Raspberry Poundcake

I went a bit bonkers baking cheesecakes this weekend. I had around 35 people over for a party on the Sunday and even though the co-organiser of this party had created a food  sharing list so organised nobody could possibly have more clarity on the parameters of their requirements, I panicked nevertheless and exceeded my baking responsibilities. I was supposed to make one cake and I made three.The first was my classic chocolate cheesecake. It's not mine actually, but Nigella's. I've made it so often however that I have pretty much co-opted it. I once made a chocolate cheesecake and gave to a community centre to auction it off for charity. It fetched nearly 60 quid and people there have been talking about Melinda's cheesecake pretty much ever since. I don't have it in my heart - or rather my ego - to disabuse them. My second cake was also a cheesecake and also Nigella's. A Nutella cheesecake. Take cheese, Nutella, and golden caster sugar, mix it up, dump it on top of a biscuit and butter base, cover with hazelnuts, and chill thoroughly. This cake is lucky if it gets a full chilling period as Nutella in my household never lasts longer than a few hours beyond its purchase. Which means this cheesecake is routinely consumed at its stickiest. But the third was a revelation. A pound cake. From a recipe torn out of a Sunday supplement. Why in fact does anybody buy cookery books these days? Admittedly, being married to a journalist does have its compensations, and one is the weekly delivery of every known Sunday paper to our doorstep. While he reads the news avidly, I consume the recipes. This one was a raspberry pound cake. I haven't bothered looking up the definition of pound cake so I am slightly at a loss to work out the difference between this and a sponge - this version is a little heavier, but otherwise the ingredients are pretty much the same - but OMG the lush stickiness of pouring half the mixture into the tin, piling in pounds of raspberries, then pouring the rest on top. It looks slightly doubtful as it goes into the oven. More like something you would put in a sundae dish. But, taking a risk is one of the more exciting reasons to attempt a new bake and even though I have broken the cardinal lunch party rule ie never make something that you have never attempted before, I close the oven door with optimism. And, I am not disappointed. I take it out an hour later, cool it, dust liberally with icing sugar, and watch with awe as it melts away on to my guests' plates even as my Nutella cheesecake sits, neglected, near by. OK, it is competing not just with my cakes but also the luscious offerings of my guests  - an amazing looking walnut cake, a pile of meringues, a tray of brownies etc etc. But still, half my guests are kids and another cardinal lunch party rule, practically Biblical in its origin, is that if you serve anything with Nutella in it, kids will flock. But the kids are entranced by our sunken trampoline and forage only for cans of Diet Coke, while my more mature guests fall on the raspberry pound cake. At the end of lunch my cheesecakes, slightly dented, go back into the fridge. But the pound cake is gone. It has been a hit because it has evoked Summer. Quite an important contribution given the soggy end to our heatwave. I would bet that if I served my chocolate cheesecakes again in 3 days time after a solid 36 hours of rain they would disappear in a moment. But in the meantime, I have a new one for my Summer dessert repertoire. Yay.

