Thursday 2 January: "Nipplefest"

Dear Nessi

6 am New Year's Day. Memories fractured like blood on the mantle piece. I crouch on the toilet looking at a mineral water bottle by the sink. It says "STILL", like the joy Division album. I always get the story of Ian Curtis mixed up with the story of Power Pack's brother. Who found him. Who saw him alive last. Etc.

While I was having a nipplefest Power Pack was having a nightmare on Crowley Street.

New Years Eve ... a Tiki bar party, the back seat of a black cab, and a Mono-nad cast of all stars...I'll try and make sense as our cast list is well out of date.

The Tory arrived before the doors were even unlocked. Trust him to be unfashionably early. Someone gave him a toy AK47 for Christmas. A not funny joke about the Iraqi side of his family. (he's called 'the Tory' cos Power Pack once almost punched him for saying he'd vote that way. Before Labour became New Tory that was...We avoid politics these days. I don't even know how he feels about my relations planning mass slaughter of his.)

Ruby, Australian singer, guitarist and belly dancer extraordinaire, was having what must be her usual bickering before a gig. She and her partner-in-crime, Mr Cowboy Hat, make such an effort when their 8-man-and-woman band perform. Lights, slide shows, palm trees, hula dancers (myself included this time). They have every tool you could possibly need and a van, and have been the most helpful, organised band I have ever played with. No wonder Ruby gets irked when other people take advantage. This time it was the "fat f*cker" (as she put it), Mr Casino, who put so many people on the guest list there were no places left for Ruby's band. Further more, Casino and his band of gangsters asked for about 5 times as much money as Ruby. They sat backstage all night, Trilby hats low over shifty eyes, drinking all the free beer, and leering at the ladies.

It was Izzy, northern blonde with an tiny waist and pert little tits that like to fall out of her vintage showgirl costumes, who asked me to dance. Then she ended up at the last minute asking to use Ruby's costumes. Another gripe for Ruby. But then Izzy brought a load of glitter costumes which pissed me off as I thought we were all doing hula, and did not bring my own fab 50's circus costume. So I ended up squeezing into a slightly 80s-cum-rock'n'roll tube dress with a glitter flame design. Then I discovered that when that pedal had dropped on my foot in November, my shoe had also ripped. And the glittery stilettos are really for pole dancing, not non-stop 60s go-go dancing which is what Laura (an Italian chick who can go go go) and I were meant to be doing all night. Midway through the second song I had stitches in my side. Luckily when we were dancing with Ruby's band it was a routine of get on stage and dance a few songs, then get back in the audience, where we could get away with as little wiggling as possible.

Tom O'Looney, my crush of several years back (past tense) said I looked very serious while dancing (by now it was hula costumes - grass skirts and flowery bra tops) and I said was cos my feet were killing me.

I hardly danced again after Ruby, apart from when I went out to watch Mr Casino and his swing band. I tried to brief Mary on them, Mr Voodoo, Mr Time Machine and the Tourist. The only one I didn't know was the sax player. "They all look really sleazy," she said. Mr Voodoo is a blues guitarist; Mr Casino former pornographer who did time for smut that's is legal in just about every other country in the world; Mr Time Machine wears baggy suits and rather than a taxi outside has a time machine where he goes back to the 40s every night. I was drunk enough later to say "wake up, your time machine was waiting outside".

I think I spent more time in the dressing room than the club. Getting old I guess. I'd rather sit chatting to Dwayne and Ellen, friends of Ruby, Mr Curly Mullet, Crawdaddy, and loads of 50s and 60s people who names I donŐt know. Mr Cowboy Hat had three slide projectors going and there were bamboo sofas everywhere. Even with the piles of back room detritus and costumes lying everywhere, it was more like a club in itself then a changing room. And then was it Ruby or me or Izzy or Laura who started the boobiefest? I just had a grope outside someone's costume, then everyone's tits were out and nipples were being pinched.

