Bedroom DJ (Beginner's Guides (Ominbus Press)) (Paperback)

It all began on a Saturday afternoon much like any other. I pottered about Oxford Street in the mid September sunshine, dodging the beautiful young things in their low slung hipster jeans, and the exhibitionist couples holding hands as the girlfriends attempted simultaneously to snog and rubber neck the shop window of Karen Milen. There I was, at the tender age of five and twenty years already a bitter and twisted spinster, wiling away my weekend with the customary short-lived thrills of retail therapy. My hypochondriac heart still ached from the torments of a brief love affair with a bedroom DJ who had recently dumped me to spend more time with his record collection. The only, albeit temporary, respite from such ills seemed to be found in purchasing tight-fitting outfits from Hennes and scouring Berwick Street's record shops for vinyl I could not play. Heartbreak was turning me into a bizarre hybrid of Bridget Jones and that vinyl junkie dropout Rob from High Fidelity. !
I didn't own a record player, but even if I had had one at this early stage in my music career I would not have known how to switch it on. I was a terminal technophobe who could barely change a lightbulb let alone programme the video. Despite these grave obstacles some tiny part of my brain had begun to insist that somehow my future lay amongst the dusty second hand vinyl stores of Soho, and those mystical hi-fi labels, Vestax and Gemini.

My spiritual transition from DJ cast-off to L-plated turntablist in my own right - my 'Road to Ibiza' conversion if you like - had happened one night at Metrogroove at Turnmills about a month previously and took me completely by surprise. An unexotic location you might say, compared with that of Saul trotting along the A-road to Damascus, but a similarly life changing experience. I was dancing away to Danny Rampling, minding my own business amongst the sweat and sleazy guys when I saw a poster on the wall declaiming that someone called Lottie was going to be playing there. No bloke would call himself Lottie, surely? They were always called DJ Bonecrusher or DJ Sexy Beast - never something as unpretentious as just 'Lottie' so she must be female. Was it possible that women could be DJs, I wondered in my crushing ignorance. Over the period of about two hours the crazy idea began to dawn on me that if someone called Lottie could play at Turnmills then why couldn't I learn to spin some tunes? I had some cash - I'd get my own decks and learn to do it in my bedroom. I had a vague idea of what you needed to get - I'd seen my ex play on his decks enough times and had helped carry his mixer down the stairs once so I knew what one looked like. If my evil ex could do it, then why couldn't I? After all, he might have been technologically minded, but he was tone deaf and couldn't hold a tune in a bucket. Gradually the mad idea I thought would sound ridiculous during my post-Turnmills hangover began to make more and more sense. I spent hours at work diligently trawling the internet for equipment shops when I was meant to be researching the stock market. Slowly I mastered the important distinction between direct drive and belt drive turntables. I even bought DJ Magazine and left it lying around the flat to impress my flatmate Nina. Of course as a financial journalist I would ensure I got expert advice before buying equipment and spend time looking for the best deal. Oh yeah.

A month later as I trudged along on that fateful Saturday afternoon, I remember my feet suddenly quickening at the thought of the electrical delights awaiting me in the emporia of Tottenham Court Road. Before long I stood pressing my nose against the warm glass of the hi-fi shop windows, whispering that hallowed name over and over again....Technics. The next thing I knew I was in the back seat of a dubiously driven minicab, en route home to North London with a set of spankingly new record decks in the boot, an amp and a mixer. And worse, much worse than that - they were brand new Technics SL 1210s (mk 2). I trembled in my trainers at the sacreligious thought of me, a mere beginner and - horror of horrors - female at that, splashing out on the tool of the professional DJ. What's more, I had walked off the street and in record time even for me succeeded in spending a thousand pounds I didn't have in less than ten minutes. If I listened carefully enough I could hear the long suffering credit card in my wallet gently weeping. Hazily I recall standing at the shop counter as I sacrificed the plastic, half expecting the sales advisor to sneer that they only sold equipment to genuine DJs, not their vindictive ex-girlfriends who couldn't tell a crossfader from a croissant. Who the devil did I think I was and what the bloody hell would my mum/boss/flatmate/cat think when they found out? Sinking back into the passenger seat, I hung my head in shame. What had I done?