Coffee shops are sociological choices

Back at hospital today, for more x rays and ultrasounds, and an epic three hour wait to see my frazzled orthopaedic consultant. Gaps between each of my four appointments at hospital today meant I had time to tank up on overpriced tea and coffee and a bewildering range of croissants, toasties and pastries at the array of cafes near the hospital. I've been to this hospital so many times now that I've become well acquainted with these cafes, and though in the early days I could hardly tell one from the other, in recent months their unique propositions have become a lot clearer, not least from their clientele. And the division is really quite hilarious. First up, Starbucks. Starbucks is constantly busy because although it does not charge much less than its cutesie village-green neighbours, it manages to deliver its goods with the air of one who knows your time is valuable and you don't want to spend it doing the Times Cryptic Crossword. So commuters love it. But, interestingly, so do the post natal groups. Starbucks opposite the hospital is HEAVING for the best part of the day with saggy post natal Mums and their bawling newborns, who clearly coalesce for some group therapy, and presumably have decided that Starbucks is already so noisy with the constant slam of cups and bawling of TWO SKINNY LATTES TO GO (or whatever) that the collective bawling of their bewildered offspring will go unnoticed. And they're right about that. Of course those who do notice, vote with their feet and head to the other cafes, but there too there are distinct social differences. The artisan bakery with the "tearoom" that looks as if it's been added as a chi chi afterthought, is populated by grey haired blokes in their fifties who look like playwrights. The cafe nearest the hospital, the only one with a front that is totally open ie no door to squeeze through, is where orthopaedics go. Most days it's a health hazard for any able bodied person because of the risk of tripping over crutches that are splayed across the floor. The one halfway up the hill, with tasteful hanging baskets, wooden slab tables, is for ladies who lunch with tiny children in prep school uniform.  The one with the word "OLD" which is in fact spelt "OLDE" is frequented by much older women in hobo clothes with paint stains on their hands. My problem is, the absence of cafe for my type, which I would define loosely as, wild haired, harried working Mum whose clothes look as if she threw them on in the dark.. So I end up at the Costa coffee on the hospital forecourt which is frequented by inpatient escapees desperate for a fag. I don't smoke so I look a bit lonely, but I have to admit that even though they are all in hospital gowns, pyjamas or ratty looking trackie bottoms, with drips hanging off them, I do, worryingly, fit in with the general look. There is a terrible message in there somewhere.

Watermelon Pip Spitting Competitions

I work in Central London and it would be fair to say that the daily commute, which takes me on foot through Trafalgar Square and St James Park, is getting increasingly stressful. With all the hype about the millions who will be descending on London for the Olympics, nobody said anything about the millions who would be descending on London for the Diamond Jubilee. Hoards of lost tourists wandering up and down the Mall disconsolately looking at maps, or milling in their droves around Buckingham Palace, or watching the Grendadiers rehearsing their bit for the Trooping of the Colour, means the daily commute now involves squeezing through aimless hoards, or worse, talking to them. For myself, I have an escape plan for the Jubilee weekend. Not, you understand, from the Jubilee - that simply won't be possible, not least since we are going to a chocolate box village in the Cotswolds which I imagine will have shut off every available through road for a Jubilee exhibition of tea cosies, or similar - but an escape from the Jubilee in London. Let's face it, with all those tourists, what are the chances of seeing anything of the flotilla or of the marching Grenadiers,except on BBC? Meantime, the warm weather continues so I am inspired to invest in a chunk of watermelon. I love watermelon, not just for the melon, but for the seeds you can spit out (yes, I am that disgusting), and the joy of my adolescent life, watermelon pip spitting competitions, is a legacy I fully intend to pass on to my kids. Like many pointless activities - beer mat flipping etc - there is an art to it, getting enough saliva behind the pip to achieve a projectile effect - well, you get the gist. And since birds love them, I consider this a highly organic pastime. And for those of you scratching your heads and wondering why on earth anyone would bother, here's the thing. Tomorrow I have six, yes six appointments at my local hospital, all related to my orthopaedic "issues". This being the NHS, none of these six departments share systems, nor communicate with each other in any way, which means each visit needs separate questionnaires, blood tests, assessments and waiting lists. There are many sources of stress in life, of which the most acknowledged include moving house and getting divorced, but I would put hospital waiting rooms right up there. For each clinic there is at least a one hour waiting time, so without any idea of when you will be seen, by whom or for how long, you are trapped in a windowless, miserable room with understaffed stressed out clerks, wishing to the Almighty that you could be anywhere else, anywhere please but stuck here. Usually after a marathon like this I have to go for a furious 80 length swim, or I indulge in major shopping therapy, because frankly it's either that or it's run amok with an axe. So. Watermelon pip spitting competitions are a foil to this angst-inducing, mind numbingly bureaucratic, dehumanising, demoralising, bureaucracy. Nuff said.

