East End warmth

Recently I took a decision to take a day out of each month this year to get to know London again. Each month I pick a tiny corner of the city and spend a day exploring it. It has to be a small area because the idea is not to turn tourist and shoot frenetically from one attraction to the next. In fact, it is not about attractions at all. It's about stopping to take the time to get to know an area. And today, it was the Womens' Library and Brick Lane. I used to know parts of the East End really well. My parents owned a pharmacy in Bethnal Green and I used to work there every school holiday, commuting either from my school in the City or from our home in Essex so I knew the area like the back of my hand - Mile End, Stepney, Commercial Road, Aldgate, Hackney, Old Street, Liverpool Street and Bethnal Green districts, are all integral to my childhood. But it has been years since my parents sold their business, I left school, and never really visited again. In those years the area has seen huge investment, quite a bit of gentrification as commuters have been looking for more affordable property, and my first impression as I resurfaced at Aldgate East, was that I had set foot in a different world.  The Womens' Library, by the way, is soon to move to LSE, so no point in advising you to check it out in its current home at London Metropolitan University. Once it is established there though, it is worth a look. The archive of materials dating back to the late nineteenth century is an amazing documentation of how the fight for rights of women has evolved over the last 120 years or so. Boy did I feel guilty when I left. Belated New Year Resolution: become an activist again. No post-feminism for me. But there is something else about the location of the Womens Library, which sadly will be lost when it moves, and that is that its current premises sit close to the hub of a centre for  immigration to the UK over the last 100 years. And that is what I went in search of as I moseyed down Brick Lane. Very important to do this if you want history rather than vintage clothing markets. Brick Lane is heaving at the gills from Friday to Sunday. But on weekdays, the streets are clearer, and life hums with the most incredible array of Asian and Middle Eastern cafes and food shops, set into Huguenot buildings.  A mosque half way down Brick Lane used to be a synagogue. Before that, a Methodist church. Before that, a Huguenot church. I wander into a jewellery shop and browse fantastic, original pieces curated from local designers. As I browse I chat to the woman at the till. I tell her about my plan to rediscover London. What a great idea, she says. Why am I doing it? As a way of coming to terms with the death of my sister, I tell her. She does not miss a beat as she replies, I can absolutely see how seeking out novelty, particularly through history, or art, or beautiful scenery, or even just different scenery, can help put things into perspective, she says. So don't forget to do the side streets. Try Cheshire St. I do, and i find a hairdresser that gives free cuts on Mondays and Tuesdays. I pop in, get a haircut, tell them about my plan. Wow, the stylist says. What a cool thing to do. Well don't stop at Brick Lane, she says, and recommends an area South of Spitalfields. Hours later I have popped into multiple outlets and pop ups, acted on their recommendations and ended up in the achingly hip back streets of Hoxton, footsore and revelated. It is a great area - gritty, with layers upon layers of migration stamping its presence on daily commerce - and though the area may have changed in appearance radically, East End curiosity and warmth remains the same. No doubt it has its rough edges, but I took a similar walk through Chelsea and Kensington last month and not a single person asked what I was doing there.  That has to tell you something.

