Tell Tale Signs

When I'm in a new neighbourhood I always check out the small ads in the newsagents windows, this is a section from my local.

You may need to click to enlarge image

The Boys Are Back In Town

... I was saying to my friend Eryl
The manly tide has now risen beyond our armpits, the crew swooped home from a filming trip a few days ago, Miss Whiplash and I are doing the doggypaddle in a testosterone-and-pelican-case sea.

So I visited my parents for a dose of normal life.

My mother likes things neat, there isn't quite enough to dust at home so, despite being a card-carrying atheist, she is on the church-cleaning rota and goes along once a month to help polish the church knobs, I have been told that the village vicar is a particularly rebarbative lady.

We went along to the local pub, my mother exchanged gossip with the barmaid. For long minutes Dad and I listened to the details of Mrs Welling's kitchen refit and Miriam down-the-road who had gone to stay with her daughter for a few days, then there was quite a story about a broken washing machine. Finally both women stroked their chins reflectively while trying to think of more news, the barmaid said

well, that's about it, I don't think there's anything else to report


Mum said .... there's the vicar's marriage

WHAT!!!!

last month - she was stuck at an airport because of the volcano dust and met a man, they can't keep their hands off each other, they're getting married. She announced it from the pulpit last Sunday.

Last Calm Weekend

Tomorrow the house will be bulging at the seams as the crew will have all returned from the latest filming trip. Yesterday, however I was quite alone in the house when a child came to visit, he’d last been here about a year ago when he was four years old. Not sure if he remembered the house he stood in my kitchen with a puzzled look on his face then he thrust his finger in the air with inspiration, he did know this place, he turned to me and said

Didn’t you used to keep men here?


I recently had a message from a friend asking me if I was off gallivanting - such a lovely word, one that might describe an interesting way of moving; something involving high stepping, prancing and the tossing of one’s plumed head, I think gallivanting is a more energetic form of catering



After writing about my recent encounter with Bearpit Man it dawned on me that the reason that I could now understand his words was because he seems to have overcome a speech impediment, an aspect of him that I hadn’t properly registered before,   like when someone you know shaves off a moustache and you can’t work out what’s wrong with their face.

I saw Bearpit man again this morning pushing a big wire shopping trolley that he had ingeniously modified for his catering forays, he showed me around the trolley’s compartments stuffed with thermoses and stacks of cups that he had pre-dosed with coffee powder and sugar

Disgruntled

I was hired by a company that produce an organic range of food products. They wanted me to perform a cookery demonstration for some church-going folk (in their church). Loads of planning and preparation was involved, recipes were to be supplied in advance so that the congregation could follow along as I was cooking, I was hoping that they would sing the recipes to the tunes of my favourite hymns while I cooked – sadly this did not happen.

After a week of testing many variations of courgette fritters and rhubarb desserts* I was looking a bit green and a friend asked me if I was getting well paid for this job, I replied indeed not, the money for this is derisible.

I produced a 3-course supper for 30 people in one hour, there was laughter and applause, as I was packing up people came by to say some very lovely things and I left the church feeling entirely delightful.

The following day the lady who hired me called, not to thank me but to make a tight-lipped criticism of a small aspect of my work - something that could have been spotted and resolved before the event. I remembered that she signs emails off with this little homily

'Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.'

* Rhubarb Mess
Serves: 2
4 dessertspoons sugar
the juice and finely grated zest of 1 orange
200g rhubarb cut into inch-long pieces
2 individual meringue nests broken up
a small handful toasted almonds
2 tbsp double cream, softly whipped

Put sugar, orange juice and zest into a pan and bring to boil (the pan should be big enough to contain the rhubarb in one layer)

When sugar is dissolved, turn heat to medium, add rhubarb put on a lid and poach for a couple of minutes, or until the rhubarb has softened, take off the heat and let it cool.

Carefully remove the rhubarb with a slotted spoon, put into a large mixing bowl with the broken meringues, whipped double cream, and half of the almonds, combine gently.

To serve, spoon the mixture into glasses or ramekins and sprinkle over the rest of the almonds

Queasy, Cheesy, Japanesey

That man is still on the roof. I called up to him from the street to see how he’s getting on. He disappeared then reappeared inside the house so he could yell down at me from the closer quarters of a window. I now know that his name is Cheesy. I propose that his activity is more of a squat than a protest, Cheesy insists that he is protesting about 50 years of injustice. I say that it's difficult to tell that from the pavement and maybe he should make a banner or something.

I go on to my own house, walk upstairs and look out of the window. He is hoisting a surfboard up on a pole.



Currently feeling a bit queasy due to sampling of dessert recipe trials involving cream and meringue for a cookery demonstration that I’ll be performing at in a couple of days.




This morning I saw an enormous and instantly recognisable shape walking along the street towards me, for the last 10 years this man and I have stopped, grinned and exchanged noises before moving on, his impenetrable West Indian accent means that I have never understood the actual words of what he says, I think of our exchanges as being like a mini episode of the Clangers, so I was quite surprised today when I discerned actual words

Him: Hey how you doin’ ?

Me: I'm Good – where are you off to?

Him: I’m goin’ down the bearpit* to feed the homeless people

Me: What are you going to feed them?

Him: Food

* I don't know what the bearpit is either

Still Gruntled

Rootling around in Bristol's delicatessens is the surest way that I know of staying gruntled. On one of these expeditions today I was diverted from a meringue hunt by a man with a lot of cheese.

I came away meringueless but accompanied by a perfect lump of wrinkly skinned Robiola. My new BFF suggested that I use some of it in this recipe from the legendary Silver Spoon cookbook.