Cheesecake and water fights

The unexpectedly fabulous weather that hit London over the last week as us Brits in paroxyms of delight. We have all been running around in bikinis and cutaways. Unfortunately, we in the South East are still having to observe a hosepipe ban. My kids and I have circumvented this with water guns, filled every five seconds from the indoor tap or the water butt (slug ridden, unfortunately, and the kids are a bit squeamish). Water guns are notoriously badly made - OK, I do tend to come over a bit neanderthal with one in my hands but I've never yet used one that had a shelf life of longer than a week. So, we graduated pretty quickly to plastic bottles, mini watering cans and washing up bowls. Yup, we got soaked, and it was brilliant. Of course, the kids were at a huge advantage having two working feet each compared to my one and a half. When you have to hobble and cannot run, accuracy becomes crucial and I've never been a good shot, which meant that the lawn got a good old watering along with the kids. When we weren't finding creative ways round the hosepipe ban, we were making cheesecakes - chocolate ones, lots of them. A Jewish festival with cheesecake at its heart has my name written all over it, and I turned out cheesecake after chocolate cheesecake. Organic Green and Black dark chocolate which melts mesmerisingly, smoothly and creamily; digestive biscuit base; and, loads of low fat cheese and eggs/egg yolks, with golden caster sugar, sour cream and lemon juice. This started life as a Nigella recipe but I must have made it a hundred times and have played around with the ingredients so much that it's taken on a life of its own. All I know is, that the tart contrast of lemon juice and sour cream, to the sugar and intensity of the dark chocolate, produces a texture you would willingly sell your possessions to get a mouthful of. And the greatest thing about a cheesecake that uses yolks, is all that leftover egg white, subsequently whipped up, sugar and chocolate chips added, turns itself beautifully and obligingly into a mountain of meringues. OK OK, the festival didn't call for meringues. I did.

White Chocolate Mousse White Chocolate

I travelled this week. A lot. I ventured over to the Western Balkans, a process that requires a stop off in Vienna. Vienna International Airport may at some point around 20 years ago have been able to cope with the volume of passenger traffic but it certainly can't now. It is probably the only airport in the Northern Hemisphere that I know, which has absolutely no seats by the departure gates, except for those taken up by tired Japanese tourists who have arrived three hours early for their return flight to Tokyo. But it is The Gateway to Eastern Europe so that is where I find myself undressing in front of two impassive strangers at security whose hand held security gadgets have bleeped loudly and fiercely on contact with my new foot. I make the horrendous mistake of saying that I have metal in my foot and this probably explains the bleeping. From their reaction I deduce that they have decided I have swallowed metal explosives from the way in which I am frogmarched summarily to a cubby hole that looks not unlike a communal changing room in Top Shop. There I am asked to strip off, and these two women take my clothes and run their buzzer over them, and then hand them back one by one. It's not fun,this experience - it is mildly humiliating, a bit bewildering as nobody explains to you what will happen or how long you will be there - and, surreally, they insist you leave your belongings sitting abandoned, bumping against the edge of the x ray conveyor belt, screaming STEAL ME, or at least they might as well be, since my IPad, watch, toiletries and phone are on display in one tray while my bag with passport, credit cards and cash gapes open in another. Luckily nobody takes advantage of this unasked for opportunity - I am given back my clothes, thanked, and asked to leave, which I do, very quickly, before they can change their minds. In the course of this business trip I take four flights, and go through four sets of security, and in three out of four I am marched to The Cubby Hole. It is tiring, but mostly it is demoralising, and when I am demoralised, chocolate is the answer. Luckily even a jaded, dated, overrun airport like Vienna has lots of chocolate in its tiny Duty Free shop but I shun this - Cadburys isn't going to cut it after the day I have had, so I head to the deli shop which appears to be bursting with Mozartkugel. I tried these when I was studying German in Salzburg and I thought they were disgusting. Gloopy, marzipan, yukky...but behind them, I Spy Lindt. I Love Lindt. I am totally seduced by their adverts depicting this single chocolate chef stirring a mesmerising concoction of runny melted milk chocolate. Even though I know he cannot possibly have made every single Lindt chocolate bunny by himself, the personal pride that he radiates as he lifts one up touches every chocolate urge I have. So, I make my way to the Lindt shelf and there I find one I haven't tried before (which is a reason to buy it on its own) - white chocolate mousse white chocolate bars. Each piece of white chocolate has fluffy white chocolate mousse inside it. Oh, and there's a milk chocolate one. And a dark chocolate one! I buy all of them. Then I see Lindt pistachio chocolate so I buy that, and then I notice that Milka does a great line in chocolate coated popcorn so I buy that too. I shlep the lot all the way home- yes, they survive the flight, although not intentionally - my plan was to dispatch a whole bar while watching Howards End on my IPad which is my idea of inflight heaven, but within 2 minutes of takeoff I am put off all food by my disgusting neighbour who snarfs down two gin and tonics in rapid succession, then falls asleep almost instantly, snoring and belching inflight jungle nuts. So, I bring my chocolate home, and with hitherto unmatched self control, keep it in the fridge till dinner, when I bring it out, rip open the white chocolate bar, and three out of the four of us snarf the lot down. And it's fabulous. I realise there are people out there who could not begin to understand how a person who appreciates Montezuma and Valrhona could be entirely content with the cocoa butter concoction that is white chocolate, but I am one of those people. I am discerning about my chocolate, but I am not discriminating. Now, where is that milk chocolate mousse bar?

