lainablog

Collecting Scottish data: hares, real ale and veggie haggis

2010-08-07T12:49:00.010+01:00

The route from my house here was pretty straight. It consisted of a train from Peckham Rye to Kings Cross, a train from kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley followed by a train from Waverley to bridge of Allan. Either side of the trains was an extra mile or so: by bus from my house to Peckham, and a walk through country like this (right).

From Bridge of Allan’s station to Keir Cottage, where my friend Andrew rents an annex of the farm house. He has no sink, just a washbasin to wash dishes in, and he must also wash clothes this way. But he has the tranquillity and the country surrounding that he sought, and he has sheep, highland cattle, hares, buzzards and a donkey for neighbours. He also has a his landlady’s hot tub in the garden with fields and Stirling Castle’s mount in the distance as a backdrop.

He has a particular affinity with the hares and has read up on their significance in folklore. So that I can see them, we walk deliberately into a baled field towards one. It waits until it can chance it no more and bolts, bounding with its distinctive hop-sprint, rousing two more. ‘That’s unusual to see three hares,’ Andrew tells me. ‘That must be for you.’

The next afternoon we were enjoying a pavement glass of wine and Lomond Gold blonde ale under the Clive Ramsay delicatessen’s restaurant awning, sheltered from the threatening rain. We noticed the brewery next door offered ‘free tours and free tasting’ and we needed no further encouragement. We entered its small cavern of a tavern and were given the ‘tour’ to view its two barrels round the corner from the bar. Our friendly young barman and his friend, a self-confessed Viking (‘I’m the same height as a Viking, I have the right hair colour and eye colour for a Viking’) ran through the list of 20-odd ales they’d brewed there. These included ‘Aleoween’ pumpkin beer, chilli beer and chocolate beer with chocolate shavings, none of which we could try because they no longer had any. However, we could taste their more standard beers on tap of varying strengths, and raspberry ale. A very merry afternoon was spent.

The next day I bid farewell to Andrew and Bridge of Allan and set off home via a stop in Edinburgh. The city was heating up for the festival with groupings of samba schools gathering in the streets and the various venues being assembled. After a ‘vegetarian Burns breakfast’ at the Crag and Tail restaurant on the Royal Mile I walked up to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It was celebrating its 50^th birthday with an injection of new works. I found it refreshing and stimulating in its presentation of groupings of inspiring artists, such as a display by the Boyle family, a family of four who create art together by going to randomly selected (by darts thrown at a world map) destinations and collected data exhaustively: counts and studies of flora and fauna, photographs, sketches; they agree that ‘art should not exclude anything as a potential subject.’ With that, I gathered my bits of data from my Scottish expedition and headed back to the train.

The new New Tayyabs: or learning the hard way

2010-01-17T15:25:00.008Z

Outside the Pride of Spitalfields, over the first outdoor pint I've had in a while, I described the New Tayyabs, the restaurant where we were about to eat. 'It's just off Whitechapel, on Fieldgate Street,' I began. 'It's really good; it's been there for years. I've been before with colleagues, but I read about it recently in Time Out's Best of London issue and decided to go again.'
'Oh I think my mum's mentioned this place!' exclaimed Amy, trying to assess how she felt about visiting a place big-upped by her mother. 'She said next time she comes down she definitely wants to go there. So, the word's reached York about this place!'
Visions of a chaotic queue began to form in my memory, and I urged the others to drink up so that we'd make our booking. These 'visions' were nothing compared with what we were about to witness.

Al and John were ahead and they walked straight past Tayyabs' bustling entrance. 'I thought that was a nightclub,' they said when we stopped them. This was quite a fair assumption to have made. I was equally struck with that distinct panic you get when you approach a club, proud that your name's on the list, only to discover that there are two queues each way round the building; you nervously approach someone on the door to say your name, only to be sent to the end of the larger of the two queues, being told: 'That's the guest list.'