Snoring while awake

Fans of the hilarious movie, Get Smart, will recognise this scene. Siegfried the baddie is placing a call to the Pentagon to inform them that he is in possession of nuclear weapons. The Pentagon switchboard places him on hold. While he is waiting Siegfried becomes aware of a noise. He turns to his partner in crime, Starker, and says to him "You know, you're the only person I know who snores while he's awake". Every time I watched this film I would roar at that point. There was always something so helplessly funny about Starker's dodgy breathing, though the sarky comment was of such a piece with Siegfried's cutting wit "I've even got a replacement for you! It's called a rhinoceros!" (You can tell how much I love this movie), that he could have said anything, frankly, and I would have been on the floor, shrieking, tears coursing down my cheeks, thumping a cushion and pointing helplessly at the screen. Well, not quite, but you get the picture. Anyway. An experience on the Eurostar has, sadly, changed this for me, forever. No longer is it a hilarious piece of slapstick. Now it is a scene filled with pathos. Why? Because I have been there. The 0650 train from St Pancras International to Brussels is packed. It is stuffed full of Eurocrats returning to their office from a weekend in London; morose schoolkids on a daytrip they didn't volunteer for; civil servants, off to lobby Brussels for a day; businessmen en route to the tax haven of Europe aka Luxembourg. Oh, and once you pass Lille, the corridors fill up with freeloaders. If heaven forbid there were any kind of emergency on a busy Eurostar train after Lille the chances of getting out in time would be as close to nil as makes no difference, the "Lille Loophole" stuffing out the gangways with backpackers, cheap middle class travellers, and probably a sprinkling of illegal immigrants, who have sashayed through the barrier free gateway that is Lille Europe, on to the ticket-check-free Eurostar for the last leg of the journey, either left to Brussels or right to St Pancras. So this is a deeply unpleasant train. It is way too busy and at that hour of the morning few have managed to get in a shower before embarking, which means that by the time you approach the tunnel it's stuffy,  stale, whiffy, and generally not a place you want to be stuck in miles under the Channel for half an hour. I generally manage to escape from this with the perfect combination of a window seat, piles of work papers to read, and the musical and cultural downloads on my IPad. But on this day even these are insufficient. For, as I review my background papers for the punishing programme of meetings ahead of me, I am distracted by a noise. I look up. Somebody. Is Snoring. Given the unholy hour of the day that saw us all on the road to St Pancras it is entirely unsurprising that any of us would crash out helplessly, scrunched inelegantly in our seats, papers strewn about us. But here's the thing. Nobody is sleeping. Everybody appears to be buried in their mobile phones, laptops, magazines or supercaffeinated lattes. I track the sound. It is coming from next to me. I look at my neighbour. He is, I have to tell you, a pretty unpalatable sight. He is greasy and unwashed. He is blobby, more in a never-exercise-drink-too-much-gone-to-pot kind of way, than in a too-many-takeouts look, and yes there is a difference. His belly is straining to escape its shiny red sweater. His IPad is balanced on his belly (ah, well it has its uses then). He is lounging in his seat with the air of one who is buried in his favourite sofa - you know the abandon that overtakes you when you are at home after a day's work, glass of wine in your hand, favourite sitcom on the TV and you think, sod it, nobody can see me, and that is your cue to scratch your bottom at will, investigate the spaces between your toes, stick your finger in your ear...my neighbour was indulging in the complete panoply of inhibition-free activity. And he was snoring. Whilst watching his movie. I stare at him, my mouth slightly open, my face betraying increasing disdain. Does he have a cold? Nasal problems? No nose at all? Nope, all seems present and correct. He is snoring, because he has lapsed into a semi-coma of the kind that hits all of us when we are at our most relaxed. And there seems to be no way of stopping him. I nudge him, he moves a millimetre, his breathing doesn't miss a beat. I provoke him into talking to see if he will shut his mouth to breathe between sentences. He does. And when he finishes speaking, he lapses back into his snore mode. After 20 minutes of this I am ready to kill him. My fingers curl around my smart pen with the killer nib. I wonder to myself whether the window will open wide enough for me to hurl this man out. I consider climbing on to the roof of the train to get away from him. I fish earplugs out of my suitcase but they are no match for the Stereo Snore. I wish there were a happy ending to this anecdote but there isn't. The train gets stuck for an hour on the other side of the tunnel, its interior gets more and more stuffy, my neighbour snores away, and I resort to a sort of meditation-cum-mental fantasy to transport myself from my personal travelling hell. Finally I alight from the train at Brussels exhausted and dying to get to a shower (but no hope of this for at least 10 hours), fully aware that this encounter has ruined Get Smart forever. No longer is the Siegfried/Starker Snore Scene a comedy. It is a tragedy without end. I will probably never watch it again.

