Margaret Hodge and the BNP

Well, she has gone and done it again. Margaret Hodge MP had me in an apoplectic rage this morning following comments in yesterday's Sunday Times which have been widely reported elsewhere today.

The Times: More people considering BNP protest vote
Angry voters may support BNP
The Guardian: BNP 'needs 5% swing to win 70 council seats'
The Mirror: Hodge: we could lose white voters to the BNP
The Telegraph: White voters are deserting us for the BNP, says Blair ally.

The fact that she believes eight out of ten white working class voters here are going to vote for the BNP (offensive party of the far right) deeply saddens me but it is not a surprise and ultimately isn't what has made me angry.

At the General Election, in May 2005, the BNP polled nearly 17% of the vote in Barking. Their biggest success ever. Hodge, who won the seat, wrote a defensive article in the Observer blaming Labour for losing touch with its traditional voters. She highlighted the sense of anger, disillusionment and powerlessness felt by many constituents here and how the BNP had effectively capitalised on it.

This maddened me. If Hodge clearly understood the problems on the ground and what was causing them why had she done nothing about it beforehand? Why had she not organised an effective campaign to promote Labour and to counter the BNP's poisonous lies? Why was she blaming the Labour party as if she was not a part of it? An edited version of my letter was published.

My last point was that Hodge 'must translate today's insights into actions and admit her own failings'.

Has she heeded my advice? Of course not. A year on she is showing the same high level of understanding which, given her total lack of action to address the issues we as a constituency face, smacks of nothing more than a modern day mixture of paternalism, condescension and pity.

Signs

Two signs spotted from the number 5 bus today:

1. A shop with no name on the Barking Road, Upton Park, has the following written on the awning: EVERYTHING YOU WANT FOR DAILY NEEDS. OPEN 366 DAYS A YEAR.

2. A small poster in Tippy's Cafe (English by day; Thai by night) at East Ham, and replicated on a much greater scale on the railings of Upton Park football ground, advertising the upcoming local elections: May the 4th be with you. Vote.

I'll let you guess which one made me laugh and which had my cringing in my boots.

Hamilton Hall

I survived the Hamilton Hall experience.

The Hamilton Hall is a pub at one of the main overground stations in London – Liverpool Street. The commuter trains run out to the Essex coast carrying the wide boys and girls* in and out every day. I grew up on the edge of London and Essex – Romford – through which the overcrowded and slow Great Eastern line runs.

I was to meet friends there before going for a curry Wednesday night. The place makes me nervous. Very nervous.

The problem is I always run into someone I went to school with or knew in my younger days. The conversation goes something like this:

Them: Emma! Are you married?
Me: No.
Them: Oh. You've got kids, though?
Me: No.
Them: Never mind. You're not too old yet! A house?
Me: No. I'm happy as I am. Live with my partner and am doing well professionally – one
step off senior management in a school.
Them: You always did like school, didn't you?.(Sneer). Where do you live?
Me: Barking.
Them: Oh, that's awful. My husband's a trader in the city. We've got a four bedroomed house
in Hornchurch, his and hers convertibles, three children, a swimming pool and a villa in
Marbella.

Okay, okay. I may have slightly exaggerated that last bit but you get the drift. They think you have to acquire certain material things (husbands and children are seen as commodities) to be happy; I don't and am always annoyed that I leave with their pity.

This time I didn't bump into anyone. I felt like I had triumphed over the place. The weight of the world left my shoulders as we sauntered off to the curry capital Brick Lane.

*does this translate into US English – dodgy chancers?

...Update...

After taking the digital card thing from my camera to Jimmy Chung's for processing, where admittedly I pay more, for good service and flattery (“Good photos, Emma, good photos”) than I would in somewhere like Boots, I set off up the escalators to the library which is temporarily housed above Asda.

The man on the Information Desk did not fill me with confidence. A weak, weedy and ineffectual Mr Muscle type. He listened intently to my pin problem, took my library card, stared at the monitor for a moment or two and wandered off. He came back with Joyce. She didn't need a badge to announce her position as Senior Librarian. Robust and confident she would not have been out of place during the Blitz. I imagined her with her sleeves rolled up ready to charge into the fray.

We exchanged knowing looks. I'm not sure what about. She seemed to take a shine to me. Within moments I had learnt everything that was wrong with the new system and how she was clearly the person to put it right. I was in no doubt - I would be leaving with a functioning pin.

Not only can I decide where I want to pick up my reserved book from I can choose how I am notified – post, email or SMS. All I have to do now is wait.

Borrowing Books

Back to books. I am attempting to borrow this month's book group choice, Master and Margarita from the local library. You can check to see if the library holds it online.

A new page pops up. It informs me that I am searching in the London Consortium catalogue which comprises Barking and Dagenham, Havering, Redbridge, Waltham Forest and the other north London borough of...Wandsworth (ok, just in case you don't know London it's very definitely south of the river).

I start ranting. The page doesn't tell me if I can actually borrow something from another borough. It's all very well and good being able to browse but that doesn't really help me in the long term. (It is at this juncture that I should point out I don't actually want to borrow the book. I want to buy it. Things going wrong are making me happy).

Author search: BULGAKOV

Bulgakov, Mikhail or Bulgakov, Valentin Federovich?

I click on the former. The first entry reads: Six Soviet Plays, ed. By Eugene Lyons. Author: AFINOGENYEV, Alexander.

Hello? I'm getting angrier and happier by the minute.

I locate the book and guess what? Most of the copies are held in Tooting, Putney and other South London libraries. There are none in Barking and Dagenham (quelle surprise).

Rubbing my hands with glee I decide there is only one way to find out if I can have an out of borough book and that is to try to reserve it.

I enter my library card number and my pin. I get an error message. I try again. Three times. The number is in front of me and the pin is always the last four digits of your phone number.
I am now getting delightfully frustrated. I email the library asking why I can't log on to the new system and to see if I can borrow the book and collect it from my local branch. I expect an answer sometime in 2010.

30 minutes later Mr Librarian explains that yes, I can borrow any book listed and collect it from where I choose, and that the pin is now randomly generated by a computer system – ask any librarian.

Any librarian? The one at my school? Doug in the States? I click on opening times. 7pm every weekday evening...except...you've guessed it...Wednesday! Shuts at 5pm and it's now 4.30pm. I ring expecting them to say you cannot have it over the telephone. No such luck. After taking my details and seemingly endless tipp-tapping on a keyboard, I get my new pin.

I sulked in the bath. This plan was coming together. I wouldn't be able to buy the book.

With a heavy heart I tried once more to log on with the new pin and HURRAH! It doesn't work and it's too late to tell anyone. Hee hee.

Regent's Canal

Before I regale you with stories from my Regent's Canal walk, chosen by Coolbuddha, I must make a confession.

I was forced into committing a sacrilegious act. The printer jammed as I tried to copy the relevant pages of the guidebook. I was quite determined I was not taking any extra baggage this time so I unceremoniously butchered the pages from the binding with a pair of Ikea kitchen scissors. I did feel guilty but as the day wore on the memory conjured up a naughty giggle more akin to having been caught behind the bike sheds.

My excitement was tempered at the bus stop to Barking. In stark contrast to last Thursday this was a walk I was looking forward to but the weather could not have been more different. The wind was biting into me and the cold chilling my bones.

I was cheered on the train by the sight of families talking to one another. One little lad was told by his grandmother that the Gherkin was “Ken's New Building”. He confidently asserted it would be better named the “Bullet Building”. I managed to keep my gob shut and not point out the mistakes being made and got off the train with his imaginative comment of “this station must be called after a house made of lemons and limes” (Limehouse) ringing in my ears.