We established the slightly shorter queue just out one door and made our guest list joke to the last person in it. We soon found our way into the restaurant and were met with absolute mayhem. The entrance area was crammed. There was no sense of any queue, just a body of hungry people. I lost any bravado I had had and gave in to the fray: I stood still and let my body be ebb and flow in the mass. Luckily Amy took control of the situation. Our situation, that is, rather than the whole situation - although I'm sure she could have done that if she had needed to care beyond our own immediate hunger. She approached a man in a black shirt with a smile that hinted at bemusement, who stood at a counter with a clipboard.
'We have a booking at 8,' she said.
'What name please?' he asked.
'Delaina Haslam...'
'Mmm....'
'There,' she pointed.
'Two people,' he said.
'No, it's for four,' Amy replied.
'Ok, for four.'
All that careful calling back to change the booking from two to four people for nothing, I thought. Good job it hadn't mattered.
'Ok, five minutes,' said the man.
We waited beyond the specified five minutes, during which time others approached the man, giving their names for reservations they'd made for 8 o'clock. All were given the same answer: five minutes.

We gave it another five minutes then confronted him with another enquiry as to when we'd get our table, pointing out that he had told several other people that they would also be seated in five minutes. We should perhaps have been angrier by now, but this man had obviously been allotted this role because he was somebody you couldn't get angry with. He maintained such an imposing calm amid chaos that an angry confrontation would bounce off him like bullets from a bullet-proof vest. Our second enquiry got us a tick next to our reservation. This again helped appease us, and we quietened down to wait once more, hoping that the tick was positive, and not a reminder to spit on our poppadoms.

While Mr Serene stood and made ticks and crosses on his sacred yet immaterial list, another front-man arrived and began to enquire of groups their numbers. He took whichever group fitted the spaces he had, and again, those who'd got near enough to him and shouted the loudest. We made sure we were one of these groups, and were led to a table 45 minutes after our reserved hour. It was only then that we realised I hadn't done my homework properly because they didn't sell beer. So Al and I promptly left again to head to an off-licence.

The food was good. The meat-eaters went for the lamb chops - I'd managed to glean enough prior knowledge to have an idea that this was the dish to order here (reams of lamb chops passing us as we wolfed down poppadoms confirmed this rumour). It was agreed that if we could ever face the fight for a table again, the order would go lamb chops followed by a meat and two veg curries (apparently they overdid it on the meat, while I kept my bindi to myself).

We went for two deserts between us, despite being full, just because we wanted to prolong the sensation of superiority as other less fortunate punters queued around us. One group of particularly narked-off girls provoked a moment of forced hilarity when one sat on the fire extinguisher and set it off.

We chose kulfi because we knew what it was, and rasmalai because we did not. The rasmalai (a sweet, dairy-based solid swimming in milk) had the edge in my opinion because the kulfi was on a stick and therefore not suited to sharing
.
Eventually we tore ourselves away from our precious table. It was 10.20pm and the queue was showing no sign of abating. We decided that if we came again it would be midweek. But we also imagined bringing Amy's mum here for an eight o'clock booking on a Friday, saying: 'Right, here we are, this is the restaurant you wanted to come to,' and watching her face. We'd thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and our meal, but were angry with the restaurant for deliberately overbooking in this way, and thus showing little regard for its customers, only for its hype and profits (although it cannot be denied it's very reasonable, with the bill for the four of us falling just short of £50).

Next evening I related my experience to the colleagues who'd first introduced me to the place.
'You want to go to the new New Tayyab's,' they told me. 'It was opened by the same people just round the corner. It's called Needoo Grill, and it's 98% as good as Tayyabs.'

Late to Baldessari

2010-01-10T11:16:00.002Z

We liked the carrot game best. I’ll have to tell you how to play because there’s no point telling you to visit the John Baldessari at Tate Modern because you have one day left to do that. So, the Carrot Game. Get a load of carrots, like 30. Get three of them and put them in front of the participant asking him/her to choose one of the three. Place the rejected carrots to one side and replace them with two new carrots and again ask participant to choose one. Repeat until you get through the pile. What are you left with at the end?

After the Tate we travelled back to Forest Hill Road (my street), SE22, to dine at the Herne Tavern. We had been keen to try the Herne since receiving good reviews from our trusted neighbours. It’s owned by the same people who run The Palmerston in East Dulwich, where I once had a very boozy and expensive meal having waited in their bar until 9.45pm for a table with my good friend Anna. Anna later declared it to have been the poshest meal she’d ever had, but I’m not sure that she was in a state to make such a judgement by that time.

