Dear Scott,
Hope you’re doing good. I’m writing you from El Shaddai in the Stratford Centre. Proof:
As you can see, the owner Laudia does not mess about when it comes to promo. You wonder whether she set up the shop to support her modelling rather than the other way round.
The bigger salon on Bethnal Green Road has closed, she says, forever. All her stuff is now in this tiny green unit. Wigs, hair extensions and mannequin heads, and Laudias on every surface.
Everyone is speaking Portuguese not English adding to the feeling that I can’t really be here. Ruddy old England. Shopping centre on a Sunday. The peroxide is in my eyes, nose and mouth. Laudia insists on plugging in a broken fan to stir fumes about the place when I start crying. The lights are eye-watering too. My burning scalp. Face puffy with hangover.
Anyway, as best man, I thought you’d want a report on how I got on yesterday with Billy. Starting at Turners Old Star, I feel I got the groomsmanly activity started in the right spirit. And that spirit was tequila, haw haw.
Billy played pool with a man who was either on coke or his nervous system had been rewired from years and years of it — he kept yelling hey hey ho-ho at the top of his voice and then kissing in some of the most composed back-cuts I’ve ever seen not on TV. Without missing a beat. You would have loved to see it.
We moved to the Prospect of Whitby and Billy showed me your game where you have to land a coin on that post that rises out of the river tantalisingly close to the smoking area. Upwards of forty pence was lost to the Thames.
The poet Robert Graves said, ‘There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.’
Erm. I’d have to disagree, because of this photo of Billy trying to land 10p on a pillar that, while resembling glass candle One Canada Square looming in the background with its pyramidal tip, is also a literal noose.
The juxtaposition reminds me of Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell, in which Jack the Ripper has these weird visions of modernity from the Victorian East End.
‘On November 9th, 1888, in 13 Miller’s Court, Jack the Ripper executed his masterpiece,’ writes Dr Elizabeth Ho, ‘the violent mutilation of his final victim Mary Jeanette Kelly’. In Moore’s version of events, as Ho explains, Sir William Gull, Royal Physician in Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, is the serial murderer and ‘the energy required to kill Kelly causes the boundaries of time to dissolve’:
In an ecstatic hallucinatory state, Gull suddenly finds himself triumphantly brandishing a scalpel in the middle of an open-walled office. He accuses the workers around him of being “numbed” by the “shimmering numbers and…lights” of the twentieth century.
According to eastlondonhistory.com, one theory on the noose at the Prospect of Whitby is that it was placed there to commemorate a notorious 17th century judge. ‘It is thought that Judge Jeffreys used to watch hangings from the comfort of the pub’s balcony.’
Meanwhile, across the Thames, ‘Screens flash with data as markets bear and bull, phones ring, and men with loosed ties and rolled-up sleeves bark orders across desks as a new group of graduate recruits arrive at the company.’
Do you remember talking about finances at Billy and Hollie’s before Christmas? Have you thought of any smart tips for making money make money that I should try instead of an ISA? Do the twenty-four blackbirds represent the hours in a day? Or do they represent ‘the choirs of the monasteries baking a pie to curry favour with Henry VIII’?
The scalp burn 🥵 is a nice distraction from the nausea, and vice versa
and I am feeling particularly testy at being separated from the one I love by the most dreary of practical exigencies money when I want only to lean on my elbow and stare into space feeling the one warm beautiful thing in the world breathing upon my right rib
So true! She’s at home and reportedly just eaten the tiramisu I was too drunk to eat last night. What am I doing here? Brandishing a scalpel numbed by shimmering lights? Executing a masterpiece?
It’s only when the security guards arrive and begin to hurry along Laudia to shut up shop for the night that I’m reminded that people used to make good use of this space and the smooth floors of it all.
When London won its bid for the 2012 Olympics, communities in areas like Stratford in the east of the city were promised investment, regeneration and opportunity, even if they didn’t want it. Five years after the games and a plummeting number of people take part in sport, while the area is brimming with unaffordable housing, and a tax-payer subsidised football ground sits on their doorstep.
But in the shadow of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, there’s a strip of space that kids in this part of the capital are clinging onto. In the city of property developers, bottomless prosecco brunches, and anti-homeless spikes, this place is nothing short of an oasis.
Time passes. ‘Where culture and community once blossomed, now private security guards and Jamie's Italians now reign supreme.’
I don’t mean to bum you out, Scott, I promise. What I mean is something about time and money, security guards vs. skaters, trains vs. hares, Industry vs. Nature, my head vs. cheap bleach, blackbirds vs. pies, I don’t know — but there’s always the stag to continue with all this. Will you be bringing your copy of Capital? Maybe you’ll finally lay me that golden goose! Maybe we’ll make Billy found a start up!
But Scott zzzzzz now I’m finishing this on the bus, I’ve gone the wrong way. It’s 7pm. I’m an hour away from home. Turns out I’m in Ilford / ‘I’ve accidentally run to Windsor.’
He’s like the energy of New York, the jet, the speed, the movement, longing for another place, the next moment, instead of being content with being in the now. What happens in Ilford? I cannot believe I said Emily could have the tiramisu! You better believe I’ll be buying ice cream on the way home. Could you blame me?
Let me know if you’ve got any feedback on my groomsmanship and I can make some tweaks for next time? Hope you and Jen are doing good and looking forward to seeing you both soon.
All best,
Sammi x
p.s. I’m trying to build a likeminded community of readers and writers. Come on in, the water’s fine.
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