French Toast and Stress Relief Oil

I bought this product years ago that calls itself Stress Relief Oil. At the time I had a minor wrench in one of my ankles - too much Stairmaster - and this stuff came in a cool metal bottle with a pump, and I was on the hunt for TLC and was well and truly seduced by the stuff. I rubbed it on every morning and evening and quite frankly it probably had no useful ingredient in it at all but it smelt nice, and had an appropriate name, and in a few days the pain was all gone. I never finished it, lost interest in it and it found its way into the Red Bag of Doom. The Red Bag of Doom is a freebie make up bag I was given by a sales assistant at Clarins once, into which I put all my discarded skincare to languish. Every 5 years or so I clean it out, chuck virtually everything that is in there away, and start again. In the last few days I have got so fed up with ice blocks on my feet I have decided to change tack and, emptying out the Red Bag of Doom, I found my placebo buddy. I smeared it on my knee and my foot and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, and yep, it may not be helping but it's MUCH nicer than frostbite. Emboldened by the nice warm feeling in the knee and the foot I decide to treat my family to French Toast. Or cinnamon bread or whatever you call it in your particular world. Do they call it French Toast in France? Asks one of my kids, totally innocently, and after pondering I say, I have no idea but I'd hazard a guess that they definitely don't. My family last had French Toast in a safari lodge in South Africa and have been begging for it ever since. I have been refusing to make it, as for no obvious reason, especially not for someone who bakes cakes of a thousand calories, it has been on my Too Fattening List, along with Mars Bars (and not much else). But Stress Relief Oil does not just loosen up my stiff new metatarsals, it also makes me a nicer person. Or more of a sucker. Either way, I find myself beating up egg, milk and cinnamon, and dipping leftover challah in it. Challah is brilliant. A fraction of the cost of brioche and the great thing about it is, you have it in your bread bin EVERY weekend to play with. I fry it up, dot it with syrup, dust it with icing sugar, and serve it up to my disbelieving family, who dispatch it in a matter of seconds.

