I should try not to forget about how when we lived in that one room in Highbury Estate, we used to eat dinner sitting on the floor, with that little wooden table between us.
Unless I am much mistaken, after work it was usually me sitting at the desk, and Oriana sitting on the bed. Then she would start bothering me about when I was going to make dinner.
Besides that, I remember riding home in the dark, taking the shortcut through that little street behind the theatre - or riding to work hungover in the morning, stopping in Rosebery for sausage and onions in bread to try to quell my drunkenness.
And I remember sitting by that window, looking out over the trees in the middle of the estate, as the darkness closed in early.
And the night that Dan Shaw-Smith came around, after I’d just got back from Amsterdam, and we drank strong Belgian beers, then got stoned in the kitchen.
And the time I had been trying to cut that bike away that was locked to the front of our flat, then a little later on the nextdoor neighbour came outside and was asking if I knew anything about someone trying to steal his bike - and I think I still had the saw in my hand, but I just said “no”, and he didn’t say anything more on the matter.
Then when, Akari, our Japanese flatmate started to go mad, calling me to tell me that everything was wrong, that she’d done something terrible and didn’t want her parents to know. Her room became a tomb, which (still by phone), she insisted that no-one should ever enter. She told me that one time in Islington some men had tried to kidnap her, dragging her into a car then driving away. She says she later managed to open the door and jump out - and I was never sure if that really happened. When Akari lost it, and Savin (the Indian) stopped paying his rent, it really started to feel like the flat was falling apart. Li (the landlady) started calling me to ask about when Savin would pay his rent. Why did everyone call me?
And the walks we would take on Saturday or Sunday, with that evening again closing in, so soon after we’d set out. The low, silver light stencilling the bare branches. People walking past each other quickly in the streets, everybody’s hands in their pockets.
The drunken shouting in the streets after Saturday-afternoon football. Not being able to find a decent local pub. The time Oriana ran away, and I unsuccessfully went looking for her around the streets.
Frankly, I don’t know how we survived.
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