Living on the sofas and spare beds of empty holiday homes and people’s flats in Europe as I now do, I get a fantastic opportunity to see and experience new locations and cultures.
One such opportunity arose this week to stay on a friend’s sofa in Croydon. If you don’t know much about Croydon’s stigmas, a good place to start would be to look up references to Croydon in the fantastic urban dictionary. (A perenial favourite is the Croydon facelift) Croydon’s besmirched reputation should be cast aside though; it really is a seething mass of eclectic options, as I found out on Tuesday.
The first thing that the visitor to Croydon should know is that it abounds with places to eat and drink. Safety is a key concern, so although the council has granted an abundance of late licenses to clubs serving discount hooch, it has also recently designated certain public areas as no drink zones. Perhaps no drunk zones would be more appropriate, but eck, at least they’re trying.
A walk along the main drag of Croydon reveals many many bars, including the Black Sheep Bar (or Black Sheep Baaaa as I like to think of it). Tuesday night’s theme is ‘Anything Goes’. I went with my friend, in our ‘anything’ costumes, and promptly set about the business of getting some of the one GBP pints of lager down our necks. I haven’t seen ‘Pound-a-pint’ offers since I was a student, so this was quite refreshing. Very refreshing in fact.
In the pub / club, I spoke to a man with a funny fag. He kept mumbling, “Croydon is a w*nker.” The DJ incongruously followed the Aphex Twin with Justin Trousersnake. Extremely young-looking girls danced about. There was a bit of breakdancing. The tallest woman I have ever seen got (physically) picked up by a short sweaty man. It was a thoroughly entertaining night out.
Neither my friend nor I can remember the journey home, after he fell off a chair in the local gristle-burger joint, and I had to give him a piggy-back away from the scene of the crime. I awoke on the floor of his flat, huddled on top of a duvet in my shorts. He awoke curiously naked on the sofa. Sopping wet clothes were strewn about the floor.
Maybe the drinks were drugged. Maybe they weren’t. Perhaps there was a drug that wipes away your memory, but makes you think that you had a great time when you think back to it. All I know is that when I’m next in Croydon, the Black Sheep Bar will be a definite port of call, to get some more of whatever they put in their ludicrously inexpensive drinks. Even if I didn’t see any Croydon facelifts in there.