Chocolate pudding

It's been 5 days since the boot came off. Actually maybe it's more than 5. Truth is the whole thing's turned into a blur of pain and muscle spasm. Every day I've got myself to my local pool and ploughed up and down it, revelling in the millimetres of increased movement in the foot. Every day I've done my water squats, water balancing, water hopping and water walking. I've even got to the point of climbing out of the pool using the steps (you know! like able bodied people do!) instead of winching myself out in the special disabled chair that you have to wait so long for someone to come and operate that you have hyopothermia by the time they've hauled you out) or  heaving myself out on my front with my Popeye-like arms (months of crutches will do that to your biceps and triceps), and then slowly and tortuously lifting myself from beached whale to one legged synchronised swimmer position. Climbing out of the pool! On both feet! Very exciting. But the minute I have to make regular contact with a flat and uncompromising surface - pavements, roads, anywhere that isn't grass really - the pain begins. My legs fight it so hard they feel like they have been through several workouts after just a 15 minute walk from the station to home. It's wearing, exhausting, sometimes tearful, and pretty thankless - after all, a visible walking aid elicits sympathy, while no apparent reason for stumbling and swearing denotes either chronic lack of basic fitness or, well, drunkenness. Not a good impression at all. So there has to be an antidote, a reward, an escape. Yesterday as I hauled myself into the house on feet that were begging to be slotted into large blocks of ice and left there forever, I thought about what might meet the case here. And the first one was, a welcomely open bottle of Beyerskloof Pinotage. And the other was, chocolate pudding. Everyone has their ultimate comfortfest, and I'm not particularly loyal about mine (except for the fact that it inolves some form of cake, usually chocolate based) but there really is something ultimately brow-soothing about chocolate pudding. Chocolate pudding in my schoolgirl memory is that blancmange-wobbly stuff that came out of tins and was plonked unceremoniously on my tin plate at school by the scowling Kitchen Manager. I didn't care, I loved it even back then. This was stuff that slipped down you without you even having to go to the trouble of tasting it. These days my chocolate pudding is a bit more sophisticated than that, but actually not that much. I use a Nigella recipe - again (Honestly? If it's Chocolate It Has To Be Nigella) which is totally genius. It takes all of about 7 minutes to make and literally involves the same plonking method as that of my school memories. Get some self raising flour. Chuck it into a bowl with some cocoa powder, sugar and ground hazelnuts. Whisk up egg, milk, vanilla and butter in another bowl. Combine the two. Smear it into a buttered dish. That's the body of your chocolate pudding. But the magic happens in the sauce. Add loads and loads of dark Muscovado sugar, to loads and loads of cocoa powder. It comes up looking like dark, grainy sand. Scatter it richly across your pudding mixture. And then get a jug of boiling water and pour it over the top. Don't mix it in. It goes into the oven looking, disconcertingly, like something your kids would hail as the best raw material for mud pies. But when it comes out of the oven 35 minutes or so later, it has transformed. It has turned into an unctuous, sticky, molten, steaming, fragrant, unbelievably rich, chocolate pudding. Aaaah. I ease my feet out of my ice blocks - now they've returned to their normal size I can actually get them into my Fitflop slippers and stand up, albeit a bit unsteadily (all that pinotage...), I scoop two spoons of chocolate pudding into the bowl, pad into the lounge, park myself in front of Master and Commander (that film has more swashbuckling eye candy than a girl has a right to expect), and I'm in Melinda Decompression Heaven.

Being a citizen is risky

I am mid hobble to Charing Cross station, where I start my commute home. Seconds before I reach the steps down to the tube, a guy crosses my path and as he does so, he chucks a screwed up piece of paper on to the ground in front of me. Instinctively I bend down and pick it up. Excuse me mate, I say, nicely but very, very clearly, you've dropped this. He looks at me in a split second of disbelief, then recovers and says, Ididn't drop it. I threw it. Well, I say pleasantly, hand still outstretched, perhaps you could throw it into a bin. He takes the litter from me, then it dawns on him and he loses it. What are you, trying to be a BLOKE now? He say, loudly and sneeringly. No, I reply calmly, I just want to see a clean city. Actually I'm thinking, what an interesting train of thought. Do blokes pick up litter but girls don't? What he actually means - that he would only take a challenge from a man, for challenge is undoubtedly how he interprets this episode - is too stupid to bother deconstructing. It does however confirm two things. Firstly, this man is a numbskull. And secondly, that I think I need to duck. Fast. And I'm right. The only dustbin here is your MOUTH, he screams, and lunges at me. I step aside. He stumbles, a few people gather round to watch, and the guy giving away Evening Standard newspapers intervenes. Come on mate, he says, pulling the guy to his feet. The guy straightens up and heads off. On his way, he let's off a stream of insults. Garbage mouth! Lesbian! Etc. As I make my way into the station I find I am a bit shaken. Being a citizen is pretty risky stuff, presumably because people who toss their rubbish on to the street are morons and don't take kindly to reminders, however gentle, of what it takes to be a social being. Hey, but as he stomped off, though he was yelling silly stuff (I LOVED the lesbian comment), he hadn't let go of his litter. And the other good thing? I had leftover White cake to look forward to.

