The guy that occupies the next room in this high rangy suburban house plays the same tape with the same four pop songs on it over and over on each weekend. Exactly the same tape with exactly the same songs. Forever Autumn by Justin Hayward, Love Grows by Edison Lighthouse, some Suzi Quatro song that didn’t chart and Mull of Kintyre by Wings. There is only one of those songs that I like (Love Grows) but that is beside the point. OK, I know he’s pissed out of his mind on Stella but isn’t he getting a little tired of those four songs? I know all too well that I an!
He’s a creature of habit this chap and appears to be profoundly depressed (although he often expresses worry that our drinking water is laced with anti-depressants, I would have thought he’d be glad!). He works in education in some capacity and when he comes home he makes the same rice and fish meal every evening and, if I’m foolish enough to be in the kitchen at the same time, he’ll tell me the health benefits of his diet. The irony is, of course, the fact that he then spends most of the weekend getting sloshed but this seems not to have occurred to him.
The same four songs, though! I asked him why once and he told me it was the only tape he had.
I heard him crying in his room one Sunday, but we’re not supposed to notice each others foibles so nothing was said.
He’s the spit of Osama Bin Laden though he’s not middle eastern in any way. He’s as English as they come. He just has a sallow complexion to go with his gloomy mien and a similar style of beard and a bald dome. He tells me he thinks this is what repels women.
I suspect, he’s actually gay but is deeply ashamed of this.
This is bed-sit London Winchmore Hill style. Green Dragon Lane to be exact just down from a Spanish-style villa Michael Portillo used to live in before he lost his seat in ‘97.
There’s me and Osama, a gay Israelite and a blonde tarty looking girl who seems to prefer black guys downstairs and a white South African and a black Zimbabwean lady upstairs. We all use the communal kitchen and toilet which is downstairs. The toilet also has a really duff shower which dribbles water at you. The kitchen has a washing machine and a tumble dryer one or both of which is constantly in use and I’ve already annoyed everyone by requesting that nine in the evening be the ‘last wash’.
Sharing amenities with other folk is a pain but this is London early in the present century and for most, sharing is the only way unless you are earning loads. Thatcher wanted landlords to prosper not poor folk be housed by councils so this was the deal: sharing amenities with a bunch of total strangers until one had sold one's soul enough to afford to enter the property game or else move the fuck out of the giddy metropolis altogether.
The landlord was a merry Irish soul named, predictably, Mick, who’d made his wad in the building game and was now coining it by charging us all an extortionate rent to exist in his property. I told Mick that I’d once lived in County Wicklow and he seemed about as impressed as if I’d said once opened a can of beans with a brick. Mick had the one interest and that was rent.
Except for Osama. He’s worried about Osama.
“D’ye think he’s suicidal? I mean you said you heard him crying.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Lonely man in bedsit and all that!”
“And just the same four songs over and over?”
“Aye, and he may not be the only one who’s suicidal if he doesn’t stop playing them. I’m thinking of buying him some new tunes for Christmas”
Mick considers this.
“Sure I have some tapes in the house, meself”
“No Irish dirges and laments I hope?”
Two verses of ‘Kevin Barry’ and I think he’d be hanging from the light fitting!
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