Just before Christmas Al and I had ventured down the hill for a pint at the Herne. Now, the reason we had not done this before now is that the Herne tavern is one of those pubs that does not make it easy for the pub-goer of today. It stands broodingly on a corner back from the road, behind a huge tree in fact, not bothering to make its presence known in any way, with stained-glass windows not giving anything away. But no. 7 had said it’s good, so in we went. Inside we found it to be friendly and inviting (bit late now) with its roaring open fire. But just as we were relaxing into a pint of Wherry and a wine, a fight broke out. Yes, a fight. This was more in keeping with our fears from its outside appearance. But seeing that it was a fight between drunk locals of a generation above us we decided we had nothing to fear, resuming our sipping and turning our gazes back to the friendly flames.

Last night was our first time in the restaurant. The food was of a high standard. The watercress soup outdid itself and was a creamy delight, better than the pondweed of my imaginings (but I still ordered it). The raddichio and blue cheese risotto was slightly disappointing after that because it was rather unrelenting: the flavour was so intense and there was nowhere for me to hide, I just had to go on eating it. Service was at times exaggerated: we were asked how everything was every three minutes by three separate staff members. My initial response had been ‘Amazing’, that was during the soup. I think that got reported to the chef who then came out to get a bit of the praise action; unfortunately by this time we were close to the responding: ‘Bloody awful’ just to get some peace. Mum had a caponata with cute little mozzarella balls, followed by linguine with Jerusalem artichoke puree, sage, rocket and parmesan (that puree gave it the mmm factor); Al had a Scotch duck egg, rocket, shallot and black pudding salad followed by a Pan-fried fillet of Cornish Pollack, boulangere potatoes and chantaney carrots. He said that despite sounding incredible his main was too salty and there wasn’t as much fish or vegetables as he would have liked. The carrots looked great in their natural form; it’s just we didn’t have enough to choose from. ‘That one,’ we said as we picked our favourites when the dish arrived. And then the game was over.

Tales from Harrogate

2010-01-02T15:57:00.005Z

31/12/09
It’s far from the open-fired cottage of our imagination. Instead, I type sitting on top of the brown and maroon floral print cover stretched businesslike across our double at the Arc ‘boutique’ b&b opposite the Harrogate International Centre. This is my new netbook, Sky, an ice-blue Dell. She arrived yesterday and I hope will change my life.

2/1/10
After a morning in Harrogate’s splendid Turkish baths, and lunch at Betty’s, New Year was brought in at the Tannin Level restaurant. At first there were five of us, but my sister had to leave to see to a cat that couldn’t pee (being a vet on call). The Tannin staff – particularly the tall woman with short bleached hair in a short, cream sequined dress I took to be manageress - were most obliging and brought Romilly's starter on the double to have before she left. She did not make it back before her main, but they set an oversized cheeseboard aside for her, informing other guests that they were ‘out of cheese’. Rom returned before midnight with news that she’d saved Tubbs, which was fantastic because she’d expected to have to put him down.

We got an amazing deal for £25 a head. The quality of the food was high. I was deciding between the two vegetarian starters. I settled on the croustade of woodland mushrooms with a poached egg; but a sip of Rom’s early soup had me on the edge of switching – the potato, garlic and tarragon was instantly delicious. I stuck with the croustade, and unfortunately lived to regret it (mildly) as the taste was not as stunning as the sip of soup had been, and it contributed to filling me to the point of discomfort later in the meal when topped off with butternut squash risotto. I ate my way out of the pain with peanut butter parfait with chocolate ice cream, which made it all better. It was all accompanied by good wine, as we’d hoped for at a place named after a wine term. We were particularly struck by the first white on the cheaper list, a South African Chenin Blanc. We’d asked for ‘crisp’, and it was delivered. A relaxed pace accompanied the considerate service and time was allowed for our jaunts outside to enjoy the falling snow.

Only us and the table next to us were left in the restaurant at midnight. The staff told us not to panic and - they’d tell us when we got to the countdown. ‘I’d hate to celebrate prematurely,’ remarked a woman on the other table. As we shouted ‘three, two, one, yay!’ Rom’s phone went. Not Tubbs’s owner, she thought. But no, it was Mark in Australia with his computer timed to tell him when it was midnight in the UK.