Lifting my eyes from the ground

I pass a guy selling the Big Issue every day, twice a day, during the week. He stands on the Strand outside Boots. Usually he adopts a funny or silly pose to attract attention. He is popular with kids. But that is pretty much it. He sells his magazines in a commuter stretch where the traffic is either going to or from work, or to or from food, or to or from a workout. Nobody is interested in deviating from their single objective, me included. I've been doing this commute for some years, he has been there for that duration, and until only about 3 weeks ago I am ashamed to say I never raised my eyes to him. Everything that got in my line of sight between the station and the office where I was to begin my busy day of work, was an obstacle. Therefore I kept my eyes to the ground, like an animal tracking its prey. If you look at people walking up the Strand you realise pretty quickly that everybody does this. Not tourists, obviously, and there are a fair few thousand of those in the same neck of the woods. And it is precisely because of these bum bag wearing, map reading, sun visor sporting, merrily confused crowds, that we commuters are so fiercely single minded in the pursuit of our direction of travel.  But a few weeks ago, I found myself walking almost solo up that stretch of road. I say almost. I don't think it's possible for anyone to be the only person walking up the Strand. Maybe the government employs a core group of, say, 500 people to walk up and down it just to make it feel loved. I don't know. But at this time, which was not late at night, or that early in the morning, I found myself almost alone. The Big Issue vendor, seeing me approaching, struck a comic pose, and because I am British, and had not the comfort of a crowd, I was completely unable to ignore him. I slowed down fractionally, I smiled at him, and walked on by. Not until I reached the steps of the tube entrance did it compute in my head that the man had abandoned his pose to smile equally broadly back at me. He hadn't tried to sell me his magazine (which is just as well - I loathe magazines of pretty much every kind). He had just had a human reaction to my human reaction. A few days later I passed him early in the morning, I smiled and said Hello. He beamed and said hello back. Hello became a regular watchword between us, twice a day - en route to my office, and en route back to the tube. Then I took the daring step of deviating from our accepted interaction. I stopped, smiled and said Good Morning. Two words! Double my usual amount! And he said, Good Morning back to me. And then he said, thank you for speaking to me.  He said this genuinely gratefully. I pondered on it all the way to my desk. It depressed me extremely. This man was trying to sell the Big Issue, mostly not 6 feet away from two guys handing out free copies of the Evening Standard or Time Out, so he was in a hopeless competition. He was homeless and game about it, and he was being ignored quite routinely by thousands of people. Including me, up till then. I got up from my desk to make myself a cup of tea and on the way to the kitchen I passed a woman I had never looked at properly before. She was in a blue uniform toting a bucket and mop. I stopped, and said hello. She lifted her eyes from the ground and smiled at me, tentatively. Do you clean on this floor regularly? I asked. She nodded. What's your name, I asked. Fatima, she replied. Well, I said. Thanks Fatima, for keeping this floor clean. She smiled at me and took her bucket and mop away to another part of the office. I walked into the kitchen to get my tea. Pouring boiling water into my cup, I thought my eyes do not belong on the ground. They need to be up in the rest of my face, looking properly about me, so I can stop ignoring people I choose to edit out of my daily life, and give them the dignity of a courteous recognition. I went back to my desk, and got on with my day.

Anniversaries in a year of mourning

On Friday it will be my sister's birthday. My elder sister, that is, who died last October of cancer. In this first terrible year since she left us, every "first" has been hard. This forthcoming one, perhaps the hardest of all. Birthdays of loved ones who have died are always days of remembrance. In this case it is particularly poignant, because my sister loved, loved, loved celebrating her birthday. It was a  major enterprise for her. She would plan for weeks beforehand. She would write her birthday list on yellow Post Its and put them on the wall up all the way up the stairs of her house for her husband and kids to find. She died not long after her fiftieth birthday, a milestone she had been longing to throw a huge party for. She had the huge party - her husband and family saw to that - but she was in no state to enjoy it. Dressed up, and drugged up to the ears to counteract the appalling pain of the tumours that had spread to her spine, barely able to communicate while her friends milled sympathetically around her holding their glasses of wine in one hand, and some of them clutching tissues in the other, the party remains one of the more painful of the memories I have of that terrible year. What to do, then, on Friday? If there is one thing I have learned, and I have learned it the hard way, it is that days that induce painful memories are best spent doing something completely different from the traditions of previous years. After someone you love leaves you, the moments associated with them can't be recreated in the same way, because that person was a central defining factor. None more so than their birthday. I have mulled over this for many a night in the last month, and I am still not sure what the answer is, but I do know that I have hit on the right question. And that is, how do I want to spend that day? How to redefine it, not recreate it? I think a lot has to do with how I will feel when I wake up on Friday morning. But what I have done, is given myself several options. Of course there are options I have discarded, that include, spend the whole day weeping in bed; drink heavily on Thursday night and call in sick on Friday so I can wallow; sit in my kitchen looking obsessively at pictures of her. I don't want to do any of these things. It is approaching a year since she died and getting close to the time when I should reasonably think about moving on from the raw pain of loss. So I don't want to court it by opening wounds, like rubbing away at a scab so it doesn't heal. Here are the options I have thought through: 1. Take one of my favourite books, drive to the cemetery where she is buried, and sit on the bench that is nearly opposite her grave, and read and reflect. Perhaps also listen to some music. 2. Take a very long walk somewhere leafy with lots of sky above my head. Make the walk long enough to feel real fatigue at the end of it. End up at a cafe somewhere, preferably one that is popular with families. I find the sight of young children unfailingly uplifting, even the badly behaved ones. They induce hope to my grief. 3. Go to work. Treat it like just another day. In the evening, over my ritual family Friday night meal, open a bottle of wine and toast her memory. Or light a memorial candle alongside Sabbath candles. No, you are not supposed to do it on a birthday but who cares? And 4. Search out my younger sister. Give her a huge hug. Good options, I think. And not mutually exclusive either. There is more than a passing chance I will end up doing a version of all four.

