Apologies & happy new year

I’m not living in East London anymore. I’ve been meaning to write more about this fact, but I’m so busy with life here, which is basically all about survival – not my own, that of my 13 month old son – that I just haven’t had time. Seriously, it’s just one seemingly endless session of drunken toddling into another room followed by an eerie, optimistic silence and then a thwack! and a howl (the longer the silence between the thwack and the howl, the worse the injury. That silence is torture). Interspersed with the odd tantrum, usually over a remote control, mobile, set of keys, pen or computer mouse. Strangely, never over an actual toy.

 

I’m trying not to be a neurotic helicopter parent but he now has the agility and determination and utter lack of fear to actually kill himself. Today I thought he’d gone over a mezzanine (he hadn’t). It’s like working 24/7 as the bodyguard of an egocentric, drunk, emotionally volatile midget. And you have to be eternally present, in both body and spirit. It’s exhausting, although also pretty funny at times. So I haven’t had time for much else.

 

I’m really tempted to finish this blog. But I may somehow evolve it instead, once I work out how. Please just bear in mind,  though, that if you are only here for the latest East London club opening (and I rather painted myself into a corner by naming my blog as I did), then you aren’t going to get it here.

 

But I will try and write more soon. And happy new year.

What’s so shameful about the walk of shame?

So this is the Youtube clip that has everyone talking, and I have to confess I don’t mind it as much as some. Nothing gets a Saturday morning off to a good start like spotting a really cracking Walk of Shame. Of course, I don’t let on. In the same way that it’s considered civil to ignore toddlers mid-tantrum or someone vomiting on the tube, I never allow a smirk to cross my face when I see someone scurrying home on a chilly morning in a gold glitter dress or a ragged tux, makeup streaked, heels scuffed, hands shaking slightly with the DTs. I just bite the side of my mouth and do that thing where you avert your eyes until they are right next to you then treat yourself to a really good look just as they pass. All with a completely expressionless face.

But inside I am thrilled. It’s a bit like witnessing time travel – seeing someone with their head still firmly in Friday night hedonism but their body cruelly shoved into the bustle and smuggery of pre-9am Saturday morning. And I love the look on their face, so dignified, so faux-nonchalant. Also, I’ve never done a proper walk of shame myself. Mainly because I just don’t have the stamina, or the wardrobe. So there’s a certain admiration there, too.

The best example I’ve seen in recent times was when I was in the midst of nesting, and I stormed out the front door on a cot-buying mission to IKEA (we went for the budget Sniglar which worked out well as he’s barely in it; to his way of thinking he shares his bed with us). It was a bright Sunday morning, and there, sitting on the front wall, was a human.

When I went up to him I saw that although he was upright he was far from conscious. I kind of poked him, to make sure he hadn’t died, and that’s when he woke up and I saw that he was completely and utterly off his head. He was mute, for a start, and had pupils like black holes, but as he looked at me I saw cross his face a sort of blankness followed by confusion, a flicker of understanding and then a distinct, slow-motion leer that conveyed something along the lines of – oh, I’ve pulled.

He followed me to the car and made to get in – seeming not to register that I was rather obviously with child – and I was so addled by maternal instincts and simultaneously baffled by the situation that I was quite happy to drop him home. It was only when my partner came out, registered the situation and efficiently shooed him away (very firm boundaries, you see) that he realised that he was going home alone, and commenced his very own Walk of Shame, which he wasn’t the slightest bit ashamed of.

It’s a misnomer, really. There’s nothing shameful about it; if anything you should be proud of your endurance and happy to be providing a bit of free entertainment. A community service, practically, and – a bit like Tony Abbott – part of the rich tapestry of life.

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On deceased estates, and signature salads

A while ago I was sent the re-issued Moro cookbooks, which have come in handy lately, as I’m in the midst of developing a signature salad. I know, it’s not going to change the world. But it’s important to me. I’m back in Oz, you see, and when you attend a barbecue here (which is definitely more than once a year) it’s good manners to bring a salad.

But it seems that barbecues have moved on quite a bit since I was here as a twenty-something, when you would see people rocking up with two cling-filmed sausages in their top pocket, and salad was iceberg with a few cherry tomatoes on top. There’s been a mining boom, so at an average barbecue now you’ll see a spa on the deck, boutique ales in the outdoor kitchen fridge, fillets of beef on the barbecue and signature salads on the table.

Unfortunately, I pretty much missed the entire boom. So we’re house-hunting with some pretty savage filters on our search engine and so far all we’ve come up with are a couple of deceased estates, both so decrepit you wonder how anyone lives in them (and then remember that they don’t, anymore). A deceased estate has a terrible stillness. Ceilings so yellow with cigarette smoke they look varnished. Fake roses on the kitchen table. A single, bone-dry towel hanging on the backyard clothesline.