The four of us went on to the blues bar and danced to ska while Rom returned to check on Tubbs. On the walk to the b&b we enjoyed the following features: the statue encased in glass (only in Harrogate can it stay) that had steamed up; an upmarket furniture shop with a bed with bondage straps holding together its head and footboards; and the snow, which two of us tried to declare was a ‘new type’, and others had known before, made up of old crunchy ice sprinkled with just-fallen fluffiness. Happy New Year.

An evening back in May chez Joe & Laina

2009-10-22T22:26:00.001+01:00

I had the evening to shop and cook. This was a useful and enjoyable prospect. At the weekend we were travelling to France. We wanted to save money by having a picnic on the ferry, and this was the slot I’d set aside to prepare it in. The rest of the week I was out; and so yes, I was taking pleasure in domesticity this evening.

I brought the shopping in and put it away, listing to Zane Lowe, chopping the potato into thinnish slices for Spanish omelette. Joe got home around 8.15. He’d been to the gym. I was frying the potato and onion. They were swimming in oil.

I walked to my room and saw that the door to Joe’s room, was open but the light was off: he’d gone out again.

He returned after half nine. He’d been for a jog.

‘Where do the days go, Dez?’ he asked me, coming back into the kitchen.

‘You jog them away,’ I said.

‘You cook them away,’ he replied.

I couldn’t argue with that. Although I wanted to.

slow morning

2009-05-08T23:54:00.003+01:00

The late spring morning warming the back garden was too much to resist. But I was very conscious of time to the second as I settled onto the wooden chair.
‘It’s Slow Down London week,’ Al told me, just as I popped the last morsel of toast into my mouth.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, and regretted it immediately.
‘Well…’
I could tell that this was the opening to a potentially lengthy explanation that I just didn’t have time for at that moment. Highly aware of the irony, I said: ‘Talking of slow…’, and rose from the table to hasten off to the next part of my day, away from the garden, and slowness.

vegetable veneer

2009-05-02T22:41:00.009+01:00

We were drawn together by an urge to grow vegetables. We organised a ‘kale-off’: kale picked because we read it was ‘an easy vegetable to grow’ and ‘reputed to improve and sweeten with frost’. However, at the garden centre our eyes were diverted elsewhere, to onion, garlic and peas – from the ‘can be sown now’ section (it was October). We planted in a hurry, wanting results straight away. Our ultimate result blossomed before our shoots sprouted. Little had we known that in sowing such seeds we were guaranteeing the end of our gardening careers.

Waste

2008-10-26T11:31:00.003Z

I was at the Almeida Theatre with Kirstie watching the Sam West-directed Waste. I looked down on the couple on stage knowing full well they were not right together, that they had no spark; and yet wondering why not: they should be good together; they share the same cynicism.

They reminded me of so many couples: they should work but they don’t. She was accepting of the affair he had, resigned and wanting to show herself to be above such concerns. And yet a typically feminine desire for his affection was evident on her part. As it had been too in the other woman, the one he got pregnant. He had lusted after her. He shouldn’t be attractive and yet she longed after him while he shunned. He loses his political career, yes. But she loses her life.

autumn leaves

2008-10-17T23:23:00.002+01:00

I walked quickly through central London feeling smug that I no longer need a map. I managed to miss Trafalgar Square and ended up on Pall Mall. I saw Queen’s guards guarding a brick-walled building which I couldn’t identify. I asked a couple of men in suits if I carried on walking I’d come to Trafalgar Square. They sent me back in the opposite direction asking if I seen a certain Italian restaurant on my travels. I hadn’t. I walked off. Then I spotted a way through to what must be The Mall, where I wanted to be. I hesitated. “Straight down to Trafalgar Square!” The men in suits called after me. I started to run back towards them to ask them about getting to the Mall. They turned their backs.
I walked through autumn leaves on The Mall. They gave me a high that reminded me of being about five.

Appropriating conversations

2008-10-17T22:09:00.000+01:00

Adele and I sat outside a Soho bar sipping mixers and watching Wednesday night go by. We tried to define our surroundings: “It’s fun…” I began. “It’s just, everybody kind of doesn’t really seem as if they come here all the time…”.

“Like they don’t belong here,” suggested Adele.

“Yeah that’s it,” I agreed.

Well of course not. You get a few Soho stalwarts hanging on corners, running gay video stores, ignoring tourists. But apart from that, the crowd could be that of any old provincial British beered-up town. Just with a slightly funkier backdrop.

