A few Saturdays ago I was prompted to reflect upon a very ‘special’ portion of my life in London. This trip down memory lane was inspired by an afternoon visit to my old stomping ground, Portobello Road market.
Now before I continue, I want to put to bed any assumptions you may have about people who live in West London and, specifically, those who live in the Notting Hill area. They are not all rich. In fact, their liquid state is probably so hampered by their geographical residence that they’re more likely to be skint than you. That was certainly my story, and is the backdrop for this blog post.
My recent visit was very pleasant. Portobello Road market seems to have quietened down a little since I lived there, and I must say that browsing the selection of dubious antiques with my girlfriend was enjoyable. This was in sharp contrast to around eight years ago. Saturday mornings were a nightmare, because I’d spend the best past of half an hour dodging tourists to get to Notting Hill Gate - the exit point for the market.
However, things have changed and as we wandered through the thicket of stalls, I came across a familiar building. About three quarters of the way down Portobello Road, there’s a Thai restaurant. It's stood on the first floor of an old Victorian foundation, overlooking the market. The restaurant is made up of a small inside area and a makeshift balcony, which is particularly popular as it affords eaters a good opportunity to people and market watch. I know this popular spot well. My old flat was located next door to it. Turning off the main drag by a few houses, I took my girlfriend to my old residence. She didn’t seem impressed, and unsurprisingly so. The appearance from the outside is of a house that doesn’t belong to the rest of the street. A small Victorian period property with the white paint peeling from the exterior and the front garden overgrown with weeds and bushes. If I were to give it an adjective, “shabby” would be too kind. The other houses on the street are tidy, quirky and rather extravagant. My old flat was the runt, but still it had been my runt.
For a small fortune each month, I had rented a box room in this building. It had an en-suite bathroom, with no bath. There was a tiny shower unit and toilet. This room was so narrow, you had to climb over the toilet to get to the shower. When you sat down on it, your knees touched the wall. It didn’t have a sink. The only sink was located in the main room and was next to a solitary kitchen unit, on which a plugin hob stood. There was an old wooden chair in the corner of the room, and a double bed that was raised, on stilts, about six feet above ground level. The kindest thing anyone said about my tiny abode was that it was a good utilisation of space.
I had moved into the property in March and one of the things that I quickly discovered was was that the building had been divided up, in its entirety, into studio flats. Over the course of my tenancy, I caught the odd glimpse into the other rooms/flats. The were woefully tiny spaces. Smaller without exception than my own, and jammed to the gills with belongings. In the heat of the summer this made for a horrifically unhygienic environment and, coupled with its geographical proximity to the market, meant vermin.
Frequently, as I drew deeply on my terribly made rollups and gazed out the window, I would hear the pitter patter of tiny feet. Four of them. It’s hard to look artistic and cool, smoking a cigarette, when mice are scuttling in and out of your living room-come-bedroom-come-kitchen. I’m not even convinced they were mice. If they were, they were bloody big ones. I'd go so far as to venture rat-sized ones. Maybe this was why the cat never stayed for long? These were, after all, very big rodents and I'd suggest an intimidating, if not scary, prospect for even the most sturdy feline. In short, it was quite grim, but, I could cope. After all, a few rats/mice never hurt anyone... unless of course you count the plague. In which case they did, a lot.
Sadly the mice/rat hybrids weren't the only unwanted lodgers. The hot August days, bought a wave of insects and bugs. One of these was: the cockroach. I must confess that up until that point, my knowledge of the cockroach was limited. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever seen one in the flesh until then. But let me tell you, in case you are as uneducated as I was in the cockroach department, baby cockroaches don’t look like adult ones. In fact, I’d seen quite a few baby insects crawling around and although I had found them somewhat annoying, I hadn’t been overly concerned. I’d used some fly spray on these pests and then not really given it much thought. They were small and greenish in colour, and I honestly thought they were some sort of plant-eating nuisance that had made their way into my living area; maybe from a shoe after walking in the park. Oh, how naive.
The first time I realised what they were was when I found one that had been afforded the time to grow fully. It had planted itself underneath a shirt I’d been drying on my solitary chair. I recall, vividly and with terror, removing the shirt to unearth a black mass around the size of a penny looking back at me. Okay, okay, maybe it wasn’t specifically looking at me, but it was definitely aware of my presence. I know this because when I gave out a horrified and wholey unmanly shriek, the little blighter ran off to some other region of the room hiding out of the light. A game of cat and mouse then proceeded. I chased it around the room desperately trying to whack it with a flip-flop, but it successfully evaded my attempts. The second thing you should know about cockroaches is they’re really rather quick. I, however, am nothing if not persistent and although it took a while, I was eventually triumphant. Once the extermination was complete, I cleaned the entire flat from top to bottom. It was during this cleansing session that the extent of my infestation became evident. I found a further two, fully grown, and many more greenish brown tinted smaller relatives, in various nooks and crannies. After disposing of them, I called my landlord. Embarrassed as I was that they were there, this certainly needed to be dealt with quickly and to his credit he organised an exterminator for the next day. He also informed me that the building had issues with cockroaches, which predated my inhabitation of the premises. This was something of a relief because until this point I had been more than just a little concerned that this situation had been brought on by my own poor general hygiene. As it turns its out it was someone else poor personal hygiene. Bastards!
