The Beating of Your Heart is the Only Sound

I went to a Roller Disco last night. You could bring your own rollerskates or rent pink & white ones at the premises. They converted a music venue across the street from Hackney Empire into the rink; the DJ sat on the stage, playing funk and 70s music (with a liberal dose of 80s pop), underneath the glittering sign Guilty Pleasures while, through out the night, people skated, drank, danced and had their broken bones tended by "Skate Marshalls".

Kevin, Osmo, Anu and I were one of the first people to arrive. We watched the rollerskaters for a while - some keeping close to the barriers; others in the centre, showing off - before getting our own skates. One of my co-workers, Robin, arrived with two friends. We said hello and he told me he had never rollerskated before. Twenty minutes later, he fell right in front of me, on top of his rollerskates. They carried him into the back room and, later, Kevin saw him escorted out on a wheel chair.

My first song on the rink was "Flashdance... What a Feeling". It didn't take long for me to realize a few things about Roller Discos:

• If you see giggly girls holding hands on the rink, for the love of God stay away from them. These type of skaters collect people, holding hands with friends they encounter along the way until they are the equivalent of a tsunami, taking everything and everyone down with them.
  
• Also stay away from people in funny costumes or suit jackets. They may look cute but they are destined to spend half the night on their asses, staring up at the passing skaters as if they couldn't possibly be funnier. They seem to be on a mission to dislocate their shoulders for a laugh.
  
• 70s disco only makes true and perfect sense on a rollerskating rink.
  
• When falling on your ass (like I did), make sure you don't break the fall with your left arm and nearly snap it in half.
  

I kept hoping for the DJ to play Blondie's "Atomic"; I'd had that song stuck in my head all week ever since we planned at work to go to the Roller Disco. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. My favourite tunes of the night were Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough", Tiffany's "I Think We Are Alone Now ", The Trammps "Disco Inferno" and just about anything else that made me feel like a Studio 54 old timer.

A Push and a Shove, and the Land that We Stand on is Ours

I just witnessed teenagers attack a group of men in the No. 8 bus. I was on my way home from Brick Lane (having left Kevin behind because he has a larger tolerance of crowds than me), staring out of the bus' window, when I heard a teenage girl talking loudly into her cellphone. She was screaming "how could I call you if your mobile was turned off?" If you've seen the Vicky Pollard skit in Little Britain, multiply that by a 100 and you get the idea.

She kept up the loud behaviour, enliciting giggles from her two friends, until a man talking on his cellphone described her as "trash". After some abuse thrown at him, because how dare him call her "trash", she seemed to move her attention somewhere. The bus then stopped, and as he leaned down to pick up a box of flowers he had bought, she said "take your flowers and go home." Understandably, he stepped on her foot as he walked away; she stood up with a scream and shoved him. His friend, looking completely bewildered, got two shoves and pushes from her, to the sound of her friends laughing. They were proper violent shoves that made one of the guys hit someone sitting up ahead. If that wasn't enough, she then stood up on a seat and tried to spit at them through the window, calling them "cunts".

As you can imagine, I desperately wanted to grab her by the hair and punch her face. Perhaps I'd be applauded by the horrified bus; perhaps I'd end up in the nearest police station. Honestly, with a trip to Brasil just around the corner, I couldn't take the chance of getting in trouble.

Who, in their right minds, calls a London teenager "trash" to their face? They were obviously new in town.