Thirty degree plus workwear

What is a corporate woman to do in this heat? Admittedly female workwear has been morphing into an increasingly casual look over the last few years but even in the world of dress-and-itsy-bitsy-cardigan, which has by and large replaced the thigh length skirt and sharply cut jacket with shoulder pads or at least it has unless you are a contestant on The Apprentice, this weather is a challege. It's been a real eye opener to see how corporate women commuters are coping with the challenge. Me, I don't have such a huge personal stride to take here. Given that I spend my personal life decked out in a Gap vest, huge shorts and fitflops, any transition to something that showcases my figure and swishes when I walk represents several steps up the ladder of presentability. In other words, put on any kind of frock and I'm Ready For Duty. Even a beach dress. For others this has been a golden opportunity to throw caution to the wind. I pass several women walking up the Strand in floaty pieces of material I would probably have reserved for a first date. Others have gone full on Laura Ashley and are decked out in so much calf length floral material they are attracting wasps. Still others are attempting silk, which, girls, is a really bad idea when the weather is so hot you have no alternative but to sweat like a lumberjack. Here's a tip for all female commuters. Wear cotton. Or don't come into work at all. It really is that simple. The important thing, I hear a woman tell another as they walk their sweaty way through the stuffy tunnels of Charing Cross tube station, is to layer up. Hum, I think to myself. Surely the important thing, apart from to make sure you never have less than 5 litres of water about your person, is to LOSE the layers? A problem for anyone with a muffin top, of course, as in weather this hot there really is no place to hide. If you layer up you sweat so much your layers stick to you, revealing even more than you would be revealing if you had no layers. But if you don't layer up, then the challenge is on to find the dress that skims perfectly over the bumps. Or, as I notice an increasing number of women doing, you decide that you Just Don't Care. Fellow workers are simply going to have to get used to the sight of you at your desk checking email in a bikini. No I'm kidding. Not a bikini. But something not all that far off. Midriff  baring vests and mini skirts. For some women even just baring their arms is the equivalent of running naked through the office, and there are a lot of pink bare arms about. Well. Unless you have a job interview to go to during this heatwave - and boy, do I feel sorry for you if you do - there really is only one answer.  The answer to all the problems that corporate workwear has ever presented. Work From Home.