It doesn't matter what the time the buses always crawl down from Aldwych to Trafalgar Square. The Column is being cleaned. Buggers up the tourists' photos (which does, unfortunately, make me laugh).


We covered the main shopping street with ease and were soon winging our way up the Edgeware Road. I defy anyone to find more establishments starting with Z within spitting distance of each other – Zam Zam (supermarket), Zonzo (Italian restaurant) and Zorba (Middle Eastern eaterie).

Surprisingly, I managed to get off at the right bus stop for Warwick Avenue. I am usually so preoccupied with missing the stop that I get off too early.

My first thoughts, as I gazed at the Clifton Villas, was that I was in the northern equivalent of Kensington. The big houses with magnolias out front and the village-like feel were similar. I then hit the canal.

Little Venice. I have never experienced the Real Thing but, lovely though this is, I would expect something a little more from the original. The area only acquired the name in the 50s but Byron and Robert Browning had made comparisons back when they were around (apparently). Advertising suggested you can eat on a boat, watch a puppet show, the list goes on...

The more houseboats I saw the more I was carried away with the idea that this was a romantic way in which to live. Surely life on a boat MUST be idyllic? The smell of wood burning took me back to my childhood and I decided all was well with the world. I then spotted the Sir Percy who is for sale. I broached the question: what would Colin say? And came back down to earth with a bump. “Can you get satellite?”.




The architecture, of which, technically, I know very little was varied but reinforced my love of red brick, high ceilings and big windows which let in an abundance of light. Railings (black) would be nice as well.

On spotting a boarded-up pub my first thought was one of reassurance. It wasn't just us poorer areas that were being hit. I then realised what a beautiful building it was and was saddened by the idea it would be turned into expensive flats.

My first descent onto the tow path proper and I was humming away (On Top of the World) without a care in the world. The first tunnel was narrow, low and very black and I suddenly wondered whether I was safe alone on a dank day. I didn't want to end up like Dirty Den (admittedly he did rise from the dead a few years later).






But then, all change! I was taken aback by the grandeur of the houses skirting Regent's Park - both the buildings and the gardens are immaculate - with no signs of life. The original plans had the canal running through the park but the riff raff working the boats on the water would have lowered the tone of what still is a very exclusive area.



A sign announced workmen were ahead. I couldn't fathom out what they were doing but later passed a sign asking people to be careful as the “powerwashing of the pontoons” was commencing on April 10. It sounds like I had a lucky escape.




There was only one boat in action. As it approached I could see an elderly gentleman guiding at the rear. I'd decided to shout a hello in friendly greeting. He beat me to it with a cry of “how do you do?”. My heart a-flutter, I was suddenly Austen's Emma Woodhouse, I shouted back “very well, Sir. Very well”. (I then collapsed, metaphorically speaking, in fits of laughter while I tried to work out where on earth that response had come from). The water responded in his wake with a thwack, thwop, thwump.

Since our visit to the zoo a few weekends ago more of the Into Africa exhibit area was open. I spotted same rather vicious-looking hyena/dog type creatures in an enclosure bordering the other side of the canal. The giraffes would be much more suited to a gentle stroll by the river. On seeing the Snowdon Aviary I did burst into song myself – a quick rendition of 'Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree'.




Camden Lock was more pleasing on the eye than I had perhaps imagined although there was a group of 16 year old German tourists conducting a love-in on the banks of the canal.
Boats are not immune to the money-making schemes of councils – mooring for the 'stop and shop' is limited to four hours – 'charges apply thereafter'.






(Pat, all I can say here is Dan Flavin, eat your heart out!)



It was strange to approach St Pancras from the canal. The gasometer and the tower were familiar but from a very different angle.

There was very little noise on my walk. The only real exceptions being the reggae pumped out of the Global Express warehouse, the platform announcements from the Marylebone Station and the drilling from the building site at King's Cross. I thought the worker's carrier bags pegged to a string in the window of one of the mobile huts rather touching – and a wonderful source of practical jokes.

I felt slightly unnerved as I approached the crowds in Islington. The atmosphere was so different from that of the waterside. Chapel Street market is a gem where the old and the new meet. On one side of the street is M. Manzes live and jellied eels, on the other the trendy euphorium bakery.

The guidebook describes the walk from Warwick Avenue to Angel but mentions the possibility of continuing to Limehouse. I was unsure until I got going. I was so full of life that there was no way I was stopping short. Until it started pouring with rain. I took shelter under a tree at St Pancras when it was at it's worst and trudged my way to Islington. Undaunted I stopped for a coffee in the hope the cloud would clear. It did me no such favours and I resignedly decided to bail out. Another four miles in the rain would be foolish given my recent health scares (although I do believe that the idea you are automatically going to catch cold in the rain is a load of poppycock).

Disappointed, I didn't want to rush home so decided that whatever the first bus was at the stop on the other side of the road I was jumping on it to its destination. I was fortunate. The 30 to Marble Arch. Followed by the 23 to Liverpool Street and the 8 to Bow. And the District Line home.

Clearing up the books

There seems to have been a misunderstanding.

In writing about my need to economise I mentioned books. At no point did I say that I am going to stop buying them – it's an impossibility. They are paid for out of my pocket money.
I went to Beer and Books last night with two books (House of Dr Dee which I am reading now and the book group choice of Love in the Time of Cholera) and came back with six. One was a gift and the other three I bought with the voucher my brother gave me for my birthday.

P., who is the only person, because of my illness, to have been to all the gatherings puts me to shame as he has a far superior collection of books and has plenty of ideas of how to fit more on the bookshelves. He is also rather posh and has a fantastic vocabulary. If I turn up a little late it's because I've had a f**king nightmare. Yesterday, he'd had “an incipient disaster”. Sounded too delightful to be something terrible.

Banksy

Like Drawing Blood from a Phone - it's fantastic! Click the link.

Buying Power

We are trying to save the deposit for a house which, in these times, even in east London, is a considerable sum. The problem is that I am not very good at it. I like books, good food, drinking and going places. On the other hand, I don't want to live forever in a one bedroom flat with no garden. I know that we can buy our council flat, and most people have encouraged us to do so, but I do believe in social housing. It's helped us out and I hope that it will do the same for others after us. The only other option is a strict budget.

After the bills are paid we have joint going out money, food money and 'pocket money'. I am trying to spend more wisely and according to the rules of something which I read ages and ages ago. With embarrassment I note these were copied into my journal in November 2002. I obviously thought they were important but it's taken me two and a half years to act!

Do I need it?
How many do I already have?
How much will I use it?
How long will it last?
Is it recyclable?
Could I borrow it?
Do without it?
Repair and maintain it?
Dispose of it environmentally?

It's very difficult. Books are an issue in themselves. I do frequent the local library as I believe they are important, especially for the elderly and the very young. I do, however, like to buy my own copy of a book. If they are crap they are recyclable – I take them to a charity shop.
I have made two purchases this weekend – each for £10 and both very exciting (in my mind at least).

The first is a plain black shopping trolley (ie not tartan or gaudy colours). I can now buy much more at the market and actually get it home. I need it. I don't have one already. I will use it every weekend. It'll last a while. I'm sure my dad could recycle it or repair it. I can't borrow one and I can't see myself needing to dispose of it. Hurrah!