Robiola Triangles

some Butter
some olive oil
8 slices of bread, crusts removed
7oz robiola cheese
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan
1 lightly beaten egg
2 tablespoons double cream
some salt

Pre heat oven to 350 F. Grease a baking sheet with butter. Cut each slice of bread into two triangles, drizzle each with olive oil and a pinch of salt.

Mash the robiola in a bowl and stir in the Parmesan, egg and cream until fully mixed. Spread the mixture on the bread triangles and place on the prepared baking sheet, bake for about 10 minutes – serve hot.

Earlier in the week we staged a pie-in, the last lunch party for the departing crew. Dazed by lack of sleep we were grateful for the instructions on how to manage this product.

Rock Paper Scissors

One of the Camera Boys has a snake - it is half his age and twice his height

When he goes away to film the snake usually goes to visit the Camera Boy’s parents

Camera Boy has just moved to a new house where there is another Boy With a Snake

There is also a Girl With a Hamster

This time the snake will stay home

The Camera Boy is hoping that they will all get on together...

Gruntled

The recent volcano activity has caused quite a lot of upset to our scheduling and a sense of doubled disruption has infected the house. Meetings were missed, negotiations for future projects have been jumbled up and remade and all the while the house has been engulfed by the preparations for filming trips. This week two schedules were being arranged and rearranged, big open cases are spread over the floor making us move around with a sort of high goose-stepping motion. Yesterday I was feeling quite disgruntled.

Since a recent short visit to a very concretey bit of California we have learned never to assume that any materials will be readily available. The crew will need to make a set to contain some laboratory ants, one of my jobs was to put a spadeful of earth from our garden into the oven for sterilisation. We are sending (clean) dirt to America.

At 2am this morning one crew came back from filming starry skies and at 7am I waved off the other crew as a car took them to the airport, the cases have all gone. Today I will be in the house on my own, calm has descended, I wonder if this feeling is gruntlement.

Working At Home

With no other work happening at the moment I’m making myself useful in the film production office which is busy with preparations for the next filming trip.



The production office occupies the same house that I live in; once I get out of bed I am effectively at work but without the benefits that most people get from working at home.

In the early days of this office-in-the-house arrangement, when I wasn’t really concentrating, I got up early one day and put some dye on my hair. Not wanting to get dye on my clothes I didn’t get dressed, it also seemed reasonable to put some bleaching paste on my moustache. Then I went downstairs to the kitchen to make breakfast. I put the kettle on, saw a pile of clean laundry and started doing a bit of ironing, my feet were cold from standing on the kitchen floor, I put on the nearest shoe-shaped things which were a pair of large wellington boots. Just as my paste moustache was dried and cracking and I realised that I should wash it off, a Camera Boy, who had let himself in early and quietly to prepare some camera cases, walked into the kitchen - I think he is scarred for life.

Campaigning Via Telepathy

Looking out of my bedroom window this morning I noticed a man on a nearby roof gesticulating, there were banners and whatnot too, but his flags were furled and illegible. Not sure if this was purely for my benefit I decided to try and find out what he wanted to communicate.
The man’s hairdo declared his tribal allegiance so I walked across the street to the cider-drinkers community headquarters and asked them about their friend.

He's protesting about the supermarket, he was throwing the roof tiles off yesterday

Is he doing it alone or are you taking turns?

No we’re all doing it, I’ll be up on a roof this side of the road tomorrow.

I feel the protest lacks clarity.

Cake Off

It has been a month of absences and missed birthdays, the crew that set out 5 weeks ago for Costa Rica were stranded in Madrid on the return journey so a filming trip in Spain was scrambled earlier than originally planned now everyone is late and has missed events and each other.



Back together in the production office we know several ways to celebrate – but it always starts with cake. Whiplash set the ball rolling yesterday with a classic carrot cake topped with her Ultimate Frosting Experience. Today I responded with a sticky ginger and lemon cake*. Tomorrow belongs to Cake Boy who has promised us his famous strawberry cream sponge ...


*follow the link and add ginger wine, more lemon juice/zest and chopped walnuts (worked fine without the apple)

Snapshots From The Last 7 Days: Catalonia

Driving from Santander to Barcelona was easy enough, but once in Catalonia things got a bit confusing. The Catalan people have their own language and like to name/number their roads or not as they see fit, I spent 4 hours being lost in the spaghetti knots of roads around Barcelona trying to find my way to where the crew were working.

There are currently a series of unofficial referendums being held around the Catalonian towns and villages to try and get support for independence


In Barcelona I handed over the van to the cameramen so they could drive the kit home. The Director and I then took off for a few days on the rocky Catalonian peninsula of Cadaqués.


The centre of Cadaqués is maze of crazy-paved and cobbled streets which will become dead ends or steps or simply a rugged sort of rocky riverbed, quite a lot of streets are unnamed and most houses don’t have numbers

I had a go at making a map of Cadaqués


I had booked an apartment on Picasso Street, the landlady emailed me to say that there was no house number but I should call when we arrived and she would take us there. We wound our way down around the mountains and parked the car in what seemed to be roughly the right bit of town, suddenly before us we saw Picassso Street and felt triumphant, I called the landlady:

Me: Hola – Isabel, we’re here - at the end of Picasso Street
Isabel: Which Picasso Street?
Me: It has a furniture shop at the end where I am
Isabel: No you’re at the wrong Picasso Street, you need the short one.


Isabel came to our rescue riding this moped

White Van Woman

Funny the way things work out; my diary says that I am abroad working at a glamorous international music event - the Icelandic volcano has put paid to that idea and, unbelievably, my would-be employers have decided to go ahead with their festivities without me.

