The realisation didn’t come to me at first, but yesterday was a perfect illustration of what makes me such a renaissance man. I unexpectedly had a day to myself and, as is so often the case lately when that happens, I hopped on a train and half an hour later I was in London.
I used to have a friend who lived in Highgate in a lovely flat. All the wonders of the capital were on his doorstep, so were the delights of Highgate Village. But, because of his boring job in the City and his almost crippling shyness, he never enjoyed either of them. And every time I saw him he would always say the same thing. “I’m worried that my life is passing me by.” The first time he said it, I was concerned, constructive. Then, about six months later he said exactly the same thing and I responded the same way. Six months later, it was harder to do so, even more so six months after that.
I stayed with him once. I remember peeking in his fridge while he was in the bathroom. He had taken all the button mushrooms out of the little tray they came in and arranged them on the glass shelf in a perfect geometric pattern, all equally spaced like a game of mushroom solitaire. He had the time to do that, but not to see a play or go to a bar. Such beautifully constructed, precise and tragic emptiness.
He never did make the most of Highgate. He got ME and had to sell the flat and move back in with his mother near Derby. Then he got some kind of terrible digestive disorder and spent weeks in hospital being fed through a tube. I still get a text message from him now and again. It always says the same thing “We must catch up soon, when I’m better.” The first time I got it I was concerned, constructive. Six months later, it was harder to be so. And so it goes.
So for his sake if not mine, I make the most of being able to get to London. He crossed my mind yesterday as I wandered down Marylebone High Street with only my iPod for company and realised that this is the first year that I’ve really taken advantage of being a short train ride away from all these possibilities.
My iPod obliged by playing my favourite song from last year as I came out of the beautiful
Rococo clutching my haul of bars of milk chocolate subtly and delicately flavoured with sea salt. (Incidentally I haven’t put any music on the blog for ages, mainly because my laptop died and took a while to replace. Have you missed it, or are you not fussed? Let me know.)
Tunng - WoodcatMainly though I suspect my trip to London was to conclude some unfinished business; namely to pick up all the things I would have bought in Paris were it not for the punitive exchange rate. First was a gorgeous eau de parfum, a warm smoky mixture of rum, tobacco and vanilla which smells like a dream and lasts forever. Then came a lovely olive green trenchcoat. The latter gives me no small cause for concern, for the whole thing has a disturbing feeling about it of going back to the future. First I bought a cardigan before going away, and now a trenchcoat - I’m worried that I am recreating my wardrobe of 1992 piece by piece. Next will come the grey stonewashed jeans, then the dazzlingly white and hopelessly uncool New Balance trainers. Finally I need to get a pair of glasses with lenses the size of widescreen televisions and then I can sit around drinking Strongbow and black and moaning that no girls want to kiss me, the circle complete at last.
Anyway a day of wafting round London indulging in retail therapy is all very well but after all that conspicuous consumption a true renaissance man’s mind turns to culture. I needed to do something in the evening which spoke of the human condition, while continuing the high standard the afternoon had set for bright lights and beautiful people.
Naturally this is why last night I ended up sitting in an ice rink which faintly honked of piss cheering on the “Bracknell Bees” ice hockey team as they sank to an ignominious defeat against the “Manchester Phoenix” (is "phoenix" the plural of "phoenix"? I suppose so, but even so it was vexing me).
I remember the first time I saw the ice rink. The funbus which goes from Reading to Bracknell travels past it at a snail’s pace every morning (when you are willing the journey to take forever) and afternoon (when you can’t get home fast enough). On the side of what looks like a gigantic elephant grey warehouse are huge black block capitals proclaiming that it is, and I quote,
“THE COUNTRY’S FIRST OLYMPIC AND INTERNATIONAL SIZE ICE RINK”.
I can’t even begin to imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth around Britain when other towns realised that Bracknell had beaten them to it.
We all laughed at this preposterous boast and agreed that we wouldn’t be seen dead there. There is more on a winter sports theme, even though the only winter I associate with Bracknell is one of the nuclear variety. Just up the hill from the ice rink is an artificial ski slope which looks so far from fun that you couldn't realistically get to fun from there even using a satnav. In February it had to shut down temporarily.
Because of the snow.
