life in peckham
Due to test match sofa’s move to Nunhead, I’ve been spending more than a few moments in Peckham.
It is truly an urban wonderland.
Peckham is largely a market pretending to be a suburb.
The smell of rotting food is right there in the evenings, and disgustingly in the mornings so is the stench of fresh food.
At night the foxes eat out of the bins.
There are usually seventy different kind of bananas on show.
And the place is always packed with people.
One day, on a particularly people heavy day, I saw someone walking up the footpath with what looked like a large shopping trolley with a dead body in it.
It wasn’t, it was just a trolley of meat.
Now this was just a normal shopping trolley that could have been used by any supermarket in the world, and instead some butcher type fellow was transporting uncovered meats around the streets of peckham.
It was mad, and yet glorious.
I’m not sure how many vegans live in Peckham, but it would have been worth following this guy around just to see if one walked past it, shrieked and ran away.
Perhaps the fresh air from the 14 buses that drive through there smokes the meat.
It was big chunks of meat of too, like limbs of lamb or something.
The other moment I cherished was when the service finished one morning at the Peckham Rye Lane Chapel.
A weird little place wedged into Peckham between cheap phones and cheap booze.
I must have timed it perfectly as all the men from the church came out.
All old black dudes, all dressed like they were about to head to a Harlem speak easy in the 30s.
I’ve never seen so many classy hats in one place.
Almost everyone of them had a three piece suit on, and several were sporting very pimp daddy walking sticks.
I can only assume this was a men’s only service, or even a mens breakfast.
I’m not sure how I would go about getting invited into this, but I want it, and then I want to know where they all buy their clothes and hats.
On top of meat and well dressed spiritual men, Peckham also has a miracle centre, and not enough suburbs do.
pop condoms
Condoms aren’t exciting.
But they could be, if a boy band got involved.
Especially the runner up to an x factor from a few years ago.
The band is JLS, 4 young guys whose general appeal is that you could take them all home to mum, I spose they can sing, but I can’t recall what they sound like to verify that.
Being that they are a boy band, the average age of their fans must be about 12.
So them on condoms is an interesting choice.
Obviously teen pregnancy is a big deal, but it isn’t until a boy band (in the old days weren’t boy bands responsible for teen pregnancies?) puts their face on a condom – not literally – that you really notice the problem.
In the UK I haven’t noticed too many teen mothers, although I don’t go looking for them anymore.
While JLS are putting rubbers on youngsters with questionable music taste, what about kids who like good music.
Why not have a Fugazi condom for punk fans?
Since Fugazi once had an album called red medicine, you could probably get them involved with the STD side of it as well.
Ofcourse my major problem with the JLS condoms is it ruins my fantasy that all guys in boy bands are completely sexless.
Literally
The Oatmeal, who you should all read, has got the best description of the word literally ever.
You should read it, it has a gayroller in it.
Really.
Quick, go read it.
food blog
No, not my blog, I’ll stick with shit and toes, but my friend, Soph, has a food blog.
Now I find all foodies massive wankers, but I could live on party pies and dim sims (two Australian delicacies).
But Soph likes food, and if you also like food, I see no reason why you don’t go over there and read all about food.
The blog is called apicia, which is enough to make me eat cheese and vegemite sandwiches for life, but you should visit it.
sweet corn in peckham
A woman runs to a fruit and veg store. Actually she runs to the sweet corn section.
You have to ask why.
When she gets there, she takes her time.
Looking over here is a chubby young smoking dude as she looks over each sweet corn one at a time.
I feel at home, not because of the running for the sweet corn, which I may never understand, but because she is Black and he is Vietnamese.
In Footscray (my home back in Melbourne), that was the normal combination of humans.
Throw in some white drug addicts, and Peckham could do a more than passable interpretation of Footscray.
I was only there for a short time and I was offered pirated DVDS, saw two cases of road rage, one guy talking to himself and some screaming match that seemed to be more for therapy than anything else.
I felt right at home.
I did keep wondering about the sweet corn runner.
Why had she done it?
Had she then bought the sweet corn and then run home, before running around her kitchen and then running around the dining table to serve it.
Or was she just excited by the sweet corn, because she stopped rushing once she got there. She gave that sweet corn a proper physical before deciding on the few she liked.
I’m not a food guy, so maybe I don’t get it, but at that stage I hadn’t eaten for 24 hours due to my flight back from Sri Lanka, and all I wanted was a quarter pounder and two double cheese burgers.
I didn’t run, i just walked and ordered.
I might run for a late night bus, or if I needed a shit and was looking for a toilet, but I could never run for sweet corn.
Where the heart is
No, this is not about Natalie Portman.
This is about the new football, soccer, team that is in Melbourne.
They are called Melbourne Heart. I assume because of a bet.
If the name is stupid, they have taken stupid to a whole new level with their song.
I must admit I have not listened to it all, but only because I just couldn’t.
I mean, for fuck’s sake, it starts with a fucken heart beat.
A heartbeat.
The whole thing is some sort of sick meta-joke that people will only work out in 20 years, like we did with the 80s.
I wouldn’t care normally, sporting teams have been calling themselves stupid things for years, but this one has Melbourne in it, so I expected a higher standard.
This is the shit song.
There are two A league teams in Melbourne, the other one is called Victory.
I never really warmed to them, until I heard this song.
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