I had a really good time and couldn't believe it was 4 am by the time Tom, Serena and I started trying to round up people to go to Frankie's. The plan was that I would meet Power Pack there, as it is also in South London. Otherwise Power Pack would have stayed with you guys, and I'd have had to stay in the club 'til 6 am when tubes started running. Triple fare cabs from South to North on New Year's Eve were well out of budget. Plus I wanted to spend a little of the evening with my husband. It was weird not being with him at midnight, the first year we haven't been together the entire night. (I was tuning Ruby's guitar when the clock struck 12. Mr Cowboy Hat passed around a bottle of Cava; Mary and Knife Girl were in the club wondering where I was.) But Power Pack has gone off clubs - too crowded, loud and expensive.

So, 4 am. Outside a light drizzle fell. I jumped in the first taxi to appear. But no one else seemed ready. Mr Casino had his double bass which wouldn't fit in the old style black London taxi. Suddenly it was just me and Tom and I was drunk and the meter was running. We took off.

There is something romantic about the old black cabs. Unlike New York's yellows, the London taxi has more or less retained its original 1950's shape. Two seats face backwards and there is plenty of room - though the tendency seems to be to snuggle up in the deep, dark leather seats. If you are drunk and its raining and it's New Year's Eve.

"Your hands are warm..." I said... And then we were there, at Frankie's. No, I had no intention of any retro snogging. I guess that the past, even when its the past, was still the present once, and can never really be entirely forgotten.

As soon as we walked in I collapsed into Power Pack's arms. Frankie's party, before the people from the Tiki bar arrived way too late, was only himself, Ricki's sister (who will need a pseudonym soon as Frankie is due to marry her in June) and the fat old pouf who looks like Aleister Crowley. Crowley can be a nuisance at parties, but with such a small number Power Pack thought it would be ok. Crowley had never annoyed my husband personally, just been rude to other people in front of him. But this time was different.

I'll never know exactly what happened cos much alcohol had already been consumed when the fight started. By the time I arrived, Crowley was gone and Power Pack was upset, and hostile to everyone including me. They had called three taxis - and like a creature in horror film, Crowley would reappear 5 minutes after he'd left, blubbing incoherently. He cut his hand breaking a glass on the mantles piece. Ricki's sister said she spent an hour cleaning up the blood. But it was still everywhere, little streaks or blobs. On a ceramic dog under the mantle. On the door, the floor, a stack of newspapers.

I took Power Pack to the bedroom. I could have stayed up as more guests arrived. But Power Pack was alternating between not knowing where he was and begin really abusive, no doubt in the aftermath of the fight. So I stayed on the bed, not getting under the white duvet, not wanting to put my smelly clothes on Frankie's clean sheets. I was freezing and slept badly, just wanting to go home, but knowing we had to wait for public transport to start running. "your hands are warm..." I said to Power Pack, never once doubting the choice I'd made those years ago. Not regretting that I was missing out on tom downstairs. Cold, drunk, confused on the surface but still happy inside.

Frankie lives near an over ground train station, not a tube. The first train wasn't 'til 10:47 am. So Power Pack and I got up at 10, joined Frankie and his new love (the sister of the woman he lived with 7 years), while Tom dozed on the front room floor, horrible claw-like feet sticking out from under an orange duvet. Frankie and Suzy (we'll call her Suzy) were the only ones still awake. Still drinking. We had a smoke, and walked to the station with a joint still going. The law's not clear - but as Frankie put it, they are not going to arrest 2 white people smoking a joint, when crack dealers are prolly shooting each other in the next street. It was weird though, broad daylight, puffing away.

The view from the train was dismal. London is ugly. Not pretty like Barcelona or Paris. "Berlin is ugly, too," I mused as we crossed the grey river and more dull office blocks, rain splattering the windows. It's because London and Berlin were bombed to bits in WWII.

And then Power Pack and I got into another discussion about what it must have been like in London then, and what it'll be like in Baghdad, and how the Americans still donŐt really know what it's like to be on the ground while bombs reign from the sky day in, day out.

F Park was dismal as always, too. Power Pack got a hotdog from the vendors that set up on football days, and we picked our way over the potholes on Twelve Nuns road. It wasn't until we got to the back road to our place that things improved. Victorian cake icing houses. I wish we lived in one of them and not our horrible block. But still it could be worse; we could live in one of those newer 60s blocks, the ones that are getting demolished cos they are falling apart already and no one wants to live in them.

Back home, to a warm cat, fold out sofa and a day of lazy TV.

Petra