“Have you seen the film Chopper?” a guy on the table next to us was asking his companions.

“Have you?” I asked Adele.

Then I told her about how I’d been in these parts recently with Amy, who’s an appropriation artist, and about how she’d applied her artistic technique to both her food ordering (ordering what the next table ordered) and her conversation. She listened to the next table’s dinner-table anecdotes and copied the theme, which was hypnotherapy. She’d recently been hypnotised so it worked quite well.

Adele hadn’t seen Chopper and nor had I. So that didn’t work so well for me. But she enjoyed hearing about Amy and her appropriation.

spinning haikus

2008-10-02T21:24:00.003+01:00

The sun shone on our plentiful spiders’ webs. One sliver thread joined a bush to the towel I’d hung on the washing line 20 minutes earlier. “Quick work,” said Fin.

I ducked under the line, avoiding the webs, and walked over to Alec and Briony sitting at the garden table.

“We’re writing haikus,” they told me. Of course they were.

They read me what they had so far. They’d been almost as productive as the spiders.

I remembered a thought that had been bounced around at Annekoos’s party the night before. Briony had put forward conkers fading as the epitome of disappointment. Somebody else thought snow getting messed up and melting just as sad. Briony maintained that a faded conker beats sludge in the poignancy stakes.

On the sunny spidery morning I suggested we write a haiku about these disappointments.

“A perfect snow! Melts,” said Briony.

“Sunday afternoon. Dwindles,” said Alec.

“Shiny conkers! Fade,” I added.

“Quick work,” said Fin.

My First Mass

2008-09-28T22:26:00.005+01:00

The phone rang.

“Delaina?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Briony. We have to leave now.”

“I’m there.”

I grabbed the rest of the belongings I thought I night need for the evening and hurried out the house. When I reached the street I saw that my neighbours were already crossing Lordship Lane with their bikes. This was bad: our street is a busy one and it would take me a while to wait for another green light to cross. I decided on taking the pavement route downhill on the opposite side of the road and catching the light further down.

The rest of our journey to Waterloo in an attempt to meet the Critical Mass group on time was equally strategic, dashing and hairy. My god, I thought, if I were not as used to cycling as I am (which is quite used), I wouldn’t stand a hope in hell of keeping up with these guys. I quite enjoyed the pace; it was exhilarating. I enjoyed the change of tactics at manic Elephant and Castle most: we got off and walked.

We met the Mass just as it was setting off in a chorus of bells and whistling. We crossed Waterloo Bridge and continued up Kingsway onto Holborn. People on the pavements were cheering. In our midst were carts with sound systems, costumed unicyclists and tandemists.

It was as we turned down Shaftsbury Avenue we heard the call from one of our party to stop, a cyclist had been hit. We stopped but knew that Briony had already gone. As we waited, negotiated, watching and assessing the situation, a drunk man passed me shouting: “And I hope you’re next.”

“Thank you,” I called back.

“And you, silly,” he added to the elevated unicyclist.

Our team stratagem was to press on. Negative tension spread amongst the pack. Drivers shouted, we shouted back. I no longer wanted to be there. Our mini-mass agreed: to Parliament Square then we call it an evening.

We made it, alongside angry cars. Too dispersed. Where was our protective mass?

At Waterloo we ducked into the safety of food and wine. Al wasn’t comfortable: “We used to end Critical Mass at a squat party,” he grumbled.

bargain bin

2008-09-17T22:14:00.004+01:00

Something caught the eye of the man before me in the library queue. It was a book, in the wastepaper basket. Picking up the books he’d just taken out, the man nodded towards the bin and asked if it was (what I believe he referred to as) an American Adventure that they were throwing out. It was a large paperback picture book with a colourful and detailed countryside scene on its cover. It lay facedown, pages splayed, at the top of the bin. The librarian walked over to it and picked it out, saying: “It’s all…” and pointing to its torn cover. “Can I have it?” asked the man. The librarian shrugged and passed it to him reluctantly. The man took it with a controlled look of satisfaction. The other people at the counter watched him leave. From surprise at his audacity his audience was moved to envy. We wished we’d spotted it first.