I hate gyms

Baking with the kids, and between us we produce a white cake with white chocolate buttercream icing. This is another one from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook, but because everything is in American we mess it up the first time. Really, what is a stick of butter? But our real downfall was the misunderstanding over confectioner's sugar. This, my friends, is icing sugar. Not to be confused with any other kind,as we unfortunately did, thereby producing a hapless mess of congealed granulated sugar, butter, white chocolate and milk. Yuk. The kids are aghast as I throw away the whole lot but I explain to them that professional chefs do it all the time. They look at me with compassion.I hope their look does not mean, but Mum you aren't one and at this rate you never will be. Cake done, I head to my gym. I have been a member of this pretty sorry establishment for at least ten years and in all that time all that has happened is that the quality of the kit has gone down while membership fees have gone up. And up. And up again. As I contemplate the pool in which I need to do my one hour of brain-challenging physiotherapy, wondering how to create the space among the writhing mass of limbs and froth, I think pretty wryly that paying over the odds for the privilege of kicking someone in the teeth who has got in the wrong lane for the tenth time and doesn't care,seems like an odd motivation for spending my money. The truth is,that if I had half the chance I would stop going to this smelly, poorly maintained establishment with pissed off staff who are paid peanuts and bugger off after a few months to be personal trainers, and exercise outside. I read magazine articles about running buddies and boot camps and walking clubs and bicycle tracks, and think to myself, this is what it has to be about. But the problem is that this is a fantasy. There are two non negotiables for my exercise regime. Firstly, I need to exercise in water. But what about Hampstead pond, said a mate to me when I put this argument. Well let's see. Scuzzy as my gym pool often is, there are two things it isn't. It is not freezing bloody cold,which Hampstead pond is for eleven and a half months of the year. And it is not bogged down in olive coloured weed and suspicious looking plankton. And secondly, when I exercise, I like to be able to emerge without shivering or soaking my keks off. And let's face it, this is Britain. It's rained every day since the beginning of Spring for goodness sake. I would love to do a Boot Camp workout but it has to be on fluffy bright green, patch free grass, in dappled sunlight. Anything less is deeply unappetising because it involves involuntary discomfort. And biking? I am scared witless of cycling in London. Frankly driving isn't all that palatable - and if I have to duck, dive and swerve in my car, what must it be like on a bike? The upshot of all this is, that my third rate gym has me captive. I am doomed to share the sauna first thing in the morning with a posse of blokes who convene there after their workouts and shave. Yup, in the sauna. Or the changing room, with swimming class Mums who peel off the plastic blue pool safe covers for their shoes, and abandon them on the floor for the cleaner who is probably paid significantly less than a living wage, to be told off for not clearing up. Or the weights area, with paunchy blokes of a certain age who grunt so obscenely I could be forgiven for imagining I am either in the reception area of some Nevada brothel or I'm sharing a court with Monica Seles. I need to exercise, and I love to exercise. If anyone has a gym-free, weather-friendly suggestion let's hear it...

It's all in your head

OK stand by, gird your loins, deep breaths, take a few steps back. This one is going to be a rant. Anyone who has had a major injury or any kind of reconstructive surgery will know, that the hardest part comes when you think it should be easy. The bit where the bandages, the plaster cast, the surgical boot etc, come off, and you emerge with your new whatever it is to twirl away into the sunset. And in fact it's the reverse. You take off the surgical boot to find that your new foot is so swollen and stiff it won't fit into any but your largest and ugliest trainers, that it hurts like hell to take a step, and that by the time you have made it to the top of your street all the muscles from your heel to your bum are screaming from the effort of compensating. That, my friends, is what physiotherapy is all about. It is about pushing, pushing, pushing through that pain, that refusal of your body to do what it must do, to get it to a place where the machinery is functioning in a perfectly balanced formation. Our bodies are designed for the cop out route. Any excuse to move sloppily and the body will do it. The slightest ache and other parts of you will step in and do the job instead, thus sending you right down the slippery slope of referral pain, collapsing joints, blah blah blah. To be successful at physiotherapy you have to be really, really brave. Really, really committed. Perhaps even a bit crazy. But you also, I think, need a goal. Do you think, at the end of this, I will be able to run? I ask my physiotherapist. I have in my head an objective of doing the Race For Life, which I did just once a few years back and absolutely loved - masses upon masses of women and girls clad in pink running, jogging or walking, but mainly CHATTING their way through a 5k run for cancer research. My physiotherapist refuses to commit herself. I get why that is. Yes of course you'll be able to, she might say, and then I find I can't, and then I sue her right? Except that, to refuse to admit an element of the aspirational in this journey of difficulty and pain, is to deny a very basic instinct to reach for the stars. We all do better when we have a goal, even if that goal seems totally, ridiculously unreachable. I am in daily admiration of people whose blogs and columns I read, who have suffered appalling damage to their bodies and who have a non negotiable determination to achieve rehabilitation goals that their medical practitioners chip away at by throwing statistics at them about plateauing or whatever. Let's be clear about this. Medical science can only get you so far. I have worked witih some brilliant physiotherapists but they and I both know that ninety percent of my recovery, my ability to restore full mobility and be that Olympic Marathon Runner (no! no! I yelped at her, it's just a 5k FUN RUN - but I might as well not have bothered - a fun run for someone with a brand new foot is the equivalent goal of emulating Paula Radcliffe in her prime), is all about my own mental will. And since I am now on my third round of rehabilitation after three sets of surgery, nobody knows this better than I. It is no coincidence that in each case I have "defied the odds" coming out of plaster/boots etc etc early, making shock gasp speedy recovery etc etc. How was that possible? Because I worked really, really hard at it. Because when I could not go on any further, I went on. Because when the pain was so bad it brought tears to my eyes, I muttered to myself, wiped away the tears, and did it again. Oh, and because I bake like crazy. Yup, there is a link. Baking, in case you have not yet worked this out fro my blog, is my consolation, my reward, my personal creative process. It is my escape, my place to unload stress, and most of all, it is a thing of beauty that I can control. Leg in plaster? Bake kneeling on a chair. Even when you feel at your very worst about yourself, producing a sponge cake dusted with icing and a few strawberries thrown on the side, reminds you that although it may feel as if your life is all about managing pain, you are still more than capable of generating beauty, and love, and a few inches on other peoples' waistlines.