The second – three headbands. The picture on the stall clearly showed four uses. I can remember two (keeping your hair out your eyes and ditto plus less band on top with some round the bottom of your face if its cold). I did nearly find a fifth of my own trying to work out the remaining two- strangulation.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

Increasing numbers of children are arriving at school without the prerequisite listening and speaking skills according to an article I read recently (and which I now cannot find). This point was brought home to me on the train Thursday. A whole family were sat listening to mp3 players. Mum, dad and three children. There was no conversation, no interaction. At their age (between 7 and 13) we would have been looking out the window, pointing to things and asking interminable questions which my mother would have answered with the patience of a saint. I grumpily guessed they were off shopping to Oxford Street rather than sampling the cultural and historical delights in which London abounds. I then remembered that I myself was en route to Kensington.

Buses are infinitely more interesting than trains so I took the 15 from Limehouse and changed for the 9 at Aldwych to reach my destination. They also take far longer and it put off my inevitable arrival for a good 30 minutes or so. The speed with which we shot through Knightsbridge confirmed the fact the bus driver was of good working class stock and viewed the place with the same sense of antipathy as his passengers. (If you are wealthy (and stupid) enough to shop in Harrods you don't get on buses).

My first dilemma was how to hold the guidebook, my notebook, pen and camera all at once. I realised I was going to look like a total tourist rather than a reluctant day-tripping Londoner from the Other Side (ie the east). The rude stares I elicited while eating my beigel outside M&S made me wonder whether I'd tucked my skirt in my knickers and turned green on the way but ultimately made me think to hell with all of you. And off I set.

Turning the corner from the High Street into Derry Street the first building I spotted was that of Associated Newspapers. My heart sank and I was filled with foreboding. Not only was I having to contend with the ghost of Diana but was on the home territory of the Daily Hell and the Evening Standard. Colin has a lot to answer for (for your chance to fill with me horror, see below *).

Through a small alley and I found myself in a beautiful square. The houses were perfect and the communal (gated) garden in the middle has never seen a down and out in its life. The Chapel of the Convent of the Assumption informs passersby that the “exposition of the blessed sacrament” occurs “daily”. Exposition of the sacrament? Sounds either dangerous or painful.

On reading the little plaque attached to the railings of the Maltese Embassy – diplomatic cars only – I did wonder if they pay for this privilege of reserved parking on a public road. Going off on a slight tangent, the embassy of the United Arab Emirates has just stumped up £99,950 in unpaid congestion charges and fines. That of the US is still flouting the law. They should be told, most diplomatically of course, to cough up or ship out.

My journey took me through mews of cottages, past giant houses and the odd council block (Lexham House). The sun was shining and at times I felt like I was in a village or even abroad. The smell of hyacinths drifted on the breeze. Magnolias and almond trees were in full blossom. I photographed the buds of the biggest camellias I have ever seen.

I lingered looking in the windows of the greengrocers, the organic butchers and the Pie Man. Everything was serene, calm and very English. I was enamoured. On my return to the city I passed the cabbies' green tea hut at Hyde Park Corner and was amazed to see a man contending with the traffic on a penny farthing. I could not believe that no-one else on the bus was looking out at this spectacle. I wanted to nudge the woman next to me and say LOOK!

My whole mood had changed. Colin was no longer in the doghouse. I felt happy and alive. I had enjoyed a wonderful glimpse of another world. I tried to imagine myself living in a majestic house in a quiet square but failed. I would be suffocated and constrained by what I perceive as the rules of another time. I arrived back on the estate to herald the arrival of police officers on mountain bikes, a bright blue leather sofa being hoisted off the back of a pick-up truck and kids screaming and shouting. That's more like it.

*First person to choose a number between 1 and 30, exlcuding 2, decides my walk for Tuesday!

Once the beigels have defrosted, I'm off into uncharted territory. Kensington. I blame Colin.

Devoid of inspiration yesterday I asked him to pick a number between 1 and 3. 2. Another number between 1 and 30. 2.

These numbers correspond to the three books of London walks I have (and the order in which I acquired them) and the walks contained therein. Colin has chosen Kensington in Andrew Duncan's Walking London.

When I say, which I frequently do, that I love London I am referring to the east, the City and parts of the West End. I don't do west or south.

If we were to play a word association game Kensington would be followed by Princess of Wales. I shall spare you my opinions on her as some of you would probably find them offensive. Let's just say I have never been, and never will be, a fan.

Being in the habit of treading familiar paths I use the walking guides more for teasing out snippets of information and for finding slightly less obvious places– I don't follow the walks and I don't take the books with me. All that is about to change.

I'm just wondering if I popped to my mum's first whether or not I might find a distress flare in the garden shed...

Ouch

Surprisingly, my legs are in perfect working order. Not a hint of trouble following yesterday's bike ride.

I do, however, have a problem.

I can't sit down.

1st Bike Ride of 2006

It should be a truth universally acknowledged that a size eight woman is not necessarily fit. There are probably women five dress sizes bigger than me who are ten times fitter (or so it seems at least).

I readily agree to a bike ride today as I do believe we have to make the most of the sun while it lasts. My brain is working overtime to decide whether or not I can realistically point out I won't be up to much due to my really rather severe illness. In terms of regular exercise walking is about it and I haven't been on the bike (my mum's) since last summer. Having been back at school for a full half-term I guess my excuses would no longer wash. Hey-ho!

The cycle path is variously obstructed by pedestrians, who cannot hear me shouting 'excuse me, please' over the deafening roar of 6 lanes of traffic, incomplete sandbagged traffic signs, no less than four parked yellow contraptions complete with flashing lights announcing a lane closure and a red lorry reversing directly at me. Not to mention the usual tyre-busting debris. Glass. Stones. Shards of metal.

We swing off the A13 at Silvertown. Beckton to the east and Canning Town to the west. All industrial areas named after the men who first built the factories – rubber and gas respectively. Silvertown is home to Britain's first flyover and was spectacularly blown up in 1917 – 83 tons of TNT went up at Brunner, Mond & Co. Probably the best non-military light show the east of London has seen.

The smell of freshly baked bread follows us as we whizz (creak in my case) past the London City Metal depot and the Peacock Gym (infamous for its alleged links to the criminal underworld). Round the bend and we are in the docks – an odd, in-between world.

The small, squat houses opposite the Excel centre resemble nothing more than beach shacks. DLR stations rise futuristically into the sky. Trains pass. Buses. But no people, few cars. The old and the new; the strangely quiet.

We stumble across a blue sign for the Newham City Farm. Any possibility of pigs fills me with joy and we take a detour (longer than needed; we skid across the one apparent green patch of a housing estate and nearly get our heads taken off by a father and toddler bonding over golf; real clubs, yellow ball).


The pigs, unfortunately, will not pose as I want them to and the eggs are only for sale between 11am and 1pm. Still, it's a wonderful little place and entry is free. (Donations are welcome in the milk churn but I can't bloody find it). I'm all for city children working out where their meat comes from.

I have my first glimpse of City Airport and enter yet another time zone devoid of life. Empty roads, buildings and sky-bound train tracks.

I make it home but not without struggling for the last part of the return leg. I'm quite certain I won't be able to walk tomorrow. Skinny or not.

Veins

The temperature may only have been 1°C when I drove Colin to work this morning but the sun had risen almost majestically.

The red brick houses to the north of Ilford were bigger and wider than usual; their chests puffed out to bathe in the sun's glorious rays. The railings of the park cast shadows onto the crunchy, frosty grass. The shopfronts glittered and the cars sparkled. (I was almost blinded trying to drive with a sun so bright but so low in the sky).

Yesterday started in much the same vein but failed to continue. The clouds came over to match Colin's mood. After an hour being subjected to GMTV at top volume in the hospital waiting room, we were told his operation had been cancelled. He was gutted. I was purely angry but kept my mouth shut as it was his shindig. Someone had allegedly tried to ring the day before but the number they had on file was clearly made up. (No mention of the home number, Colin's mobile and mine that he gave them at the pre-op). He has been given another appointment later in April but which is useless as it transpires he's on the wrong consultant's list even though this one does veins and the one he is under now apparently doesn't. Proverbial piss up in a brewery comes to mind.

