ReallyGoodWriter | Food • Writing • Poetry Iambic Cafe

food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

Today it was grey and spitting with rain. Better that than pouring I suppose. Nevertheless, there is much one can do underground or inside. So I made my way to the Gare de Lyon to have the anticipated tussle with the automatic ticket machine in advance of my 8.04 departure tomorrow. Sure enough the machine rejected my Canadian credit card, and the ticket agent tried to as well, but luckily she persevered and managed to coax a ticket out for me.

Onward I steamed, this time to la Librairie Gourmande.. of all the bookshops in all the world.. I found a copy of some required reading (en anglais) — a (how could it be otherwise) heavy paperback called Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, by Harvey Levenstein. That should keep me from floating away during tomorrow’s train journey.

I passed by Shakespeare & Company which didn’t open till noon, and so headed up to the Marais. En route I emerged at Metro St-Paul where we were treated to an all-singing Manifestation (Tous en Greve) by a large throng of cheerful protesters.

On I went to check out Chez Marianne, where I had a wonderful assiette – caviar d’aubergines avec cumin; salade turque (tomatoes, peppers, fennel, onion, I think); salade d’artichauts; and some excellent felafel on top.

Though I drooled at the windows of Florence Finkelsztajn I thought it more prudent to taste only with my eyes… Have you ever seen such strudel?

Travelling back I passed through the Metro station at Bastille where they seem to have above average buskers. Imagine 11 hearty Ukranian men in full voice and full orchestra singing their hearts out, and there you have Les Musiciens de Lviv. Fabulous.

Why oh why would anyone Wal-mart??

It’s been a beautiful day in France. Started off well in London but the clouds had gathered by the time my enormous bags and I got to Waterloo (thank you again Andrew) to board the Eurostar. An uneventful and comfortable journey, with a helpful taxi driver at the Paris end; we confessed our mutual inabilities in one another’s languages and faltered through a little small talk (mostly about the beauty of the Italian language) while he followed his GPS directions to (l’Hotel St-Louis Bastille (thanks Sue: great tip – very nice hotel!).

The weather was so gorgeous I hopped on the Metro and went for an afternoon wander: caught Notre Dame streaming with the last of today’s sunlight,

the Seine looking lovely – the trees still leafy,

the plant and flower stalls selling beautiful things,

and the Galeries Lafayette lit up like a temple carpet.

A nice plate of salad in their 6th floor cafeteria and home I hurtled on the Metro – even travelling at rush hour it felt positively commodious after London and the crush of the tube. Resting my feet and self in preparation for my one day of sightseeing tomorrrow.

Where it all began, at the Fish Works on Regent’s Park Road in Primrose Hill.

A lovely table in a lovely flat.

Starting in style: marinated anchovies from Sainsbury’s, plus artichoke salad and Lebanese Coleslaw from the Green Valley.

Red mullet hits the table and we fall over in delight. A little thyme and wine and olive oil in the preparations. Lovely with steamed new season brussels sprouts ‘n carrots, and baby roast potatoes with rosemary. Thanks Leah!

Quick before it’s all gone… cheese from Neal’s Yard cheese shop in Covent Garden. The stilton in particular caused some happy moans…

Evidently we defied death and ivy for the sake of a pleasant perambulation through Kent on a dry and breezy Friday afternoon.

Set off from (truly and appropriately) Sole Street station and walked a wide circle to reach a pretty flint church at Luddesdown (home of Luddesdown Organic Farms, we surmised from some posted literature along the path). Some restoration work was in progress on one of the churchyard’s walls:

And flint was everywhere in the fields, crusted in chalk, so it almost seemed we were stepping over bones.

And then, we spied a pub. It was the Golden Lion – unfortunately for my conscience a Greene King pub – and its entertainment poster (promising “themed food night’s” and referring us to “local paper’s and in house flyers”) certainly begged for help from Lynne Truss. But all that aside, I highly commend its amazing and enormous Bubble ‘n Squeak, smothered in excellent cheese and perfectly seasoned. Oh, and cheap (just under £3)! This dish takes many forms, but here it was made from mashed potatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions and – perhaps, because it is usual – a little bacon or ham.

Just up and around the bend on Henley Street, The Cock Inn, but we were making for the train and couldn’t stop again.

After all that walking, a stroll through Rochester where the cathedral seems to rise between the walls of the castle where Dickens wanted to be buried. Sadly for him, Queen Victoria felt his remains would be better placed in Westminster Abbey and there he remains, in Poets’ Corner.

Back to London and a final sprint round the Power and Taboo exhibition at the British Museum. Too limp to go further we collapsed in gratitude before some excellent Thai food at the Thai Garden Cafe on Museum Street.

What a lovely audience — in The Crypt at St Mary’s Islington, November 9.

Back in London one more time. I can’t think when I last read with Nancy, but I suppose it was sometime in the nineties, that long lost decade when we shared this city and all its ups and downs. After long silences from both of us we have both published new collections this year. Hers, Writing With Mercury, is the long-awaited successor to Maria Breaks Her Silence (1989). A jazzy ol’ cover on the new book by and as a tribute to her friend Elaine Kowalsky, who was killed by a car last year when she was crossing the street on her way to a birthday party – a sad and sudden end.

Nancy’s fetching scarf, beautiful book and inspiring reading.

Nancy and Mike have been running this Islington-based, more or less bi-monthly readings series Poetry in the Crypt for some years now and it’s a feel-good venture, no pay for the poets and all proceeds going to the St Mary’s homelessness project. Normally there is an open mic as well as a feature reader or two, but not tonight due to the addition of music to the bill. It was good fun with a generous audience (in all senses) and more people I wanted to catch up with and meet than I managed to talk to. Sold out of all the copies of Cartography that I’d schlepped across the ocean for the occasion which was very good news for my baggage weight; maybe not such good news in case I do more readings before my year is up! Anyone who wants one can find it on ABE or Amazon.ca (it comes up in Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk as well, very mysterious) or of course try ordering from your local bookshop.

Mike at the mic.

All in all a wonderful evening. I even enjoyed even being heckled by fireworks – a timely volley of them went off just as I was reading the lines “I feel sometimes that everything happens to me” in my traditional final poem Another Life to Live at the Edge of the Young and Restless Days of our Lives.