Cheesecake

I blogged a while back about toffee crisp and almond cheesecake. But in fact cheesecakes are the centre of my baking world, and I make hundreds of them. The first cake I ever made was a mascarpone and lime cheesecake, taken from a recipe card freebie at Sainsburys. I made it over and over again, to the barely masked hilarity of my extended family, until I decided to take a brave leap into the unknown, and attempted Nigella's dark chocolate cheesecake. An instant hit, and it opened the floodgates. Pumpkin cheesecake with butterscotch sauce. New York cheesecake. White chocolate and raspberry cheesecake. Pecan and fudge cheesecake. And since I made the toffee crisp and almond cheesecake, adapted from the Magnolia Bakery receipe for Heath Bar cheesecake, I have played hari kiri with the toppings, courtesy of those mini bite things from Cadburys that I have been obsessing about recently. In fact my greatest baking triumph, was when I contributed a dark chocolate cheesecake for a charity auction, and it raised over 50 quid. That was, like, five years ago and I still get a warm glow whenever I think about it. I have made square ones and round ones, mini ones and party ones, bain marie cheesecakes and fridge cheesecakes. It has a satisfying stodge to it that your basic flour/butter/sugar combo cannot hold a candle to. Hence a rerun of the toffee crisp cheesecake was necessary as a celebration for the end of my first day, Sans Boot. It was hell. I don't know how I managed to lull myself into a reverse Cinderella fantasy that losing the boot would restore my mobility and endow me with a beautifully reconstructed left foot all in the same move, but what actually happened was, that the new foot emerged puffy, swollen and only able to fit into a pair of old trainers; the toe and heel refused to move at all so that walking turned into more of a painful half-hop up the street; the muscles in my left leg below the knee had so much wastage from three months of no use, and the right leg had had to work so much harder, that the right leg was twice the size of the left. In essence, it was a mess. But I am irrepressibly glass half full in my assessment of the day's boot-free experience, so as I staggered exhausted into the house, I figured I needed a major clap on the back for getting through it without falling over, spraining the other ankle, or simply giving up before I reached the tube station. Cheesecake. Cheesecake denotes effort where a sponge cake is more like, what this old thing?? Cheesecake shouts special, it shouts piggy, it shouts EAT ME. And we did. Lots.

