Lucy Lord - Revelry

If my current place of work has one saving grace, it’s its Mayfair location, the majority of financial institutions being stuck in the City, or, worse, stranded in the vampirically bloodless no-man’s-land that is Canary Wharf. East London may be hip but the Square Mile depresses the hell out of me – except at weekends, when you can appreciate the buildings without the suits.

Not wanting to waste a moment of sunshine, I decide to walk home. It’ll only take an hour or so and I’m not meeting Poppy till 7.30. People are beginning to throng the pavements, spilling out of pubs and bars. I amble through the grand streets of Mayfair to Hyde Park and the rose gardens, whose overblown beauty at this time of year transports me to some far-off fairyland. Then the long walk past the Serpentine, teeming with ducks, geese, swans, gulls, runners, Rollerbladers and tourists. By the time I hit Portobello Road I’m thoroughly invigorated by the sheer buzz of London in the summertime, Stella and binding far from my thoughts.

When I first started coming to London with Poppy, in our teens, we’d always hang out on Portobello Road – initially to browse the market for 1920s and 30s memorabilia, then to gaze at cool boys in pubs and bars. Neither of us had the confidence to chat to them in those days. Anyway, I always loved the area, and was determined that it would be my home one day.

It wasn’t as simple as that, but a couple of years out of Goldsmiths, living in a grimy flat-share in Balham, I saw an ad in the ‘For Sale’ section of the Standard for a ‘tiny, run-down one-bedroom flat with balcony in the heart of Notting Hill’. Balcony? This was beyond my wildest dreams. So I hopped on the Central Line on a lovely summer evening and went, heart in mouth, to the address I’d scribbled down on a Post-it note. The location was perfect – a winding side street off the dodgy end of Portobello Road, with a row of pastel-painted terraced early Victorian houses. ‘Run-down’ was accurate enough, though. The pink stucco was peeling badly and it smelt as if the rubbish hadn’t been taken away for weeks.

Yet up four flights of rickety stairs lay the flat of my dreams. Yes, it was tiny, and yes the swirly carpet was hideous and the kitchen units painted the most revolting orangey salmon pink, but there was a little stone balcony leading out from the kitchen with views over the rooftops of West London and I just knew I’d be happy there.

My darling nan (my mother’s mother is still ‘Granny’) had left me a small nest-egg which just covered the deposit. When she died, she was still living in the terraced house on the Hoxton/Dalston borders where my dad was brought up, one of the few slums to have survived Hitler’s bombs. Dad offered to buy her a nice place in the country but she always stubbornly refused. The East End was what she knew and loved. It came as an enormous shock to discover she’d squirrelled away fifty grand to be divided equally between me and Max, her beloved grandchildren. Dad inherited the house, which he rents to Max as premises for his hugely successful bar/restaurant business. Funny how Nan was sitting on a goldmine for all those years. I still miss her.

Now I let myself in and look around contentedly. One of the first things I did when I moved in was to rip out that horrible carpet and paint the floorboards white and, though I say so myself, the effect is pretty damn cool. There wasn’t much cash left for decorating, but I replaced the salmon-coloured kitchen units with some inoffensive ones from Ikea, laid blue and white mosaic tiles over the splash-back and put up some French art nouveau posters in second-hand frames. With my little herb garden on the window ledge and balcony door open so you can see all my flower boxes, I like to think the effect is artfully bohemian.

My living room is a mishmash of old and new, but that’s the way I like it. There are books everywhere. One wall is completely lined with bookshelves but that’s not nearly enough, so they tend to pile up on the floor. A zebra-print Sixties beanbag and sheepskin rug look incongruously Austin Powers against the antique chandelier, huge fake Venetian mirror and chaise longue I’ve picked up in the market over the years. I found my most recent acquisition, a fairly nasty repro Forties chest of drawers, in a skip. Now that I’ve painted it bright lacquer red, changed the handles and put some gorgeous chinoiserie silk under a sheet of glass on its surface, I adore it. I’m considering upholstering the chaise longue similarly, but that might drain my beer resources.

White muslin curtains flutter around the sash window, which looks out onto a window box crammed with colourful geraniums. My beloved oils hang from the walls that are not lined with books, and overgrown houseplants take up probably more floor space than they should.

I go into my bedroom to get changed and my smugness evaporates. Christ, the mess. When my flat is tidy it can look very pretty indeed. I tidied up the living room yesterday. But it’s so small, and OK, I’m such a slut, that mess does accumulate extraordinarily quickly. I start rummaging through the clothes on the floor in search of something to wear. Poppy said that Damian and Ben might be joining us later, so I need to look good. Or, at least, not like a Hogarthian gin hag. After trying on and discarding several options, I settle on a short halterneck floral tea dress in shades of mauve, navy and white that shows off the remnants of my Ibiza tan. I’ll pair it with my old navy Converse to stop it looking too girly, but in the meantime I wander barefoot to the fridge and pour myself a glass of wine.

I pick up my phone to look at the time. It’s only 6.45; still plenty of time before I meet Poppy at The Westbourne, so I go out onto my balcony and gaze over the treetops. It really is a gorgeous evening. I do a lot of my painting out here – so much so, in fact, that I’ve probably exhausted this particular view. I really must get a studio sorted, but I’m absolutely broke, especially after the Ibiza shenanigans. And there’s Glastonbury, Bestival and all sorts coming up. Priorities, Bella. Sometimes I wonder how much I really love my painting if I’m happy to spend so much time and money partying. If I could dedicate my life to lotus-eating, would I? I probably need to be way more dedicated to ever really succeed, especially in the current dreary climate. On the other hand, artists are meant to be hedonistic, aren’t they?

Suddenly I laugh. Come on, Bella, snap out of it. Artists are meant to be hedonistic indeed! A pretentious excuse for getting off your tits if ever there was one.

I go inside to redo my make-up, brush my hair, drain my glass, shove my feet into my battered Converse and pick up a denim jacket in case it gets chilly later. Money, keys, fags in pocket. No need for a handbag as I’m not going far.

As I head towards The Westbourne, it strikes me how much the area has changed since I moved here. I still love it. The architecture is fab and nothing beats getting one’s vegetables from the market on a Saturday morning (if one is up, that is), but the fabled ‘cultural diversity’ has become a bit of a joke. Whatever you may feel about American bankers, culturally diverse they are not. And now half of them are out of work, the streets are crawling with them, like expensively shod vermin. (Actually, running with them, as they can no longer afford their gyms. The heart bleeds.) Still, while Notting Hill’s no longer the in place to live, for me it still has that slightly arty loucheness that an entire plague of penny-loafer-wearing Chad Jnr IIs would be hard pushed to destroy.

The USP of The Westbourne is its relatively sizeable beer garden, all too rare a commodity in central London, which opens directly onto the street for maximum posing potential. It’s predictably heaving, but Poppy has managed to secure a table outside. The cream of London’s beautiful people jostles for standing room on the pavement, spilling pints of expensive lager on Sass & Bide jeans. A white E-type Jag, circa 1972, provides some much-needed extra seating. Three skinny girls perch on its bonnet and a ridiculously handsome black guy grins from the driving seat. This summer a disproportionate number of people are wearing Stetsons. Wild West London indeed.