I dropped C. off at a meeting this morning and on my return sat staring at bits of paper on the kitchen table. A compliments slip from the British Transport Police which accompanied the attack alarm they sent me. A letter from the same institution which confirmed I had 'reported an offence of SEXUAL ASSAULT on a FEMALE'. Three articles torn from Thursday's Independent referring to the low conviction rates for rape and sexual assault. I was also replaying a scene from the Hills Have Eyes, a terrible film which I saw last night, in which two grotesque mutant men assault and attempt to rape two young, blond and attractive women.

My feelings alternated between depression, anger and a sense of being chilled to the bone.

Depressed in that I feel powerless in the face of the statistics quoted by the journalists:
only 5.6% of reported rape cases (I wasn't actually raped) end in a conviction when it is estimated that perhaps just a quarter of women in that position have the courage to report the rape to the police.

Angry that this is where we are at as a society when 'almost half of all adult women in England and Wlaes have experienced domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking' (Robert Verkaik, Independent). It seems accepted that women are going to be attacked and that, still, the prejudices prevail. They'd been drinking/wearing revealing clothing/going home late on their own. The letter sent from the police was standard. It was sorry for any inconvenience I have been caused. Inconvenience? I felt dirty, ashamed, intimidated, confused, angry, upset. Not inconvenienced.

Other people have always thought me perhaps a little too naive, a bit too optimistic about human nature. I've been brought down to earth with a bump. I was on a full tube when I was assaulted. No-one did anything to help me. Not even an 'Oi, mate! Leave her alone'. That has possibly affected more than the attack itself. (I have been stalked and sexually harrassed before).

Chilled to the bone in the sense that everywhere we are surrounded by images of women as sexual objects. The scene in the Hills Have Eyes (a film I had no inclination to see in the first place) crystallised for me what women are up against. Films are full of scenes of women at the mercy of men. Magazines are full of naked women in sexual poses. Lap dancing and pole dancing have increasingly become accepted by young women as otherwise they are seen as prudish – they are sold the lie that they are liberated and free when they are in fact gratifying men's most basic, and sometimes degenerate, desires. The men who are highlighted as being deviant in some way are ugly, outsiders. Another lie. Women, if they are not stunners, are not taken seriously. Believe me: ordinary men commit crimes against ordinary women.

I am intelligent enough to realise that a lot of men can view the pictures, watch the films and still treat women with respect. Unfortunately, I am increasingly of the opinion that the mags and flicks reinforce a low opinion of women in society as a whole and that they have to go.

And just in case you wanted to ask, yes, it was late, yes, I was wearing a skirt and no, I hadn't had too much to drink.

Barking's Barcelona

I have no objections per se about spreading money around. Now that I am better, I have returned to my pre-illness days of shopping here, there and everywhere in an attempt to give less money to the supermarkets. I do put my money where my mouth is – I was at Billingsgate fish market (a first) at 6.15am yesterday; after breakfast (double egg and chips) in the caff over the road, I bought the newspapers in the local newsagents and had a chat, and then toddled off to Queen's Market for my fruit and veg and the Newham Bookshop for chalk and a gift.

So, people may think that on reading Tristam Hunt's column in today's Observer that I agreed with his assertion 'The capital must share the spoils'. He is referring to the 2012 Olympic Games.

Before I tackle this issue I must just take him to task for even imagining that the 'Lower Lea Valley' could be 'reborn as Barking's Barcelona'. I am aware that he is attempting a spot of alliteration and that Barcelona did host the Olympics (not sure which year). I have never visited Barcelona but I am convinced it is a beautiful city. I am sure that even in it's roughest parts it does not compare to the blight of Barking. I live here. It is grey, dull and overwhelmingly poor. Racism and sexism are rife (which, when considering the football, certainly are also problems in Spain). The Olympics is not going to change that.

(I couldn't find an image of the infamous Gascoigne estate - but click the link for the kind of news it generates).

Continuing with the B's, Hunt asserts that the 'Bradfords and Birminghams' of the country should also benefit from the regeneration that the Olympics will (allegedly) bring. I agree totally but only if they too have to pay an extra fiver a month on their council tax. If Londoners have to pay for the damned Games, then Londoners should bloody well see the benefits. Can't say fairer than that.

Birthday Girl

It was pointed out to me at school that most people of my age demand an expensive meal or a few drinks for their birthday. When I said I was very excited about going to the zoo the question "how old are you, 32 or 2?" was posed.

I've shared my birthday with Easter before ( I was 16 and in Germany at the time) and now with Mothers' Day. I'm not sure that it makes much of a difference (except that I had to ring my mum back to wish her a happy day as I forgot when she rang me).

I have had an unusually low number of cards this year - I am hoping it is to do with the fact my birthday has fallen on a Sunday and the post here is crap. They amount to 2 - one from my parents and one from Colin.

Presents to date are:

1. a traditional stove-top espresso maker
2. The House of Doctor Dee. Peter Ackroyd.
3. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky. Patrick Hamilton.
4. Divine, strokable notebooks.
4. Nigella parmesan grater.
5. Nigella blue colander.

Cooking, reading and notebooks. Just about sums me up!

Flavin

Possibly one of the most overused phrases in the English language is “I don't know anything about art but I know what I like”.

When Pat first mentioned Dan Flavin's lights I wasn't sure it was for me. I read good reviews but still was not convinced.

Another well-worn saying about not judging something until you've seen it/read it sprang to mind. So when Pat suggested we paid a visit to the gallery last week I agreed.

Very unusually (read unheard of) I felt rather seasick on the tube and felt the need to buy some chocolate (very rare) from one of the kiosks at Embankment in the hope it would make me feel better. After the embarrassment of asking if they had a marathon(!) I nearly broke my teeth on it. Clearly, it had been a cold day. I had to use my back chompers to break into it.

In the Starbucks adjoining the gallery I spotted my second famous person of the evening. The first got on the tube at Monument and I had a vague recollection of him being a tv presenter. I have since worked out it was Ross Kelly.

I've had no luck with the second – an actor. Older, biggish, round glasses, slightly scruffy/eccentric looking. There was possibly a third person in the Thai/Chinese restaurant that rounded off the night. Pat informs me he bears a passing resemblance to Rufus Sewell. I wouldn't have a clue...

The Flavin retrospective was everything Pat told me it was. Excellent. I've got the white walls in my flat but not the huge space or the clutter-free environment in which these pieces shine. You've got until April 2nd.

Rubbish

I've long campagined for those of us stuck in flats to be able to fill the orange recycling bags given freely to houses in Barking. We're serviced by the same dustcart but for some unfathomable reason aren't entitled to use them (even though the council is having a green campaign at the moment and attempting to up their recycling rates).

Walking to the tube this morning I started looking jealously at the recycling bags waiting for the refuse truck. By the time I hit the station I'd recognised three things:

1. The bags were full of convenience food packaging, tins and plastic bottles.
2. I use very few tins and exactly none of the others.
3. I am in danger of becoming a food snob.

I am thinking of changing my campaign to one for composting for flats. I'm sure my carrot peelings would help the roses in the local park along.

Things You Overhear

1. Calling your children by a biblical name rather than Tyrone or Tyreece means they will grow up good (young lad; 87 bus from Barking to Romford).

2. Imported, out of season strawberries are still good for the cellulite round the bottom of your buttocks (twenty-something Scouser; Tesco, Canary Wharf).