RIP Surgical Boot

The hospital where my recent radical foot reconstruction took place 3 months ago has been the scene of nearly every health drama of my life and the lives of my kids. I have been in and out of the place so often that duty nurses know me by sight, an achievement of which I am, unsurprisingly, not particularly proud. If hospitals issued loyalty cards with a stamp for every procedure I'd probably be drinking my 20th free latte courtesy of the hospital canteen by now. If they gave stamps for every visit, I'd be a contender for the Guinness Book of Records. Well, I am back there today for a decisive appointment with my foot surgeon, who I hope will consign The Boot to history. Goodness knows I have worked hard enough to merit it. Five times a week in the pool, heaving myself on to my tiptoes, squatting up and down, walking length after length, and deploying mind over matter to move my stubborn new big toe, which has so much scar tissue around it it's like a fortress, and coaxing it to do anything requires a pain threshold few of us will ever reach in our lives. The surgeon takes x rays, looks at the foot from every angle, compares it to the other one, then does a 15 minute self congratulatory speech, which to be honest he probably deserves - swollen and stiff as it is, The New Foot is a thing of singular beauty compared to its gargoyle-like predecessor - and delivers my reward. I can stop wearing The Boot. Now I have to step up the physiotherapy to unstiffen the heel, the new arch and the new toe, and this is going to be painful in normal shoes but now is the time to do it. Well, I am ready for this of course, but the thing that is bothering me is not the pain or the months of physiotherapy. It is that I am now losing the only visible proof that I qualify for those specially assigned seats on busses and trains for those of us for whom standing for longer than a few seconds represents a major challenges. It's hard enough at the moment in the rush hour when people can't see you from the waist down. Last week, I had two fairly scary commuter episodes when very cross older ladies yelled at me for my selfishness, and frankly the bus both times was so packed it was impossible for me to hold my leg up so they could witness my qualifications to occupy a Disabled Seat. With the boot gone, it is time for artificial aids, as it were. I own a very cool collapsible black stick, and from tomorrow I will be making liberal use of it. The truth is that nothing less will drag a commuter from their own personal world. Oddly, nobody has yet asked me how it is that I manage to navigate Charing Cross station, which is huge and has a million stairs and corridors, without any walking prop, but the stick comes out as I walk up the platform, I lean on it to get in the carriage, I get myself into the seat freshly liberated by some other poor sod, and the stick gets folded up. Job done. The very exciting thing about No Boot is that our dining room chairs can now be returned to our dining table. For the last three months they have been living variously in bathrooms, hallways and stairs so I can sit whenever I need to. If you wanted to sit at our dining table for the last three months you had to move fast or you were consigned to the dilapidated old directors' chairs that are so low your eyes are about level with the tablecloth. Visitors to our home will be happy to have their line of sight restored. And of course, it means I no longer have to torture myself nightly about clothes. I can finally wear an outfit that will not lose all its dignity with the addition of The Boot. This is almost worth shelling out a whole new Post-Boot wardrobe for. But that requires effort and I have caught a cold, probably because of all the swimming sessions and the hobbling back home with wet hair in the rain. So, I decide not to go clothes shopping. Instead I polish off the last of the triple chocolate meringues I made at the weekend. There are quite a few left so this is an achievement.

Wispa bites and movies

Home from work, and checking my mail box for letters I find a courier delivery card. Sorry we missed you! it says. Ever noticed, by the way, how the use of exclamation marks is supposed to denote informality and friendliness? All it ever triggers in me is irritation but then I'm an eats shoots and leaves kind of person. An apology with an exclamation mark is not an apology, it's an ill-timed joke. Especially this one, which goes on to say, we have lefty your parcel...and then the next bit is filled out in handwriting by the courier. And he has written "in your wheelie bin". Yup. This courier has delivered my package into my dustbin. And he has done this on bin collection day, which would be hilarious if it were not so entirely inconceivable. What person puts your package in a dustbin? Many phone calls to the providers later, it remains a mystery. This is not because it cannot be cleared up, but because the customer service people have been briefed not to go off message and consequently when I talk to them, and I speak to four of them in the dealing of this matter, I get exactly the same script, complete, believe it or not, with exclamations. Your courier left my package in my bin, I say, Oh, I am so sorry your package has been lost! is the answer. But it hasn't been lost, I reply, it was put in my dustbin. That's fine! I will register your lost package and resend it to you immediately! See what I mean? Total absence of human interaction makes resolution of this otherwise very simple issue absolutely impossible. If I had the energy I'd pursue my questioning, not with any hope of finding out why my package was put in a bin, but to see how far I can push the customer service operative off message before her head starts spinning and she self destructs. But I do not have the energy. So I go into my kitchen, which is well stocked for a birthday party I am throwing later on. I excavate the supplies, emerge from the kitchen with a packet of Wispa Mini Bites, take them into the lounge and slump in front of Independence Day, one of my fave Hollywood blockbuster trash movies. I love these mini bite things. Some clever marketing bod at Cadburys had the bright idea of taking all their various chocolate brands, chopping them into bits, slapping them into bags and charging twice what you would pay for buying them whole, because they have saved you the energy and time you need to bite them. These are things you chuck in your gob like Homer Simpson and swallow them down without even thinking about it. Genius. What these bashed up chocolate bits are also excellent for, is cake decorations. For this party I have made a cheesecake, and as an afterthought I have sprinkled Twirl bites all over the top, put the cheesecake back in the oven for an hour switched off, and let the diminishing heat slowly melt the bottom of the Twirl bites into the surface of the cake. Cheesecake bliss.