Cycling in a skirt

I see them whenever I travel to Paris. Perfectly coiffed women in flippy skirts and capes, sailing gracefully through St Germain on a vintage bike, barely bouncing on the cobbled streets, feet clad in high heeled courts, hair (untrammeled by anything as prosaic as a bicycle helmet) wafting gracefully in the breeze. How, how do they do it? I have always made sure to cycle in shorts, leggings or nasty trackie bottoms, walking boots or trainers, or a pair of Converse at a pinch. I end every bike ride with black tyre streaks on the backs of my legs and mud on my hands, sweat on my cheeks and running down my neck. Much of this is down to the fact that I live at the bottom of a hill. Want to cycle anywhere at all? It starts with a 10 minute uphill stretch to the main road. No other way around it. Today, however, I am going to a music conference, and from there to an appointment with my GP, and the only way to get from one to the other in time, since the only bus that goes that way has a frequency akin to the Groundhog, is to bike. And I do not go to conferences in shorts, leggings or trackie bottoms. So. I spend an inordinate amount of time searching out a dress of suitable length.  Too low and it catches in the pedals or spokes. Too high and my backside is public property. Too flippy and a British breeze will compromise my unmodellesque thighs. Too straight and my legs will lock, sending me straight over the handlebars at the first turn. I finally turn up a Gap beach dress, stretchy enough to manipulate, finishing an inch below the knee, tuckable under the bottom without ruining its shape, sufficiently jaunty to channel a sartorial look, and exactly the same colour of blue as my bicycle helmet, which I will be wearing, Parisian chic or no Parisian chic. I try a practice climb on to my bike while in the hall of my house, to hone a dignified mount. That mastered, I attach the basket to the front, pop in my cute yellow shoulder bag, and I cycle off, heart palpitating. As I cycle I have a dire need to check my reflection in shop windows. How high has the dress ridden up? Can I look any more nerdy with a helmet on my head? Never has it been more difficult to focus on the road. But I do, and nobody wolf whistles, which is frankly a relief, and nobody jeers either, which is also a relief (interestingly, I get quite a lot of both when I cycle in my shorts, which are large and turquoise and profoundly Unsexy). I arrive insouciantly at the conference, dismount slightly clumsily but nobody appears to notice, wheel it round to the bike rack feeling, oooh, so....Eco...throw my shoulder bag over my arm, grab my conference folder, and walk into the hall. Feeling very, very Parisan. So that is how it is done. Right. It's back to the Gap for loads more of those dresses. Well I cannot wear the same one tomorrow. It's drenched in cycle sweat.

Hair protocol at the gym

I've been growing my hair. I mean, like, seriously going for it. I started around 18 months ago and now it falls below my shoulders, or it would if it weren't so curly.  And the longer it's got, the more issues it has created. Firstly, baking. I've never had to think about hair getting into cake mix but this is now getting embarrassing. I think it's been three times that a guest, manfully diplomatic, has extracted a long, brown strand from a slice of pumpkin cheesecake, murmuring, yours I think? and placing it on the side of their plate. Um yes, I stammer each time, but hey, at least you know it's clean, right? After the third time I started pinning back my hair. I'm getting close to the point of having to wear one of those weird shower caps that industrial sandwich makers have to put on. I'm not quite pretentious enough to wear a chef's hat and besides, there's no chef's hat in the world that could accommodate my Brian May look. Curly hair grows out. It grows up. It defies gravity. It resists, stubbornly, anything resembling plaits, pigtails or sidecombs. It is a friend of the Alice Band, as long as you don't mind never finding your Alice Band again. Twice I've woken up at night with something uncomfortable digging into my face only to discover that an alice band I put on the day before simply nestled so far into my curls that I forgot that it was there. One upside of wildly long curly hair, is envious looks. Honestly, if you want a textbook case study to illustrate the principle that The Grass Is Always Greener, check out hair. I often get approving comments from people about my hair. Is it natural? it's so thick and well, curly! - what do you put on it? Mine's so boring and straight... there are days when I crave straight hair, principally hot days, because at least you can bundle it all up and it'll stay there. Mine? Any contact with so much as a plastic barette and it declares mutiny. What to do, then, at the gym? There is only one look at the gym and that is, hair scraped back. This is very important. If you don't scrape your hair back the message is that you are simply not serious about your exercise. It also says, EEEE-WWWW. Hair not tied back is a vehicle for your sweat to distribute itself across the exercise mats, leaving slug like trails in its wake. So I go for, like, a double Alice Band effect. One at the front to keep the curls from falling forward over my face like a human waterfall. And the other in the middle of my head likewise to trap the hair at the side. The stuff at the back I can't do much about but at least I can't see it so whatever it gets up to when I work out, it's only a problem for people behind me. Honestly, I probably look like Darcy Bussell in a tango with Dumbo the Flying Elephant. But try counting the number of people in the gym who actually pull off a look that improves their image. Really, we all sacrifice our dignity to some extent the minute we put on our lycra tops. Why not just complete the humiliation with a full on Alice Band Attack. The one comfort I take from this as I regard myself forlornly and somewhat apologetically in the unforgiving mirrors which seem to be EVERYWHERE at my gym, is that as I look around, most people seem similarly self preoccupied. What's the worst they can be thinking? Thank goodness she looks even weirder with her trapped hair, than I do with my blu-tac'd moustache.

