Why can't I quit Soho House?
Help, I'm hostage to 2007!
Back in 2007 I could not believe that there was a bar in London with a swimming pool on the roof. The arrival of Shoreditch House felt unfathomable. Like we were suddenly living in LA. My boss would occasionally take me there for my annual review and I would look around desperately for celebrities whilst trying to negotiate a laughable pay rise.
Eventually, one of my housemates who worked in TV got a membership and so most weekends, we’d clatter onto the Northern Line, armed with Nokias and Marlboro Menthols, and spend all of our terrible pay there on house wine, hummus and mini mustard sausages.
Honestly, it was great. As five girls from the Midlands, Soho House made us feel that we had really arrived in London. There weren’t that many actual celebrities, to be fair (I have hazy memories of chatting to Gareth Gates one night). It didn’t matter. Everyone in the media was there and every time we went, it felt like anything could happen.
Most of the time, ‘anything’ didn’t happen. We’d sit outside on the terrace in Greek Street, shivering in Sienna Miller-inspired tops and long necklaces, filling ashtrays and talking about….what? Maybe Britney Spears shaving her head or the first SATC movie. I can’t really recall. Our boyfriends were almost never invited. For whatever reason, Soho House was always about us, not them.
Back home, revved up on too many espresso martinis, we’d continue the party, doing drunken renditions of Christina Aguilera’s I am Beautiful for each other in pyjamas. And on Sunday morning, I’d come downstairs to the kind of debauched detritus that would now give me a proper panic attack, but I barely noticed. We were living the most carefree (and hangover-free) days of our lives, but, of course, we had no idea.
Had I known then that almost two decades years later, I would still be coming back to Soho House – I would probably have been mortified for myself. And, sometimes, I wonder if younger me has a point. Why, at 44, am I not hosting fabulous dinner parties in my Notting Hill mansion with my gorgeous, literary husband – our two long-limbed, teenage children perhaps helping to top up glasses? Shouldn’t I have grown out of Soho House by now?
Pipe down 20-something me, that’s what I say. 44 isn’t as old as you think it is. Gorgeous, literary men (specifically with mansions) are a myth and White City House caters to a much more mature crowd. Doesn’t it?! Admittedly, there are more suitable alternatives out there. Orly’s House, a family-focused member’s club with all the Soho House-style bells and whistles – is opening soon on my doorstep in Sheen. In theory, I should be clambering to swap up my membership for this place, with its built-in childcare and people my own age. But honestly? I suspect I won’t.
Perhaps the fact that I am too old for Soho House is half the point. When I am there, I can temporarily forget that I am grown up enough to have a mortgage and nursery bills to pay. I can enjoy the impeccable lighting in the bathrooms and think perhaps all is not lost when I look in the mirror (it gets harder to sing Christina Aguilera quite so earnestly these days). And I can meet up with those very same housemates from 20 years back, drink slightly better wine and pretend that the night could still go anywhere…