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All the parties I have never planned

When I was in Morden, Jacinta and I were fond of a Friday night out at Edwards in Wimbledon, and since I moved out of easy traveling distance of Wimbledon, the Edwards nights had to include staying at Jacinta’s. This night was such Friday – except instead of me piking at 12 to go home, Jacinta induced me to stay out in another, far less salubrious club called Footlights. We finally left that establishment at about 2am and, it being a mild night, we walked back to Jacinta’s via a little road of shops and houses just out of Wimbledon.

As we were passing the houses, we were hailed by a group of boys having a party on the roof. After a slightly rowdy exchange of greetings and compliments, we accepted their invitation to join them, trotted up three flights of stairs through a crowded share house to climb a precarious ladder to the roof to join our hosts. Once out on the flat roof it was definitely worth the slightly bizarre circumstances.

Jacinta’s little slice of Wimbledon is along a line of hills at the end of Wimbledon Common – from Jacinta’s room alone you can see south to Croydon and north-east to Canary Wharf – a spectacular view of many miles of London. The view from the roof top party was just as extensive and so we sat with the mixture of Australian, English and Turkish housemates, listened to Welsh rap and talked 3am talk.

The uncle of the Turkish guy owned the kebab shop across the road, so as we left he opened the shop for us and cooked us some chips while I nattered on about my trip to Turkey. It even turned out that the suburb in Istanbul that I had stayed in was where he was born. We finally got home around 3.30am with our chips – chips that were fresh, hot and, we agreed, by far the best chips we had ever tasted after one of the strangest parties we had ever attended.

Jacinta makes sure she drops in to say hi to our mate at the kebab shop – just think 'Fit but you know it' by the Streets and you will understand why one must be good mates with one's local kebab shop owners ...

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