Race for Life

There was a funny moment at the warm up session for the Race For Life at Hampstead Heath on Saturday, in which I was down to join the joggers, raising money for Cancer Research UK in memory of my sister. One of the volunteers, her job to get us motivated and hyped up for the run, took the mike and said, Cancer affects everyone. Here's an example. Raise your hand if you know someone who has been affected by cancer. Every single one of us raises a hand. You see, she says, that proves it. No it doesn't, says my neighbour. It proves that everyone who has lost someone to cancer feels so bloody helpless to do anything that they join Race For Life. She is right. I am not sure how many of us would be doing this thing if we had not ourselves witnessed the horror of a loved one succumbing to cancer. I know I'm one of them. The first time I did the Race For Life, my sister had just been diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer. She was about to have her mastectomy and I felt so helpless that I signed up for Race For Life just as a way to channel my emotions. I signed up late so I didn't even try to raise any money. I just paid my sign up fee, and turned up. In fact, I couldn't even run. I had horrible stuff going on with my left foot, the mobility of which had been degenerating for years, and was giving me a lot of daily pain. So I didn't run it. I walked it, in just over an hour. And yes, it really did feel as if I was helping. I was back again this year. This time, two years later, I had much more baggage. Firstly, my sister had died. There was no way of kidding myself that anything I could possibly do, would help. Help was too late. I was now in the ballpark of doing whatever I could to reduce the impact of the appallingness that my sister had gone through, on other people. If any money I raised could further research into surgical termination of tumours at multiple sites, then I was going to support it. Could we support more efforts to find life prolonging medication for women with secondary breast cancer? If that had been around for my sister, perhaps she would have had five more years. Five more. You have no idea how precious that would have been to us all. How many more milestones she would have witnessed, including her daughter's 18th birthday, her daughter taking her A levels, her son graduating university, her nieces and nephews competing in sporting events, moving up school, winning prizes for their achievements.  So there I now was, with my sister's name pinned to my back. And this time, I was with the joggers. Last year I had major medical surgery to rebuild my left foot, which had been causing me so much pain. I had worked incredibly hard to restore its mobility with months and months of physiotherapy and I was not just at the Race For Life to raise money for a worthwhile charity whose issues had huge emotional significance for my own family experience. I was also there to settle a score with a physiotherapist who told me I would not run again. Great to have the new foot, she said. You'll be able to walk pain free up the street. I want to run in the Race For Life, I told her instantly. She laughed involuntarily (and pretty insensitively) and said, yup, well, maybe if you join them at the back. With the buggy walkers. Not for the first time in my life after a patronising encounter with a medical specialist, I found myself working out in my head what it would take to defy such a generic assessment of my capbilities, deciding she had underestimated my determination, and gearing myself up for the challenge. Now here I was. I thought I would join the joggers somewhere towards the back, but not quite at the very back. I was dressed in purple, because that was my sister's favourite colour. And because there was no way I was wearing pink. After much motivational screaming, we shot off. Well, not quite shot. Too many of us to put up much more than a speedwalk for the first 100m. But then as we streamed over the glorious Heath in fantastic weather, we fanned out a bit, flanked by cheering spectators and bemused Heath walkers, and we found our stride. I jogged carefully, deliberately, maintaining consciousness of the flexiblity in my foot, deploying a heel to toe movement, finding my rhythm. I ran behind three women who looked like sisters, each with a card on their back that said "For Mum And Dad". I blinked the tears back. It was emotional enough remembering the loss of my sister. Among all the cheering, there was a pall of sadness among the runners who carried bereavement on their backs. I overtook the sisters and tracked a mother and young daughter for 1km or so. Her card said "My best friend Sarah" and her little daughter's said "For Sarah". Some peoples' cards listed 5 or 6 people. One person's card said, for everyone who has had to go through this" and another's said "In solidarity with all these runners who have lost someone". Inspiring stuff, but I tell you what' it's not easy running, weeping, wiping your eyes and nose, and still keeping pace. Well. I made it. The last 1km was downhill or flat, with just a last lurch uphill to the finish, and I spotted my son in the crowd yelling Mum, Mum!! as I approached. I waved to him and all my sadness disappeared in the sheer happiness of having reached my own goal - to defy that stupid physiotherapist and reach the heights of what I knew I was capable of doing - to run 5k without stopping, 18 months after major reconstructive surgery - to remember my sister, to join in solidarity with others, to raise money (nearly a thousand pounds, since you ask) for cancer research. I was sweaty, streaming, aching and laughing. I cannot wait to do it again next year.

