It’s no secret that the family on my mum’s side is bigger, louder and more addicted to WhatsApp than my dad’s East Anglian contingent. But there was always something relaxing and magical about our childhood trips up to Suffolk, and by some strange alchemy Tash and I both picked the same weekend to induct Cormac and Randi respectively into the joys of Coney Weston and Knettishall Heath. Naturally we had both also asked our cousin Julie to drive us around our old haunts on a rainy Saturday afternoon, and (since she is wonderful and very patient) that is how we came to be loitering together outside of our grandparents’ old bungalow taking photos through the hedges and assuring the new owners that we’d leave in a minute.
As it happens, Randi has been a fan of Bury St Edmunds since her very first visit to the UK and this trip only cemented its reputation as the foodie capital of Suffolk. (In all honesty, good luck finding better toasties anywhere else.) We also hung around for the Bury St Edmunds Fireworks Spectacular, an event which looked to be in some danger of cancellation for the second year running before the organisers determined that all of the undeniable wind and rain was nevertheless blowing away from us all in an acceptable direction. Pretty fireworks, check. First mulled wine of the winter season, check. My only complaint was the lack of any bonfire, which I still need to prove to Randi is actually a core component of Bonfire Night.
After the fireworks, Randi and I stayed over with Julie in the village of Harleston before enjoying a delicious farm-sourced breakfast and hanging out with her partner David, her parents Derek and Ginny and her son Kieron who (shockingly and frighteningly, since in my head he’s about 8) is now an actual adult who can chat to me about work while also very kindly cutting my hair. (This is a professional skill he has, not some odd family ritual involving clippers.) It was so wonderful to see everyone again after way too long and I’m already excited about our next trip up there! Although hopefully next time we won’t have to spend over an hour on the way back stranded in a field between Diss and Stowmarket after our train “hit an obstruction” while the driver went back-and-forth with control about whether it was a better option to (a) empty the last two carriages and proceed on at 5mph without breaks or (b) summon a “rescue train” and evacuate over the tracks…*
Continuing the nostalgic childhood theme, last week I had a delightful meet-up with my old piano teacher, Simon. I’d love to say something normal like “we just ran into each other after all these years!” but the truth is that I was inspired by an old photo to stalk him over e-mail and invite him to dinner and drinks which he graciously accepted despite not having seen me since I was 10. (I wasn’t even a very good piano player, to be honest, but he was too tactful to mention this.)
When not stalking people I have also been seeing a bunch of good stuff recently, starting with Translations at the National which is the kind of complex, multi-layered play (about the colonialism of the English language in Ireland) which makes me wish I was still in an A-Level English class to examine it all. Katie and I continued our classic Doctor Who odyssey in her new flat with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (a flawed masterpiece) while Randi and I went out to the cinema to see Chris Morris’s new film The Day Shall Come (the spiritual successor to Four Lions which comes close to matching it for enjoyable terrorist slapstick before the brutal ending) and to the London Palladium to see German comedian Henning Wehn in stand-up. (You know him! He’s the one from the panel shows!) We also explored Putney, walked along the banks of the Thames a lot and met up with Harriet and her husband Zach for lunch in Golders Green so that Randi could finally lay her hands on some decent challah bread in London.
This week was also the week that I got a little too invested in Halloween. I’ve never really been a huge fan myself – give me mulled wine over fancy dress any day – but I do appreciate other people enjoying themselves, especially when those other people are young children who have made the effort to dress up and shakedown their neighbours for sweets. So I raced back from work early to put out a few lanterns, affix a scary doorbell to the door and pour out 50 mini bags of Haribo and some chocolate into some large bowls. For a horrible hour I proceeded to pace around our flat, sticking my head out the window and looking forlornly up and down the empty street. But, then, a Halloween miracle! The trick-or-treaters arrived, the children’s demands for sugar were met and the spooky tones of the scary doorbell rang out into the dark for all of Tulse Hill to hear.
*Disappointingly, they ended up going with the first option.
I promise I had every intention of taking Randi on a whistlestop tour of the capital of the North when we originally planned our weekend in Manchester. But given that she had just run an eventful half-marathon in Edinburgh a week earlier, I think we can be forgiven for sharing a lazy weekend with Rob, Sarah and their dog Juniper in Stockport instead.
We were legitimately staying in Greater Manchester, at least, with honest-to-goodness tram stops and everything. And we very much enjoyed lunching at Altrincham Market and walking Juniper around the maze-like Walkden Gardens. What really took me back, though, was spending an afternoon trying out all of the crazy new weapons in Worms WMD. Robert was the person who first introduced me to Worms a million years ago at his house one day after school, and it was gleefully nostalgic to pick up the battle again in 2019. The only thing that’s changed is that one of us now owns a house…
Talking of homeowners, back in London we also hung out with nearby Matt and Laura in their wonderful flat which – based on their stories of dodgy electrics and chipboard walls – has clearly been a long, slow labour of love over the past few years. But now they’ve pulled so far ahead in the homeliness stakes (the British definition, not the American one) that they can whip out homemade raspberry ripple ice cream after dinner with homegrown raspberries from the garden. Very impressive!
