I know this is awfully, awfully slack, but a few people have emailed me and I haven’t gotten back to them. So in case you’re not mad at me yet and might be checking the blog, I’m sorry, and I promise to reply, but it might not be this week or next week (Italy!), but the week after. And that’s because I do want to write a proper email! And it’s not that I’m not doing emails at all – I’m just doing them at a slow pace!

Happy New Year!

I’ve patched up the previous post, which I hurriedly published as my internet time ticked down to 0.

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Titles

I am trying the titles thing. But, as with anything I do, it’s likely to be inconsistently carried out, and probably dropped very soon.

Soho House

“Soho house is a private members club located in the heart of London’s Soho. It … currently has just over 3000 members, mainly from the media, art, and film worlds. Due to its popularity there is a waiting list of approx 18 mths for membership. Soho House has a restaurant, several bar areas, two roof terraces, and a cinema all located in a Georgian townhouse.

…. Each year Soho House takes the club to the Cannes Film Festival, where we provide all the services of Soho House London, whether it be on a boat, in a villa, or a party in a chateau.

… Soho House rules. … Application procedure. Any member wishing to propose a candidate must fill in an application form … signed by a seconder who must be a member. A brief CV must accompany the application. The application will be considered at the next full committee meeting…. Objections will be written down… The sub-committee will request a full written explanation both from the proposer and the objector of their case….

… Members may bring no more than three guests except by prior arrangement. Reception must be informed of guests’ names. …

… Except by prior arrangement for a specific private function, no cameras, recording equipment, or mobile phones may be switched on inside the club.

… Once inside the House, reception acts as your point of contact with the outside world and we recommend that you make yourself known to the receptionists, particularly if you are expecting a cab, call, or guest. …”

And not only that, they have Babbington House in the Somerset countryside, “28 bedrooms including the Lodge… a health spa including indoor and outdoor pool, gymnasium, sauna, treatment rooms, and a lakeside Mongolian yurt” (if anyone knows what a yurt is please tell me), Electric House “a small intimate club for members in the Notting Hill area” (the Electric Cinema and adjacent Brasserie below is open to the public so plan to check that out), Soho House New York “opened in May 2003… with a hotel situated in the lower floors”, Soho House LA “for the past two years we have been present in LA for the Oscars”.

How crazy is that? We don’t have places like that in Sydney or Melbourne do we? I don’t think such elitist snobbery would go down well in Australia. At any rate, there just isn’t the same kind of money as here. Max was actually quite surprised when I said I had a job trial there, he was like, “Soho House? that’s a private club for media types, and it’s quite well known/exclusive ( I can’t remember what he actually said)”. And I thought it was a bit of an overstatement. Until I got the induction book.

Soho House London is huge, even though it looks anything but (the entrance is a little door in the wall). It’s a maze of staircases and rooms leading into other rooms; there are four floors, three different staircases, storage in landings between floors, and lots of cupboards in walls. There is the restaurant/ Dining Room – split into the yellow (light but by no means bright), blue (dark and sombre), red (deep and masculine) rooms – on the first floor; the Drawing Room (red, furnished with couches and armchairs, with a smaller Blue Drawing Room adjacent), and the Circle Bar (with circular walls, one side covered in straight vertical strips of mirror – visually unsettling to me), on the second floor; the Kitchen Bar (or 3KB to staff), with couches, and tables and chairs, with this dark unfinished wood look; and then on the fourth the Old Terrace, which is a tiny rooftop space that is a bit of an extension of the Kitchen Bar, with views of the tops of city buildings, and on the other side the Roof Deck, light and open, with pot plants etc which is mostly a function area but sometimes opened for dining. The hallways and staircases inside the building are painted dark green/cream.

And then there is Soho House 21, which is the other side/half of the building (slick and modern, white walls, lighter wood , chrome fittings), which is open to members and non-members, but has nowhere near the character of Soho House of course. And housed in the same complex, managed by the same group, are restaurant/bars open to the public, Cafe Boheme, Boheme Kitchen and Bar, and Barsolona. We had a quick look into Barsolona yesterday when one of the managers took me on a tour of the place; it’s this tiny little basement bar, with a mediterranean feel, and that apparently does the latin thing. So will have to drag Iv and Vish down there one night.

Soho House is open almost all the time, from breakfast through to 2.30am Mon to Fri, 10-3am Sat, 10-6pm Sun. Lots of business lunches, breakfast meetings etc, but also people just relaxing/catching up. And yes, there are people talking about such and such actor who was really good in this and now doing this, and who to invite and who not to invite to this party, etc. Yesterday there was a guy looking at a script with another guy who looked not a day over 18.

Service in the House can be a bit of a nighmare, because the 3KB kitchen and bar dispense the food and drink for the Old Terrace and the Drawing Room, and during the day, they have one (!!! I don’t understand why) person behind the bar, and he has to do glassie duties as well. Yesterday I was being trained in the Old Terrace, and my legs got so tired walking up and down the stairs. And it is fucking scary walking down the tiny spiral fire escape stairs (the quickest way down to the bar) with a full tray of glasses. And then, to get desserts, and some wines, you have to walk all the way down to the first floor.

Most of the people that work there are either French or Polish. So there are often conversations going on in those languages. The other day we had wine training (all restaurants/bars should have this! Did you know there is a varietal called a roussin? It is now my favourite white!), and the guy giving us the talk stopped as there were conversations happening around the table, and when he started again, he was speaking French and he didn’t even realise it. Just on a tangent here, I didn’t realise that when you swish the wine around in your mouth to properly ‘taste’ it, that it was supposed to be audible! This guy was swishing away ’slurp slurp’ – no, ‘SLURP SLURP’, and man, it was fucking gross! If that is the sign of an educated appreciator of wine then I will remain uncultured thank you very much. I do hope though that the wine training sessions continue to happen regularly!

I swear though I don’t think I’m going to make it past these next two weeks in there, I’m such a shoddy waitress. Jess or Toks would be fine – I wish they were here with me, that’d make it so much more bearable to be working there!!! And I thought I’d done my time in hospitality. Urgh!

The French know how to celebrate in style. Vish and I were walking from Soho to Leicester Square last night after the game, and we heard this crowd noise/chanting and ended up following it to Picadilly Circus, where all these French fans were gathered around the horses statue/fountain, with some of them clambered on top of it, chanting/screaming/cheering away at the tops of their voices and waving French flags. The crowd got bigger too as we stood there watching them, and the cops were hovering around trying to contain them and keep them off the streets. And we were thinking, that could’ve been Aussies last night. Except that Aussies would probably just be at the pub getting pissed. The French fans took their party to the streets – we saw them marching through Leicester Square a little later, “Allez les Bleus” (spelling?) among other things which unfortunately my French ain’t good enough to recognise.

Of course it would end this way. Consistent with the way the team’s been copping it throughout the World Cup. Poor Vishal was inconsolable. Italy is actually his favourite team, and he had been pessimistic/realistic about the Aus Croatia game, but he really thought we had a good chance against Italy, and didn’t we play well! And then that call! Awful.

I hate it when you smell, on a random person, or even just catch a whiff of, on the street when someone walks past etc, the cologne of an 'ex-lover' (for lack of a better word – sexual partner seems so clinical). Torture.

Can someone fix that sentence for me?

I wish there was no such thing as cologne or perfume.

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