3. Although there are too many f**king foreigners asking for directions in London, you cannot ignore them just in case you go to their country (late-twenties, East Ender; Matter of Time pub, Mile End).

Oh for a camera

Don't you just hate it when you see the perfect photo but don't have a camera to hand?

Dolphin pub, Mare Street, Hackney. Irish but with a large Vietnamese contingent.

A Vietnamese man of short stature (about 5') wearing a massive Guinness hat, swigging a pint of the aforementioned, fag hanging out of mouth, dancing his own version of a jig.

Priceless.

Oh My God!

When I wore my hair down on Thursday it elicited a variety of responses from my form class including "groovy", "wild" and "oh, my God!".

Unfortunatley, I hadn't been there for registration the previous afternoon and quite uncharacteristically they'd been naughty. So, I had to do Ms Angry - I am hurt...embarrassed...angry...you've let me down etc.etc. Their shoulders sagged, their heads dropped and their eyes were downcast. I finished with "And does anyone have anything relevant to say?".

S., who has very severe learning difficulties, put his hand up. "Is it important?" I scowled.

"Yes. You look very beautiful".

How can you be angry at that? A blush and a fit of giggles and it was all forgotten.

Frisé

Having my hair cut has always been something of a traumatic experience. It's not for nothing that older girls at school used to shout 'birds nest' as I walked past.

It's thick, curly and very very frizzy. I came out of a hairdressers on the Kingsway in Swansea about thirteen years ago resembling a prize poodle.

It should, therefore, come as no surprise that my hair only gets the chop annually or even once in eighteen months. And yesterday was the day.

My mum and sister kept suggesting I go to a family friend who does a good job on their barnets. I wasn't convinved. My mum's hair is fine and straight. K.'s much less curly, much more controllable and most importantly she actually invests time in looking after it properly (something I am too lazy to do). I used to babysit for the person in question. Is she really old enough and sensible enough to do me justice?

I think J. was more nervous than me and thankfully this meant she did not throw caution to the wind (which is what usually happens when scissors meet my hair for the first time). The results are good. Exactly what I wanted.

She charges a tenth of the price of Tony and Guy and her pug sleeps on your lap, purring like a cat, while she goes about her business. How many hairdressers can you say that for? I'll be back in March 2007.

Upton Park

I was led to Upton Park a few weekends ago.

A search for local, independent bookshops on the Internet brought up the Newham Bookshop which I remembered having seen from a bus years ago. I thought it was a council information point (goodness knows why).

At about the same time, I saw a letter in the Guardian referring to the planned demolition of Queen's Market to make way for an Asda. This was first mooted a good couple of years ago and I had forgotten all about it.

I thought it my duty to get down to the market and support it. I did expect to see evidence of some kind of campaign - posters and petitions - but this amounted to a small A4 sheet of paper pinned to the upright of a fruit stall reading 'SAY NO TO ASDA'. This was something of a disappointment. The market wasn't.

Is Asda going to sell you a bag of calves' feet for 99p? Half a goat? Exotic fish, fruit and veg? Probably not.

I have to be honest here and say that I could not buy meat or fish from the market as I am a fussy bugger but the fruit, veg, herbs and spices are a marvel to behold - and cheaper than the supermarket for the most part. The customers are a remarkably varied lot but share the same enthusiasm for filling up their shopping trolleys (I defy you to find more in such a small space; I'm determined to find a modern version - I can't be doing with the old-fashioned tartan-type). An old white woman remarked to an incredibly ill-tempered man sharing her table in Percy Ingles "We're a dying race. Isn't change a wonderful thing?". He did not concur.

The bookshop is everything its fans have said it is. Compact but with a wide range of books and a knowledgeable member of staff. I thought I was going to have to order my Beer and Books choice (Raymond Chandler's Big Sleep) as it didn't appear in the fiction section. The young lady behind the till appeared to magic a copy out of nowhere. Wonderful.

The only thing to marr Upton Park has to be the football team. I shall have to try to forget the fact we were attacked after a game (Big Dunc equalised just before the whistle to draw the game; didn't go down too well with the home fans) and in a moment of madness, following a different match, I punched a racist fan on the tube. C. and his brother had to remain silent for the remainder of the journey as they didn't fancy anyone hearing their Northern accents and working out they were with me.

According to the Friends of Queen's Market website which I have just discovered the 25th March is a political action day. I can get my fruit and veg, buy some books and have a good old rant against Labour. How exciting.

Stood at Limehouse station this evening with the wind whistling round my blisters a non-stopping train whizzed past. My jaw nearly hit the platform when I saw the second carriage - bright orange/yellow with block red text COUGH FREE ZONE! (Exclamation mark mine).

Back in December someone mentioned c2c had introduced non-coughing carriages but I really didn't believe it. It was a gimmick; unworkable. Well, I stand corrected. I've seen it with my own eyes.

New York, New York

Those of you who read Pat's blog will know that the preparations for his work trip to New York haven't been exactly trouble-free.

I do know that he wouldn't wish me ill but I do think he was rather upset by the fact I didn't have TB. It would have been the perfect excuse not to travel - 'I might have it too'. (And what thanks that would have been for buying me dinner!).

I helped out by countersigning his passport application and even offered to lend him my bright pink suitcase.

It would seem he had one last favour to ask of me. Make sure he was up this morning bright and early to catch the plane. I'd only have been too happy to oblige had he not sent the message to my work email address at the weekend. I read it approximately three hours too late.

I can only assume that he made it of his own accord or is holed up in his flat for the week.

Back

I do have four plasters on my right foot as a result of rubbing shoes. I had to wait TWELVE minutes for a Jubilee Line tube due to a signal failure. I nearly got knocked over in assembly by an eager member of my form who wished to welcome me back. (He's rather little and managed to hug my knees). Another tutee spilt salad all over my chair at lunchtime and someone asked me if I'd had 'chicken flu'. I got a round of applause and a cheer when I was welcomed back in morning briefing. I think they've missed me.

Beer

There is always the danger that when you've been ill for sometime and have done almost nothing for a number of weeks that you think you're ok and then realise you're not. I decided to have a day out in London yesterday. If I survived that, all was well.

The football was a little too early for my liking; kick off at 12.30pm. The breakfast menu would still be out at the highly recommended family-run Italian eaterie on Great Castle Street - Café Lido - and I was craving spinach and ricotta cannelloni. It really is the best. The waitress and the kitchen came up trumps and let me order it even though it wasn't quite 11am. Sets you up for the day.

We made our way to the Freemason's Arms on Long Acre. There is the obvious connection gleaned from its name (it's the old-fashioned briefcases that make me laugh; you don't see them anywhere else) but it was also home to the first meeting of the FA. This is where the first football league rules were decided. Where else to watch the FA Cup match between Liverpool and Manchester United?

We got our usual table (if we go to watch sport during the day it is always here). There's a nice mix of locals, day-tripping Londoners and tourists. During the course of our visit the table joining ours was variously colonised by a grey-haired, grey whiskered, bespectacled Italian (with too-long fingernails) who had just taken part in the Asahi Pure Logic Sudoku Championships which were being held upstairs, a French couple, a crusty sporting a Blackberry and a massive bag from the Disney Store (v. strange), two women who had 'done' the National Gallery and the shops and a couple of Notts Forest season ticket holders who were here for the weekend. (They had tickets booked for the London Eye today which is a shame as the weather has been lousy).

I was very good and stuck to four pints of Guinness (less than one an hour) before we moved on to China Town. I somehow managed to order the wrong set meal but we scoffed it all the same. A Tiger there and a Bailey's near Embankment finshed the evening off.

