Room 5 - Make Luv (2003)

I was in a club in Brighton, one of the ones on the seafront, upstairs. This song came on so loud, so, so, so loud. I was standing there and I got a feeling. I just started watching people, the dark, black sticky walls and floor, the bright lights and spilled drinks. I felt drunk but like I had overcome being drunk, I could feel my body, tired after days of this abuse of my body, and drowned, but my head was lucid. Racing almost. I didn’t care about my girlfriend, though I held my hand around her hip. She was talking but I’d stopped listening. I felt empty, the club felt empty. I was feeling something but it was like the way you’d feel a punch in a racing helmet. Discotheque Despair. It was a vast emptiness, a boredom with all of this. Why would we do it, what are we trying to forget? Why are we damning ourselves and beating ourselves and each other? I don’t know. The moment passed but the feeling stayed with me, and sometimes it comes over, like a single chord, getting louder and louder and more ominous, until it's crashing in my ears like a wave. But it doesn't sweep me up like a wave, it leaves me quiet and hollow, waiting for bed, waiting to shut my eyes and start again tomorrow, to do it better, to be an actual person, to achieve rather than waste. Every time I hear that affected guitar of the intro to the song, I’m taken back to that club for just a couple of seconds, and I can see the lights beaming then getting lost in the indistinguishable darkness of the black walls again.

Arnold Schwarzenegger comes to Hackney

A guy in full Olympic organiser kit is walking quite fast on the same side of the road as I reach home. He says: “Hey mate.”

I look around and he excitedly tells me:

“Mate, you know Arnold Schwarzenegger’s down there?”

I say: “No? Where?”

“Down on London Fields, mate, you know, he’s there, cos of the Olympics and that. He’s, like, come to London cos he’s helping with the Austrians and weightlifting and that. He’s there man, pumping iron and showing off.”

I was cautious. “Well, where are you going, then?”

“I’m going home, I live over the road– I just been down there though.”

He skipped on, I took my keys out of my pocket. Inside I told Tim. He was puzzled, “What? Now?” I put my bag down. What if Arnold really was on London Fields? You don’t want it to be the in the papers tomorrow and we be the guys who have to say we knew, but just sat at home. I got my camera.

It was sunny, so London Fields was busy. Over by the swimming pool there was a big bus, blacked out windows. Arnold! Excitedly we walked over. It looked like something was happening, there were a couple of heavies hanging around.

“Mate, what’s going on in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah it is, Arnold Schwarnegger’s in there?”

 “Huh? No”

“Yeah he is, we know.”

The blokes started laughing.

“No he isn’t, they’re filming some Australian show in there, some sitcom.”

“Nah man, Arnie’s on the fields, we know.”

“Well, if he is we haven’t seen him.”

“He’s in there isn’t he? You just can’t tell us.”

We decided to have some fun

“Come on man, we got to get in there, I got to arm wrestle him. I leant him that tenner five years ago and he never gave it me back, so now he’s got to arm wrestle me for it. I’m going to beat him.”

The heavies all laugh/grunt, again.

“Honestly pal, we don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah you do.”

“No we don’t. Honestly, Australian thing, ‘Always….’ Something, I can’t remember.”

“Alright, alright. Maybe Arnie’s NOT in there. But he’s definitely on London Fields.”

I don’t know if you know, but London Fields is pretty big. You can’t see one side from the other. We figure he’s got to be on the other side. So we leave the goons and get on down the park.

Some hippies drinking cider:

“Have you seen Arnold Schwarzewarzer?”

“No. Uh, what?”

“He’s supposed to be here. You know, Arnie.”

“Nope. Not here. We haven’t seen him”

Some young mum:

“Have you seen Arnie? He’s supposed to be on London Fields.”

“What?”

“Yeah, helping out with the weight lifting and that. It’s for Austria.”

“Sorry, no.”

“Uh, ok.”

A group of hipsters:

“Hey man, have you heard? Arnold Schwarnoogers on the park.”

“Yeah, yeah. He’s over there.”

“…No he isn’t, we just came from over there.”

“Yeah, we saw him, he was dressed as Robocop.”

“You’re a dick, Arnie wasn’t even in ‘RoboCop’. He was the Terminator.”

By then we’d started to realise. We asked a few people for good measure, but this time with big smiles on our faces.

Arnie never showed up.  We went to the shop instead and got a couple of tins. It was a nice night, at least we’d got out the house for a bit. I think I took a picture, but it would have been better with Arnie pumping serious iron and chewing on a cigar in it.