I appear to have written a book

2008-09-11T23:17:00.014+01:00

When I decided to walk out on all my recent reality I began a diary. This diary provides the basis for this blog: I choose a moment to record from each day, and once a week I choose a moment from the week to inspire me for lainablog.

Day one was the day after leaving. I woke up at Amy’s. It was sunny. We went for breakfast and then went sketching in Shoreditch, did the Volvic v Evian taste test (Volvic tastes better) and sat on her friend Cornelius’s sofa on Brick Lane.

I continued the diary through my stays with all the friends who took me in and listened to all my woes about being homeless and jobless, including Eloise and the Angels, my sister and her menagerie and Alec and Briony, whom I have to thank for my whole present situation.

I reached the end of this particular diary on Sunday evening sitting in bed in my new flat about to start my new job.

And when I came to look for inspiration for my blog this week I picked up the diary and the significance of its ending struck me. I had a think about all the things I’d done over this troubled summer. It’s quite a lot. I have to think of it that way or else it’s all been just an odd blip in my life, a period in which I lost the plot and wasted my savings. I’ve always had to find something positive in everything or else I find it hard to bear. There was a point this summer in which I worried that none of it made sense and none of it was positive. But then a string of things occurred that led to where I am now and made me not be able to see it all as anything but positive.

So this blog is dedicated to all those who helped me. I’d like now to list a few more specific thank-yous:

-Beth for providing me with Desert Flower for a companion

-The Business Wire hardcore

-Adam, Gary and Chloe for encouraging me to blog and showing me how

-Seb for being a muse

-The Rennes lot, particularly Kirstie who hosted us at a difficult time

-Caroline & Scott for eternal support and the Adobe suite

-Alec & Briony for providing me with my new reality and for navigating

-Annekoos and family for welcoming a stranger and for all-night Scattergories

-Fin for housing me

-Laura & Mark for recruitment- and general solid support

-The Sheffield email stalwarts

-Hannah & Sameer for sunbathing at Blenheim and Bluetooth

-My parents for – apart from the obvious – the garden stove chat

-The electrician who agreed to move the unbudgable cabinet while he was round

-BMI for employing me

I did a lot this summer. And looking back over this diary I realise I did one more thing: I wrote a book. Couldn’t have done it without you.

When September came

2008-09-04T00:24:00.002+01:00

On Sunday I was reminded it would be September the next day. I cried. It was quite surprising; I hadn’t expected to do that and it seems strange now that it happened.

I was visiting my friends Hannah and Sameer. As they asked me what was wrong I tried to laugh as I said, “I don’t want it to be September.” But because I was already crying it just looked like I was crying more.

Earlier that day Hannah has devised the Amélie Poulain game. We had to list our likes in the way Amélie does at the start of the film. Hannah liked it when bus drivers wave at each other. I liked little footpaths that join streets together. We continued: getting into a hot bath; waking in the morning and knowing that you can go back to sleep again; conkers; discovering new drinks; caterpillars.

I was toying with ‘enjoying a really good book’ when Hannah turned things round. “I hate coming to the end of a really good book,” she said very seriously and crossly.

I remembered that Roland Barthes likened our tendency to race to the end of a book and then wish we were still reading it, to the way we live our lives: wishing them on to the next stage and the next only to wish we had them over again.

It seems to me there are other comparable pleasurable acts: sex for one. Food can also be like this. And holidays: we keep waiting for the next pleasurable activity and the next on holiday and are then sorry that we have to go home. And there have been times when I’ve questioned looking forward to my family coming to visit because I’m aware that I’ll have to say goodbye again at the end. And music can be like this for me: I want to hear a certain piece and then am sorry when it finishes and I want to hear it again. These things do not all fit easily into one category but there is something that links them in my mind.

I told Hannah that my favourite thing in the world was Saturday morning in bed with a lover (not just any, but someone you’re very close to): that little world beneath the duvet that’s just the two of you. I think one of the reasons that this is my favourite is because it has no fixed end.

We see this distinction of endlessness in some of the other little pleasures that Hannah and I picked as our favourite things. We picked objects rather than activities: Conkers, Footpaths, Seeing bus drivers wave… or we picked moments: it was the moment of getting in the hot bath rather than the activity of taking the bath; and it was the discovery of a new drink, not the drinking.

We cannot stop the passing of time. We cannot choose when one month becomes another. But September came and turned out to be better than August. Best not fight it.