The verdict? No hangover but my ribs and back hurt like hell. Look's like tomorrow is going to be fun.

Back to Work

Why, oh why, did I say to the doctor that I didn't need signing off for another two weeks? Why did my parents not bring me up to be a malingerer?

The thought of going back to work tomorrow fills me with dread. It's like going back to school after the six week's holiday except I haven't been off galavanting and enjoying myself.

The stories I have heard in my absence, if shown on a TV soap opera, would push the bounds of reality. I'd be sat there screaming 'but things like that don't happen in schools'.

I've made my list. I've got my best suit and high heels ready. This girl means business.

I like you. Do you want a kiss?

I think these were my exact words when the lovely Dr Syed told me I no longer required a lung biopsy.

I'd been sat on a trolley outside the CT scanner feeling a total fraud. I could quite clearly have walked from the ward to the radiology department. I now understand this is a blasphemous thought which could cost a poorly paid porter his job.

A quite beautiful English voice emanated from around the corner; shortly followed by its owner. A very smart, not unattractive, doctor clutching a can of cold Coke.

When the nurse said “This is Emma”. He looked at me in horror. Admittedly, I'd had the worst night's sleep of my life and have been ill for six weeks but even so I thought it a little rude. “How old are you, Emma?”

I'll forgive him the look of revulsion. He was concerned that I was far too young to have such a risky procedure. The doctor was brutally blunt with me as he described how it was unlikely he could carry out the biopsy without collapsing my lung. I felt very strangely reassured that someone was being honest with me rather than wanting to run for the nearest door.

I signed the consent forms after we'd struck a deal. (The forms, incidentally, have to list every possible consequence of the treatment including 'pain' and 'bruising'. A sad reflection on our litigation-happy society. “But, the doctor never said sticking a ruddy great needle into my lungs might hurt or leave a bruise...”). I would have an up-to-date scan and if it showed that the lesion was any smaller the biopsy wouldn't go ahead.

To everyone's delight, not least my own, Dr Syed was able to tell me that there was virtually nothing left; the biopsy was unnecessary.

I like you. Do you want a kiss?

Gurus and ploughshares

After the ordeal that was Pamuk's The Black Book I am pleased to announce that my faith in the written word has been restored.

Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, was given to me last Christmas but had somehow slipped between the bookshelves. I found it trying to dig out Austen's Sense and Sensibility ( I had the idea of reading her novels in chronological order but fell at the first hurdle, ie. the first one has disappeared). This really is one of those books where you nod your head in agreement, shake your head in disbelief and force a wry smile of acknowledgement. You will love it if you believe in the Enlightenment, rationalism and reality. If you like self-help books, cried like a loony when Diana died and sincerely believe you are going to win the lottery it probably isn't the book for you.

The other book I would recommend is Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian. It's an easy read rather than a literary masterpiece but it is intensely funny. It starts thus: 'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukranian divorcée. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside'. I can see this one being made into a film.

Essex Girls? We're the Best

My headteacher's notion that 'her girls' would be disadvantaged by the Essex Girl stereotype prevelant in the national tabloids in the late eighties and early nineties made me hysterical with laughter. I quite seriously thought that the only thing stopping me from getting ahead in the world would be me.

I spent the next four years at uni being the butt of everyone else's jokes. (My only respite was a year in Strasbourg where I was subsumed into the the hard-drinking, loose-living stereotype of les anglaises).

I am amazed that a decade and a half later we've only moved on to the extent that the Essex Girl stereotype is being championed not just by the tabloids but by Germaine Greer in the Observer.

She'll be telling us next that she enjoys nothing more than watching Desperate Housewives and Footballers' Wives. Backward-looking programmes which promote the 'virtues' of ignorance and good looks.

TB or not TB?

Good news is usually celebrated with a bottle of red wine or a pint or three of Guinness but alcohol just isn't on the menu at the moment. The fantastic news that I don't have TB (hurrah!) was celebrated with a mug of Green & Black's hot chocolate. Very different but just about acceptable.

I do still have to undergo a lung biopsy next week which sounds particularly nasty. The only real danger is a punctured lung. It would leak air and a) heal itself or b) a tube is inserted and (I stopped listening at this point).

Not wanting to exaggerate or anything but it feels like I've cracked my ribs and/or torn all the muscles on the right side of my body from coughing so much. The sooner I get some medicine the better. (And the sooner I found something more interesting to talk about).

Whoosh...over my head!

Galip went on to read lines he couldn't get the hang of...

This sentence just about sums up how I feel about Orhan Pamuk's The Black Book, the novel from which it is taken.

Galip, an Istanbul lawyer, is looking for his wife who has vanished. Chapters alternate between his search and the newspaper column of his famous journalist cousin, Jelal Bey.

The idea of identity runs through the book. Can you ever really be yourself? (Especially in an Eastern country that looks so much to the West?). A question which I could happily debate. Much of the book, however, passed me by. I can't, and don't want to, understand letters, Latin, Turkish or otherwise, telling stories in people's faces. A black telephone is a black telephone. It doesn't have a hidden meaning. Signs on carrier bags tell you where they've come from (generally) not the mysteries of the universe.

I was interested enough to want to know what happens but fed up with forcing myself to read it. In the end, when reading became more of a chore than a pleasure, I skim-read the last 100 pages or so.

I am left wondering about the translation. I realise how incredibly hard it must be to do a book justice in another language. It was the Americanisms - broad (woman), geezer, it was twelve past three - that grated on me; as did 'bathetic' and 'highfalutin' in the same sentence (different registers?).

When watching a subtitled version of the French masterpiece La Haine with A-level students a few years back, I was horrified to discover the name Asterix had been translated - as Snoopy. I flew into an apoplectic rage, calmed only by the fact the kids recognised the cultural travesty without needing an explanation.

The reason this anecdote came to mind was the start of this sentence:

The host (whose goggling eyes reminded Galip at times of Bugs Bunny)...

Goggling is an ugly word. Do Bugs Bunny's eyes really goggle? In my mind, the two just don't go together. They're not an obvious pairing. My question is, obviously, this: did Pamuk use Bugs Bunny in his original?

For me the most disappointing aspect of the book is the cover's assertion that it's a "novel suffused with the sights, sounds and scents of contemporary Istanbul". There was much mention of Istanbul but I wasn't drawn in. I didn't experience, what surely must be, a great city.
I would never tell someone not to read a book - I like coffee, you like tea - but this really isn't one I'd recommend. Sadly.

Year of the Dog

I hope I'm not alone in not realising adult nappies exist. Due to the long and crowded train journeys to get home within China some supermarkets have reported sales of adult nappies have gone up by 50%. This is clearly the down side of the Chinese New Year. I'm assuming sales of lotions for chapped buttocks have increased accordingly.

Boycott

Back in October last year the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed twelve cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed including one "showing Mohammed wearing a turban-like bomb, and another as brandishing a sabre, with two burka-clad women behind him". The newspaper had urged readers to send in cartoons as an author had written to them complaining no-one would illustrate his book through fear of the Islamic reaction. Mohammed cannot be depicted.

Apparently, two of the cartoonists are now in hiding and the newspaper has had to hire security guards at it's offices. Muslims have marched on the streets in protest and ambassadors from eleven Muslim countries demanded a meeting with the Prime Minister (who refused).

Friday's Independent carried a tiny little column which noted that the Saudi response was to withdraw their ambassador to Denmark. It was the last sentence, however, that struck me.

"Saudis are boycotting Danish products".

Given I can only think of two Danish products - Carlsberg and bacon - I fail to see this plan denting Danish trade figures.

