you know. These parties are totally recessiontastic.’
‘Huh?’ I say.
‘Houseparties are the new going out. Front rooms are the new Boujis Beer is the new Cristal.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Where’s Gekko? I need to talk to her about a work thing later.’
‘Kitchen.’
Mitch calls Bloomie ‘Gekko’ in a rather sweet Wall Street reference—she says she hates it, but I’m not sure she does. He walks through to the kitchen, high-fiving and low-fiving people all the way. Mitch is good at collecting people. Most of the crowd tonight will be our university friends, and then satellite friends from everyone’s work, school and extended family. Being part of this insta-crowd makes living in London a lot easier: an ever-evolving gang without too much effort. My first year in London, pre-Mitch and Eddie and Bloomie and Kate joining me, is barely worth talking about. I call it The Lost Year, the one before I went out with Arty Jonathan. I spent most of my time getting drunk with the other new, green Londoners in horrible chain bars, and taking nightbuses back to Mortlake, an area in South London that you can only get to by buses and sheer willpower, where I shared a manky little flat with four strangers. Then, thankfully, the old group all moved to London and I quickly phased out my new friends for the cosy reassurance of my old ones.
‘Sass! I hear you’ve become bitter!’ says Harry, a podgy architect who’s been involved in a passionate conversation about Jack Johnson for the past few minutes. He was skinny on the first day of university. His shirt now strains against his gut so tight that I can see the cavernous shadow of his belly button. I smile at him and don’t say anything. He adds cheerfully, ‘Sworn off all men!’
The rest of the iPod-battlers look up and grin.
Holy shit, my friends are gossips. Looks like news of my Dating Sabbatical has hit the streets. Rule 4: avoid talking about the Sabbatical.
‘I’d rather swear off them than under them!’ I reply cryptically. I’ve made better comebacks, but I decide to pretend it was a killer riposte, raise a knowing eyebrow at Harry and swan off to the kitchen to find Bloomie.
Despite work very nearly getting in the way of a timely sartorial decision, I managed to come up with a rather soul-cheering outfit. It’s a rather short fitted black mini dress with sheer black tights and ankleboots, and my hair done in a rockabilly-quiffy-ponytail thing. (Yes, yes, why I am dressing as a Robert Palmer girl meets Elvis when I ostensibly don’t want to attract attention is a mystery to me too, but old habits die hard. Anyway, ‘drop your style standards’ isn’t one of the rules.)
Bloomie is standing at the counter, a cigarette jammed in the corner of her mouth like a cowboy as she manhandles a bottle of vodka, a bottle of blue Curaçao, a punnet of blueberries and a blender lid. Eddie—one of my other best friends in London—is standing next to her, holding two bottles of Morgan’s Spiced Rum, a bag of bananas, a coconut and some mango juice. This is the point of Mitch’s houseparties, by the way. We all bring various ingredients, he borrows blenders from everyone who has one (are you kidding? I don’t own an iron, dude, let alone a blender) and we make up cocktails and name them. Yes. It’s dangerous.
‘This is it, kids,’ announces Bloomie as dramatically as you can with a cigarette in the corner crease of your lips. ‘Prepare to experience the most mind-blowingly awesome cocktail since the Knickerless Bloomer.’ That, obviously, was the name of her cocktail at the last party (white rum, coconut milk, Malibu, strawberries and a pinch of cinnamon).
‘No fucking Malibu this time,’ calls Mitch, as he leaves the kitchen with a round of shots for the iPod brigade. ‘Every cocktail Gekko makes has fucking Malibu in it. It’s like being at school. And stop fucking smoking in my kitchen.’
‘You wish, Bitch, my darling…’ says Bloomie, very obviously more concerned with arranging the ingredients on the counter.
I lean over and kiss Eddie hello. Eddie and I dated for two weeks at university, and broke up for heartfelt reasons now forgotten. (He doesn’t make the list as one of the official breakups, obviously.) Eddie’s been in a long-distance relationship for the past two years with a girl called Maeve who lives in Geneva, of all places. They see each other once every two months, and he doesn’t even talk about her much. I secretly suspect he’s just lazy and doesn’t want to bother to play the field. Eddie’s an engineer. What he actually does all day, I just don’t know. Builds things?
‘What’s shaking, Edward?’ I ask.
‘Not much,’ he says.‘My sisters are in London tomorrow night. They’re going to Spain on Sunday. Wanna help me entertain them? Dinner, somewhere cheap and cheerful in Notting Hill?’
‘Good luck finding that,’ interjects Bloomie.
‘Love to,’ I say. ‘Love the lovely sisters. How’s Maeve?’
‘Good, fine, she’s fine. Now, do you know how to open a coconut?’
‘“Open” a coconut?’ I repeat.
‘I’m making a tropical punch.’
‘What a stunning idea,’ I say.
‘Not original enough for you, my little creative bunny? Fine. Here’s a twist for you: when someone drinks it, you have to hit them in the face. Get it? Tropical punch.’
I start to laugh. ‘Take my fag, darling,’ Bloomie interrupts. This darling means me, I know, so I reach over and take it from her mouth, and she immediately whirls around and throws her hands in the air. ‘Everyone! I have a secret weapon! I have a pestle and mortar and I shall be muddling blueberries with sugar as the base for tonight’s winning cocktail!’
The crowd in the kitchen laughs and whoops. After a few minutes of muddling, and some blending of ice, vodka and Curaçao, she pours the cocktail into about 15 of the many double-shot glasses Mitch purchased specifically for his parties. She raises her glass: ‘A toast to the Blue-mie Moon!’ and drinks it. We all repeat ‘the Blue-mie Moon!’ and follow suit. (If this drink takes its inspiration from the mojito, then it’s a long-distant, slightly inbred, unpleasantly blueberry-skin-filled cousin.) The night has begun.
An hour later, and we’ve had Mitch’s Marvellous Medicine (tequila and crème de menthe; disgusting), the Molasses Fiend (this one was mine, and if I may say, it was a toffee-espresso delight), a Deep Deep Burn (Tabasco—need I say more?) and a Bite Me (butterscotch schnapps and Baileys, garnished with crushed up bits of Crunchie). Eddie has been banished outside to wrestle with the coconut and a large cleaver, and someone new has discovered, as someone new always does, that blending lemonade and ice leads to tears.
Bloomie and I have taken up our customary early-party position perched up in the big kitchen window, so we can hold our fags outside and comment on activities inside at the same time. It’s a delicate operation in a mini dress, but the adroit placement of a teatowel over my thighs sees me through. The best thing about sitting in the kitchen window, of course, is that it’s low-effort socialising: everyone comes in when they arrive to say hello and try a cocktail or five before situating themselves near the booze-and-ice buckets planted strategically around the living room, stairs and garden.
I tell Bloomie about my night with Kate, and the finger-gunning Yank. She cackles with laughter.
‘I also had some rather good stuff happen at work today,’ I grin, and waggle