Meanwhile the film office has been smoking with activity; the film crew got stuck in Madrid on their way back from Costa Rica. Miss Whiplash and I spent the weekend pacing around her desk and pointing fingers in the air as we hatched cunning plan after cunning plan. With typical brilliance Whiplash managed to fix a new filming schedule so that the crew can be occupied filming ants in Barcelona while awaiting rescue...

I have just collected a van huge enough to accommodate fifty hundred cases of filming equipment and some passengers. In the morning I will board a ferry for a 24-hour journey to Santander, I will then drive my great white leviathan towards the Mediterranean where I hope to find shining faces waiting for me.

Actually their faces might be shining, but from the reports we’ve been getting I expect the rest of their bodies to be quite nasty; someone has a fungal infection, one of the Camera Boys has a swollen leg and everyone is itchy from insect bites. The outright winner of the horrible disease competition though, is The Director with the many parasites that are currently burrowing around in his skin, this is much more impressive than last year’s return from Costa Rica when he played host to just a single botfly, then, we tried to entice the botfly out of his arm by strapping something fatty over it's airhole, the point being that it will burrow up into the new food, in search of air and thus get out of its human host*. The top picture shows my purchases for this purpose from the Italian delicatessen down the road, I bought a lovely bit of speck but it wasn’t bendy enough and the pork fat turned out to be easier to fit.


Gruesome body events are an occupational hazard for film crews and is the stuff of many a pub anecdote, we know someone who hatched spiders out of his forehead while trying to edit his footage and there is a very well known cameraman who used to remove his trousers at the drop of a hat to show the hole in his leg made by a hippo.

* Youtube has some very gross footage of botfly removal – don’t go there!

How To Deal With Awkward Customers

It has been a 'Watch and Learn' sort of week, this weeks theme demonstrated some ways one might respond to difficult requests from people;

Example 1
I was in the film production office which is full of ant talk; a crew is in Costa Rica, trying to film ants and avoid getting washed away by rain or eaten away by fungus. The Camera Boys still in the office are impressing us with their latest hair and eyebrow styling while simultaneously trying to arrange the next trip, Zena is back on the research. She reported this conclusion from a world authority on myrmecology

Ants will never do a task that is beneath their abilities.

this turns out to be an appropriate response to so many requests


Example 2
before heading over to my cooking job, I decided to try out the 'Exclusive Jamaican Restaurant’ that has recently opened it’s doors in my neighbourhood, it’s way too exclusive to bother with a menu. before I was seated the waitress said
What you wanna eat?

I asked what was being served, she folded her arms, cast her eyes heavenwards and started reciting a list

stew vegetable
fry chicken
goat stew
chicken
salt fish
ox tail ...

I asked what the ox tail was like

It is like chicken



Example 3
I was cooking supper and two little girls were playing shop in my kitchen - they had set up a joke shop;

Shopkeeper girl: Hello Madam, what do you want?

Customer girl: A whoopee cushion and a big nose please

Shopkeeper girl: Anything else?

Customer girl: Chocolate

Shopkeeper girl: It has to be a trick

Customer girl: A chocolate trick please

When Life Gives You Lemons ...

This morning I spied some fat, warty and outrageously expensive lemons in my local gourmet grocery. A friend had recently rhapsodised at length on the joys of an Amalfi lemon salad so I took out a mortgage and bought a few. I have since been online checking out recipes.

This recipe looked good but once I got Googling I couldn't stop and I have ended up discovering many other uses for a posh lemon, those listed below are mostly from this place I have added a couple of my own ideas

THINGS YOU'LL NEED

Amalfi lemons
1. Soften rough elbows by rubbing half a lemon on your elbows each evening before bed.

2. Lighten age spots. Rub a cotton ball soaked in Amalfi lemon juice on the age spots. You will notice them lighten within 6-8 weeks.

3. Calluses on hands or feet can be reduced and softened thanks to the acidity of the lemon. Put a slice of lemon on the corn and cover with a band aid overnight. Let the lemon act during sleep, it will facilitate the removal of the hardened skin. Or put half a lemon in heels of your shoes during the day to get the added benefit of more tallness.

4. Blackheads and blemishes, rub lemon juice on your blackheads at night right before bed and notice a difference in a few days. For blemishes, dab a cotton ball soaked in Amalfi lemon juice right on the blemish several times per day.

5. To improve concentration put a few drops of lemon essential oil in a diffuser.

6. Stop your partner snoring, sew an Amalfi lemon into the back of their pajama jacket

7. Improve your posture, practise walking with an Amalfi lemon on your head

Do join in...

Slugs and Snails

This week I have been cooking in the depths of rural England, back to the house where little girls danced with whales, here are some of the week’s high- and low-points

1. The place is now full of little boys - the meals were appropriately themed; last night’s supper was worms in a compost heap followed by mud pie with extra dirt.

2. This is a no-electronic-games-allowed household, most of the boys were outside, happily running around thwacking things, but I discovered a sad-faced child called Oscar in the pantry, he was fingering something he called a DS. He agreed to wash his hands and help me make pizzas.

3. Oscar wants to be an actor and shows great promise, after flinging something to the floor during supper, his mother insisted that there would be no mud pie until he picked it up, he left the room roaring
I am now going to kill myself

4. I stayed on the premises this time, I dislike 'living-in’, but it’s a long commute and The Director is away stalking vampires.