Democracy

We all know, because Mr Bush keeps telling us, that the way to solve all the problems in the Middle East is to ensure democracy. Which is why I nearly pissed my pants when I learnt Hamas had won in the Palestinian elections. (I'm not saying it is an appropriate response but an honest one). I'd like to have seen Mr Bush's first, private reaction. I cannot imagine it was as tame as mine.

Civic duty

With the possible exception of Wednesday's bronchoscopy (see below) the highlight of the past two weeks must be the one-hour birdwatch for the RSPB. We don't have a garden but there is a nice green patch with a gloriously tall tree behind the flat to watch.

The results were rather disappointing. I'm sure there are usually more birds around. Anyway, I spotted 6 blackbirds, 2 coal tits, 1 collared dove and 2 crows. The four squirrels and one mangey three-legged fox don't count but they're worth mentioning as they are much more fun to observe.

Englishness

Much has been made in the press recently about Englishness and what it means.

I think the responses to my suspected TB (sorry to harp on but there's not much going on here at the moment) are typically English: "crumbs", "oh gosh" and "crikey" and two links to a BBC article about Bill Gates giving $600 million to fight tuberculosis along with the lines "why don't you see if you can get a slice?" and "blimey you have a fan...Bill has heard and rushed to the rescue".

Urgh

I got a morning out at the hospital on Wednesday (isn't life just full of fun?!).

I had to have a bronchoscopy - fibre optic telescope stuck up your nose, down your throat and into your lungs - as part of the tests to ascertain whether or not I have TB. Your throat gets sprayed with this viscious stuff that soon makes it go numb which is really rather alarming because it feels like you can't swallow. Something else gets squirted up your nose and if you're lucky you get a sedative as well. Apparently, it makes you a little drowsy. Thankfully, I went straight to sleep. I remember the consultant asking if it felt like I'd had one G&T too many and then I woke up in the ward.

Need vs Greed

I have absolutely no problems with Eskimos wearing fur. They live a certain lifestyle in extreme conditions and polyester probably wouldn't do the trick. After reading today's reports about the big freeze in Russia (I cannot even begin to wonder what minus thirty feels like), I may even be sympathetic enough to allow them a spot of fur to keep warm. The cold has clearly gone to the heads of some. Yesterday was the Orthodox Epiphany and was marked by the usual Blessing of the Water. This meant lunatics, proving they are Real Men, cut through the ice with a chainsaw and then jumped in dressed in nothing but their Speedos. I think the only sane part is gulping down the cognac when they stagger out.

What I don't agree with is people with more money than sense wearing fur as a fashion statement. And certainly not that acquired from endangered species. Yes, I am referring to that hideously vile, self-serving, arrogant and abusive man that is Pete Burns. The papers today seem to think the coat isn't gorilla. Chimps have been mentioned (not endangered) as have colobus monkeys (endangered). I would really quite like to see him properly incarcerated (without high heels, make-up and accessories) but knowing my luck I'll be sat here fuming as its announced the coat is either fake or not from animals covered by the Control of Trade in Endangered Species.

Books, books and more books

While off from work with an alleged chronic throat infection, I've read the enlightening Bloody Foreigners,

the interesting City of Cities (Stephen Inwood),

Truman Capote's dazzling In Cold Blood ,

and the hysterically funny Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

The good news is that I've plenty of time on my hands to read lots more. The bad news is that it's becuase I don't have a throat infection at all but suspected TB.

You follow your principles and go work in a totally inclusive inner-city comprehensive and what thanks do you get? Some bastard child gives you tuberculosis!

There is a slim chance that I don't have it but the consultant is working on the theory that I do and I'm going along with him. (He clearly knows more about these things than me). At the moment, I officially have pneumonia.

Having got to the age of thirty-one and three quarters without any real illnesses (chicken pox excluded) it's all a bit bewildering. I've had more x-rays, scans, tests and consulations in three days than the previous three decades. I've got my first ever anaesthetic next week when they stick something up my nose and down my throat to my lungs. Sounds bloody delightful.

I'm off to the clinic and shall then settle down on the sofa with Donna Tartt's Secret History.I think book reviews, boredom and odd comments on the news are all you're going to get for quite some time. Unless there's any interesting people-watching to be had in the hospitals of course.

Sinclair

Not being well enough to go to work today, I was asleep in bed when the postman nearly knocked the door down. I knew it must be the books I'd ordered – the leather-bound Walter Besant and Zangwill, both from 1900, and a first edition of the London Nobody Knows – so I roused my self quickly. I shouted after him wrapped in my duvet weakly explaining I was ill in case he thought I was just a lazy cow.

“Stay where you are; don't worry love,” came the reply as he gingerly placed my parcel just inside the door and scuttled off. On reflection, he must have been seeing an infected, smelly wreck as opposed to the svelte-young girl wrapped in nothing more than a duvet I would have preferred.

GJ, my colleague and collector of all things Sinclair, rang at about 4.20pm to check I was ok. Or so I thought. Pleasantries out the way he then dropped the bombshell. The author and psychogeographer Iain Sinclair had popped by the school, sat in my chair, at my desk, in my office as he wanted to see GJ's collection.

So, his books may be a little difficult to grasp in places but I am in awe of the man's knowledge, ideas and perseverance. And I missed him due to a bloody bad cold.

I rang Pat straight away for sympathy but he just laughed at me.

London Nobody Knows Two

G. rang before Christmas to say that the London Nobody Knows was back on at the ICA. She missed it last time. Would I want to see it with her? My wish of early October was likely to a reality soon. I could watch Cohen's film without having it tainted by the awful, horrendous, ridiculous World of Gilbert and George. This time around it was to be followed by St Etienne's Finisterre.

A small boy in front of me on the bus, possibly about six or seven years old, was picking his noise and sticking the bogies and not on the window. Further back on the top deck, an uncle was attempting to convince another young lad that the number 15 actually travels to the moon. Once we reached Trafalgar Square we hit a long ramp and it was up, up and away to the stars...

Being early, as I am generally am, I sat and had a hot chocolate in St James's Park, despite the fact it was freezing. Next to the lake a swarm of ducks, geese, pigeons and seagulls were being fed. An old boy, wearing a cap, was stood to one side feeding a mottled pigeon which had settled on his arm and a squirrel. Both clearly know them. No food was given to anything else. Much to the amusement of the tourists, the squirrel jumped onto the fence and begged on its hind legs for a nut, hopped off, ate it and repeated the performance.

When the doors to the screen opened we were asked to move over to the left. A rather foppish Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen-type left two seats between him and us. A couple attempted to sit there but he explained they were taken. The usher sprang into action and made it very clear seats could not be saved. A battle between the dandy and the doorman – one determined to keep the seats, the other equally determined that someone other than the popinjay's friends would be sitting there – ensued. Everything ended in a bloodless draw. The attendant instructed a single man to sit next to G but the fop still managed to get a friend either side.
The film itself was, of course, excellent. The good news is that some of the places shown in '67 are in a better condition today; others don't exist anymore.

Finisterre was also worth watching. It is influenced by Fletcher's book and also Nairn's London (which is a new one on me). I came out thinking that's the kind of film I could make. I don't mean by that I have the technical skills to make a similar film but the ideas – the places and the people I would capture. Stills, moving footage, words, music. An example would be the passage that runs by the side of the National Gallery towards Leicester Square. Little-used by pedestrians it was home to a huddle of hooded skateboarders as we cut through. The London tourists and office workers from the suburbs never see.

Thorndon Country Park

Pleasant country walks are easily accessible from London:

I've been into London a few times over the past week or so. I very much enjoyed the photos in Tom Hunter's exhibition at the National Gallery. The light is fantastic and I also like the subject matter – takes on Old Masters and photos taken to reflect the headlines of the Hackney Gazette.