Cake baking for cholesterol conscious diabetics

I love The Great British Bake Off as much as the next person. Mary Berry, how cool,is she, such a lovely manner etc. But in all the reviews I have read of this programme, which is so popular it is going global, nobody has pointed out, as far as I can see, that Mary Berry and her über tanned sidekick only seem interested in promoting one version of British baking. The one that is essentially about high end sponge cakes for designer garden fetes. The type that, if we are really honest, middle class white Caucasians like to go to. I was first struck by this reflection, when Berry criticised a contestant (very nicely, let it be admitted) for baking with potato flour. I have never used potato flour before, she said, and cannot imagine why you would. Well here's a reason Mary. If you are Jewish, an observer of the Passover, during which time products containing raising agents are forbidden, and you do not want a wholly cake free 8 days, then potato flour is your New Best Friend. But you wouldn't expect Berry to know about British Jewish festival baking, or indeed any diverse application of British baking. I have encountered this attitude to baking again more recently in my quest to find a cake my Dad can eat. He is diabetic and has to avoid bad cholesterol. Which means any of the sweet, stodgy stuff has to avoid sugar, egg yolk and butter. Cue instant baking paralysis. How on earth do you bake without these baking ingredients? Ask Berry and I assume her answer would be, if you cannot bake with these ingredients, then you're stuffed. There is only one way of baking. Actually two if you count the French pastry recipes she has cheerfully been co-opting, but let's not split hairs. Well, I decide to rise to the challenge independent of the Bake Off. I google diabetic recipes, and there are loads. Of course, they all use eggs. I google cholesterol free recipes, and there are loads. They all use sugar. This is about pret a porter cooking isn't it. If you are more than one category then you appear to be swimming too hard against the tide. It's No Cake For You. So does that mean that if you are a low cholesterol diabetic then baking is history? Endless fruit compote?  Of course all it means is that if nobody else is going to exercise their creative baking abilities then I must simply invent it myself.  Well, for all those of you out there who have this particular baking challenge, here goes. I mashed up 3 tubs of low fat cream cheese. Added diabetic sugar substitute, estimating the amount by, well, tasting it. Whisked the whites of two eggs and folded it into the cream cheese mix. Poured into a tin and baked for about 40 minutes. Took it out. Left it to stand for half an hour. Mixed low fat sour cream and vanilla essence together, poured it carefully on top of the cheesecake, put it back in the oven for about 20 minutes. Took it out. Chopped up strawberries and arranged them prettily on top. Put it in the fridge. Took it out the next day and served. It was a really wonderful cake. Dad was satisfyingly appreciative, which would be enough praise on its own, but non diabetics also filched a slice, which is saying something given that the table, groaning under the weight of birthday cake baking, also held a white chocolate sponge, a Nutella hazelnut cheesecake, double chocolate meringues and a mountain of Rocky Roads. It may not have been my most complex cake. But it is one of which I am the proudest. I followed my nose, used my instinct, drew on my existing knowledge, took a punt, and prayed. And it worked, and my Dad was able to indulge with all of the rest of us without feeling like a third class cake eater. The Great British Bake Off? Like so many things, it is there for the mainstream. My own Great British Bake Off has diversity written all over it.

To wear headphones in the gym, or not to wear them?

