I’m back in creative mood this week. Katja’s booked me to exhibit my poetry in an art show next year, and I’ve decided to produce another piece of poetry-inclusive artwork. I can’t say what it is yet, although I can tell you it might be a bit controversial. Probably not as much so as the cheese porn poem, which raised a lot of comments – and eyebrows – despite it being about, err, cheese.
As it happens, I spent yesterday at the Old Truman Brewery displaying even more disgraceful behaviour with cheese. I sampled a greater number of tiny wedges of free cheese than you could imagine one person could grab in an afternoon. Also chocolate (yep, back on that), Bailey’s marshamallows, bacon-infused sausages, coconut-based vodka cocktails and, well, after that stronger-than-expected concoction, I couldn’t even begin to tell you what else I ate and drank!
The venue is in Brick Lane, an area once so run down and slum-like; now a hive of cosmopolitan vitality, with cafés, bars, restaurants and the most amazing vintage shopping areas. I love nothing better than rummaging through ‘vintage’ tut with an open box of street food in one hand and a newly-purchased 1920’s French newspaper in the other. I’ve bought a couple of my favourite dresses in scenarios just like that.
Anyway, I’ve known Brick Lane since I was a little girl. My dad drove a black cab and, from the age of about seven, he’d take me out with him on the nights when I couldn’t sleep. I’d perch on the arm rest next his seat with my arm cuddled around his shoulders to keep my balance, cheerfully dangling my legs in the luggage compartment and pocketing all the tips.
At the end of the night, somewhere between midnight and 3am, we’d stop off at the Brick Lane Beigal Bake for smoke salmon and cream cheese beigals. (This was before the days of fashionably calling them bagels!) He was a regular customer and friends with the staff, so we’d go through to the back where the doughy rings were being baked. I loved watching the men sdquidging them into shape. I can’t actually remember the culinary process now, but I’m fairly certain I was allowed to poke my dirty little seven-year-old fingers into the unbaked rings.
This week I skipped the beigals and made do with a pear and chocolate pannetonne, which I managed to demolish in one day, and a bag of hand-made chocolates with small pipettes of alcohol wedged into the ganache at jaunty angles.
I really need to put food aside and concentrate on work now for the rest of this year. Social media is at a peak today – Cyber Monday, the day of internet madness when chaotic shoppers crazily bag pre-Christmas bargains – and I should be looking at new laptopsl Instead I’m heading off to a law firm in London (quite close to Brick Lane actually) for a networking lunch. I have a large flowery brolly, but if this promise of rain makes good, I’ll jump in a black cab. So, I’ve come full circle. Expect I won’t be cuddling the driver or dangling my legs anywhere in his taxi, but hey ho…
London’s famous for its black cabs, but no one seems to have written any memorable lyrics. Joni Mitchell, however… “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Sometimes you can only wish for a big yellow taxi.
If you’re looking for some good Cyber Monday deals, I hope you find lovely bargains. And if you’d like to up your game on social media during this early Christmas rush, we’d be delighted to help. You can email Marion or me, or call us on 07875 059540. Or, of course, tweet: @WeekendWitch.
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