On the bus back to Limehouse I was taken by St Paul's. It looks magestic lit up against the night sky. In comparison, the Tower looks remarkably squat. I got annoyed by the musical accompaniment that is the wheelchair ramp – resembled a siren sounding the alarm at a nuclear plant – and also a pair of Italian tourists trying to locate their position in an A to Z. Every time they managed to find the street they were on we'd moved on by at least five minutes. I couldn't help myself and had to intervene. I couldn't quite work out whether they were pleased or not.

Following on from Gaw Blimey's blog about coughing carriages on the c2c ( I thought it was April Fool's) the only mention I found was an advert for Benylin – Is your cough driving you off the rails? Four people were coughing, myself included, and I am pleased to say that the Health Police did not descend and remove us elsewhere.

Walking down from Fenchurch Street station I noticed a board for a local bar. 'All pints £2.90'. As if they think that is some kind of bargain.

The book (a present) I bought in the Design Museum came in a delightful paper carrier bag. I did ask the cashier if the bag was strong enough. The answer was in the affirmative. I couldn't help but check they were sure. 'Tried and tested' was the answer. Well, I don't know where. Half way down the South Bank one of the handles went and I had to carry the book under my arm – which rubbed the corner of the bag through. I am not impressed and shall tell them so next time I visit.

Outside Marks and Spencers on Oxford Street I was happy to acknowledge the black Father Christmas. He's been there collecting for charity for as long as I can remember. Lord Cole. When I asked how long he pointed to his badge – 12 years service for Diabetes Uk – except it was out of date; 15 years would be more accurate. His vice-like grip on my arm suggested he wanted more of a chat. So we did. It was lovely!

Sam Smith's pub are a shining light in the dark of London as far as I am concerned. The beer is good and cheap (£1.70 for a pint of bitter) and I have yet to find one devoid of atmosphere. Waiting for C. in the Red Lion on Kingly Street I did get embarrassed by the fact I had to ask a complete stranger to help me detach my hair from the wood panelling. That may have been less embarrassing than the fact I walked out of the changing rooms in the Ilford Debenhams having forgotten to put my top back on. I thought my coat felt odd; I looked down, saw my bra and nearly had a heart attack.

The View from my Living Room Window

I can see the black slate rooves, sitting proudly on their red brick walls, lightly-dusted with snow.

I can see a man in a red and blue tracksuit, shivering, smoking a cigarette in his garden.

I know that food is scarce for the birds.

A blackbird sees a woodie off from a piece of bread. The robins are pecking the frozen ground. The coal tits and blue tits cling to the bird feeder.

A woman in the adjoining block cleans her windows; her face set against the blasts of icy-cold air.

I see another blackbird poke its beak into the squirrels' drey and get short shrift from the occupants.

I can hear the silence shattered by the high-pitched yap of an ankle-biter. The muffled rumble of the tube. The swoosh of the fast train. The murmur of the African Chief's TV. The plaintive cry of the Lithuanian Baby. The water coursing through the radiator. The coo of the pigeons. The caw of the crows.

I can see the swirling seagulls reflected in the newly-polished windows.

I can see all is still and hear all is quiet.

Hoo Hing

We are lucky enough to be close to the main distributors for Chinese food in London. Most of their money obviously comes from the wholesale trade but they cater for us little people too.
My first feeling is always one of insignificance. Me and my little car parking between the thirty-odd articulated lorries on their day of rest. This soon changes to excitement as I browse the isles and choose my goods. There is then the bewilderment that is the check-out.

Service is very good but very frustrating.

Your shopping is packed for you. Fine if, like the man in front of me, you have bought enough to stock the kitchen of your restaurant for the next week and the whole lot needs carting out on two big flat trolleys. I had a carrier bag's worth of food. No-one was around to pack so I attempted to pick up a bag myself. “NO!” shouts the woman on the till scaring me half to death. “NO!”. So that left me stood there like a lemon until a packer came back from the car park.

Only once the goods are packed can you pay. Embarrassingly, everyone seemed to be paying with huge wads of money. £675 here, £567 there. I only had my card. Big mistake. The cashier wrote 11.66 on the back of a piece of paper and started shouting in Cantonese. I had to wait for another packer to come and collect the paper and my card and take it to a till at the other end of the shop. I did try to follow - “NO!”. Two minutes later I was shooed along to the till to enter my PIN. I asked if I could take my card back but no that wasn't to be. “We bring. We bring” and I was sent back to stand at my original till until someone was available to return the card to me. I contemplated making a run for the car with my shopping but the cashier's beady eye was on me so I waited for the man with no teeth to come to collect the bag and escort me out.
My final feeling was, not surprisingly, one of overwhelming relief.

Stress of the Season

I have to say I do quite like Christmas (even though I say every year that I'm not going to buy presents anymore; it's all far too commericalised etc. etc.).

I can kind of understand why people end up getting so stressed from all the pressure but then again I can't. We did our most of our Christmas shopping in one go in the West End a few weekends ago. We were over and done with in about two hours and sat down to a very nice brunch. (You can, however, trust my sister to be the awkward one. Wanting a present from a shop no-one has ever heard of in Covent Garden meant it wasn't open when we arrived at 9am. Far too early for the better sort of person).

It's taken me nine years but Colin finally relented and let me have a real Christmas tree. I was like a little kid driving up to Columbia Road to choose one. He even let me have a far bigger tree than I thought I would get away with. (It's all to do with who does the hoovering). Which of course meant I had to invest in some new silver baubles in Paperchase the next day otherwise it would have looked bare.

Last year's presents were very tastefully wrapped in brown paper with some leaves, a cinnamon stick and ribbon. This year I have gone for magazine pages. A slightly different take on recycling.

As for the free-range Norfolk black that should have been delivered yesterday, there was a 'technical hitch' which roughly translates as some arse in the warehouse dropped a crate of paint on it rendering it inedible. (That's the official version from the farm; my version reads – some arse from the delivery company splodged a bit of paint on the lid of the polystyrene box and has taken the turkey home for his Christmas dinner). Turkey number two should be arriving today.

Christmas Cheer

You may possibly have thought I've been quiet of late due to Christmas fun and festivities. You'd be wrong. Let me set the record straight.

Too tired and too knackered to do anything other than work, sleep and eat. Trying not to be ill – all in vain.

Monday I blotted my attendance record for the year by being sent home sick. Ridiculously, I then got a phone call saying that if you're absent on the last day of term (the following day) you have to have a doctor's certificate to get paid. 'But you know I'm ill. You're the ones who sent me home', I cried to no avail. I don't actually have a doctor and even if I did tell me the likelihood of getting an appointment on the same day.

Turned up at 7.30am Tuesday for the Head to take one look at me and say 'Should you be here?'. 'Go home. I'll say I've seen you'.

Aaahh.

Early Morning Shock

The mix of people at Upney tube in the morning is pretty much static. I was jolted out of my early morning reverie last week when I spotted a rather distinguished-looking man.

Highly-polished shiny brown shoes. Well cut navy suit. Wool overcoat. Brown leather gloves and attaché case. Navy hat (can't tell a fedora from a trilby; sorry). Nice aftershave. Of a certain age.
We ended up sitting next to each other on the train. He leant into his bag and produced an intelligent tome as expected.

I'm lying. He pulled out a bright pink paperback.


Danielle Steel.


I was flabbergasted. I spent the twelve minutes to West Ham arguing with myself.

Book group. Researcher. Reviewer. Critic.

I couldn't ask as I don't speak to people in the morning.

I'm scared he might have been reading it for pleasure. The world is doomed.