fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

Matt, Monica and I moved into our new house at the end of last week - it is way bigger than the old one and was decorated by someone VERY fond of bright blue – bright blue carpet, curtains and soft furnishing, predominantly blue colored art and, just to add a bit of colour, canary yellow kitchen appliances. My bedroom is at the back with a lovely view (we are on the second floor) and I have made sure to put out all my most colourful possessions to counteract the predominance of blue. With my pink and green sheets, my vast rainbow silk scarf across the window, my acres of colourful postcards on the walls and my bright pink umbrella suspended from the roof, the blue kind of disappears! (sunglasses are recommended for entering the room though) Monica and I spent a day setting up the lounge room, so we had a little party. My bedroom. My bedroom.

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...

I just don't know where to start! The tackiness seemed to go on forever and that 'bracing' wind was whittling away at my bones. I was at a seaside resort on the Lincolnshire coast called Skegness - sadly enough the name is a good indication of the general attractiveness of the surrounds - to attend the Evangelical Alliance stand for a few days at a four week Christian Conference. I had spent the entire weekend gushing on about my paid holiday in Skegness, an excitement that vastly amused my English friends, who warned me repeatedly not to expect much. The three hour train journey out to Skeggie (or Skeggers – my attempt at a more Australian ring – it never caught on) was brilliant. I finally traveled out of the South East of England and I was glued to the windows watching the most fabulous countryside unroll before me. There was a particularly lovely section of the trip where the train chugged through low, hedge-rowed hills that hid so many little towns that as one church s...

I know the Square Mile MUCH better now – after that night I made sure one day a week was set aside to wander the streets without a map and with no direction. I went to the Alternative Fashion Week in the Spitalfields markets - shows put on by students with the most fabulous designs and ideas - after which I followed the crowds to Petticoat Lane markets and the beautiful arcades of Bishopsgate. I walked a substantial part of the ruins of the Roman Walls - a wonderful trek that has you darting down dark alleys to find oasis' of Roman ruins in landscaped gardens. I strolled down the dark valleys of the roads radiating off the Bank junction, vast stone walls looming above the pavement and hiding an amazing array of churches, pubs and Roman temples beneath its corporate facade. My favourite part of the immediate neighbourhood however is the Barbican Center, which is a huge complex of apartments, conference centers, cinemas and theatres that is like a small 1960's space station set...

The biggest exhibit at the Tate Modern Gallery for the last few months had been the Weather Project, a vast sun made up of powerful lights and an opaque plastice disc setting in a vast turbine hall with a mirrored ceiling. For the last two nights of the exhibition the hall was open until 1am and I joined the crowd on the South Bank at midnight to see a Midnight Sun in wintery London. The Tate is housed in a huge factory and the turbine hall was vast, the mirrored ceiling opened it up even more and the air-conditioning pumped out air carrying dissolved sugar which gave the area a sulphurous glow. Coming out of the freezing night air off the Thames, the heat was incredible and familiar, I was grinning as I crossed the concrete floor to get closer to the much missed warmth. After walking behind the disc to look at the mechanics of the sun I joined the rest of the crowd on the concrete floor – once you had inspected the sun for more than five minutes the urge to watch yourself in the mirro...

Kim is a fantastically conscientious traveler and around February had proposed a twelve hour tour of Dublin for St Patrick's Day – Kim, Monica, Matt and I were the lucky revelers who attended. We flew out of London at 5pm, Matt and Monica from Stansted, Kim and I from Gatwick, and were in the middle of Dublin by 8pm. Kim was the only one who knew anything or anyone in the city so we spent the night in various bars meeting people who knew Kim, or people who knew people who knew Kim, or people who wanted to know Kim ... We met random drunk but hilariously funny Scotsmen and Matt and Monica found themselves a philosopher wandering the streets of Dublin at 3 o'clock in the morning. Since we had optimistically envisaged partying all night and had not arranged accommodation – something I would not recommend doing anywhere – we also met two lovely Irishmen who offered us a couch for the few hours before our 8am flight back to London. These two lovely men were called Liam and Ronan ...

