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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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.

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.

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.

I’ll call him Cyril as that’s the sort of man he was – crisp white trousers, a baggy blue chambray shirt, an older, yet curiously unaged face (confirmed bachelor, no children, I suspect) and a floppy sort of hat with a rustic little twig sticking out of it.

It appeared that his friend, a woman called Jillian, was ticking him off for talking too loudly about another neighbour – clearly a sworn enemy of them both – in what sounded like a communal garden. What was odd about the conversation was that although he denied talking loudly, his voice was reverberating through the entire bus.

‘I WASN’T talking loudly Jillian! He listens. That’s what happens, he listens and he watches. I knew he was there because I heard the curtains twitching, but I WASN’T TALKING LOUDLY.’

Silence as Jillian said her piece.

‘I DON’T KNOW WHAT HIS PROBLEM IS. It’s malicious, it’s gone on for years now. He’s homophobic, that’s part of it. And it will just go on and on. But I DON’T KNOW HOW HE HEARD ME.’

More silence.

‘Because I’m obsessed with him.’

Pause.

‘Yes, I agree it doesn’t make sense. I don’t know how he can hear me. I never hear his parties.’

Aha. At this point he got off, still bellowing into the phone, and silence was restored. And of course, no one gave any indication of having heard a word.

Baroque in Hackney

Anyway, she’s come up with a list of local people to help post-riot – rebuilding shops, flying family in from overseas, taking new family photographs for those who lost theirs in the fire, that sort of thing – and the links to do so, via the wondrous internet.

Here’s the link

She’s also added another link, which I have to share here as it made me smile and my baby laugh (he’s going to go far).

I was working as a scientist in East Berlin when the wall went up overnight in 1961. My 15-year-old daughter was staying with my mother in West Berlin that weekend, so I didn’t see her for two years. Eventually she was granted a visa and visited me a few times, but it was very stressful. She had to queue for hours and go through a heavily guarded checkpoint, always dreading an interrogation or body search.

By 1967 I was desperate to escape. My sister, a ballerina, had committed suicide in West Berlin, and my request to attend her funeral was turned down without explanation. I realised then how cruel the system was, and I felt very lonely. All I wanted was to get out.

I was prepared to take the risk because even if I was caught and imprisoned I would be set free after a few years. It was widely known that the West German government paid a substantial amount of money per prisoner to the East Germans, who were desperate to boost their economy. Three years in prison was nothing compared to a lifetime in East Berlin surrounded by barbed wire and a wall. At the time no one thought that the wall would eventually come down.

My mother organised my escape. She contacted the Red Cross and through them found an American organisation that would smuggle me out for 30,000 DM (14,000 GBP) – all her savings. I had to meet the mediator at a café. As we talked we had to look relaxed, in case there were Stasi agents watching us. He told me to book a holiday at the seaside resort of Varna in Bulgaria, where I was to stand outside the post office every night at eight o’clock, wearing a white coat so the courier would recognise me. My daughter smuggled my important documents, such as my university degree and birth certificate, across the border under her clothes.

Because of my work as a scientist I was considered trustworthy by the GDR, and granted a travel visa. At Varna I stayed in a hotel for East German tourists. We all had meals in the hotel restaurant, which gave the authorities a chance to count people and ensure no one was missing. An undercover Stasi agent usually accompanied tour groups, posing as a guide or traveller. You never knew who it was, but you knew they were there.

To disguise my intentions I established myself as a party girl, staying out late in nightclubs so people wouldn’t immediately raise the alarm when I didn’t show up after a night out. During the day I rested. I shared a room with another woman and the lack of privacy was stressful, as I had no chance to reflect on what I was about to attempt. I felt exhausted from the effort of acting normal.

Each night I stood outside the post office in my white coat, a camera over my shoulder to look like a tourist and my DDR passport in my pocket. I felt very focussed on my escape, but after a week no one had come and I started to panic.

On the eighth night a young man approached me, and I recognised him as an old university acquaintance. He gave me directions to a meeting point, then I returned to the hotel for dinner so the alarm wouldn’t be raised. Afterwards I left as if going to a nightclub. It was a long, eerie walk past tobacco fields to the meeting point. It was getting dark and I felt very lonely. Suddenly along came a massive beige car with American diplomatic number plates. In the car was the boy I knew, along with a driver.

I sat in the back of the car and we drove to the Yugoslavian border. Just before we got there we stopped in a dark forest. The driver pressed a button on the dashboard and to my amazement it opened up, revealing a space just big enough to squeeze into. Once in, I found it bigger than it looked, with enough room to lie down.

When we arrived at the border I could hear the guards asking questions, and I felt ice cold, totally alert and immersed in the situation. Because the car had diplomatic number plates it was unlikely to be searched, but I knew that the alarm had probably been raised at the hotel.

We drove down many isolated donkey tracks and through fields in Yugoslavia, staying in cheap hotels along the way. It took about four days to get to the Austrian border, and whenever we travelled through a town or checkpoint I had to squeeze back into the chamber.

Finally we reached Munich, and I boarded a flight to West Berlin’s Tempelhof airport. I arrived with only my handbag, after a journey that would have taken less than an hour by train. I felt so relieved and happy to see my daughter and my mother.

I had to report to an escapee intake centre, where I was interrogated by the Germans and each of the Allies, first the Americans, then the British and finally the French. They all asked the same questions – where did you live in East Berlin, and what do you know about the Russian military?

I was granted refugee status, but the authorities advised me to leave Berlin because scientists were sometimes kidnapped back by the East Germans, so I registered with the job centre, and found work as a high school chemistry teacher in North Germany, where I still live today. Finally normal life could begin.

So I thought I’d write instead about the Japanese domestic interiors exhibition at the Geffrye Museum (on until 29 August). I visited last Friday, and although it’s a little thin in parts I still liked it – ever since David Mitchell said something (or perhaps he was quoting someone else) along the lines of ‘all countries are different, but Japan is differently different’ the country has become something of an obsession. The Japan rooms at the British Museum only fuelled it, and just yesterday I received in the post, all the way from Shibuya Publishing, Japan, a copy of Art For All magazine, which featured a blog I wrote mentioning Gilbert and George. My bloggerly cup spilleth over.

Anyway, I learned a few things at the exhibition about Japanese homes. Firstly, toilets are considered unclean (obviously) so you would never have one in the same room as the bath or sink (or, presumably, carpet the loo, as I have seen here). And while you wear house slippers at all times in a Japanese home, you change these for special toilet slippers at the appropriate time. I like that.

Also, dolls are often given as gifts by grandparents (nothing new there). They are thought to protect the children as they grow up. Dolls must be treated well or they can cause bad luck; when stored, their faces must be covered, and old and unwanted dolls must be ritually disposed of at temples and shrines. Now this I also feel is very wise – like many people, I find some dolls disturbing, and I think the idea of treating them carefully is a good one. I remember reading a book set on the Welsh coast about a girl who is given a wooden doll – I think it was called Dodi – and it causes all sorts of trouble. I’d love to read it again actually, and see if it’s still as terrifying (editing it: it’s called A Candle In Her Room & the secondhand paperback is currently going for about 30 quid on Amazon. Hunting it down also reminded me of my whole teenage Lois Duncan phase – Killing Mr Griffin, Stranger with my Face, Trapped in Time – she wrote brilliant teen thrillers).

Finally, the entry of the home is considered spiritually hazardous, so lucky owls and cats are displayed on top of the shoe cupboard as protection.

Bugger. Baby squawking. Back to ball training (the kid’s got talent).