World Travel Guide Online

The Streets
London, England

It’s Friday night and we have all been working too hard again. The evening begins in a low-key way – a few beers, a few friends and plans for the weekend are laid out for inspection. London is our city and for all her callousness, dirt and lack of charm we love her passionately and couldn’t make it through the week unless we had a dive into her sordid underbelly to look forward to each weekend. The London of tourists and guide-book attractions is just one veneer of the city. Each weekend we dive deeper and only emerge, reborn, refreshed and sore-headed each Monday morning. For us there is nowhere else we would rather be than on the streets of the greatest city in the world. This is the story of a weekend in London and a reflection on how us true Londoners live.

Friday night always begins in a bar close to the university. Over pints of warmish beer and bags of cheese and onion crisps we slowly unwind from the horrors of office life and with each life-giving pint the conversation takes new turns, new realms of possibilities appear and people are drawn to us like moths to a candle. By nine o’clock we have loosened our ties and our grumbling stomachs tell us it’s time to head off into the night and go for a curry, and perhaps a few more pints. If we then have the energy and aren’t too drunk we might hit a club. But it’s Friday and we are all tired and we all have that Friday feeling of looking forward to a big weekend. It’s now the time to reacquaint ourselves with alcohol and prepare for the main event of a big Saturday night out.

Saturday morning comes slowly into my consciousness and the day is more than half way through before I am even vaguely functioning. My head feels fuzzy and buzzing – it feels like someone is inside and trying to kick their way out. I vaguely recall staggering home, talking (well, more like shouting) with friends, at 4am after a curry and a few more drinks in a club but it’s a blur really. There is no time for self-loathing as I need to head on over to Southall, grab some lunch, some new clothes, and get ready for the night.

Twenty minutes later I step off the bus in busy, throbbing, cosmopolitan Southall. Alice fell through a rabbit hole but never did she end up somewhere like Southall. The streets are awash with the shimmering silks of saris, the sound of a distorted Asian music blasts from every shop, the smell of spices frying assaults your nose from a hundred street side cafes, lithe young Lolitas – the products of Asia mixed with West London – slink past whilst venerable elders sit in dirty shalwar kamizes and lament the passing of their youth and dreams. The fact that I am clocking the girls who are clocking me hasn’t gone unnoticed and I receive looks of disgust from the bearded elders as I walk up the Broadway grinning and rubbing my sore head.

I come here each weekend either to have lunch with friends whom I know from my days back in India and Pakistan, to buy spicy Indian sweets from the small shop behind the police station, to have a shirt made from the fabrics which are hot off the plane from Bombay or just to look at the girls. Once I did more than look but it almost ended in tragedy and I learnt that looking was just about permissible but touching would result in four heavies turning up at my flat in the middle of the night offering to reshape my legs for me.

Lunch is in one of the many low-cost Pakistani restaurants which line the high street. It’s always good simple food, freshly cooked and perfect for a hangover. As we sit on the street and exchange tales, a soft-top Mercedes drives past, the stereo is so loud that it makes the cutlery dance on the table. The car was probably stolen to order a few hours ago and will be on its way to the subcontinent by the end of the day. It often seems that everything illegal passes through Southall on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes it is caseloads of Rolex watches, conveniently liberated from a warehouse at the airport, sometimes it is the latest designer clothes and sometimes more sinister things pass through from Kashmir or Lahore.

I don’t really belong in this world but for some reason the locals accept me and know I have travelled in their lands with an open mind. J. and X. turn up just as we are wiping our sticky fingers on the greasy table cloth. Raised as Asian stars, but with a London Underground travel card, these are the boys that CS gassed the father of the girl who was making crank calls to my parents because I slept with her sisters. Today they are trying to sell something a lot more sinister than CS gas. They stay long enough to pop some pills, eat a samosa and to share their solution to all the world’s ills. When these guys have a day off the GDP of Colombia goes south.