My bags were taken to a converted barn adjacent to the main house; a vast split level space with fat oak floorboards and stone gable ends - it is wonderfully empty, a bed one end, a sink the other and a huge old tub somewhere in the middle. It is the old hay loft and harness rooms and is over a mill race - in daylight the sound of the stream rushing under the building is charming. At night I realised that the big empty space of my apartment is a supersonic amplifier, it was like being trapped in a giant’s bathroom with a broken flush - I have not slept a wink for four nights.

5. There is no internet or phone signal at the house so I found a big empty pub with wifi. I went there this morning at 9 am and sat down at the only table with an electric socket, then some people came in; two couples and a teenage boy, none of them appeared to have a neck and they were clearly all very closely related. They walked past the empty tables and came to sit with me - they weren’t being at all friendly, finally one of the men said
We always sit here

6. While I was preparing supper tonight Oscar lurked nearby, finally he asked me
What do you really do for a living?



Photo by Mark Peterson

Encouraging The Young

The best coffee in the world is served in the lesbian café close to our office. Last week the Camera Boys came back from the café enthusing about an opportunity they'd seen for earning extra income. Later in the day Whiplash and I went over and checked out the ad;

Sperm Donor Wanted

Single woman, early 40's seeks reliable sperm donor

- No involvement needed/expected

- cash payment made for donation

- genuine advert

On our return Whiplash was scornful

She wants 'reliable sperm' - do you think either of you could produce reliable sperm?





the following day one of the Camera Boys turned up newly shorn in readiness for an imminent filming trip I said

Good hair - it makes you look very youthful

At that moment The Director walked into the room and looked at the Boy

Useful! -It'll take more than a haircut to make him look useful


!

And Now For Something Shiny

Christmas is one of the many things that I refuse to acknowledge the existence of - for as long as possible - then somewhere around the 24th of December, my inner Trash Queen smashes through the carapace of my outer Grinch and I go into a frenzy of strewing holly and ivy around on random ledges as a prelude to the rearrangement of my collection of shiny stuff.

At some point in the new year the vegetation rots and I remove it but the shiny things remain until either the dust conceals the shininess* or I'm in a mood to move them around a bit.

Hence, as we approach Good Friday, I am typing this post next to the fairy light net that I installed on 24th December 2002, suspended among the lights are the jewelled Joy and Happiness Angels and a bloody-faced felt wolf in reindeer's clothing that were made by Ange last December.

I'm not the only one to do this obviously; along the Portobello Road is a shop called The Last Place On Earth. Last December I took photos of the owner sticking boxfuls of old gift ribbon bows around his frontage, I thought this was just for Christmas - but no, yesterday morning I passed the shop and saw that now the entire shop front is covered in bows and he has expansion plans up to the next floor!



*the shiny things are then banished to a box - I believe that the dust will drop off after a few years and I will bring them back out and rehang them.


I left the Pop Flat this morning and had a farewell breakfast with Half a Pop Group and The Child. The Child started scratching her head energetically, her mother's face looked horror-stricken, I said

Oh dear what does an itchy head mean?

The Child was triumphant

Nits and I've got curly ones!

Head Gear

In Bristol the protracted editing frenzy has finally died down, the editor has moved on to edit someone else’s film, Zena is on an Arctic Ice Tiger Wrestling Safari and Cake Boy is attending a cake-eating marathon on a European ski slope.

This leaves just myself, two Camera Boys, Miss Whiplash and The Director in the house/production office.

The two Camera Boys are young and excitable, they went through an excessive hair phase recently. This spring it seems that it is all about hats; Miss Whiplash is getting concerned about the proliferation of electricity and has been acquiring amulets, I do like cacti but the orgone accumulator is quite bulky and the office is getting a bit cluttered so we are looking for other ways to make her feel happy. Buoyed by their recent success in inventing a new lighting system, the Camera Boys are now developing a special hat for her


This has exposed a curious side of Miss Whiplash; a woman fearless in the face of litigation and all known body fluids. When she’s not looking after the production office she is on the road with her fierce band of rockers, wearing animal-print leotards and feather accessories - this is a woman who shoots flames from her fingernails.

Whiplash has suddenly been plunged into a domestic emergency where she is helping to look after a pile of children. Listening to her account of the weekend I was struck by the difference in our sense of the ultimate Nausea-Inducing-Experience. Hardened by 15 years of life with a man who thinks it’s normal to breed cockroaches to feed to his spiders, I was surprised to hear how upset she was by a few head lice,

I’ve had to spend my weekend combing them out – LIVE NITS!!!

followed by
there’s always a turd on the floor in the morning but I can cope with that!

I’d go for nit-combing over turd-between-the-toes any day – am I alone here?

My Life Among Top Celebrities

I have no more cooking jobs booked in until next month so I've returned to Bristol to make myself useful and hang out with the stars.

I do have previous form as a celebrity chauffeuse so I was the natural choice to collect John Lynch from Bristol Temple Meads and deliver him for a voice recording on a film about lions. I donned my best chauffing uniform to take him to the recording studio and he did tell me loads of really good juicy celebrity gossip - but I was so star struck that I didn’t pay proper attention and now I can’t remember who is running off with who on the film sets these days.

Not content with just the one celebrity this week, I spent yesterday with Joey who is not only movie star glamorous but also extremely talented, she is a vestment-maker extraordinaire and definitely the person to go to if you need some new clerical outfits - and if that’s not enough to impress you, I have first hand evidence that she is the best macaron-maker in the world.






We spent the day improving our porn site app for the iphone and I’m fairly sure that I convinced John to appear in some of our videos while I was driving him back to the station.