So I wasn’t expecting ever to go to the ice hockey, and last year Gemma, Phil and I decided to go as a sort of work social. You know, for a laugh. Turn up, sneer at the chavs, have a hot dog, that sort of thing. But as the match drew on I realised, with a growing sense of chilling unease, that I was loving every minute of it. The Bracknell Bees trounced the Slough Ramraiders (that may not be their real name) 4-2 and by the end the drums were beating and the crowd were repetitively chanting “BRACKNELL, BRACKNELL, BRACKNELL” like something out of a BNP rally. I had to stop myself joining in.
Plus, someone had used some surplus to requirements chewing gum to do this to one of the safety signs on the stairwell. What, I ask you, is not to love?
Gemma, Dave, Kelly and I took our seats (pretty much the same seats as last time) and I was pleased to see that little had changed. The Tannoy announcer was still a barely intelligible hyperactive local radio DJ on amphetamines type, for one. In fact, if I were going to sum up ice hockey in a single word I think hyperactive would be it. It’s not just that the action is incredibly quick (Gemma and Kelly missed at least two of the goals because they made the mistake of looking at one another while having a conversation) but the moment the puck is out of play for any reason or the match is stopped they play music. Not whole songs of course, tiny snippets of songs. It’s almost like they are saying “we know you have trouble concentrating so here are ten seconds of
No Limits by 2 Unlimited”.
And such amazing music! Where else could you hear fragments of the theme music from
The Flintstones one minute and
Nothing Like A Dame from South Pacific the next? Actually for that matter, where could you go nowadays to hear them at all? Not to mention the serendipitous moment when they cranked up
Dude Looks Like A Lady just as Gemma and I were musing on whether the polyester clad mulleted individual six seats along from her was exactly that, or a lady who looks like a dude, or just a deeply unfortunate hermaphrodite (eventual betting settled on the middle option).
There’s a genuine obsession with stats and numbers in ice hockey, too. Early in the second period one of the Manchester players scored - the improbably named Bowie - and the announcer said “That goal was by number 7, Ian Bowie, so that’s 7 from 52 from 13 at 23:34.”
“House!” I shouted, raising my hand.
Nobody laughed.
There was only one problem with the match as it turns out, which is that the Bracknell Bees appear to be little better at ice hockey than I would be after six pints of Special Brew. A quick look at the form guide indicated that they had only won two matches all season. On the plus side, previous results suggested that we’d get to see plenty of goals. And so it proved as they stumbled - literally, in some places - to a humiliating 6-0 defeat. If I were sports-minded, or had aspirations as a sports writer, I could say all manner of things about why they lost - their failure to keep possession or inability to press the advantage when Manchester had players in the sin bin (sponsored by Cavaliers in the Broad Street Mall, your one stop shop for printing t-shirts, offensive or otherwise).
I won’t say any of those things, because I think I’ve proved quite effectively that I’m no sportswriter. My theory - because of course I’ve got one - is simpler than that. I reckon it’s all about the netminders (that‘s goalkeepers to you and me). You see, last time we went to see the Bracknell Bees the chap in goal was called Gregg Rockman.
Rockman. I ask you, how can you fail when your goalkeeper has a name like some kind of heavy metal superhero? He was completely immense, both literally and metaphorically - though wearing a pair of kneepads each the size of a generously proportioned wheely bin probably helps with that. I left that match full of admiration for him, and also quite envious that he had such an amazing surname (imagine how cool that must be at parties).
He’s since quit to go and join the Slough Ramraiders. And in his place, this year, we had a chap called Carl Ambler. And I’m afraid, having watched him pootle round the goalmouth like a man possessed by the spirit of a paraplegic war veteran, he kind of lived up to his name too. Harry Patch might have been quicker.
That might be a little bit mean. He made some good saves and everything. But come on, who would you pick - Ambler or Rockman? Exactly.
Even the Bees’ abject surrender hasn’t put me off. Really, if you can go to watch ice hockey you should. The smell of the warpaint, the grease of the crowd, you can’t beat it. And, as it turns out, plenty of clinching proof that black is not necessarily a slimming colour after all. Best of all, the people behind me - boyfriend and girlfriend - loved it so much they carried out a running commentary throughout, in an indeterminate Eastern European language I could not understand. The overall effect was that of watching sport extremely late at night on a very obscure cable TV channel indeed. Worth a tenner of anybody’s money.
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