By the time I am ready to leave Southall my phone has already rung half a dozen times: what time are we meeting, where are we going, how are we getting there and what time are we coming home? I rush across town fielding calls and arrive back at my flat just in time for the half time football scores. We all passionately follow football and the ritual of getting ready to go out whilst checking the half-times is sacred. I know we will spend the early sober part of the evening dissecting them in minute detail whilst those of us who had tickets will be basking in the glory of an afternoon spent on the terraces.

I make it to the pub just in time for final score and order my first pint of the evening as the results come in. Our teams haven’t had a particularly good day and we all feel the sense of frustration that another thrashing by United brings, but, the night is a child, and we shall soon loose ourselves on the dance floor. It’s time to grab some cans and jump on a train.

Looking down the train carriage as it rumbles and shakes its way into London is like looking at a slice through all of London’s society. Young Asian girls, pretty in tight trousers and flowing silk tops rub shoulders with an elegant couple dressed up to the nines (‘oh, we are off to the opera, don’t you know’), teenagers with shaved heads and piercings bob their head to their personal stereos, an elderly man struggles with the Times crossword whilst a family of Japanese tourists fumble with a map. We sit back, drink beer, admire the girls and feel the waves of excitement slowly building. We live for Saturday night. Soon the night will belong to us and the grind of 9-5 working will be long forgotten.

We spill out of the train into Covent Garden which at this time of a Saturday night is heaving with tourists who are as wide eyed as children in a toy shop. The constant strobing of their flash bulbs and flutter of maps makes them think that the whole of London is out on manoeuvres for their own edification when in fact the truth is quite the opposite. They are there to brighten our lives and add a splash of exotic possibility to our regular crawl through the scene in London. Whilst they queue ten deep for the trendier bars and clubs around the Garden, where they will pay twenty quid to get in and dance with other tourists and underage girls, we make our way to the Essex Serpent and the upstairs room where few non-regulars ever stray. It’s packed to overflowing but the atmosphere is one of brotherhood – we are here to party and party we shall. Barriers such as sex, colour, creed or religion are forgotten as we all seek our own personal form of oblivion.

Licensing laws in London remain archaic and so we order doubles which we drink as fast as singles and in-between catching up with friends, ‘you’ll never guess who is pregnant,’ or ‘I was so drunk last week. What time did we leave?’ we knock back the drinks and keep an eye on the clock. The bell for last orders rings, ‘time gentlemen, please’ and we dive out into the night. You might think that by the sheer volume of people on the streets that it is rush-hour, and in a way it is – we are all rushing off to clubs or parties now, single minded in our pursuits. We cross the street and into the small village hall which is the Africa Centre. We pay seven quid to get in, shake hands with the bouncer (who admires my new shirt) and enter the place where all my work-day dreams lead.

The club is called Funkin’ Pussy and has been held every Saturday night at the Africa Centre for the last ten years or so. It’s small, dark, hot, and very very loud. As you enter the club proper a wall of sound assaults you. This is swiftly followed by a wave of heat, which in the summer can feel like a sauna. We fight our way to the bar for cold Tuskers and edge back to the dance floor. Regular DJ, Hooch is rocking the turntables whilst his partner The Dump is on the mike and egging the crowd on:

“Funkin’ Pussy – we are going to rock tonight. Welcome to the weekly warehouse jam. Ain’t nothing like a party. No Parking on the dance floor.”

We catch his eye and wave our cold beers in his direction.

“Welcome along to the Africa Centre, the centre of the world.”

We fan out onto the dance floor. And then Hooch drops the Mohawks into the mix and the place explodes. Black, white, brown, straight, gay, and anyone in between is welcome at Funkin’ Pussy. The only qualification is that you must love the music, be prepared to sweat and make as much noise as possible. All week I live for this and I am almost drowning in the vibe. Hot, sweaty bodies are pressed all around me, the music is so loud the walls are shaking and The Dump is whipping people into a frenzy with music which runs all the way from James Brown, through Parliament and Funkadelic to the Temptations. The pressure increases as more and more bodies are pressed closer together. I am drenched with sweat and hoarse from shouting and screaming. One summer we all had whistles and my ears would be ringing for days afterwards. Then, just when you think the pressure can’t go any higher, Hooch drops the beat and begins scratching over a familiar base line. The Dump is in front of the decks, sweat dripping down his face, rolling his eyes in ecstasy:

“Funkin’ Pussy, do you remember? It’s time to pay our respects to the motor city.”

