sometimes when I open my mouth

  Margot Leadbetter from 'The Good Life' leaps out.




Last night, walking past my local trendy burger establishment, I looked in the open hatch where boxes of food are passed out to the delivery bikes and stood transfixed as a hip young man poured gloopy yellow cheese sauce onto chips then sprinkled gherkins and jalapenos all over it - this was what I wanted for supper - I went in and stood in the queue.

A whole vocabulary has sprung up around this particular sort of food place that I find off-putting - calling shredded meat 'pulled' doesn't make it any less horrible. The other popular word  is 'dirty' which I assumed meant putting 'pulled' meat or gravy on top. Standing in line in this hipster burger bar I read on the menus that they were offering 'dirty' burgers' and all kinds of other 'dirty' stuff. As I got to the front of the queue, I noticed the slogan emblazoned on all the take-away boxes announced 'Shakes, Dirty burgers, Dirty Chips'. Feeling the need for clarification I asked the man in the backwards baseball hat what they meant by 'dirty' 

it's like, unhealthy stuff

why aren't your shakes dirty? 

That wouldn't sound good

in a bookshop today

I was browsing and selecting a few greetings cards while the guy behind the till gave the girl stacking shelves an account of what kind of a wild party animal he is, it wasn't convincing and I zoned out until I got to the till and tried to pay for my cards, it took a while because they continued their conversation, he rang up the total and took my money without looking in my direction:

... so does she identify as gay or bi?

She says queer but she also says she doesn't actually like having sex with anyone

I haven't had sex in a million years so I think I must be asexual

me too 

he handed over change, then looked at me as if to say - are you still here?

do you want a bag with that?

I was minding my own business

at a café in London yesterday, I'd been there ten minutes before a Man-who-knows-everything came and sat next to me. He was elderly and, despite the continental-effect dark glasses, black beret and trench coat, he was clearly east-end-london born-and-bred

I know all the best places I do, wanna know the best value pot of tea in London?

turns out that it's in a café by the Hoxton peace mural

three quid for a massive pot and you can stay as long as you want

He did actually turn out to know everything and I have several good tips on things I must do this week - here are a couple that I'm willing to share:

a) get the best view of St Paul's
Marks and Spencer's on Cheapside, go down in the food basement at the end of the day, they'll be marking down all the food to stupid prices so it's worth going just for that, but wait till sun's just going down and there's no-one on the escalator and then up you go and St Paul's will loom into view in a very impressive way

b) see anything for two hours for free 
At the back of the BFI, sign in to the Mediatech at the back and it gets you access to an unparalleled film library - anything you want two.hours.for.free

The house has been crumbling with loneliness

while the Man and I have been away these last two years. I've been trying to attend to some of the issues and earlier this year I turned my attention to our very sad laundry room. I asked a builder to take away the remaining tilework, remove the radiator, take up the tiles, lay a concrete floor and set up a new worktop and shelving. There was the usual game - he said he'd come in April, finally making an appearance  in June - perfectly timed for me to progress from being fed up to sheer gratitude that he arrived at all. His work was mostly great - except for the bit about the floor. I'd asked for polished concrete but builder-man hastily dumped some screed (not quite enough) and left it looking like lumpy cookie dough. I arrived home before the floor was dry and spent several hours scraping down the lumps, I've painted it with a bold design in the hope that the uneven surface is disguised. The room was dark and dingy with a single tiny window but my cunningly placed mirrors have amplified the light - and do you like my jolly appliance-hiding curtains?