My IPod Nano broke down a few days ago. Of course I cursed the defective technology of Apple, but in my heart of hearts, I knew that the fact that it had had two accidents in the last three months, both closely related to the scenario where you drop it as you are taking it out of your pocket to find a tune you actually want to listen to as opposed to the myriads of moody albums you appear to have downloaded from your husband's ITunes library by mistake, but you take it out a bit too quickly because you are doing this at the same time as you are adjusting the strap of your workbag which has fallen to your elbow because it is overloaded with work laptop, personal IPad, gym kit and three weeks' worth of food, and you are trotting to the station rather than walking because you have left the house late because one of the kids wouldn't wake up etc etc...and it falls to the ground as you are trotting, and you tread on it heavily a nanosecond after your sluggish, too-early-in-the-morning brain clocks what has happened. I've done that twice. Probably three times. So not only is it my fault that my fake silver Nano has finally downed tools and refused to co-operate, it is a miracle it has managed to stagger this far, considering that accident number 3 was at least 2 months ago. I can cope with a music-free gap in my life of about, ooh, 24 hours. But no longer. This is because music is essential to me in the gym. But, I have no time to rush to the nearest Apple shop to buy my replacement, shoot home, open up ITunes, register my new Nano, and transfer my music library on to it.  I have therefore had to order it online and while waiting for it to arrive, I am faced with the prospect of at least three music free sessions at the gym.  Total disaster, I tell myself. Upbeat music is essential to me at the gym to motivate me. All that sports science that says, if you listen to music with the right amount of Beats Per Minute, you up the tempo and intensity of your workout accordingly, totally resonates with me. I go to a gym where a lot of oldies work out which means that if you rely on the music that they pipe through the loudspeaker then you are faced with the peculiar, slightly surreal prospect of lifting weights to the warbling of Perry Como. But all right, worse things have happened at sea, and for three days I am just going to have to get on with it. I am in the very last stages of my Matt Roberts Lose Your Male Paunch workout (see previous posts for details on why I would be doing this particular workout...) so at least I have something to focus on. And in fact, all goes well. It goes so well, that I find myself revisiting my theology about headphones in the gym. Here are the advantages, I have discovered, of not wearing headphones in the gym. 1. When you do tortuous sit ups in groups of 20 lifting a weight over your head at the same time (Matt Roberts, no 4 in the 8 Step  Lose Your Paunch Workout), you will have a fighting chance of completing the set because you will not have to keep stopping to readjust your headphones which have lost out to gravity and have slipped uncompromisingly, over your eyes. 2. If you do the early bird workout, generally at least an hour before older members arrive, the gym music is surprisingly and pleasantly upbeat, even approaching modern (if Michael Jackson "Can You Feel It) counts as modern, and next to Mr Como it surely does), and provides a welcome contrast to the four hundredth listening of my Black Eyed Peas singles. And 3). No headphones means you are privy to all the hilarious conversations that go on around you. In a heavily male dominated section of the gym - the end where the weights are - conversation is, frankly, pretty inane and highly missable, there are still some gems. Hey, mate, where's Pete gone? Oh he's still downstairs, chatting up some chick. Well tell him to get up here, he's supposed to be exercising his abs, not the ones below that. Oh ho ho ho. For at least a day I tell myself the no headphones option is making me focus more on my workout and less on the music, too. But this morning I change my mind. This morning's workout experience provided me with these profound disadvantages. 1. No headphones means you can hear every breath, grunt, and bodily function of those workout out around you. And it is a well known fact that working out can induce bodily functions that may be funny, or may be undignified, but are generally, disgusting and certainly not things you want to be witnessing (or smelling) from a complete stranger, and a sweaty one at that. Even worse is the realisation that listening to really loud boom boom music means I cannot be absolutely sure I haven't been grunting or having my own personal bodily functions, to which I may well have been blissfully ignorant.  Just the thought freezes me, mid-crunch. 2. Sometimes the gym stops piping music, and even though it may only be for a few seconds, the gym goes excruciatingly quiet, which makes me hold my breath. Holding your breath while working out is, like, really, really bad for you. 3. Wearing headphones allows you to imagine you are not in some horribly, sweaty gym, but in fact working out on the set of X Factor or on a beach, in some foreign country, or in your bedroom - anywhere, in fact, but on this smelly mat, next to smelly blokes, looking at mildewed ceilings, and forcing myself through round 4 of the Lose Your Paunch Workout. Right. That Nano had better arrive tomorrow or else.