After my terrible defeat at the hands of the RAA and the ensuring debacle of the love affair with an exorbitantly priced bracelet, I got back on the horse and attended a free lecture at the National Portrait Gallery on Dandyism . The Regency Period, when the first dandy, Beau Brummell, lived his life, was the flavour of my March for a few different reasons. I had stayed home every Saturday from mid-February to watch Regency House Party – a show documenting 12 modern singles living in Regency costume in a Regency house with all the attendant Regency strictures and conditions. They had their social places, no access to anything other than Regency entertainment and they could only bathe once a week. It was pure heaven for me, though a bit embarrassing to admit to when you were turning down Saturday night invitations. It addition to this interactive immersion in Regency culture, I had also committed a small crime in order to obtain myself even more Regency bliss – I stole a book! Now, m...

By the end of February I realised that, despite the fact I had been in London for 8 months, there were still some museums that I had not seen. I embarked on a Museum and Gallery bender, to commence at the Royal Academy of Arts on my Tuesday off. Jacinta and I met in Piccadilly Circus only to discovered that my bender was getting off to a bad start - my cultural event was the next week. So we went window shopping, as one does. We started out at Fortnum & Masons and went on to the lovely Regency Burlington Arcade that had its own guards and rules, including no whistling, singing or hurrying, and then Jacinta took me down Bond Street. Ooooooh, the shops! Unfortunately we had dressed down for the museum visit and I was too shy to sully the doorsteps of Cartier, Alexander McQueen and Gucci with my £20 pound sneakers and bad hair. We did go into Tiffany & Co though. Nice stuff. Once we got out of Tiffany’s we spotted a film crew with camera and presenter and another group that may ...

Last stop on the London tour for February was my long overdue expensive London haircut. I went to the Vidal Sassoon Advanced Hair Academy, handed over the tiny amount of £9.50 and sat in a chair for four hours getting my hair cut as a model. Thankfully curly hair is far harder to turn into a 'David Beckham', a 'femullet', or an asymmetrical style, so I did not walk out with a trendy and high maintenance haircut as the other models did. The students that day were a group of thirty something hairdressers from ... St Petersburg! As soon as they walked in you could tell they were from Eastern Europe, blonde hair, razor sharp cheekbones and the most divine boots *squeak* Half the entertainment was watching the towering blondes listen to the translated instructions of the diminutive gay brit flitting around instructing them. My stylist Tanya was straight out of ABBA; dead straight white blonde hair and leopard print top. And I must commend the little gay brit for making her...

Quite apart from the fact that this piece is about me and the well documented Look, this is just very funny. Monica sent it to the usual pub quiz suspects the day after the quiz at which a photo was taken - Monica's headband broke and the first thing everyone thought was 'we can make them into horns for Claire ...' Why I Am Afraid Of The Claire - by Monica White. Claire is small, granted. There's a formidable intellect there and a fierce streak. All fine and well, but I'd usually tell someone like that to bite my kneecaps if an argument wasn't going my way. The Claire, though, has one weapon that chills my blood. The Look. This is reserved for those times when words would be utterly superflous. It's usually aimed at me when I say something of a particularly stupid bent. I watch myself around The Claire. For Claire's calling (not unlike Buffy) is to be an assistant to the supernatural. 'Nothing new,' you may say, 'I've seen...

