offal. I used to buy flowers from Buster as well – he even gave us a free bunch when my Aunt Barbara was dying from leukemia in St. Thomas' Hospital. I remember getting an earful from my mum as a child if we ever tried to ask him about his crimer days. I have always meant to write something about him being ‘suicided’ in the lock-up round the back from where I used to live.
You do, indeed, have a way with words in which you can bring your reader back and forth in time with you. This was a very nice evening to share with you.
Diana Rigg in person? You are so lucky. :)
I think that's partly why I don't come home so often as I should. That and being a worker bee, stuck in my office for too much of the year.
That reminded me of seeing the Vagina Monologues with Loretta Swit in Honolulu a few years back. There's something extraordinary about seeing these superchicks live, saying things that are unutterable by them elsewhere except in the theater.. ;-)
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