Gay Camberwell

By Roz.


Following our flat viewing on Friday night, we managed to resist the urge to spend the weekend contemplating the virtues or otherwise of living in Myatts Fields.  But only just.  The profusion of good films that are out at the moment was certainly a help.  (I would, by the way, say that An Education is absolutely worth seeing; I was less convinced by A Serious Man - but I seem to be alone in this view. As you can tell, we spent much of the weekend at the Ritzy…)

But we really owe our very pleasant weekend to our neighbours’ estate agent.  Our neighbours have just put their flat (in theory identical to ours; in reality, much nicer) on the market.  For some reason (I wouldn’t like to guess!), the flowery description of the flat referred to some local attractions outside of Camberwell.  So for the first Saturday night in a long time, we remembered our proximity to Vauxhall and headed over there (having been sustained by a dinner in FM Mangals) to Duckie.  It has clearly been far too long since either of us went clubbing, since we arrived just as the RVT was opening. In fact it wasn’t actually open yet, but they let us in anyway… Having survived (albeit without either enthusiasm or panache!) the experience of sitting in the corner and hoping for company, the RVT was soon a hive of activity.  Two excellent shows - and the additional pleasure of seeing Gay Camberwell’s favourite drag queen, Michael Twaits (straight from his show at the Soho Theatre) – entertained the crowds. 

The estate agent also referred to Bellenden Road as “a short stroll away”. This reminded us that, whatever one’s view on a mile equating to “a short stroll”, it’s certainly only a fairly short cycle.  And thus on Sunday we found ourselves heading over to Petitou for brunch.  I used to go there a lot, but for some reason (perhaps the coming of House, and my discovery of Chumleigh Gardens café) I’ve been less (indeed not at all) of late.  But what an error.  We deemed our scrambled eggs to have the edge over those we’d sampled in New York on our honeymoon (and the whole meal as absolutely superior to the brunch I had on Saturday in Shoreditch’s latest innovation, The Book Club) and programmed Pink Screen Sundays for December and January.  Feeling virtuous, we felt a visit to Peckham’s chocolate shop, Melange, was more than justified.  Having unfortunately insulted the shop owner (by enquiring whether she had anything fairly plain which I could give to my mother, who likes all her food bland) and “tested” far too many samples before purchasing coriander and grapefruit milk chocolate, we went to lurk in Review (the lovely bookshop).  From here we needed no guidance from an estate agent to ensure we were back at the Castle in time to see Caramel, this week’s Pink Screen Sunday film. 

So I have one thing to say to estate agents: bring on the flowery writing! 


PS Good news - we've just heard that there's going to be a Moona party at the Castle on 5 December at 8pm. Regular readers of the blog will remember the fabulousness of the last one! More details on the calendar.