"There's water pouring through the celling and the floor's going to collapse and everyones going to die."
Ah, yes - how I will miss these parties. They made you excited in the same way making fires out of batteries makes you excited. You know something wrong is going to happen, you're just not sure what. That bent curiosity caused me to have a party in that godforsaken flat every month this year, that and the fact that I knew my time in 61 was short. The landlords feet were itching to get started on his long planned 'renovation.' His attempt to double his money by splitting the flat in two and selling it off individually as 'luxury' apartments. Stage one which involved ripping out the victorian staircase. But things came to a head this month when I returned from our tour to find my flatmate had run off with all the rent money, (say hello to Paul Cameron from me if you see him.) So I got my long awaited eviction notice.


I wasted all of twenty minutes on Saturday trying to reassure guests that the floor wasn't going to collapse and that water always pours through the celling. Not that most people cared. Someone tried to warn everyone in the living room of the impending doom but they didn't listen, instead the microphone was turned off and pounding acid rave was turned up. Not that stopping dancing would have helped anyway. The leak was from an upstairs radiator that someone had stood on for some reason. I wasn't there, although I was summoned by panicked looking girls to witness a joyous fountain of water filling Tolsons old bedroom and covering a sleeping unconcious man on the bed. Everyone in the room seemed to be enjoying the water so I didn't immediately spot why I had been brought up there, but then someone explained that this was causing the kitchen downstairs to flood - which is a bad thing. So I had to sit there for a while with my thumb over the pipe until someone managed to turn it off. The next day I found out that they'd turned off the water for the entire building and that added to the drama when at 4pm on Sunday my landlord kicked my bedroom door open screaming "You f-cking barstard!" and telling me how he was going to sue me for £10,000.


The flat had filled up quite nicely with guests after midnight, after that it kept on filling up. The hallway, staircase, living room, kitchen, upstairs - all standing room only. And still there was a hundred people in the street and a queue outside the door of people waiting to cram in. Claire kicked things off nicely with some pole dancing in the living room, which lasted about 5 minutes before the pole collapsed and smashed someone in the face. Great stuff.


We got our shite together to play at about half one, the living room swaying in what little room there was left and bulging towards us at the front. I stood on a chair and pelted glow sticks off peoples faces. Then we started & the room erupted. A booze-primed mass of bodies mangling itself together, jumping up and down and falling over and clinging onto each other while suffocated arms held glowsticks in the air, crowd surfers occasionally bobbing on the surface. The floor bent and creaked, hammered repeatedly by hundereds of feet, causing some to worry, others to leave. We finished with I Know Kung Fu and exited, drenched into the mob.


After us, Haunted House took to the floor for their second outing at 61, (and 3rd ever gig,) resulting in much more dancing. Their set interupted only briefly by the electricity running out. I ran in a swervy line to the local key store to buy some power cards. Then back, exhausted, and the party started again with surprisingly few people having left. I walked back through the door, past a young black man carrying a make-shift spear, and found my booze.

The party was full of strange and facinating weirdos. One man, aged 45 at least, staggered around covered in beer, a half smile on his face and a glazed look in his eye. I wondered for a minute how he'd heard about the party, but didn't waste much time on it. Downstairs, art school fashionista rubbed shoulders with street hardened sports casuals, while wildly matched couples performed sex acts in full view of those dancing too hard to care. The next morning I found two televisions, a toaster and a computer keyboard smashed in the garden, and a vaugue yet persistent memory of me carrying one of those televisions to a window and drunkenly slurring "watch this."


At some point people got into the loft, and legs did flail through the celing as they lost their balance and stood inbetween the beams. The upstairs toilet began leaking into the downstairs toilet and for awhile there was piss dripping off the kitchen door frame. I undid the flushing mechanism and the rivers of piss stopped, although the smell is still there today. Which is when I am writing this. It took awhile to get around to it, but since the party I've been pretty busy getting kicked out of 61. The landlord's still threatening to sue me for £10,000 which leaves me with the only option; counter-sue, and counter-sue hard. I'm currently residing in the basement of 49, having been offered shelter by old flatmates Tolson & Jum. But the search is on for a flat or building to rival 61 in its capacity for fun. Taking 61 into the expanded field, as it were. I'll be sure to keep you updated on my legal fight with my landlord, always a barrel of laughs stuff like that. I've got to give him the keys back today after I get my long suffering goldfish out the kitchen, should be a good row. Oh and Haunted House got offered a 7" single deal after they played, so jobs a good un. Keep an eye out for those f--kers in the months ahead.

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