Bookshops, Boats, Breaks And Ben.

Clubbing seems to have changed. I need to download an app to download a ticket to get to security to show my ID to get on the boat.

                Ben has not changed at all. He has a clipboard and a designated leader frown on his face. Whatever is written on the clipboard is being ticked off in a haphazardly organised way. It’s time to party though (I hope that was on the clipboard) and Martin Krafty is on the first deck as I get on the boat playing a set only he can. It’s dirty with an element of funk cheese always lurking in the background.

                The set times are up and the clipboard is down by the time I caught up with Ben Jurassic and it’s as if time has stood still. Actually, time sat up and thought about making a move for the door as we caught up on nearly 10 years and then gently reclined as if it were sat in the dodgy chair Ben owned in Liverpool Road in Reading. The beats and breaks and basslines (and rocking boat) made my feet move, my heart race and my face smile as Terry Hooligan played his set. The legends of Breaks are out in force and don’t fit in now anymore than they did in the Noughties which is great because Breakbeat never fitted in and never knew its place. Ben’s record bag is now a memory stick, records became CDs which became CDs paying signals but the groove is still there. It’s still so organic and like a happy accident. “The Next Level” by the Ils still makes me wave and jump and shake in a style I call dancing.

***

“Don’t do anything bad until after the first docking point. They won’t chuck you off after that because it costs them money.”

There’s a life lesson in there.

***

                We docked back at Tower Bridge and it’s time for the after party (LaLaLand), but Ben Jurassic is in clipboard mode with the same expression and a phone glued to his face. The after party needs extra decks (CDJs in the modern world) and we need to get them there which in a Nu Skool world meant Uber. When Nu Skool let us down the Tube didn’t (our legs may have slightly.)

                By 3am we were hungry. The club was a dingey, dirty, sweaty hive of activity but outside was a London A road and nothing else except a 24-hour garage shining like The Murco. Time unravelled, tangled, criss-crossed and settled as we headed to the 24hr talking point.

“What sandwiches do you have?”

“Chicken and egg.”

“Chicken AND egg?” There’s something discordant about adult and child in a sandwich but we took what he offered which wasn’t chicken and egg.

                We got back to Ben’s at a time only he knows and he only knows because he has a watch that tells him where he has been, what he has been doing and how many calories he’s burned doing it and it is a whole new world to me. I’ve seen people argue over who woke who up but I’ve never seen it argued with statistics from a phone. That doesn’t seem to settle it though, it serves as another angle of attack, but I think Ben lost.

                It seems fitting that after breakfast we visited a bookshop and Ben Jurassic was passionately involved with a Roald Dhal book he wanted for his children while Rosie (his wife) was perplexed by an A to Z book where A was activist and F was feminist. Ben is the same child I met so many years ago.

                My body ached as the train headed back to Reading and my face smiled. A fantastic trip back to the Noughties which I probably never left.