The rehearsal room under the arches flooded again last night, which now officially makes it three times this year, and which I have decided to simply accept as a feature of the space rather than a fault with it. Deccy stood in eight inches of water mid-riff and didn’t stop playing, which either makes him the most dedicated guitarist in Hackney or the most likely to be electrocuted, and possibly both.
We’re four songs into what might, eventually, generously, be called an EP, and every single practice this month has been derailed by something — the flood, a noise complaint, Deccy’s landlord problems, my own landlord problems, which are apparently now a genre of small talk among everyone I know under thirty-five. I read something this week that made me laugh out loud on the bus, about the House of Lords apparently finding it hard to pass a certain bill because dying feels a bit too close to home for some of its members, and I thought, yeah, that’s basically how my landlord talks about rent reviews. Everything’s fine in principle until it’s happening to you specifically.
The scene is smaller but somehow louder
There are fewer of us than there used to be, doing this. Half the bands I came up with in this scene have either split, moved to Margate, or quietly become session musicians for people with actual money. The ones left are, if anything, playing harder, like there’s something to prove about sticking around a city that keeps making it obvious it doesn’t especially want you here unless you’re paying triple for the privilege.
Our bassist Nell put it best after last night’s flood: “This city will drown your rehearsal space before it lets you have one for free, and somehow we’re still down here every Tuesday.” She’s not wrong. There’s a stubbornness to it that I think is the actual punk bit, more than the chords or the volume. Just refusing to leave.
What I actually read this week, besides the news I needed
Between practices I’ve been doom-scrolling in the way you do when you’re avoiding admin, and I caught the piece about Reform’s plan to take Britain back from wealthy elites, funded entirely by wealthy elites, which I read out loud to the whole band during our tea break and got the exact reaction you’d expect from four people who’ve collectively never owned a functioning boiler. Nell wanted it printed and taped above the mixing desk. I’m considering it.
There’s a version of political commentary that just means shouting, and there’s a version that actually lands because it names something true underneath the joke, and that one landed. We spent a good ten minutes afterward trying to work out which of us would be the wealthy elite in this scenario, given none of us can currently afford a rehearsal room that doesn’t flood.
The gig that almost didn’t happen
We’ve got a slot booked at a basement venue near Dalston next month, assuming the venue itself survives that long, which is not currently a given. Two similar spaces nearby have closed in the last year alone, priced out or noise-complained into submission, and every gig now carries a faint, unspoken feeling of might-be-the-last-one-here. That used to feel dramatic to say out loud. Now it’s just Tuesday conversation.
Still, we’re playing it. Deccy’s dried his amp out, Nell’s fixed the buzz in her pedal, and I’ve written a new verse about landlords that I’m slightly worried is too on the nose even for us. We’ll find out next month whether the room’s still standing to hear it.
Diary note to self
Buy wellies for the rehearsal room. Actually buy them this time, don’t just say you will and then stand in soaked trainers for another six months out of pure stubbornness. Some hills are worth dying on. A flooded basement in Hackney is not one of them, however punk it might feel in the moment.
What Deccy said afterwards, half-joking
Walking back to the station soaked to the knees, Deccy floated the idea, not for the first time, of just rehearsing in his mum’s garage in Luton instead, an hour and a half each way but dry, at least, and free. Nell vetoed it immediately on the grounds that a band that rehearses in Luton stops being a London band in any meaningful sense, whatever the postcode on the practice room says. I don’t entirely disagree, though I notice none of us have actually ruled it out for good, filed away instead as the kind of plan you keep in your back pocket for the day the flooding finally wins.
For now, though, we’re staying. There’s a genuine, stupid loyalty to a room that’s given us nothing but trouble, the kind of loyalty that probably says something about all of us that a therapist would have opinions on. I’m choosing not to examine it too closely and instead just buying the wellies, finally, properly, this week.
One more thing before I sign off tonight
The landlord who owns the arches sent round a notice today too, unrelated to the flooding as far as I can tell, just a general reminder that rents are “under review” for the new year, which is the kind of phrase that used to mean nothing to me five years ago and now makes my stomach drop slightly every single time I see it. I’ve stopped being surprised by the timing of these things landing all at once. It’s basically the weather now, background conditions you just factor into the week rather than a specific piece of bad luck aimed at you personally.
