fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

I enjoy working in central London for many reasons – chief among them the chance to see some genuinely different sights. One lunchtime Kim and I met on the Victoria Station concourse for lunch, we were officially going to find somewhere to sit for lunch but something even better turned up. As I was heading towards our meeting spot I walked past a very elegant couple in tux and ball dress, unusual to say the least at 12.30 in the afternoon. I found Kim and on the way back saw this couple standing by a Haagen Daaz promotions stall with another couple in elegant dancing gear. I made Kim lurk with me as I watched them organize something, turn on a stereo, and then start to tango and salsa around the stand. I was enchanted – one couple were a distinguished and very tall man with grey hair, his partner a tall stunning blonde in a strapless red ball gown. The other couple were shorter than me, two slight and very dark South Americans, the gentleman in a tux, the woman in a tiny red velvet d...

It was Matt’s birthday and we had a small celebration in honour of the day to tide him over until his party. Jacinta had come up to stay the night and try out our local club, only two blocks from us. It was an outpost of the South African equivalent of the Walkabout called Zulus , painted in the gaudy colours of the South African flag and unfailingly packed each Friday and Saturday night. So Jacinta and I got into our glad rags, downed the birthday champagne and even persuaded the usually hermitical Matt and Monica to get dressed up and join us. When we got to the line, the doorman refused to let Matt in with us three girls, despite Monica’s incredulous cry of ‘But he’s my husband!’ The irritated blondes went home and left Jacinta and I to the tender mercies of London’s South African community. And what a strange night it was too. We got into the club and it was in a huge hall with all the warmth and atmosphere of a school social – probably exacerbated by the dirt cheap beer and alc...

Despite a hideous first week at work, I actually got up on Monday morning in the best mood ever to find itself manifest on a Monday morning. I attribute it to both the sunlit bedroom and the residual well being of Sunday. Yet as I stood on the tube, crushed against my fellow travellers for 40 minutes, as I navigated the heaving tides of Victoria station concourse during peak hour and as I settled myself down in my grey office with a view only of chimney stacks and roof tiles, I felt almost Zen-like in my composure, like I was relaxing after a pleasingly strenuous yoga class. It almost felt like I was a solar charged panel, finally lighting up with the sun and radiating the stored energy. I was so high on the weather I tried to find a park in the concrete jungle of Victoria for lunch and thought I had hit pay dirt when I spotted a strip of green on the street map. Alas I had forgotten we were on the border of Belgravia and my little park was a luscious private garden that was only open ...

The timing of my move out to Matt and Monica's house couldn't have been more auspicious, the spring weather is glorious, but definitely more enjoyable with a forest on your doorstep. When I got to London in August an unusually hot summer was ending and the gardens were parched. Even so, to my eyes the greens were amazing and the pure abundance of growing things astounding. Now I understand why people live through the winter – the spring is a pleasure that makes the dreary months almost worthwhile. A sunny weekend was exactly what I needed – starved of sun, warmth and the chance to bare more than just my hands and face, I went a little crazy and became a dedicated Suntoucher. I missed one day of stunning weather frantically doing all the jobs I had to do inside, and finally escaped the house with Monica as my guide in the late evening. From home, it is only a short walk to a slice of forest surrounding a lake and the Snaresbrook Crown Court. It must have been about 7pm when we...

For a little while there London wasn’t being it’s usual self and throwing up strange and bizarre co-incidences – and then it gave me a genuine reason to laugh. Monica and I got the last tube home one night and were walking up past our 24 hour Tesco at what must have been about 12.30am. As we walked up towards the deserted car park we spied a black man in only a small white bath towel sprinting across the tarmac. We watched incredulously as, gripping his just purchased soap, he raced across the road in front of us yelling out ‘Don’t look! Don’t look!’ At this point we were exchanging quick bemused glances and shrugs with the young man who was the only other person in the street. It could have just stayed a funny story except that three weeks later I was walking out of the station when I heard a man behind me giving his companion, obviously a first time visitor to Leytonstone, a rundown of the area – ‘It’s nice, a little dodgy sometimes, like the time I saw this black guy in just a bat...

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 l...