Screams and a mass of waving hands in the air.

“Damn right, I remember..the year was 1971… Funkin’ Pussy, I know you remember. Sing that chorus for me Funkin’ Pussy.”

And we do.

And pressed in a crowd of about three hundred hot, sweaty, happy people, all of whom live for this moment and treat it with the almost religious respect it deserves we raise the roof and when the beat finally drops in we are perfectly in time…

“Papa was a rolling stone…wherever he lay his hat was his home…”

And then I am being pulled of the dance floor by my friends whose faces are streaked with sweat and plastered with silly grins. They are hungry and drag me off into the night in search of food. I am so high that my feet barely touch the cobblestones. It seems our group has grown in the last few hours by one or two significant females. My ears ring and my voice is hoarse but this doesn’t seem to matter really as neither of the girls seem to speak much English, except, “Funkin’ Pussy, yes, we like.”

Into Leicester Square which is as busy at 4am as it is at 4pm. The falafel and burger stands are doing a roaring trade to tired clubbers and lost tourists. People are just spilling out a late night showing at the Empire and queuing to catch the last few hours in Equinox. We debate whether we should go to Chinatown for a meal – the food isn’t always great but it’s fun to watch the Chinese gathered around plates of steaming noodles gambling their wages away. Perhaps we should see if Lady Luck is smiling and hit the casino or even just hang-out in a restaurant until the sun comes out. But as attractive as all these options are the night is still a child and we feel we really need to dance more. Chinatown has a good Japanese Jazz type club and we head off there, planning to dance and drink until the sun comes up.

At sunrise we fall out of the club and head off to a restaurant for breakfast. The girls from the Africa Centre, who turn out to be Ukrainian, find it amusing that we all wolf down eggs, bacon, beans and fried bread with undisguised enthusiasm whilst they sip weak tea and nibble on buttered toast. We could be sensible and head off home now but being sensible is something we do all week and so we head off for a little more fun.

The first stop is Kings Cross and the infamous Church. Pretty much anything goes at the Church and it’s most definitely not the place to take your grandmother. As the beer flows an amateur strip contest is taking place on the stage, beery boat races are taking place on the floor (we always lose this one), a team of South Africans are playing the Stick Game with a group of Scandinavians whilst two Japanese tourists are being encouraged to give a pole dance on the bar. I have to keep rubbing my eyes to really believe what is going on.

At 3:30pm The Church closes and enmasse the congregation rush over to Backpackers for more of the same. We drink, dance and watch the silly games, drinking races and wet T-shirt contests until someone suggests Los Locos. Our party seems to have swollen by a few more foreign girls by the time the taxis deposit us at Los Locos. Someone decides we need tequila and we soon have a table covered in shot glasses. It’s only 6pm and I feel decidedly unwell now. I try to dance it off but that doesn’t work and I sit down in a corner booth to admire the graffiti:

“It’s been so long since I had sex that I forget who gets tied up.”
“Own hearth is golden…”
“Party, party, party. We live for that.”

We drink and dance and chat until 10:30 when I decide that enough is enough and head off into the night to find a night-bus home. I’m tired, a little drunk and have been wearing the same clothes for far too long. My ears are ringing, my voice is hoarse from shouting and singing and I have spent a small fortune. But I am blissfully happy. These feelings and memories will keep me going through another boring working-week. As I jump onto the bus and leave the pulsing heart of London, bound for the suburbs, the city is just gearing itself up for another night. This is my city and I love her to death. Next weekend I will be back again and she will once more embrace me with open arms as I once more trip headlong into the streets.