Lonley Men

I still keep my eye on the small ads;

LONLEY MEN

I am living in one bedrom flat
in Queensway Bayswater. I am
looking a lady who gone clean my
flat and share my lonely time.
No charge for staying at flat.
No smoker please.

Who could resist?

Erasing The Evidence

There was an incident back in January, the evidence in the form of a big discoloured splash on the wall has remained to taunt me long after the yellow and purple bruises on my nose faded. My time at the Pop Flat in London is coming to an end and I must leave my room in the condition that I found it - this morning I wielded a brush loaded with white paint.

I’ll be sorry to go, Half a Pop Group went away for a month during my time here. Since they’ve been back the house has been full of the new tunes they made up during their trip, the Child has not yet been emptied of the helium produced by the excitement of her adventures so we have all been testing the songs loudly for singalongandanceability.

I am also less likely to wake and find myself engulfed in flames these days. My housemate Felicity has a habit of starting to make her supper then wandering off to gaze at the patterns on her bedroom floor - the Child has a sharp young nose and is very good at banging on Felicity’s door and yelling

FELICITY WAKE UP – YOUR RICE IS ON FIRE!


Malick Sidibé

On my table is the evidence of a photographic exhibition I visited a couple of days ago in West London; Malick Sidibé is well known for his photographs taken at clubs and parties in Mali during the 50s and 60s. This show is a selection of studio portraits from the 70s that Sidibé has reprinted with additional handwritten titles which give an extra, often comical, dimension to the images.

It seems that the entire population of the country piled into Sidibés studio to have their photograph taken in their grooviest clothes against a backdrop of stripey African cloth, the men flaunting their fashionable slim-fit shirts (the collars, the collars!) and their wider than wide flares (pantalon aux pattes d'éléphant), the women combining traditional ‘wax’ fabric head and body wraps with chic sunglasses and western-style tops, this is a portrait of a nation at a particular time in their history. Every subject, gazes intensely, proudly out of the frame, even the dribbley-faced child clutching an oversized comb has a dignified solemnity about her.

There is so much to love about this show, superb photography, great printing - and these are the best fashion images I have ever seen.


Lichfield Studios, London W10 from 11 March-16 April

Gardening Leave

SOLITARY BEES. (Apidoe.)
1, Osmia; 2, Anthidium; 3, Panurgus; 4, Megachile.


I’ve just had an extended weekend back in Bristol. My husband (known on this blog as The Director) is a very dedicated naturalist so when the blackbirds wake us up with a blast of new season competitive singing at four in the morning his response is to get up and stand outside the front door in his pants with recording equipment. My role in this enterprise is to defrost the man-sized ice block that rolls back into bed an hour later.

I miss not having a garden when I’m in London and I love sitting outside with my coffee. However, our garden mustn’t be disturbed because our house houses a production company that makes natural history films and it’s quite handy to have a film set outside the back door. I am forbidden from doing any digging or planting apart from a very small area the size of a child’s sand box right at the end where I am allowed to plant a bit of salad (for the caterpillars).

One community that is being groomed for greatness in the garden is a colony* of solitary bees that started making burrows in our lawn a few years ago. Year on year the number and variety of species has increased and as these creatures arrive in ever greater numbers so do gangs of reprobate insects; parasitic bees and wasps coming round to steal the bee holes and lay eggs on the bee larva, a whole soap opera of naughtiness and cheating is going on down there.

Once the bees start their activity no sitting on the lawn is allowed in case the bees get a bit cross waiting to get in or out of their holes so The Director and I teeter together with our morning coffee on a bit of wobbly wall by the edge of my sand box.


*Strictly speaking we shouldn’t say 'colony' the correct word is aggregation, none of the bees are related, they just like living around each other in dense populations.

Thank You Katrocket

Look what arrived in the post today from my gorgeous Canadian friend Katrocket!!!

This Glorious Artifact is a belt buckle immortalising my gurning nephew in pure Titian Crystal®, surrounded by diamonds and blue fairy dust from Mars. In years to come I plan to gift this treasure to his future spouse as a wedding gift.

You too can commission the supremely talented Beevers to make you a customised wearable item featuring your favourite person/dog/vase.

Tardis Belly

Sourdough bread, butter and honey

Apricot tart

Argentinian empanada

Pastry filled with Dulce de Leche

Chinese ribs with fresh noodles

Salt cod rissole

Portuguese custard tart

A Morroccan chicken pasty the size of a big man’s fist

Rice pudding

That’s what went in to my stomach today and unsurprisingly it is making low growly noises, I embarked on a weekend of eating my way around the London markets starting yesterday at Broadway Market in Hackney. This morning I made an early dash to Chiswick Farmers Market to buy lamb and cake with Half a Pop Group before joining the seething masses along Brick Lane.

Fortification is needed for Brick Lane, among the sci-fi film extras and stoned rocknroll types with their big coats, bigger hair and wacky hatsneyewear there are a phenomenal amount of people dragging suitcases along.

And there is an overwhelming amount of food - I wanted it all – well lots of it, not the lump of mashed potato that was being stirred around in tepid oil but I did want warm pepper and chorizo rolls and latkes and samosas ... but most of all after a very short period of squeezing my way through the crowds I needed to sit down.

Seeing a vacant chair placed at a table covered with a rose-printed oilcloth, I asked the lady standing behind the counter if I could have whatever she was serving. She turned and shouted at the curtain behind her, a man emerged and picked up a lump of white dough from a floured counter top, he swung it around, fast, forming long ropes which he drew out to make thinner. When he had made a whole skein of fat string he threw it into a boiling cauldron, fished it out a minute later, placed it in a bowl, added broth and ribs and put the ensemble on the rose-printed cloth where I was sitting - it was the most delicious thing in the world.