The one today reminded me of the Larkin poem:

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped in the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft.

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

Anway, what can you do? Except develop a signature salad and keep breathing. I have had very positive results from the Chickpea salad on page 246 of Moro The Cookbook, until I found out that the chickpea is already spoken for, so to speak. I’m now contemplating a parsnip coleslaw. Where there’s life, there’s hope.

Pushing a pram around East London

One of the key bits of advice I was given by baby books was ‘meet other mums’. It’s a bit like starting a new job and getting to know your colleagues, you see.

So once I’d had the child I dutifully took myself off to Tiny Toes mothers’ group, baby swimming lessons, music sessions and yoga. It was all rather exhausting, but I did meet a couple of like-minded souls, so it was worth it in the end.

After a while we sort of naturally outgrew Tiny Toes, in that my son is not a small child (‘God, he’s huge isn’t he!’ ‘Err, the word you’re looking for is healthy, bitch‘) and I no longer felt the need to recount my birth story in visceral detail to anything with a pulse, which seemed to be the main therapeutic function of Tiny Toes. And then I was informed that my son would need to repeat Stage One of swimming lessons, as he didn’t like being dunked underwater, and that brought up a lot of my issues about being picked last for sport, so we ditched that. And yoga was at the local Surestart children’s centre, so got axed, obviously.

The only group we stuck with, albeit sporadically, was Music & Movement at the Sebright Children’s Centre. The session is run by a musician called Coram. He’s a bit of a character, takes great pleasure in yanking dummies from babies’ mouths and hurling them at the mothers, and sometimes doesn’t show up because he’s at Glastonbury with his band or some other glamorous excuse. It’s standing room only at his sessions. You sing, bang drums, fling children around and generally have a ball. I like to think my baby got something out of it, but frankly I went more for myself.

Other things to do in East London with a cling-on in tow are:

Movies at the Rich Mix in Bethnal Green and the Rio in Dalston. A godsend in the early days as a kind of dimly lit retreat from the shock of it all. Rich Mix also has a play session with a qualified movement therapist. Slightly pointless if your child doesn’t actually move yet, but I had a fascinating conversation with a crime scene investigator mum so it was worth the trek.

London Fields Lido is nice on a sunny day if you bring a couple of mates and take turns to swim and wipe up vomit.

Hackney City Farm is awesome – homestyle Italian food and the odd guinea pig or donkey wandering about to make it ‘educational.’

Buggies & Bikes at Broadway Market hold baby signing classes and other things.

Up in Stoke Newington you have baby swimming lessons at the Sunstone Women’s Gym and Mothers Talking sessions with Naomi Stadlen, author of the brilliant What Mothers Do (Especially When It Looks Like Nothing) and How Mothers Love, which I’m still to read.

Hackney Library has singing sessions and a good book selection.

And don’t forget to get your Real Nappies For London cloth nappy voucher from Hackney Council – pictured above. Ok, you might not use them all the time, but even one nappy a day means 365 fewer a year into landfill (although sod’s law dictates that the cloth nappy of the day will be the one that sports a Number Three within five minutes of going on.)

But if you stay in your PJ’s all day then that’s fine, too. Other suggestions/tips welcome.

Back in action from the land of The Slap

Apologies for going off-piste for so long. I’m not actually in East London at present, but back in the land of The Slap, much like Wee Birdy. For those who haven’t read the book, by Christos Tsiolkas, it has a very simple and brilliant premise – a brat is slapped at a backyard barbecue, setting off all sorts of repercussions reflecting the beliefs and backgrounds of those present (an affluent, multicultural lot, very typical of Melbourne I suppose). It’s currently screening in Australia as a miniseries, with the beautiful British actor Sophie Okonedo playing one of the lead roles (in the book this character is Indian, but apparently Okonedo was so good in the auditions they rewrote the part).

I enjoyed the book. Actually I hated it; it makes for very uncomfortable reading, but I couldn’t put it down. I saw an interview with Tsiolkas recently and he said he wrote it very fast after coming home from a barbecue, and it does read as a kind of exuberant, slightly off-the-cuff novel (although I’m sure it wasn’t to write). Afterwards, though, I read his previous novel, Dead Europe, and that is fantastic – beautiful writing, dense, sinister – an Australian’s jaunt around Europe with a bloody twist. So really I’d recommend that.

It’s been acquired by the BBC so look out for it. If you thought Australia was all kangaroos and farmers in flannel shirts, prepare to be shocked.