London Place 17: Infernos

I kind of felt, writing one or two of these posts, that I was overly giving the impression that in my London youth I was a cool, chilled-out Londoner about town, one of the lads, a real social animal, whereas, of course, vast swathes of my London youth tell, as they do for so many people, a tale of profound loneliness and alienation. 

So, Infernos ... Burn. Baby. Burn.

I didn't go to Infernos often, maybe three or four times. It was never, as such, my choice to go. I think I fell asleep a couple of times. I may have enjoyed myself for a few minutes on one occasion.

What's Infernos? Infernos is/was the aptly named heart of Clapham High Street, if Clapham High Street is every bad thing you think Clapham is. It's probably where Dom Raab and Matty Hancock went on the pull in their glory days, where hundreds of young estate agents sing along to Livin' on a Prayer and the theme from Baywatch.

Let's not be too snobby. I wouldn't know how to run a successful club. I'm sure many many true romances have begun within its hallowed walls. I've never been a clubber and I don't know that Infernos was that much worse than that many other places.

But, for a person whose main settings are misanthropy and embarrassment, and whose main task is the concealing of the two, Infernos was the place where there was nowhere to hide.

I never had a tribe, but there were places which felt more like home than others. I liked pubs with friends, gigs, the cinema, I liked being part of football teams and cricket teams, going to football and cricket matches. That's plenty of places to blend in and feel at ease. I'm lucky. All the while, the main business was going on for most of the young folk elsewhere, in the bars and clubs, dressed up, hunting in packs, doing shots, asking if she wanted to dance, looking for a little romance, given half a chance.

I couldn't get to grips with any of it at university, when it was inescapable, I couldn't get to grips with it back in London, but there were usually ways to avoid it.

I thought I hated dancing and couldn't dance, but it turned out not to be that. For a few years I rather enjoyed dancing, in the right place, at the right time. But that was never somewhere like Infernos. That feeling when you know you're simultaneously more hung up, more repressed, and yet, in your own pathetic way, still a little cooler. I won't have been the only one on any given night, though it felt like it. Infernos is the kind of place that spawns a thousand monstrous Morrisseys, and that's no good thing. Panic. Burn.