ReallyGoodWriter | Food • Writing • Poetry Iambic Cafe

food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

Another quite pleasant partially sunny day today, after a week of same.

I began the week with a quintessential London moment. Walked down a street called, promisingly, Post Office Way, hoping to find a post office at the end of it, but no. The kindly woman in the Post Office logo-ed glass booth said no foot traffic was allowed there; I would have to walk all the way back and around the front of the building. Which I did and encountered a second kindly woman in a second glass booth who told me I couldn’t actually mail anything there, I would need a Post Office Counter, and she thought there was one a couple of bus stops up the road. But it was getting late by then so I gave up for one day. It’s already clear that ever more post office branches are being closed just now anyway, in my hour of need, when the queues at many of them go out the door regularly, so it’s only going to get worse. There, my first London whinge of the season.

An Italian-style crop of signs on a nearby gate.

I’ve been enjoying the office, where we have good citizen mugs to read while we sip our tea

and an excellent bakery around the corner (where I bought a fabulous pumpkin loaf the other day – a cheery orange colour with pumpkin seeds throughout).

I take the tube to get there; I’m glad I don’t have a bicycle. There is amusing evidence all over London demonstrating how this city just doesn’t get the concept of bike lanes.. Naturally cyclists ignore this little strip of insanity and ride in the bus lanes, hoping for the best.

Today’s outings included a jaunt up to St John’s Wood High Street where I visited its three or four charity shops and came away a couple of books heavier: a couple of Bill Bryson hardcovers I couldn’t pass up: I’m A Stranger Here Myself; and A Short History of Nearly Everything. And then I met Judi and we descended into the crowded cheerful basement of Food For Thought, where I had one of my favourite things, a big plate of their quiche and mixed salad.

I never have room for their fruit crumbles but that’s just as well. We went on to Neal’s Yard Dairy and tasted several of the wonderful things we were offered.

I bought some Coolea and some Berkswell and then we had tea around the corner in Neal’s Yard,

where a couple of tuneful buskers passed through with accordions. And then we had a flying visit at the Photographer’s Gallery where the excellent Keith Arnatt was having a show, and got kicked out as it was closing time, and had a glass at the Coach and Horses and called it a day, as she was nursing the beginnings of a cold and I was finishing mine off.

What a difference a weekend makes. Especially when taken with nightly doses of Night Nurse, the miracle drug. I have stopped snivelling, mostly, but am cultivating an impressive hacking cough which should keep contaminating fellow passengers at bay long enough to get truly over this thing.

I am upset that I managed to miss International Kitchen Garden Day though. Damn. Next year for sure.

Anyway, I nursed myself with healing foods, like kheer with cardamom, pistachios and golden raisins, and freshly stewed plums that I bought during a spin round Marylebone Farmers’ Market on a sunny Sunday.

Marylebone remains one of my favourite areas in the whole world. A charity shop that looks more like a Bond Street boutique. A lovely, lovely Waitrose. The world’s very best bookshop, Daunt‘s. The world’s very best charity bookshop which even has poetry readings, Oxfam. Valerie’s Patisserie for good carb ogling. A Ginger Pig for heaven’s sake: how wonderful is that? Very, very, is my answer, remembering the most fabulous ham we bought from their Borough Market outlet years ago. I saved a lustful browse through the Conran Shop for a rainy day and spent instead a calm half hour with other Sunday paper readers under the canopy of plane trees in Paddington Gardens. Even the pigeons were napping in the grass.

Monday was a holiday and so I made a late start and then had another amble up Edgware Road. Definite changes top to bottom. Arabic script even in Argos of all places. Shiny, glittery pharmacies every ten steps, mostly doing more than one thing: I thought the pharmacy plus internet cafe was a particularly ingenious idea; just the thing for RSI sufferers. The 7-11 farther up, by the enduringly tatty Church Street market, has become the Sindbad Shop.

Then on into the fringes of St. John’s Wood, but was lured down a path to Regent’s Canal, which was a perfect walking place on a warm sunny day.

The occasional canal boat chugged by; people were sitting out on their decks at the houseboat community at Little Venice; cyclists and walkers and peace and quiet.

