Back in London after the end of a busy July spent mostly travelling or away from home (NYC, MBE day, Latitude, Southwold, Hague). Returned to find my room had acquired a mysterious chemical-like odour. It’s a bit sulphur, a bit petrol, a bit burnt plastic. Homes do that when you come back after a spell away – they get annoyed and lonely and rebel.
It’s never the case when I come back that I think ‘Ah, home at last! My blissful base of familiarity.’ No, with me it’s more, ‘Have I been burgled? Why does the place have a funny smell?’
So I set about eliminating the suspects. I cleaned the sink, and bleached the drain. Cleaned and tidied the room too, in case there was some neglected cup of tea lurking somewhere and growing its own penicillin: I always forget what mould smells like until I actually see it, and remember. Also took a month’s worth of clothes to the laundrette and dry cleaners. Returning from travel and getting back to normal life, one wants to say you ‘hit the ground running’. In fact, I hit the ground cleaning.
So I now have a clean drain, clean clothes, and a clean room. And yet the smell lurks on. Might just be something next door, which I can do nothing about. I also have a history of over-sensitivity (and overreacting) to fumes – painted walls weeks later still giving me – I think – a headache when visiting friends can’t smell a thing. Ah well. Like most things in life, I’ll just hope it goes away if I ignore it long enough.
After all those adventures in July, my August is a blank. The next big thing isn’t till mid September, when Fosca play Madrid (Sept 12th). Oh, and I’m down to DJ at Volupte in Holborn again on Aug 28th. But that really is it. And I’m glad. I don’t want to feel beholden to anything or anyone for a little while. Am now just keen to get back into a writing routine, if only to find out what I want to do next.
London is sweltering, so I’m lurking in libraries. So many invites to things, particularly birthday parties, all seeming to increase in number just when I want to play Garbo for a while. I want to go to them all, and I want to go to none.
By way of a warm up to my next bout of belated diary reports (MBE finally, a little on Latitude, the Hague), I just opened The Assassin’s Cloak anthology of diaries, and this entry leapt out at me:
30th June 1967
No difficulty with the customs. I simply chose the customs officer that, in an emergency, I wouldn’t mind sleeping with. Got through without having even to open my case. London hot, very little difference in actual temperature from Tangier. ‘How dead everyone looks,’ Kenneth H remarked… We took a taxi home. A great many letters. Invitations to parties which I shall not accept.
– Joe Orton.
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