If Albert were alive

2008-08-29T20:19:00.008+01:00

[Some names have been changed to protect the innocent and the deceased and because some have skipped my memory.]

If Albert (real name) were alive he’d blog. Albert was my guinea-pig.

We unfortunately found him dead in his cadge the day after my 18^th birthday party. One fatality following a number of near casualties. Guinea-God rest his over-excitable soul.

Albert once sent his credentials off to the Early Times looking for a pen-pal. His ad read something like:

“My name’s Albert, I’m 2 ½ years old. I like playing in my run and eating cabbage. Please write to me, I’d like to hear from you.”

The responses came flooding through our front door. There was Dibbin the Cat in Chipping Norton. There was Helen, a female 11-year-old human who seemed very keen to befriend Albert and asked: “Why do you say you’re a guinea-pig?”

And there was Blossom the pet rabbit belonging to a class of 10-year-olds, who wrote to Albert 23 times in one envelope.

I thought of Albert and his epistolary jaunt earlier this week when I received a blog comment from Gorilla Bananas (real blog name at least). I was fairly surprised to receive a comment at all. I clicked on the profile and saw from the photo of the gorilla that it was someone having a joke. I saw that whoever it was was from The Congo, so I thought – Oh well it can’t be anyone I know.

As I was falling to sleep that night, thoughts of Gorilla Bananas returned to me (not like that). Wait a minute, I thought. This is a blogging gorilla. If I don’t believe it’s an actual gorilla at the keyboard why did I assume that the bit about the Congo was true? Duh. This could be someone I know. I’ve checked out Gorilla Bananas’ blog since and it is Funny. I don’t think I know this gorilla but I know I like him.

I won’t start Albert’s blog because, like I said, he’s dead so that would be weird.

Oh sorry, blown my cover. Yes, all Albert’s pen-pals, it was me writing the letters.

Swimming lessons

2008-08-20T23:47:00.003+01:00

I suspected I was slightly out of my depth in Peckham. I saw crime, poverty and maladjustment in the people who passed me. They saw out-of-placed-ness and in me. I asked for mushrooms at a market stall and the seller shook his head in disgust.

I stopped at a cashpoint. No-one was around. Beth Gibbons cried in my ear. My imagination began to wander. A man came to the machine next to me. I shouldn’t have my music so loud. I smelt drink. Deafness was making me vulnerable. The alcohol guy left and another man came. I was imagining somebody doing the “Excuse me I think you’ve dropped something” trick on me. Then, “Oi, mate, mate!” This was happening. Bellowing beside me. I span round. But he was saying, “Your money!” and holding out a tenner to the alcohol guy.

Somebody teach me to swim.

Sadflowers

2008-08-13T23:43:00.003+01:00

The logo at the top of this page tells a sad story.

My sister drove to Nottingham from Christchurch and met me from the train. It was one of this July’s wiltingly hot days that have now faded to a hazy heyday. We stopped to buy flowers on the drive to the hospital where we were visiting our grandparents. We picked a purple bunch for grandma and Rom saw sunflowers and suggested we get them for granddad.

On entering the hospital nobody batted an eyelid. Used to visitors, the staff do not waste time welcoming, they let you get on with locating the right ward yourself. Once we had done so and passed beyond the hand-disinfection point (with the percentage of visitors who comply recorded in marker pen), it was here, on pushing open the doors to grandma’s ward, that we elicited a reaction: “No flowers!” bellowed a chorus of nurses. We stopped in our tracks. “No flowers on this ward,” they continued.

“Where are they allowed?” we enquired uselessly.

“Not on many wards.”

One offered to look after them until after our visit when we could take them home. As if this was some consolation. As if we’d partly bought them for ourselves anyway.

Walking through St Pancras that evening from the train I knew I must have painted a happy picture: the woman in the short dress carrying a bunch of sunflowers. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I was the saddest girl carrying the saddest flowers.

I wonder if sunflowers will be admitted to the funeral.