Being footloose and fancy-free in the boyfriend department, and the proud owner of a ‘Friends of the British Museum’ card (a brilliant present from Kim), I spent the weekend of love with my greatest love – HISTORY. Thus my first visit to the British Museum was on the Buried Treasure weekend that included gallery talks by BM curators, displays of ancient crafts by re-enactment societies and guided tours around the Buried Treasure Exhibit itself. As a young ‘un I wanted to be an archaeologist, and throughout changes in career I have never lost my desire to find historical treasures in the ground. I still have a battered crucifix, with the body of Jesus broken off, that I found in the sheep pens on our first farm. And of course there was that dinosaur bone in a rock that I picked up at the base of the cliffs at Yallingup, which Mum threw away after three years gathering dust in the shed – Claireosaurus: Lost Forever. The Buried Treasure Exhibit displayed the Hoards (ie collections of ...

Well, the birthday was a rather fabulous affair actually. It kicked off with drinks in town on Thursday. I invited all the best friends – most of whom are regulars at the Pub Quiz each Tuesday. Once everyone was there the night really took off. I was bought Baileys all night and they changed from singles to doubles without me noticing(!) and that is when I got VERY tipsy. Towards 11 o’clock I was very happy and there were many hugs, declarations of love for London and my friends in it, and all such things. Great friends as they are, some enterprising ex-perthites even tried to freak me out by setting up a random man in the bar to say he had met me at the Cott and we had *ahem* locked lips! At first I thought that I was starting to forget faces, but as soon as he tried to claim tonsil hockey I smelt a rat … never done THAT in the Cott. I was rather blasé about my lack of headache the next morning, and all involved in the buying my drinks scam were a little miffed. There w...

I helped at a press conference run by the Media Consultancy team at the EA for the launch of an art exhibition in St Paul’s Cathedral. The exhibition featured works from some of the foremost artists in Britain at the moment, including the controversial Tracy Emin , so the media interest in the story was considerable. The journalists had shoes with worn heels, flapping grey or beige overcoats and assorted bags and notepads - the reporter from the Times was a perfect Hollywood journalist with his lean height, thin blonde hair and harried look. The photographers were, to a man, dressed as if ready to hop on a plane to a war zone somewhere; the khaki fatigues, pocket-covered safari vests and the pure amount of gadgets draped around necks and flourished in their hands. Most had two mobile phones, one to send photos and one to receive calls, as explained by the guy I actually spent most of the conference in deep discussion with. He was a photographer from AP, a news agency of the size of ...

Funny things still happen to my brain over here. Like being so spaced out from no sleep that I got strangely excited at spotting a pigeon on the platform at Baker Street Station and pointed it out to Monica saying 'hey, cool, a penguin on the underground.' Monica was so pleased with the line that she composed me a poem the next day. There's a penguin on Claire's subway Wand'ring this way and then that He waddles 'cross the platform Feet softly slapping, belly fat Dressed in warm grey feathers Birdlike beak 'neath tiny eyes Methinks that Claire's fat penguin Is a pigeon in disguise :) The story could just end there but later that week, while walking through the crowd at the Church for Australia Day there was a (hot) guy in a t-shirt that said 'one by one the penguins are stealing my sanity' Ah! But does the strange penguin inspired co-incidences stop there? No indeed not my captive audience! That very Tuesday at the pub quiz there ...

The weather forecast for the last week was snow, but frankly I was getting AWFULLY tired of waiting. On Tuesday I was walking down the street to lunch when itsy bitsy little snow flakes starting swirling around me like tiny lost baby hailstones. This lasted for about 30 seconds. Wednesday I entertained a few workmates by standing on the roof and doing a Julie-Andrews-in-the-first-scene-of-the-Sound-of-Music style dance in the 1 minute splatter of snow. Once again, not terribly exciting, but certainly an escalation. Then, Wednesday afternoon I went up to Old Street to see my house and as I came out of the tube it was snowing. Old Street Station has an open roof to the sky and so I saw the snow falling before I saw it on the ground. Being a snow-virgin there were a few fabulous moments when I didn’t even know it was snow, I seriously looked at the sky and thought ‘that is REALLY fat rain!’ (thank you Terry Pratchett) Walking out onto my very first stretch of snow covered ground I then ...