The Archive

The art annoys

When you wake up in bed with a bit of a headache and the first thought to go through your brain is ‘ah yes, there’s a senior EU official on our sofa, I remember now,” it’s safe to say it was a good night.

It all started with Embroidery Kate inviting me to an opening (stop that! An art opening) at a gallery in Soho.

She wanted to catch up with a friend of hers, Remi, who is a gorilla.

It’s true. He was working the gallery and we were waiting so Kate could say ‘hello’. Whilst we were standing around, I asked Kate what it was this bloke did. She looked at me askance and said, “He’s in Gorillaz.”

Oh, right.

Well how am I supposed to recognise him, given that the Gorillaz look like this…



It probably wouldn’t amaze you to discover that he did not look like any of those.

Anyway, we waited and waited, looking at the art and drinking the free vodka and orange they were dishing out (yes, I managed to get a toe in The Bubble. And I liked it) and chatting with the people.

Oh yes, and standing around by the art trying to look like an installation piece in the hope that someone might buy me.

Anyway, eventually Remi was free for a quick chat (he was very nice to me, possibly connected to the mistaken impression that Kate gave that I was going to buy something) and we said ‘hi’ and headed off.

One Pizza Express trip later (ah, the bubble bursts, back to my level) and we tried to meet up with Atul. “I’ll be with you for maybe 8.30,” he solemnly swore.

So it won’t surprise you that at 11.30 he finally arrived, with a senior EU official in tow.

Turns out Atul had been hosting some EU conference thing and this chap was up for a night out.

He probably didn’t realise quite what he was about to go through, thinking about it. And I’m pretty sure waking up on some strange bloke’s sofa hadn’t loomed large in his plans for the evening.

Still, he seemed to enjoy himself as we adopted Atul’s patented ‘go to a bar, stay for twenty minutes, decide it’s shit, repeat’ method for enjoying himself in London.

So we haunted the usual haunts (Nordic, The Arts, if you’ve been out with us, you know the routine) before washing up for a bit of a dance at some Spanish place Kate knew of, followed by ‘one last roll of the dice’ the Metro Club.

The club was actually quite good despite us being about twenty years older than everyone else in the place. We had a drink. We had a dance. All good.

Then I noticed a woman dancing. She looked nice.

Then I looked again (I do that kind of thing. I am classy). She looked familiar.

Turns out it was none other than Crazy Frog – supporting cast member of Bullen Street from a year or so back with whom we’d lost contact.

Well there’s a thing.

Anyway, finally realising 2.30am was probably a good time to call it a day, we piled into a cab and dashed home for a refreshing 4 hours sleep before getting up, sending EU Dude off to Waterloo and going to work.

All in all, a triumph.

Unless you count the unending agony that is The Next Day At Work of course.

posted by Peter The Great @ 3:33 PM