I can't believe that we're half way through October already. But moreso I can't believe we're less than 500 days from the 2010s. Jesus! Where did this decade go? I've now lived in London long enough to experience mini time quakes when passing places I used to frequent, but haven't been to for a while. Just the other night I passed a pub in central London that I used to go to all the time - like on the night of the Labour victory in 1997 - but haven't been to for ages. Now that night doesn't seem all that long ago and it's unsettling to realise that 11 years have flown by. I can't work out how I'm frittering all this time away. Life is cruel.
Today I went to get my photo taken for
Spotlight - the actors' directory. A fairly straight head shot is required and the one I was using was a bit old and if I want to get a follow up to my role as Percy the Shepherd, then it's important to be in the book. So my face will stare out from the pages of the massive tomes of the hopeful and the desperate and the insane. The female Spotlight directory is also pretty much a catalogue of my ex-girlfriends.
The photo shoot was in a flat in a town house in North London, on a street that I haven't visited for maybe 15 years, but which was once familiar. An ex-love (amazingly enough, someone who wasn't an actress) had lived up the very hill that I was now climbing. I couldn't remember the exact address, but as I trudged up the road I began to wonder if the photo shoot was going to happen in the very flat that she used to live in. But it was very strange to be walking past houses that seemed familiar, but which I hadn't seen for a decade and a half. I thought maybe if I spotted the actual front door all sorts of bitter sweet memories would come flooding back. It hadn't been a great time. I was a lot more into her than she was into me, though she enjoyed the attention and depending on her mood would spend time with me. Hey, what the hey? I have been on the other side of that scenario enough times. It's pointless to hold grudges. Even if she did take my young heart and stomp it into the ground. And then stomp on it some more. And then just when it seemed my heart was squished as much as it could be she jumped up and down on it some more. But like I say, I don't hold a grudge. And I think it was an accidental repeated stomping.
Nothing much came back at the time - though I seem to be making up for this now - all I remembered was one night when lost in only partially requited love or lust or whatever the 20 something me thought he was feeling, I decided to pay an unexpected visit to my amour, bringing a bottle of wine and a hastily bought bunch of flowers that on closer inspection were nearly dead. As it happened she was out that night - this was before people had mobile phones, practically Victorian times - and so I remember sitting forlornly on her steps, hoping she would return, my wilting flowers in one hand and a cheap bottle of red in the other. Various people from other flats passed me as I sat there, giving me suspicious looks. I possibly cut a desperate and strange figure. There is a fine line between love and stalking and either of these two things make us behave in strange and confused ways.
I suppose reciprocation is the only thing that really differentiates the two states and it can be a problem is someone is blowing hot and cold. And if you are a young and stupid, slightly romantic, but mainly confused fool.
One person's sweet and lovely is another person's creepy and oddball. I think I was being pretty cute, back then there was still some of my heart left that didn't have to be scraped off the floor!
She never turned up. Or at least I gave up waiting after an hour or so, perhaps conscious that there would be some embarrassment to be had if she turned up with someone else. I managed to leave the wine and dead flowers inside the front door for her. I think she was a bit freaked out by the flowers. Women like flowers, but they have to be alive. Dead flowers send out a bit of a different message. That might make you expect that the wine might be poisoned.
The whole thing dragged on for some time. Inevitably once I started losing interest in her, she began to get more interested in me. If only I had realised that was the key. Play hard to get youngsters. Sitting uninvited on steps with dead flowers rarely works. And if it does work you probably want to get away from the person who was impressed by that. But some people like stalkers.
So I wondered if I'd recognise the flat from those steps. But a few houses had them. And not the house I ended up at, so I didn't have to go back there and risk uncovering a whole litany of repressed memories.
The photos went well. You'll have to buy the next edition of Spotlight to find out.
And in 15 years time I'll tell you all about the crazy shit I am getting up to now. Time heals all embarrassments. And hearts can regenerate however much they get stomped on.