Wimbledon

I went to Wimbledon yesterday. Startlingly brilliant tickets - on Centre Court, in the lower part of the second tier, in a corner, where our view was fantastic, for the women's semi finals. And that should be it, shouldn't it, as a summary of why you go to Wimbledon. Except that, as I discovered for the first time yesterday, Wimbledon is an institution that spans fashion, food, society, rabid gossip, and sport is merely the icing on the cake. I remember watching Glenn Close in the film Dangerous Liaisons, a remake taken from the novel by Choderlos de Laclos (one of my set texts for my Batchelors Degree in French, which is why I sound so much better informed than I really am). There is a scene in the film where Glenn, playing the seamy Madame de Meurteuil to perfection, patches, beauty spots and garters a-brim, walks into her box at the opera. She picks up her opera glasses and looks not at the stage, but at the audience. She wants to know who is there, who they are with, and whether she can spot any intrigue. And she's not alone either. Everyone else is doing it. There is a hum of chatter as people covertly pass on gossip while the poor woman on stage is doing her best to belt out an aria over the hum. Well, that is Wimbledon. Most people have their binoculars focused on the Royal Box trying to see who's sitting in there. That's Victoria Beckham, said a woman in our row. No it isn't, said another woman, taking the binoculars from her. It's Sarah Jessica Parker. I looked. It was neither. It was just some posh twit in a peach coloured skater dress with far too much fake tan and oversize Bottega Venetas. That's Cliff Richard, said someone else, pointing to a bloke in a suit. Which one, I asked. There were LOADS of blokes in suits. Complete with boater hats and canes, for crying out loud. Canes?? Who on earth uses those in 21st century life? Wimbledon is populated by women with thin pins tottering in designer shoes carrying bags dripping with designer labels in one hand and a large cup of Pimms in the other, all doing their level best to impersonate Pippa Middelton. Outside the court there are at least three times as many people as there are inside the court. They are eating strawberries, watching the play on screen and swapping celebrity titbits. Inside the court, people are hushed during play, and as soon as a rest is called, they are off again. I have come to Wimbledon straight from work so I just about fit the dress code - I wear a red jersey dress, white shoes, fabulous white sunglasses (Crocs, since you ask - funky, plastic, and likely to fall apart any minute) and my black Kate Spade bag, the only designer thing I possess, and am not proud to let on that when I first spotted it I nearly fainted at the price so I hung on till the sale and got it bought for me as a birthday present. I sit there feeling mildly intimidated, absolutely loving the superb tennis being played by elite athletes, sipping my Pimms because you HAVE to have Pimms when you go to Wimbledon; wondering whether I want strawberries and cream, which I loathe - love strawberries, hate them with cream - because That Is What You Eat At Wimbledon.  Wimbledon is a social day out. It is incredible how much of a social catalyst a major sporting fixture can be. For some people of course, not all. I scanned the crowd for a non white face. I think that in the 10,000 in the arena, I spotted around ten. But I may have double counted. Easily done after a large cup of Pimms.