Then I emerged near Regent’s Park and hopped a bus up Finchley Road to visit some of my old haunts. I had an extremely nice time in the Natural Natural shop, which is, naturally, a Japanese/Asian treasure trove. Here are a couple of photos to make you weep, Andy, Donghyun, Amy…

Then into the bosom of Waitrose, which is very obviously under construction as it expands into a neighbouring shopfront. I can’t help myself. I am deeply besotted, profoundly in love with this store. This relationship has lasted for decades now; I remember outraging a Hampstead Heath dweller by saying I was happier living with Waitrose at the top of my street than the Heath, and I’d say it again, given my druthers. And my love has been tested, not just by five years in another country. During my week in London I’ve endured furtive visits to rival supermarket chains, closer to where I’m staying – Somerfields, Sainsbury’s, Tesco – but they are shabby and pitiful by comparison to the lovely Waitrose, which I’d willingly cross town to visit. It’s partly familiarity, I suppose: the enduring product lines, the sensible arrangement, the luscious recipe cards. But also the happy staff, the organic range, the recycled paper products, all of that.

Well. I wrenched myself away and ambled over Primrose Hill, pebbled with peeps all blissed out in the sunshine, and landed in the land of Leah and Howard who fed me very well on food and conversation and off I went to find a bus. Everything went well until I reached Marble Arch where I realised I had decided to return home just as everyone from the Notting Hill Carnival had decided likewise. Luckily I squeezed on the second bus – too full to fall over, as we say.

A partly lost week, thanks to a very special welcome home gift from the population of London from whom I have evidently been receiving toxic spores for the past seven days: something so special the Brits give it its own special name: I have a dreaded lurgy. Commonfolk might dismiss it as a cold, but it descended in the form of what I know from raw experience as the London Throat, a harsh and beastly ailment that quickly morphs into other unsociable symptoms – sneezing, hacking and snivelling – and inspires cravings for revolting cures such as Cold Powders and the vile green goo called Night Nurse.

I am, as well, equipped with a box of Sainsbury’s Ultrabalm Tissues, and a comforting leaflet written in typeface too small to read with the red, naked eye of the sufferer, which assures me I have made a wise purchase; these tissues are made from fibres farmed “from well-managed forests and controlled sources.” I would feel happier if the authors of this leaflet had felt able to use the words “sustainable” and “recycled”, but I am not sure they mean the same thing to all of us, and in any case I am dribbling pitifully and will use this box with apologies and contrition, not to mention pain and suffering.

So, feeling this sorry for myself, it was two days prone and unproductive, doing nothing more taxing than making toast and taramasalata, drinking pots of lemon & ginger tea, spooning canned mandarin segments into my insensible mouth, napping, and reading mysteries and thrillers of varying vintages (Peter Robinson to Robert Harris to Dorothy L. Sayers).

And so this morning dawned the third day, when the throat was subsiding and I had a brief illusory sense of well-being which drew me out into the brilliant and even seasonably warm sunshine shining down on London,

entering its charmingly named Late Summer Bank Holiday Weekend. I went on an errand of mercy (mine) to the Oxfam bookshop in Turnham Green, where I found three treasures: Not On The Label by Felicity Lawrence; Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll (a beautiful re-issue from Persephone Books); and Headlong by Michael Frayn. After a restful afternoon sipping watercress soup with the ever entertaining and delightful Meli in the sunny, flower-lined courtyard of Carvosso’s Wine Bar and Eating House, and a stroll and people-watching interval on Acton Green, I returned to another bowl of mandarin slices and a nice shot of Night Nurse which should find me rested and recovered by morning. Or so I can hope.

Some relaxed West Londoners, well out of the sun of course, having that pasty English skin, but happy to see it from the shade.

By dusk, the party ships come out to play…

And as night falls, a dinner ship sails into a perfect London sunset.

Sunday was blustery and grey, with madmen sailing up and down the Thames all afternoon, as they were again today.

Later Sunday afternoon, I hopped a bus towards Mayfair and found a perch right at the front upstairs, my favourite place to sit even now I’m no longer a tourist. It gave me a great view of the wet windy streets as we sailed up Vauxhall Bridge Road, and then pulled up at Victoria station, where we paused. There seemed to be some cars stopped in front of us, and I watched a couple of them u-turn up a taxi lane and drive off; a fender-bender between the two in front, I supposed, until I saw the bare feet, the curled form of a young woman who must have been hit by a car just before we arrived. Given the absent-mindedness and trust of the pedestrians wandering around the station – not to mention the proliferation of iPods – it’s surprising there aren’t more incidents like this, or maybe they’re so common they don’t warrant a mention any more. It took 10 minutes or so until the police arrived, and we were diverted off on a different route with the sirens drawing closer. I’ll never know…

I got off at Hyde Park Corner and scurried beneath Park Lane to the Curzon Mayfair, one of London’s most comfortable cinemas, where it is possible to take a gin and tonic and box of popcorn into the show with you. We saw The Walker, which was a nice bit of mannered fluff, and my first movie in 10 months! –and then parked ourselves at a table in the Shepherd Market branch of Sofra, which was heaving with custom, to enjoy some lentil soup and delectable Turkish mezze, succinctly served on a snappy glass platter.