Charcuterie For Vegetarians

Smelly Yoga

It’s Thursday - yoga day at my local Asian Health Centre for the Elderly. Us non-members come in first and push the chairs and sofas to the edges of the room, when we’ve finished our class the seniors arrive for a session with the same teacher - they all seem to be men. While they are waiting for us to gather up our things and leave, they get on the exercise bikes at one end of the room and gossip while pedalling.

Our yoga room is on a busy street; heavy traffic, children and mad people can be heard screeching at volume on the other side of the big windows. Inside we have an extractor fan which starts rumbling when the kitchen staff arrive, the fan circulates the pungent lunch smells but keeps them trapped in the room with us. There were more incense sticks than usual this morning because the oldies are making model planes involving the use of strong solvents, some of which has leaked into the carpet.

Our teacher is very keen on breathing and making sure the air flows in and out through the correct orifices, we are instructed to concentrate on our bottoms

Keep your mind on your anal sphincter - and any other apertures underneath, make sure none of your energy escapes!

This was a particular challenge today because I have reacted badly to last night’s eel and quite a lot of energy was requesting release.

Topsy Turvey

In the Pop Flat, where I stay during the week, The Child has partly grasped the idea that travelling can make time go backwards. When she went to bed tonight she showed me her Christmas stocking.





I felt it only right to say that I didn’t think Santa would be along any time soon

Well I’m putting it up just in case.

I am not working this week and my body is confused. I’ve lost my routine and I’m not sure what I eat when I don’t have to cook. I wandered into a shop and got stuck in the tinned section, mesmerised by stuff that should never be put in cans, things like pasta and sausages. But they tasted so good when I was a child - I bought a can of macaroni cheese.

Later I was in an area with a lot of Asian restaurants, I decided that this would be a good idea for supper, I chose the gaudiest looking place on the street, the others looked a little too smart or too hip for my mood. I should’ve walked straight back out when the smell of incense knocked me sideways, but I am British and we soldier on. It turned out that the best thing in the restaurant was the little patch of bright green turf placed under the glass in the table, I did also enjoy reading the menu which was separated into sections;

Meat
Chicken
Fish
Vegetables
Frog & Eel
Noodles
Rice...

Just as the restaurant was filling up, three men in dirty overalls walked in and went upstairs, soon the sound of intense drilling from above obliterated the harp muzak and made our tables vibrate.

Return Of The Child

I guessed from the pile of luggage in the hall that my landlords had come back from the other side of the world - it didn’t take long for audible confirmation.

The Child used to keep me under silent surveillance but now appears to be filled with helium. Bouncing off the walls with excitement she couldn’t decide whether to be a giraffe or a star as she tried to explain what she’s been doing for the last month.

The parents and The Child went to bed early but their body clocks weren’t going to let them get away with it that easily, I heard animated chatter around midnight and then all went quiet.

This morning I heard that The Child and her father were so wide awake they decided that they might as well go to the big 24-hour supermarket. A member of staff found their behaviour curious and they were taken in for questioning, the father being under suspicion of abduction.

The Last Straw

Bracing myself for an afternoon at the Crazy White House I decided to go and see some Art; first to an exhibition of William Eggleston's photos, which inspired me to go mad iphotographing with my iphone. Spotting an Indian sweet shop I went in for some Egglestonesque pics, the owners were charming and talked to me about sweet-making. When I moved in for some close up shots I noticed that there was a jet black human hair embedded in one of the knobbley orange balls I'd been planning to buy.

I erased the hair image from my head with a visit to the Wellcome Collection which has some brilliantly weird stuff - and a great café.


Arrived at CWH feeling mellow and happy. Then the children came home and it was all shattered. Having recently been in a household with normal, happy, only slightly fighty, children, the awfulness of the CWH children is like having the world turned up to horror-movie screaming pitch. I’ve been wearing earplugs but still I hear them ordering the staff around and see them helping themselves to fistfuls of crap from the easily accessible sweetie drawer*.

When they do get brought to table for supper they are plugged into one of their many electronic games and the nannies bring other toys to distract them from the fact that they are eating. Two adults spoonfeed the children, I ask the five-year old why he won’t feed himself
I don’t want to look at the food

This is the nightly ritual, the adults plead and wheedle but the children rarely eat much. They get down from the table and are given more chocolate, the boy starts taunting the dog, his mother says

Don’t do that he doesn’t like it

No stop it look he’s trying to get away from you


This goes on for quite a long time, eventually the dog yelps and the child starts crying - I am so angry that I snap and tell him

And if I see you do that again I will bite off all your fingers

CWH Lady looks a bit shocked and I realise that I am questioning my previously held belief that Murder is Wrong so I say that I am sick and I really won’t be able to come in any more


*why do parents do this? It might be 'Natural’ and 'Organic’ but it’s still fat and sugar.

French Exchange

While I was living in France I wrote several posts about my neighbours who lived in the big house down the road, Mme B wears long stick-on nails, tattooed maquillage and six-inch heels, her husband has a military haircut and cashmere coats. Mme B is a mighty force to be reckoned with and quickly became my staunch ally, getting out her typewriter and bashing out firey letters of application, resignation and complaint on the frequent occasions that I needed them.

Her young and feckless son Jules, has arrived in London, his English is minimal and he needs help with job applications, I suggested we meet last Monday and sent him the time and address of a meeting place. He was very late and explained how he navigates the city using just the tube map, getting to a station that he thinks might be about right, then wandering around until he stumbles upon the place he wants to be. He’s been doing this for three weeks now. I told him to get a proper map and improve his English trés vite.

