-
The week that ended with cheese and sunshine
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.
-
Feeling much better, thank you
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.
-
Snivelling in splendid sunshine
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.
Latest Posts
- Sublime
- Good weather for reading
- The world, the world
- Sublime launch!
- Planet Earth Poetry – Readings by Volunteers, Victoria 2026
- Poetry at the Goldfinch
Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Barny Haughton BBC BC poets Berkswell blackberries Black Stilt Bologna book launch Borough Market Carlo Petrini Catalonia Cyrus Todiwala dairy Daunt's Books Dijon Edinburgh Fanny Bay Feast of Fields Food and Morality food history food journalism Jenna Butler lardo Malahat Review Michael Pollan Okanagan olive oil tasting olive trees Omnivore's Dilemma Our Food Our Future Oxford Parmigiano-Reggiano Planet Earth Poetry poetry poetry readings Poetry videos prosciutto salumi Sean O'Brien Suffolk ticks Wendy Morton Wired Writing Yvonne Blomer
In her latest collection, Rhona McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart.
“…A beautiful, filling collection, Larder is a set of poems to read at the change of the seasons, to appreciate alongside a good meal, and to remind yourself of the beauty in everything, even the things you may not appreciate before opening McAdam’s collection….”
Rhona McAdam is a writer, poet, editor, and Registered Holistic Nutritionist with a Master’s in Food Culture from Italy and a deep-rooted passion for ecology and urban agriculture. Her work spans corporate and technical writing to poetry and creative nonfiction, often exploring the vital links between what we eat and how we live. Based in Victoria, BC, and available via Zoom, Rhona is always open to new writing commissions, readings, or workshops on nutrition and the culinary arts.