Dear diary-masquerading-as-a-blog,
Oh dear. We all know that these are the worst kind of blog posts. I’ve waited too long, haven’t taken any photos for weeks, and now there’s just a crazy mess of random stuff waiting to be blogged about with no narrative coherence whatsoever.
I could give up entirely, declare blog bankruptcy for September and start again next month. But that would obviously be contrary to my archivist heart. So, instead, I’m going to junk the whole pretence of narrative coherence and go with a post-modernist take instead…
I’m queuing for a drink at an underground bar/music venue in Hoxton. From behind me, a woman reaches out and taps gently on the shoulder of a younger woman in front. “Hey, are you here on your own? Feel free to come sit with us, if you’d like. We’re very friendly and we don’t bite.” This is how you know you’re in a good place, isn’t it? The woman accepted her offer, I got my beer and the crowd clearly loved our evening of Anthony Blaize and Tabi Gazele. At work the next week I reported back to Tabi that we really did leave in a happy buzz and felt that we’d been let in on an amazing secret. Her voice is incredible. If you can, I highly recommend listening before you read any more of this post.
Katie and I sequestered ourselves in the living room to watch a six-part 1972 Jon Pertwee adventure, The Sea Devils. As you do. It really upped my appreciation of Jo Grant – she’s much more resourceful than I remember. Midway through our Indian delivery arrived and we tucked into our curries. I realised that I kept glancing at Katie’s plate, expecting her to have leftovers that I could steal, but we’re too much alike as siblings for that to work and everything was eagerly consumed.
In contrast, I was surprisingly bad at remembering to eat during my night out with Tash this week. We just sat outside at a pub table near work, drank our Heinekens and talked about anything and everything until I arrived back at Tulse Hill station and realised that I’d had half a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. Thankfully, Tulse Hill is the kind of place where you can score six chicken nuggets and chips for £2.49 at 11.15pm on a Wednesday night (cash only). They were delicious.
Shopping for a baby shower is stressful. I keep trying to out-think everyone else who will be shopping for the same baby. Can I be the cutest? Or maybe that’s a trap… maybe the the best thing to do is to turn up with something practical, and then you look wise and knowing. But I’m not wise and knowing about babies, and anyway it’s too late because I’m already in love with the ‘activity fox’. It clearly doesn’t offend Frankie and Anya too much because they tagged along with Andrew and Bonnie a few weeks later in a return visit to Tulse Hill, during which London decided that it was summer again and we celebrated with ice-creams from Brockwell Park Café.
Our guest room has chalked up another visitor! I trundled my mum’s little black suitcase all the way from Brixton before we headed out for Turkish food with Randi. I think I’ve conjured up the only Turkish place which includes what is effectively a burrito on their menu but I am not complaining. Unexpectedly, the lights went down at 9pm and a belly dancer appeared, shimmying around the room to the rhythm of her finger cymbals and balancing a giant sword on her head.
Sanna and I are sitting outdoors by the fountains at Granary Square around the back of King’s Cross. A man barrels up to us out of the darkness, waving a phone around, explaining that he has no signal and could he please borrow my phone to call his friend? I freeze, stuck in that tricky zone between wanting to be nice and not wanting a stranger to run off with my phone. But then inspiration strikes. “Is a hotspot OK?” He thinks. “Yes, yes, a hotspot would work.” He hands me his phone instead, I connect us, and then he either calls his friend or performs a gorgeous spot of improv. Either way, he appears to be drunkenly jubilant and thanks me in various languages before running off again. I feel like I was handed a real moral dilemma and totally cheated.
I gave blood today! My first time since 2014, since Brits are not allowed to donate blood in the US, and the nurse went through my questionnaire with a straight face before teasing me that despite the gap in my records I’d never be able to run away from them forever. I’m especially fond of medical professionals this week, since my dad had a spell in hospital (he’s OK!) and, although this is a giant cliché, you really never stop being impressed by NHS staff. ❤
The last time I saw my something-cousin-Tessa-something-removed was in 2011 when I stayed with her family in Los Angeles. (I lazily failed to blog that trip, but I remember loving that family and wrote in my journal that they were all “polite, welcoming, warm, funny, clearly very creative and stylish”.) Now, very excitingly, Tessa is studying in London and joined me, Tash and Cormac to revive the tradition of eating my mum’s famous summer pudding (made with blackberries from the garden) and custard. “It’s like the most English thing our family ever did!” notes Tash.
Here’s a catchy tune I found tacked on to the end of an old cassette from the era when I was very young and very into copying things between audio tapes:
This is it
It’s happy learning
Fun and music all the way
Lots of smiles
With happy learning
As you practice every day
On the tape it sets up a nice introduction by Floella Benjamin about counting numbers, but now the final line strikes me as a little threatening. What happens if you don’t practice every day?
