Interesting weekend…

My weekend was fun. I’ve managed to do lots of things. I went out dancing till early in the morning on Friday night. I was robbed by a bank that same night (I’ll explain). I spent many hours in a local library studying. I’ve started the process of arranging a diving trip to go and play with seals in mid Spring next year and I had a ‘puppy’ and ‘living together’ talk with JJ. I also managed a nice 5.5 mile run on Sunday afternoon. (No, I didn’t get bored this weekend, at all).

I really can’t even remember the last time I went out dancing. It was definitely before going to Greece for summer since I started my courses right after I came back. Having the course run through the whole Saturday meant that I had to go to sleep early the night before and that I was dead tired that same night. That means that I last went out late in early August or late July. It could be the day of the London Pride in July.

Anyway, I decided it was high time I went out so I called some friends and I arranged to meet them late at night on Friday to go to Vauxhall. I hadn’t been there in ages but I know it provides some good (?) venues to go out. ‘JJ’ couldn’t come because he was working the next day early in the morning. Funnily enough I’ve never been out clubbing with him. We have been out of course, but not till early in the morning dancing. I have to arrange that at some point…

On the way to the tube station, I stopped at a local branch of ‘Halifax’ to get some money from the ATM. I’m not a ‘Halifax’ customer (and I probably never will be) but the location of the ATM is convenient. Anyway, I put my card in, type in the pin number and selected to take £30 out. I don’t know exactly what the machine was thinking, maybe he had a very bad day or maybe he simply didn’t like me, but only gave me £20 back! I was pretty sure that I selected to get £30 so I went to a Natwest to get a mini statement which said that I took £30 from my previous transaction! I got a bit annoyed and not about the £10 but for the fact that Halifax took money from me (I am a man of principles)! I went the next day to file a complaint but they told me I have to wait till Monday for the transaction to be fully registered. Apparently I can go to Natwest and file a report on Halifax’s mean ATM! This means ‘war’!

Anyhow, I ignored the whole event for the time being and I went to meet my friends in Vauxhall. We went for a couple ‘start’ drinks in a nice pub called ‘The Griffin’ to warm up and then walked around to find a dance venue. Some guys were giving away leaflets for a £1 entry to a local club called ‘Arena’ that hosts a party called ‘Onyx’ every Friday. The entrance fee was good, so we decided to give it a go. What I like in the Vauxhall bars and clubs is the fact that they are integrated underneath the rail tracks. That means that they use the arches of the tracks and they form long ‘corridors’ with thick brown bricks.

The Griffin

In general, we had a really nice time. ‘Arena’ has three stages and you can freely walk around and choose what kind of music you want. We mostly stayed in the main club area where nice remixes of older songs from the 90’s kept us dancing for most of the night.

I had slightly forgotten how it is going out in a gay club. The people having to extensively show off their time spent in the gym without wearing many clothes, the drugs, the attitudes, the extravagant outfits, the eye flirting, the pervs, the sex games. It was all very interesting to watch. I got asked twice if I wanted to buy pills, which kind of came as a surprise. Maybe they thought I wasn’t having enough fun or I didn’t look wasted enough. By the way, when they say ‘pills’ what kind do they mean? Is it ‘ecstasy’? Or they offer a variety and you can choose according to colour and shape?

No, I am not being judgemental. I had my drinks. I had lots of fun. I danced a lot till very late. I just prefer to be able to stand without help to take my night bus home and have the mental capability to perform simple acts on my own, like not fall or faint on the streets. I had to get up the next day and study a bit anyway (I am a bit bore, I know)…

A little bit of posh-ness

I was invited yesterday evening to Christie’s champagne reception for today’s auction. They’re putting on sale a ‘Raphael’, some ‘Turners’, a ‘Domenico Zampieri’ and a ‘Rembrandt’ among other things. So, after work, I went home and put on my ‘proper good’ clothes and went there. OK, I don’t know what you people do for a living but for me that was a glimpse of the world of the rich. I knew it would be slightly boring but I hoped it would be a little bit interesting.


So, when we arrived, there were some really nice cars stopping in the front and leaving some quite good-looking-in-a-very-rich-kind-of-way people. On the ground floor you were welcomed by a number of people checking that you were in the guest list and the cloakroom. After climbing a nicely decorated big staircase, you would go to the rooms where all the items meant to be auctioned the next day were. The average age of the people was over 60 with a couple of exemptions of young, richly dressed companions. There was a live band of four musicians playing classical music and champagne and drinks served nonstop. Maybe their purpose was to get you drunk to actually put a bid for some of the items.

The ‘Il Domenichino’ starting price was £7,000,000 ($11,508,000), the ‘Rembrandt’ £18,000,000 ($29,592,000) and the ‘Raphael’ was £12,000,000 ($19,728,000). Impressive number of zeros, I know… However, there were some items being sold, that I thought were amazingly overpriced. Nonetheless, if you really want to buy me something (it’s Christmas after all) I really like this one by Turner and it’s quite cheap with starting price of £50,000. It's from a place called Corinth, in Greece. What do you say?


After walking around the rooms of expensive furniture and paintings, you begin to realize (as expecting) though, how phony and unimpressive this world of the rich can be. There were some very stylish people wearing really expensive clothes and jewelry. However, among the people, you could see the rich sugar-daddy with a trophy half-his-age companion (most of the times blonde with fake boobs), the snobbish art know-it-all that hadn’t had a shower in ages or the sleazy man being there trying to enter this circle of people by any means necessary. That was extremely obvious in the room where food was served. That room was never empty and all these people that were supposed to be well mannered were trying to jump the queue to get another bite of foie gras, jamon or turkey.

OK, I don’t want to be plain mean. Apart from the obvious newly rich people, the whole experience was interesting and had some style. I was less bored than I feared, although my friend ‘gb’ was more bored and less impressed than he hoped. I am not the type of person easily impressed by glamour and expensive clothes and accessories. I know you don’t need them to be happy in life, although some hundred thousand pounds would be well received.
I don’t want to sound greedy, I don’t want millions of them.
OK, ok…
I admit it, I wouldn’t say no to them either…

At least I saw Jeremy Irons at Christie’s, which was nice…