Too hot to handle

When I finally gave up pretending I was trying to sleep in the attic oven and got up, I opened the curtains and there was a half dead pigeon lying on its side on the flat roof outside my window. Now there are two things that make me panic..cockroaches and flapping birds.

I can remain cool as a cucumber ( though not today, the hottest day that is ever to be apparently) when encountering a London cockroach, like the one that crawled across the table when we took my dad to Pollo’s in Soho. This establishment, a much frequented student haunt in my younger days is slightly below his usual fine dining radar, but he took to the challenge with good humour as he wedged himself into the rather uncomfortable bench seating in between his grandchildren. All was going well until a Werther’s original sized cockroach strolled leisurely across the formica table and sat there looking at us. We pretended not to notice. The cockroach stared at us. I tried to make conversation. The kids started to giggle. Finally the waiter stepped in, marched over and whacked the cockroach with a napkin and without a word scooped up the flattened corpse and went about his business.

Another time, we went to the opening of a new wine bar in Camberwell and as my friend lifted up her glass of wine a large cockroach that must have been hanging out on the overhead fan fell into the glass with a loud ‘plop’. This resulted in much hilarity and free wine for the rest of the evening. We didn’t return. Indeed the only other story I have about that very wine bar was from T , who went there for dinner one evening fairly soon after it opened . As they sat waiting for their meal a manky old tramp squatted down outside the window and had a very loud and very long shit in full view of the startled diners. The wine bar struggled on for a while but eventually closed down and is now a swanky cafe selling smashed avocados and turmeric tea.

Talking of things falling out of the sky ( well I sort of was), reminds me of two of the best stories I have ever heard.

The first one concerned L and some of his mates who were larking about one evening ( as you do) on the roof of the Bussey building, an old cricket bat factory in Peckham. In the early days the whole set up was a bit ramshackle and resembled an Amsterdam squat with endless rooms leading into dishevelled studios and cafes, now extremely gentrified full of 4×4 buggies and yoga mums. Anyway, they used to get a bit of extra income by hiring out some of the larger rooms to local churches at the weekends and the boys found themselves looking down through the skylight on a church gathering. And I mean the sort of all singing, all dancing churches with huge hairstyles and shiny frilly suits and the sort of dresses you should not approach with a naked flame. The sort of church that breathes fire and brimstone in time to the out of time drum kit with a lot of clapping and shouting. You get the picture. As the preacher got into his stride and the congregation got into their swaying, one of L’s friends lost his footing and fell through the skylight, dragging another boy with him and the pair landed on the preacher, knocking him to the ground as the astonished churchgoers shrieked in horror. He then lay on the pair of them and performed a citizens arrest while his sidekick called the police. After being taken away in a police van and questioned for the rest of the day the boys were released on a caution. And when Lucas got home and told me this I had to lie on the floor and my stomach hurt because I was laughing so hard.

The second one is so unbelievable that you just have to believe it. My friend A was standing at the local cash point minding his own business as you do. Suddenly the bloke in front turned round and punched him full in the face, knocking him over and bloodying his nose. A had no idea what had just happened and the pair of them had a heated exchange, to put it politely. It transpired ( get this) that a pigeon had dropped dead out of the sky and hit the bloke in front on the head. He had assumed it was A . I mean how good is that story?

And I have just realised that as usual I have gone off on a tangent. I haven’t even got round to the Japanese cockroaches.or the flapping birds, or the time a moth flew into my mouth. But there is a coffee pot that needs putting on, and a rucksack that needs packing. Another time.

Stay cool people.