From South East London, Glamorgan

2008-08-06T23:46:00.001+01:00

August 4
“Seb is puzzled as to why facebook thinks he is Swedish...” 3:47pm
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Laina is puzzled as to why facebook think it’s ok to trivialise a break-up with a broken-heart symbol on the news feed.
I am also puzzled as to why Spencer from Communications Direct, Cardiff, thinks everybody lives in Wales. He called up in an attempt to poach me from my mobile network. I have to give it to him, his timing was impeccable: he caught me at a moment of utmost frustration in my new home having received the third voicemail of the day requiring me to go outside and wander the neighbourhood in search of a signal with which to listen.
He began by asking if I’d had my contract upgraded in the last year. I explained that I’d moved on to a rolling contract because I’d thought I was going to be leaving the country.
“But you’re not now?” Spencer asked.
“No.”
“Prefer it in sunny South Wales?” he joked.
I was so surprised that I just echoed his polite laughter rather than replying: “No, I don’t live in Wales, I live in London.”
When we got to the stage of me giving my postcode and him checking my network coverage I assumed he’d realise his mistake. But no. He proceeded to list, falteringly, the names of nearby areas of London that received good coverage: “Lewis-ham, Came-berwell…” adding, “There are some other smaller ones but I don’t know how to pronounce them; I think they’re Welsh (and my Welsh isn’t very good).” He seemed embarrassed. But for the wrong reason.
Again, I let it all pass, flummoxed. And I thought it was called Information Technology.
If Spencer ever logs on to lainablog I now feel I know him well enough to predict his reaction to featuring:
“Ok, not a problem, not a problem.”
Getting back to your question, Seb, you live in Kings Cross, don’t you? I hear that’s a lovely region of Sweden.

Flakes on Hawaii

2008-08-01T21:07:00.001+01:00

“I’m soaked,” Seb excused himself from my attempt at a reunion hug from behind when I saw him in the Rhythm Factory. “It’s so hot!” He sounded annoyed. And yes, Britain has just “enjoyed” pretty much nine days’ of hot weather. This must be a record: isn’t the weather always breaking records these days? So have we been happy? Well not really; because people have found it too hot. Are we ever happy? No, is the short answer to that.

Later that night we attended AKA bar’s 10th birthday. As we negotiated our way into the correct queue fake snow fell upon us and onto the Narnia-themed guests who milled around. Of course: if it were winter we’d be throwing a Hawaiian party. What a perverse nation.

How many bags have you brought?

2008-08-01T21:02:00.001+01:00

Alec and I discussed store cards on the way back from Sainsbury’s. He quoted a stand-up who asked his audience: “Who here’s against ID cards?” [Cheer.]
“Who here owns a supermarket club card?” [Faltering cheer.]
His point being that they amount to the same thing.
“I never agree to complete surveys,” said Alec. “At the end of the day I think – why should I do work for free for Sainsbury’s?”
["But the points, the points, what about the points?" wailed a little voice in my head.]

It was on my next trip that it struck me how much social commentary a store such as Sainsbury’s can offer. At the checkout I was behind an elderly lady. She got my attention and pointed out how lovely the pot plant she was buying was. “Mmm, lovely,” I agreed.
“I’ll get five or six plants from that,” she told me, confidently. I had the impression of being let into a conspiracy.
“How will you do that?” I asked.
“I’ll cut ’em, and I’ll put ’em back to back and wait for ’em to get whiskers, like. . . “
“Oh yes. . . “
“Then I’ll put ’em in soil.”
I was impressed.
By this time it was the turn of the elderly lady to check out her shopping. She was being asked by the checkout assistant if she’d brought her own bags. There was an element of resentment in the elderly lady’s response to this question which made the assistant explain: “I’m not being nosy, I have to ask.” She said this friendlily and it sounded like an explanation. But when I thought about it, it wasn’t an explanation. It wasn’t even a reassurance that the question was not a nosy one. She as a checkout assistant was not being nosy, no. But Sainsbury’s was being nosy. It was for their marketing data again. And could this be of any use to the shopper? If they find that enough people don’t bother to bring their own bags will they drop the incentives to do this and soften up the greenly greenly approach?

The checkout assistant didn’t seem to notice the umbrage and carried on grinning. She commented on the elderly lady’s pot plant. And so the elderly lady repeated her explanation on how to get more plants for your money, “Put em back to back . . . they like it back to back . . . ”

Alec told me he has a friend who’d been buying cat food for over 10 years when he received a letter from Tesco expressing concern for his aging cat: did he want to take out Tesco pet insurance?

Supermarkets can be nosy places.