'Fucking useless Hippies,' Dave thought to himself as he pedalled across the lights at the junction of Hoe Street. It was a hippie that he blamed for luring away his Mandi from the party at the studio the night before. His big chance to move in after Gary had deserted her, as Dave predicted he would. Geraldine had issued the invitations with the instruction to come bizarre and partly to oblige her, and to impress Mandi he had made a serious effort. As he sweated on the bike he wiped Kohl eyeliner onto the back of his hand and wondered where on a Bank Holiday he could get acetone to clean off the black nail varnish. Though he had been the only one to make the effort he had still fallen well short of being the most bizarre. That title would have gone both to an American singer called JoJo who had recently recorded at the studio, and the spaced out hippie guitarist who had lured away his Mandi, with his hair extensions, mescaline, cocaine, his Jim Morrison tight leather trousers and death mask pallor.
She had been late turning up. Enigmatically, as ever, she claimed her delay was due to a brief incarceration in a mental hospital. She had spoken hardly a word of sense all night, flirted with a dangerous psycho, and left in search of untried thrills.
'Bitch!' Dave spat into the wind.
Dave had reached glorious town hall: the Palace of Versailles of East London, built in the thirties in a Scandinavian style fronted by a massive courtyard. Almost as impressive is its neighbour, is the Assembly Hall, above which is written: 'Fellowship is life and lack of fellowship is death.' He looked down on them from the elevation of Forest Road and wondered, as he had many times before, how these grand structures had escaped the ravages of time and town planning. Just off this part of Forest Road was the flat where Mandi had lived during her brief period as a Walthamstowaway. It was there that he and Alex and two others had crashed out after a night on the town, and where, whilst crawling away next morning hauling their "Never again" hangovers like coal sacks filled with regret, they had bumped into Mandi's landlady. One of them had stage whispered to the others. 'Well that wasn't bad for a fiver!' It was funny at the time.
He rattled across the cattle grid and turned right at the waterworks. Past the lakes and the all-night pie stands where they would wind down in the small hours, after a late running session. Drinking stewed tea from plastic cups and rubbery burgers in a crumbling buns, smoking Rothmans with Mandi promising to show him her tits for a fag and then keeping her promise. They found an aerosol of whipped cream and having used up all the desserts available to them, they searched for more decadent uses. Licking it from Mandi's navel had been Dave's choice but it had cost him a packet of ten.
Stray cows silently grazed on Whipps Cross Roundabout and Dave coasted down Lea Bridge Road, almost enjoying the bite of the wind and the sound of Bruce singing "Dancing in the Dark", the twelve inch. At the Baker Arms he made an illegal right turn into Hoe Street, passing the bottom of the road where he used to spend every other Tuesday morning queuing up to sign on. That was before he stopped being an unemployment statistic by joining the Enterprise Allowance Scheme as a songwriter.
It was so easy to rid yourself of the stigma of being unemployed: borrow one thousand pounds for a few days and attend one seminar and they gave you forty pounds a week. You could then lie in EVERY DAY.
From Hoe Street he turned left into Walthamstow High Street where normally the market was held. Most days it offered a true taste of the East End on a Saturday. The cheery costers hawking their wares and warming their shivering hands, clasping steaming mugs of splosh. Hot chestnut vendors and fly pitchers would obstruct the crowds offering a kotchell of merchandise for less than cost and record stalls would blast out Chas and Dave's "Oh Darling There Aint No Pleasin' You".
The market wasn't there as Dave pedalled his way to St James' Street, past the Wendy Burger where he would buy Mandi cheese burgers and they would share a salad. At the bottom of the High Street he was dangerously close to home and not nearly knackered enough. To extend his journey he turned left along St James' Street, past the station and East Side Studios who, with a large poster imitating the scene of fire escapes and the lettering associated with West Side, used to entice the romantically challenged. Story. At the end of St James' Street he passed the pub where during one memorable lunchtime drinking session Geraldine and Mandi, bored by suggestions from Dave, Alex and the singer who cannot be named, had said that they might try mud wrestling, embraced like lovers and licked each other's tongues. None of them ever dared show their faces in that pub again; but it was worth it.
He cycled for another half an hour taking in the lighthouse on Markhouse Road and Springfield Lock. He then returned to be told that Mandi had called and would be calling back. Apparently the guy she had gone off with had upset her. Dave awaited her call with renewed optimism for the New Year.