After Eight Mints

I have a love hate relationship with After Eight Mints. They are right down there with Ferrero Rocher balls - they are retro in an uncompromisingly uncool way, they are cloying, they are low grade, and most importantly,they run out far too soon. But they also remind me of my childhood when they were the last word in cool, with the possible exception of filter coffee, which I never drank because I was strictly a Cadburys Chocolate Powder girl and coffee was off the scale bitter compared to my palm oil coated palate. Today was an After Eight kind of day. Oddly instead of the usual caterwauling from unoriginal commuters about injuries blah blah, I was first addressed by a nice elderly lady on the Northern Line who told me she loved the way I had folded my surgical sock over my surgical boot because it made it look smart (hmmm, I think - beauty in the eye of the beholder, particularly as the The Sock is one of those nasty inverted flannel leg warmer things that flatter nobody and has, besides, been through at least 50 washes, none of them whites, which has turned it an unappetising mousy colour). Then, as I was sunk deep into the Times Quick Crossword, which takes me ages to complete and makes me feel, routinely, like a total numbskull, a fabulously flamboyant image alighted on the Victoria Line. If you are a commuter in London you will know that we don't make eye contact with ANYONE - not because we are worried about weirdos or axe murderers, but because we simply abhor any kin of human interaction in our quest to get home, or to work. We use peripheral vision at all times. Tourists must be routinely freaked by the covert sidelong looks they get from us Londoners and though I've scoured the various London guides I see nobody has yet broken it to them. But perhaps we don't want to, perhaps we want them to be freaked, because if they are, they won't come back and that'll mean more Tube seats for the rest of us. Anyway. With my peripherals I register the flamboyance of the latest commuter to join my carriage, and am about to settle back into my crossword, when an unavoidably ringing voice floats across at me "LOVE what you've done to the boot. All it needs is a bit of glitter on the sides". I look up. No choice, right? A gloriously effeminate man is talking to me with his hand placed on my knee, the one wearing The Boot, for emphasis. He is wearing silver 1980s tight jeans, and a black biker jacket with fringes. He looks fabulous. Because he is not dressed in sludge he has instantly transformed this morning's commute. I grin at him and agree emphatically that glitter on The Boot would transform the look. He swaps seats to come and be next to me, and for the next four or five stops we talk enthusiastically about how to glam up NHS surgical appliances. We work through insoles, crutches (bit of Barry M neon nail polish on the handles), blow up ankle supports (why not do them in PINK!) and I tell him about Terry, the lovely plasterer at my orthopaedic outpatients clinic, who gave me my wonderful blue fibreglass cast after my operation, which has my fellow commuter nearly in hysterics, he is so jealous. He gets off before me and the train is suddenly very quiet. I have also become a pariah - peripherals are shooting daggers at me because I have Broken The Code and interacted with another commuter, thus breaking The Cone of Silence. But no matter. He has left me in a retro haze. When I get home, rifling through the cupboards for dinner ingredients, a box of After Eights falls out. It's a sign. A retro end to a retro day.

Americans Like Stoicism

As you know, any attempt I make to go from A to B involves multiple encounters with random strangers hellbent on imparting the story of their ankle injury, bunion removal, hammer toe straightening, or Achilles Heel replacement, to me en route, because I wear a surgical boot and therefore I must be not only interested in their health stories but will also be pathetically grateful for any advice they can give me, and of course I both welcome and need their rebuke for the mess I have gotten myself into, even if they have not even asked me what has happened to me. Today en route to physiotherapy: ten strangers accosted me to heap ridicule on my limping, booted state. But on the way through the park to the station where I get my tube train home, a new experience. A group of American tourists, lounging on the path (way too sodden to sit on the grass) enjoying the brief respite from the most prolonged deluge ever to hit British soil in a hundred years of Aprils, stare at me as I approach them. As I get closer, they begin to clap. As I walk past them the applause rises to a crescendo. Go girl, they shout! You are so brave! I stare at them. Seriously, right. This cannot be happening. Random cheering and clapping by strangers only happens in cheesy Hollywood movies featuring Jennifer Aniston, or Debra Winger. Or Tom Hanks. Or maybe Will Smith. But never in the life of Melinda Simmons. It is weird and offensive and totally uncalled for, and it is also sweet and spontaneous and really rather flattering. I would have walked on with a spring in my step but I already have one. It is built into the boot. Tonight is exciting because it is Leftovers Night. We had friends over to dinner last night and now the family gets to gorge on leftover homemade mozzarella pizza and some fabulous concoction I made up on the spur of the moment involving crushed digestives with toasted almond slivers, topped with cream cheese mixed with melted white chocolate and vanilla, topped with crushed raspberries infused with lemon. Yum YUM. I probably didn't make this up actually - it is a classic combination which I probably came across in the back pages of a Sunday supplement. But it didn't involve a recipe book and that's a fairly rare thing for me. In any case, it is All Gone Now.