I sent Jules a rewritten version of his cv and he asked if we could meet again so that he could practise speaking English, we made a rendezvous for the hour before I started work today*

Blow me down if he didn’t do exactly the same thing again - arrived late because he’s using the bloody tube map, I was striding away up the street, swinging my shopping basket furiously, he saw me and ran after me, trying to keep up and apologise at the same time. I took the opportunity to practise my French rebuking vocabulary, English people rebuking in French (or at least me doing it) just makes French people laugh, he didn’t seem nearly chastised enough for my liking.

* I’m back at the CWH – DON’T give me a hard time, it’s just for a week and I need the money - it isn't improving my mood.

Dances With Whales

Last week's cooking job came with in-house entertainment, it was half term, no electronic games in the house and the television was curiously only able to receive a signal for a couple of hours each day, so the children had to work out what to do for themselves, after a bit of bored flopping around someone has an idea

Let’s put on a show!

they disappear excitedly to start rehearsals, only to return after an hour, the project has been abandoned due to artistic differences.

The two girls then decide that they will do 'Dancing On Ice’

One child strips down to her underwear and the other ran off to get her swimsuit and goggles on, they explain;
in Dancing on Ice you have to have bare arms and bare legs

They wafted around the kitchen, describing their sequinned outfits, one child dancing with a stuffed whale while the other, embracing a column of air, told me about her handsome partner

He has long brown hair and a blue hair band

then she stopped dancing and asked her friend

Do we have to be in love with our partner?

The girl with the whale continued dancing and replied dreamily

I’m in love with mine

The Week In Review

Last Thursday
Email from Chanel Lady telling me that I was not chosen to cook for them this summer – Hoorah!

Email from Desperate Lady needing an emergency cook next week - Hoorah!

Friday
Decree Absolute at The Crazy White House
CWH Lady and I had a brief and unsuitable relationship, like one of those Britney Goes To Las Vegas ones. Once I’d announced that 'we could no longer go on with this madness', the last weeks of our affair became a peculiar tentative marriage of convenience, I needed her money and she couldn’t imagine surviving without a cook. I tried to be honest and constructive about why we were not meant to be but ended up saying a lot of ‘It’s not you it’s me’ kind of things like:
The British are so innately slovenly, I could never achieve your high South African standards*

there were so many things that I couldn’t even begin to say to her.

Smell is so important, yet I repeatedly fail to acknowledge this: Household odours are very distinctive; a mix of foodstuffs, heating source and cleaning products combined with children, laundry (often dirty) and pets; this household’s particular mixture set me on edge the minute I walked over the threshold.


Saturday
My husband comes to London and submits to weekend of eating, visiting curio shops and art galleries, concedes that cinemas seem more comfortable here and that it’s fun to look at art and other people and sundry weird stuff, says he will think about making second visit later in year.


Monday
Baby Sister and I meet up, I am initially drunk merely with freedom from CWH Lady, but then we go to Italian restaurant and try the Prosecco...

In the evening I make another attempt to appreciate Chekov, Three Sisters at the Lyric, Hammersmith. Am I the only person who finds this man an utter bore? The reviews called the production Lively, Modern and Bold, I saw irritating people moaning around a table and left at the interval.

Tuesday
Visit my cousin, we go for beans on toast at nearby café, he is blind and I suddenly become acutely aware of roadworks, wonky pavements full of deep puddles, stupidly placed bollards and dog shit.

Wednesday
Turn up equipped with supper for Desperate Lady (new client), she just wants nice food on the table. Her house has an Aga and a woodstove and smells of rice pudding, it makes me ache with pleasure.

I made an Easy Chocolate Mousse
Bring 300ml double cream to boil, take away from heat and add 200 grms of broken-up dark chocolate (70% cocoa), beat together until all chocolate melted.

Transfer mix to a bowl set over another bowl of iced water and add a further 300ml of double cream, whip up into soft peaks

at this point, personally I would stop and eat this now, but if you want to make a mousse out of it beat up 2 large egg whites in a separate bowl until you have stiff peaks, pour in 100 gm sugar gradually, beating all the while until you have soft meringue, fold this into the chocolate mix and eat as soon as you need to.

* that is quite true, I routinely have to clear a festering beast or toxic substance, such as lead shot, off the work surface before I can roll out my pastry, it is very easy to leave an upper class British kitchen in better condition than I found it.

Cut Myself Shaving

On Thursday mornings I go over to my local day centre for elderly Asians where there is a yoga class in the lounge before the serious telly-watching gets under way, we do lots of corpse posing and we're supposed to be breathing but I keep getting distracted by the smell of chapati-making in the adjacent kitchen.

It must do some good because I always come away feeling very chirpy and want to tap away on my laptop, trouble is, in an attempt to smarten up before yesterday's interview I shaved the bobbley bits off my coat and nicked my fingers with the razor

taptap ouch taptap ouch

Has everyone already seen this? - love Bill Nighy, bloody Blogger has sliced the edge off though!



Join the campaign

Swimsuits In The Kitchen...

My days with Crazy White House Lady are nearly done and I have been looking for alternative employment. Agencies are sending me to meet potential clients, today I went to see an archetypal Chelsea couple who want a chef for their summer residence;

I had a very early appointment, Madam showed me in to their apartment, her Chanel suit made me think of the way I decorated birthday cakes as a child, her make-up and coiffure are solid enough to last a month if necessary, eyelashes mascara'd like black gerbera daisies, hair appears to be a safety feature.