Monday morning I found my way to the offices of Sustain, a cheery band of food activists, representing about 100 different organisations, and squeezed into the select crew that makes up London Food Link. The building wasn’t easy to find, since in true London form, the street number I was looking for, 94, is not between numbers 95 and 93 as you might expect, but around a corner and slightly behind number 93. After a day crunching words for the delightfully named and highly readable quarterly newsletter, The Jellied Eel, I emerged from the bowels of the Underground to find there was at last a big chunk o’ blue opening up over London.

So, I’ve been two days in London, which has been grey, damp and deliciously cool.

Leaving Parma scorching in its 32 degrees, I arrived to a 22 degree Friday afternoon and hopped the bus that all the Ryanair passengers were not taking because they’d bought the more expensive “cheaper than airport prices” bus tickets on a different service. So five of us enjoyed a roomy and peaceful ride through green countryside, occasionally lit dramatically by shafts of English sunlight, steered by Tony the driver who’d showed us two emergency exits to the bus and assured us we wouldn’t need them. Our route took us down Finchley Road, my old stomping grounds, and I was happy to see many landmarks still where I left them, on past the Wellington Hospital where I had my knee operation years and years ago, down Oxford Street, past Hyde Park looking lush and stately, and finally I was released into the modest zoo of Victoria Coach station. My host was waiting for me and after a quick drink and a tour of my new temporary home, departed for deepest Berkshire, generously leaving me an Evening Standard, a pint of milk and a loaf of bread to settle in with.

Saturday morning I did some larder-stocking. My first thought, as it often is when arriving in London, was for the dark aromatic coffee I buy from Markus Coffee, a little operation on Connaught Street that has valiantly, serenely and deservedly survived its proximity to a Starbuck’s that opened on Edgware Road seven or eight years ago. Walking there from the bus stop I crossed Connaught Square and passed parallel rows of traffic cones preventing parking in front of one of the homes (a pricey neighbourhood, this, where I imagine house prices vaulted the million pound mark a good decade ago); two other curious features about it suggested a story. One was the hand-written sign affixed to the wall, reading “No Reporters” and the other was a policeman cradling a machine gun and glaring at me as I passed; ditto his two colleagues who were pacing up and down the street. I wondered at first if it was a crime scene, but my friendly coffee dealer told me it was only the Blairs, who were not around much these days anyway. I picked up my package of heaven and wandered up Edgeware Road, wafting dark coffee fumes everwhere I went. A little preliminary shopping and a dolma stop at my favourite Lebanese grocery, The Green Valley, and I was headed back home.

Saturday afternoon brought a welcome last minute invitation to join Nancy and Mike at the How We Are: Photographing Britain exhibition at the Tate Britain. I was buffetted by grey winds on my way but got there to find a blue pixie dancing on the steps in welcome

and we spent a happy, somewhat overwhelming couple of hours exploring British photography of all kinds by all sorts of photographers (Lewis Carroll, Julia Margaret Cameron, Martin Parr) from all points in photography’s history. There was even a visual explanation of where the term “blue print” comes from which was a bit of a revelation, as were three photographs of the Horn Dance of Abbott’s Bromley, ancestral home of my mother’s family. Afterwards we enjoyed a couple of pints and some fairly stale crisps in a nearby pub, blissfully smoke-free since the smoking ban came into force here last month.

Then we thought we’d catch a bus to Islington — only the bus stop had a big yellow sign on it

advising us that due to an accident on August 7, the stop was closed for as long as they jolly well said so. As the wind now had damp substance in it, we were disinclined to do as the sign suggested and walk over the bridge to the Vauxhall bus station, and while we were dithering, a bus pulled up, so we got on, victorious over signage.

Then, carefully avoiding low trees,

we made it to the Afghan Kitchen

where we managed to come away with Lavand-e-Murgh (chicken in yogurt), Qurma -e- Gosht – kachalo (lamb with potatoes), Qurma Suzhi Gosht (lamb with spinach), Bajnon Borani (aubergines with yogurt) and Sarah’s (a vegetarian concoction of kidney beans, chick peas and potatoes in yogurt) and off we went to Cross Street where we cleaned the plates as best we could. Delicious welcome to London.