Following the visit from the exterminators, life just sorted itself out; rolled on, if you like. Sure, I was a little more pensive when removing laundry from my chair, but in general nothing changed. The traps the exterminator put down seemed to do their job and as time went on I noticed fewer and fewer victims. I assumed this was because there were fewer victims left.
Then came the day of the cockroach. It was a Wednesday afternoon and the end of the summer. I was working at an office near Tower Bridge. The sun was out and I was finishing the last email of the day. At this point, a coworker and friend of mine, sauntered over to my desk cubicle and suggested a beer or two after work. Happy not to waste a seldom experienced meteorological event, the English sunshine, I agreed to join him in one of the local beer gardens. Having powered down my old-school desktop PC, I began to pack up my belonging into a snazzy leather brown satchel that I donned in those days. Yes, I had (and still do have ) a man bag, and no I’m not embarrassed about that fact. I’m a man, I have a bag, and, occasionally I have feelings and my own thoughts as well. Some of them don’t even involve football or boobies, although admittedly, a fair share of them do. After all we’ve moved past the the ‘90’s and society firmly agrees that man bags, just like sensitivity and individualism, are perfectly normal, masculine things. Moreover, man bags, unlike sensitivity and individualism, also have the added benefit of being practical. But I digress. So, where was I? Ah yes, the daily, ritual of shutting up shop. Quickly, I performed a sweep for my personal effects: my book, sandwich box, notepad and wallet. All items hurriedly chucked into the neatly partitioned, velvet-lined, interior of my practical, portable personification of manliness. Now off to the pub. However, just as we were about to leave I realised I hadn’t packed my house keys. But they also weren't on my desk. I had a good rummage, firstly in my suit trousers, then in my jacket pockets, but both came up empty. Finally, I had one last proper fish around in the various compartments of my bag. Eventually, in one of the smaller, buttoned-up inner pockets! I located them. Oh joy, officially it was “Beer O’clock”!
Sadly, my delight from hearing the jingle-jangle of keys was short-lived because simultaneously, I felt a creepy, tingling sensation attach itself to my hand. This odd feeling swiftly began to move upwards towards my lower arm. Before I could say, “Bloody hell, there’s a cockroach on my arm!”, a cockroach had crawled along the sleeve of my suit jacket and onto my elbow. From there, it parachuted (very dramatic I know) onto my desk and then scurried away. It settled somewhere behind my monitor, a section of desk space used as a partition between my boss’s desk and my own. Joy.
Fortunity, this whole episode occurred very quickly. Even more fortunately my colleague, who incidentally was stood only about three feet away, was oblivious to everything. Somewhat stunned, I turned to him and said to go on without me. When asked why, I told him I’d forgotten to send an email. After a brief but candid exchange where I was deemed to be, and I quote, “a pillock”, my friend and esteemed colleague left me to it. Once he was out of sight, I checked that no-one else was in the vicinity. Thankfully the coast was clear and as such I began to move my monitor and keyboard out of the way to search for the stowaway.
I’m not ashamed to admit at this juncture that I was a little flustered. After all, I worked at a high end legal practice, and they did their business in a very swanky building. It was into this building that I had brought a cockroach. A cockroach that was now nestled somewhere amongst my belongings. My fear was elevated because I’d mentioned to my boss my infestation problem. After all, I’d needed to take a day off work to let the exterminator in, and I’d come clean about the reason. If I couldn’t catch it, and it made a reappearance the next day, there would be little doubt in his mind where it had came from. Can you imagine the shame? I certainly could.
For the next half hour, I shook cabling, I rustled papers and generally moved every movable object on my desk trying to find my unwanted guest. Eventually, I disturbed something that made it give away its position. I picked up a nearby ruler and made a few gamely swipes at it, but to no avail. It was too quick, and truth be told I a little slow. Despite being a worthy adversary, it soon made a mistake. After a few attempts to escape, it crawled to the end of the cubical, ran down one of the table legs and settled on a patch of floor under my desk. Thank god, it had nothing to hide behind. Thinking on my feet, I dived once again into my trusty man bag and retrieved my sandwich box. Carefully I open the lid and, using a technique I’d learnt trapping spiders in pint glasses as a child, I entombed it in my sandwich caked tupperware. Success! After a moment or two I managed to compose myself and even a ventured a cheeky inspection of my hostage. Then I made my way to the pub, but not before the box and its resident were disposed of in a nearby, outside litter bin.
Back to the here and now, I really did enjoy my day trip through the market in Notting Hill. But any visit will always be slightly marred by my jaded residential experience, the peak of which being the day I took a cockroach to work.