She talks in the loud confident tones commonly heard in Harrods and at the better ski resorts. Her husband, grinning at her side, interjected occasionally;

People will come through the kitchen in their swimsuits you know

I will want to come in picking at the food – you have to slap my fingers


But mostly we are silent while she talks at length and I get lost in the details of the room and things like her fingers and earlobes which are encrusted with round knobs of jewellery, I suddenly heard her saying

...I move the table around a lot, sometimes it’s at one side of the room, sometimes the other and I often have it put out on the patio, there’s lots of tableware ...and flowers I love doing all the design...’

When it was over I walked up the road for breakfast at the Victoria and Albert Museum and ended up staying in the building until it was time for my date with CWH Lady.


Later I checked the small ads
This was one I thought I might go for

LADY REQUIRE FOR COOKING FOOD AND BODY MASSAGE

we are looking for a lady who can cook indian food for 1 time + body massage.

can be around 21-26
urgent require,
pay=£250 for cooking + £50 for transport between zone 5-6 + 150 Body massage.

Top Tip: Peel The Base Off A Saucepan In Just Several Hours

Put a pot of beans on then go to sleep. This has the special bonus of making the house smell funny.

Pot Heads

The Australians reckoned that having come as far as England they might as well 'do Europe' while they were at it, they have disappeared, leaving me alone in the Pop Flat with Felicity. It feels like we're doing a middle-aged remake of an 80s comedy series.



Felicity gets back every evening from a job that she loathes, she deals with the horror by smoking her way through a large amount of marijuana, then she gets really hungry and prepares a late feast – usually something involving lots of vegetables and rice. The only pot big enough to hold the quantity of food she thinks she'll want to eat has part of it’s side broken off along with one of the handles. There's a lid from a different pot that sits on top of the one-eared pot and I've got rather fond of the sight of this odd pairing.








So imagine my sadness the other day when I saw that the mismatching lid, had broken in half – but it's ok - I’ve mended it, we only had string and sellotape in the house, I think the string will work best.

News From The Pop Flat

From Monday to Friday, I live at the top of a house in London. When I moved in at the beginning of last month, the lower floor was occupied by Half a Pop Group and their recording studio, they also have a Child who slept in the room next to mine - I’d just got used to the Child sidling into the room where I happened to be and giving me a good staring. Then, ten days ago, Half a Pop Group took the Child, left London and some Australian musicians turned up to replace them and use the house and recording studio.

I’ve heard the piano playing and caught fragments of song, but now they’re moving closer. Today I heard high-pitched, wailey singing in my kitchen and knocking sounds, a bit like DIY, I wondered if a partition was going up.

I gave up trying to find a use for Facebook and went to investigate. A tall man with spiky hair was puffing away on a big joint, his trousers were really tight and short and very low slung, he must’ve bought them when he was twelve, I wonder if he loved them so much when he got them that he has worn them constantly and now he's grown and can’t get them off. he looked up and beamed when he saw me:

Hello Darling

Hi, you got everything you need?

Yeah Rockin’

What you up to?

I'm putting some drum tracks down

I can now see that the knocking noise is coming from a digital drumming device connected to his laptop, a girl’s singing drifts up the stairs.

They're busy - I’ve got to get out the way so I came up here

OK, d’you want some tea?

Yeah Rockin’

New Eatery - Opening Soon!

Over the weekend I took a tour of the neighbourhood with my man and we noticed that a restaurant we used to frequent had been renamed, there was a board out the front with the words BRING YOUR OWN written on it.

We looked at each other

Bring your own ...???

Bring your own ... money?

Bring your own husband?

then we got it at the same time
Bring your own dinner!

If it turns out not to be that kind of restaurant we have decided that we will jump into this obvious gap in the market - a restaurant for all those people who know what they like.

We're going to make it 'All You Can Eat' and 'Self Service' and for people who like buffets we'll have trestles for them to put their stuff on.

We'll provide the drink.

Lucky Dip Dinners

After my last post I thought about how I've often gone to countries not speaking the language at all and have simply pointed at parts of the text on the menu in the hope that I was choosing things that would end up resembling a meal.



This made me go and dig out the sketchbooks where I'd made notes in an attempt to try and learn from these experiences, a way to remember the words for 'cat giblets' or 'face of pig' for future reference. The page above was made during a typical 'point-and-shoot' dining experience. This was in Budapest in 1992, I had just got a degree in colouring-in from Brighton. Not knowing what else to do, I managed to get a grant to spend a term at the Hungarian College of Art and Design in Budapest, they didn't make me very welcome and refused to let me use the school facilities so I spent my days in the city's cheap eating and drinking places filling sketch books and taking photos. I dug them out this weekend and fell down a rabbit-hole of memories:





At the end of my residency, to fulfill the terms of my contract I had to put on an exhibition of my work, so I invited people to come to my room and look at these sketchbooks, one of the college tutors edited an arty magazine called Magyar Narancs and several months after I had left town he put a little feature in the magazine, a photocopy was posted to me along with a translation of the text to the left of the image


An Engish girl, taughened(sic) by the salty air of Brighton, drifted into the Trabant-smoked streets of Budapest. She sat into the low-flying bakelite, tiled Budapest; she was flying as a black butterfly between the battered houses. Her drawings, like the magazine illustrations of the thirties, are travel drafts about the magic. Metaphors, jotted down on mustard-stained grease-proof paper; cooked-sausage-sketches. Espresso-bar tables, Dobos-cake crumbs on them, are sweeped into the sketchbook.