Dear Octopus,
Yesterday was a bleak and gloomy Sunday afternoon. As I sat on a rickety bench in our local Iranian laundrette, trying (and failing) to read a book over the repetitive watery thudding of various antiquarian machines, I thought: 'this is fucking grim.' And that made me think about the phases of our lives as they unfurl around us; some grim, some not so. I'd like to think - after all -that having lived in our nation's capital for five years now that I'd be above this sort of thing. The seed of this particularly abstract thought was planted by my mother Vino Squid, who told me recently that our lives are dictated by chapters; some short, some long, and as such one should never be afraid of ending one and starting another. Don't dwell on the past, was her point. I believe I made reference to it in Part I.
As anyone who knows me in anything other than passing should immediately realise, this situation called for a diagram. But with my sketching skills comprehensively and irreversibly depleted by the fact that I have absolutely no natural talent for it, my inadequacy forces me to make do with a description.
As follows:
2003-2006: The Apple Tree
Three years of university. Cereal, daytime television. X-Box. Beer, mixed with cider, mixed with blackcurrant cordial. Red biros circling illegible notes. Summers working in an actual office (how grown up), evenings drinking red wine (how grown up) and listening to the Toad play guitar under the apple tree. Road trips, elaborate drinking games, scourges of paranoia and a crippling lack of self-confidence. The Postal Service, Bright Eyes, Coldplay. Bright sunny days viewed from the bottom of an unusually dark hole.
2006-2008: The Bar Under The Bridge
London baby. University, but with money. Work hard / play hard our way to Inferno's: boozing inside, fighting outside, drudgery, a girlfriend, the lagging realisation that this is not just another semester between holidays. Ironing shirts of an evening whilst watching reality television. Our landlady's depressing painting hanging on the kitchen wall. Cheap dates in cheap restaurants, cheap talk. Interim appraisals at the bottom of the ladder. Curries on neon Brick Lane, Sunday evenings on Peckham Rye. The art student who ran the shitty pub quiz in the Bar Under The Bridge, his stupid fucking haircut, getting asked to leave for calling him the c-word (he so was). Jamie T, Regina Spektor, The Perishers. The last vestiges of us all living together, now that we are here.
2009-2010: The Loft
A loft on Lydden Grove. New housemates. Saturday Kitchen, eating fish finger sandwiches. Lots of cooking programmes. Nights out in Artesian Well, being ignored. Social networking. A winter so cold there was frost on the inside of my window. A winter so cold I could see my breath when I was lying in bed. Chain-smoking with worry. A fear that something is changing, and can never be undone. Kissing on the Waterloo footbridge. Cat Power, The XX, Joan Armatrading. A book, a new life, and you.
2009-2011: The House That Love Built (And Forgot)
The shared house, the fallout. Strangers. A hospital of living. Bicycles stored in hallways, toilet roll in cupboards. The gradual osmosis of change; Honksy and Pongo sauntering in on a dry Saturday. Nicknames, takeaways, house parties spent mixing martinis for sweet, pretentious children. Lavatorial humour laughing on the sofa. Sunday walks in Wimbledon Park, sleeping under the trees. Dates with very lovely, very sad women. Promotions, roof terraces, nights at the theatre. Coming home from Hoxton Square warehouse parties in black cabs, sidling slyly through the peach-cream dawn. Bon Iver, Laura Marling, Grizzly Bear. Writing letters to someone who cannot read them, thinking it okay.
What next?
(Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't involve that fucking laundrette. He keeps over-starching my collars and I'm just not standing for it.)
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
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