Girl With the Green Bag

I recently made a HUGE decision. One that probably only other working women will understand. I decided to jettison the colour black from my commuter ensemble - in particular, to break with a lifelong accessory, The Black Bag.  Everybody on the rush hour train has one of these. Women try very hard to pull off a Black as Fashion Forward Item statement with their work bag, but we all know the truth. And the truth is, that if you get up at the crack of dawn, and particularly if you have to get others up with you, recalcitrant kids or partners included, or equally if you are the only person getting up early and have to dress in the dim light of your bathroom so as not to disturb your snoring partner, then black is just the only option. Any other colour requires you to make decisions about colour-co-ordination, or tactical colour clashing, and frankly we are just not up to it at that hour of the morning. Most mornings in my working past, if I have managed to put my knickers on the right way round and chosen black tights instead of navy blue, that is a major result.  But recently I have been sitting in the tube looking at everybody's black bags - usually black Radley or black Fiorelli if I'm being brutally honest about my fellow travellers here - black Prada only to be found in the Chelsea cafe by women who wouldn't dream of working for a living - and wondering how it is possible for me to be so assertive in my personality busuck invisible in my outer clothes. With a birthday coming up this felt like the perfect opportunity to challenge myself to jump right out of the commuter comfort zone into the world of strong colour, the type of colour that would be noticeable but not headache-inducing, strong but not overwhelming. And the bag still had to be serviceable, so none of your frippery pink/denim mini bowling bag efforts. This had to have pockets, compartments, a zip for security, it had to be big enough for the IPad and a drinking bottle, small enough to sling comfortably over a shoulder in case I found myself in a commuter mishap (trains cancelled, fire in the tunnel, terrorist threat, electrical fault - you name it, I have been there, and trust me, if you are not wearing shoes you can run in on the tube you are asking for trouble). And it had to be distinctive. With expectations like that, a bag with that much asked of it would find itself in Bag Therapy before the month was out. And yet, just a week or two after making this decision, I found it. Kate Spade, in the sale, humungous amounts off its original you-cannot-be-serious price tag, in the most brilliant shade of green. Bottle green, but not a dark bottle. Silver chains attached to the bag strap. Black and white striped interior with all the right pockets for essentials, and roomy enough for my commuter requirements. I coquette around the shop in it, leave without it, obsess about it for 2 hours, drag a friend back in to ask her opinion (this, by the way, is a total fallacy. Any female friend whose advice you ask knows for certain that you have already made your mind up and what you want is emotional support, not an honest opinion. Of course you should buy it, it looks fabulous on you! - means absolutely nothing beyond, I'm your friend, I love you, and you deserve to treat yourself. Impartial judgement it ain't.) But in this case my friend is right - I have made my mind up, and I take the bag to the counter and I buy it. All the way home I cannot quite believe I have done this. A green bag for work. I'm going to stick out like a, like a....green Goblin. I take the bag up to my room, fish out my black workbag, transfer tissues, Oyster card, mobile phone, pens, emergency make up, water bottle, business card holder, notebook, IPad, keys, more keys, emergency lipgloss, Vaseline, and travel sanpro, into the green bag. It all fits. Next morning I put on my black coat, black tights and black boots, pick up my green bag, and go. In the train, bag on my lap, I feel as if I am cradling a belisha beacon. I feel eyes covertly on me. I try to look as if I have a different colour bag for every day of the week. On the way home again, a woman leans over and says, I saw you this morning. I remember the green bag. This makes my heart leap. The next morning I put on black coat, black tights, black boots, green bag, and decide at the last minute to reject my black gloves for tomato red leather gloves. Alighting at Charing Cross a woman stops me and says, where did you get that bag? I glow. Unfortunately I can't glow green as I am not really The Green Goblin. But I am morphing with ease into The Girl With The Green Bag. Commuting will never be the same again.