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| Talk,
Kim Sampson,
26 February 2001 | |
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The invitation to the party is in jocular code. ‘Bring what you need to have a good time,’ the email reads. Meaning: please bring some drugs. Anything. Failing such procurement, an Unwins is conveniently in the vicinity.
Jeni has moved to Finsbury Park, and the new flat is at the end of a whole road which seems to exist entirely of halal butchers. ‘You’ll never go without a falafel again,’ I tell her. She doesn’t seem too bothered by this. She has been making the guacamole she habitually creates for these evenings and no ever seems to eat. Bringing what you need to have a good time mixes uneasily with domestic goddess efforts.
Screamadelica on the stereo is giving the party a prematurely nostalgic note. No one here can be over 30. ‘We wanna get loaded! We wanna have a good time!’ squeal those in remembrance of not-too-distant university hall of residence parties. Before long, a group of musos in the corner sneer and switch the music to something more voguish, an easy listening compilation. And then the inevitable happens: the James Brown Anthem.
The James Brown Anthem is de rigeur, an especial favourite for the Bloke Making Idiotic Conversation and the Girl Laughing At His God-Awful Jokes. They urhg! They huh! They get on up, get on up! Like sex machines!
As if reading my thoughts, an Ulsterman gurns in an armchair and looks me in the eye. ‘And you know what always happens at fockin’ parties?’ he asks. ‘Someone’ll always put on fockin’ Abba.’ Later I find him in the kitchen, sleeping with his head in the guacamole.
Abba, thankfully, didn’t feature in the party’s playlist, as the musos kept their hands on the CD collection for most of the evening. There was a brief coup staged after midnight, when a band of people smoking what they needed to have a good time hijacked the stereo for half an hour of pirate radio. Garage was played as riposte to the lounge sounds that had preceded.
If the dissenters were looking for a shake-up, they got one. ‘My god, who are those people?’ said one guest. She might possibly have been the host. No one was sure of the answer to her question. It was rumoured that they were bringing what other people than themselves need to have good time. So the subject was closed, and no one would re-enter the front room until the big shouts out all around London Town were taken off the airwaves. And if you didn’t like it, you could go stick your head in the guacamole.
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