On Friday evening I skipped out of work (not literally, but close) to meet Randi on platform 4 at Blackfriars station for a Mystery Train to a Mystery Station and then a nearby Mystery Location. (This was a good format – I like mysteries!) The Mystery Station turned out to be Sydenham Hill, which feels like it’s been built in the middle of a forest, and from there we walked to Sydenham Hill Wood which is a fantastic example of the amazing places which lurk undiscovered all across London. Back in the nineteenth century there used to be a railway running through this area and it’s possibly the first time in my life where I’ve looked down from a bridge at ex-railway track – now very much a wood again – and thought “hmm, maybe we didn’t really need that one”.
Our expeditions into wild frontiers continued at the weekend with our fifth London Loop walk, from Chigwell to the ridiculously-named Havering-atte-Bower. I did promise I wasn’t going to do an in-depth review of each walk, and that is still true. I stand by that. But this walk was notable for several reasons:
- It rained a lot. We hadn’t prepared for this eventuality, and had a low moment as we fought through some mud and brambles in the rain and wondered what on earth we were doing with our weeknd.
- After asking for directions from a uniformed staff member in Hainault Forest – very much still in the rain – she pointed us on our way before adding “and if you see three cows… tell them I’m looking for them”. Only in Hainault.
- By the time we reached Havering Country Park the sun had come out and we could enjoy a picnic overlooking London and some beautiful giant sequoia trees imported from California. Who knew?
- The bus service in Havering-atte-Bower is subpar.
Other than lots of London-based walking, the highlights of the last two weeks have been seeing Daryl and Ermila again on one of their many quick visits, heading back to Dishoom (dining tip courtesy of Catherine and AJ) for brunch – it’s as good as you would think – and catching the stunning play The Lehman Trilogy near the end of its West End run. This is a three-act, three-hour story (adapted from the original Italian, which is five hours) of Lehman Bros bank starting from its beginning as a rural store in Alabama run by three Jewish immigrant brothers from Bavaria. The actors playing the three brothers go on to play every single other character in the drama right up until the demented implosion of the bank in 2008, and everything about the play – from the script to the set to the performances – was superb.
Finally, last night I caught up once again with my school friend Harriet. That’s my primary school friend, to be exact, and since leaving primary school we’ve probably only met up every 5-7 years or so (the answers will be in this blog’s archives). But somehow we always seem to pick up where we left off, even though she’s now an actual doctor and not just a 10 year-old planning to become one.
I wouldn’t say that the last few weeks have been quiet exactly, but we have settled into more of a routine, finally getting some proper decorations up in the flat (I think this is outing #5 for my venerable Underground to Anywhere poster, which has made it across the Atlantic and back with me) and enjoying a few weekends in a row without any major travel. Naturally we’ve used this time to plan future travel, because otherwise there would be nothing to blog about later.
We have had several welcome guests (and two unwelcome ones), starting with Katie (in the welcome category) who came with Tash and Cormac to inspect our flat and local pub before staying overnight for an intensive Saturday of Grand Austria Hotel. Also still in the welcome category is Villy, who popped in on one of her head-spinning globetrotting tours to sample the delights of Herne Hill Market and Brockwell Park. My favourite moment was in the walled garden when she exclaimed, in a real burst of national pride, that Bulgaria was the world’s biggest exporter of rose oil. So now you know too.
Rounding out the welcome category are Sophie and Irfan, who stopped by for tea after we all had dinner together at the Mercato Metropolitano food court. (If you haven’t been just because it’s south of the river, you should go! Although it was worrying to hear from Irfan that after 5 years of living nearby his North London identity has totally slipped away.) It’s been two years since I last saw Sophie and god knows how long since I last saw Irfan, but it was reassuring just how quickly we slipped back into our old uni patterns of bullying Sophie for not knowing enough about the Tube. Even after I marched us around in circles in the rain looking for the wrong bus stop.
The two unwelcome visitors? A pair of mice, which clearly approve of our decorating because they suddenly saw fit to explore the living room. We may have gone a tad over the top in response, culminating this afternoon in a protracted stakeout, a large saucepan and some extraordinary rendition to a neighbouring road. Don’t worry, we’ve got this, and you should still feel free to visit us.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve also had lovely catch-up drinks with Peter Mandler, a work-organised steak night in which I didn’t eat any steak, ‘lunch’ (i.e. the feeding of the five thousand) at Carolyn’s with Aussie cousins Deb & Rob as well as Cindy and little Isaac, amongst others, and a long night out with Clark where I grilled him about Brexit as if he had been summoned to a select committee. (Sorry, Clark! Just catching up!) After a two-month break – for which you can blame railway engineering works – Randi and I also completed our fifth section of the London Loop walks. That name is slightly misleading for a route which stuck mostly in Essex, but I’ll forgive it because it yielded our first (delicious) blackberries of the whole endeavour.
Helen on It’s (waiting) time.: “Fabulous news, congratulations to you both! X” Jun 8, 21:51
