The incontinence of noise

Young, well-spoken and well-to-do, she sat at the back of a bus, phone to ear, explaining to a friend in a carrying voice about that afternoon’s appointment with her gynecologist, seemingly oblivious to all those around who were perhaps less than enthusiastic about the details of the encounter.

On a train, speeding north from London, a young man, seated at a table in a standard-class carriage, opened his laptop and decided that this was the perfect environment in which to conduct a business video conference call. Everyone within three or four seats in all directions was included – irrespective of their wishes or even the interests of business confidentiality.

These are two snapshots of a modern Britain where humans have become noise incontinent. And they will be familiar to most of us.

But it is not just a matter of conversations made public. It’s one thing for headphones to leak sound, but at least the wearer is making an effort.

Yet it is now the norm, in urban areas, for the first good weather of the year to see windows and balcony doors flung open, and music ‘shared’ with neighbours.

“Music,” that is, consisting of little more than booming bass. The same “music” that you’ll hear from passing cars, whether the windows are down or not.

But this is not simply a matter of individual behavior.

In shopping arcades, going far beyond the curse of muzak, shops blast out sound – presumably, because a psychologist somewhere has discovered that hi-tempo, booming tracks encourage spending and quickly.

The Arndale in Manchester is one example: on a visit one Sunday morning, only the Waterstones Bookshop and Games Workshop were peaceful – although both were busy. Even the Disney Store was playing music loudly – hi-tempo and with a beat, albeit rather more in keeping with little pink princesses.

On a larger scale, it is now apparently acceptable for a rave festival to be arranged and staged within 50 metres of homes, and if residents do not like feeling their bones rattled, that’s their misanthropy.

It never is, incidentally, Chopin rattling someone else’s windows – or Johnny Cash or Dean Martin or even Abba or the Stones.

But try to find a coffee shop – chain or independent – that doesn’t insist on providing some sort of soundtrack to your morning cappuccino. It might just be the radio, but you could be forgiven for thinking that we are scared to sit peacefully; to allow ourselves the opportunity to hear ourselves think.

There is a narrowing of basic good manners here – not a conscious one, but resulting from a sense of individual entitlement that requires no justification and expects no challenge.

‘Why do you think it’s fair for you to make other people listen to your conversation/music?’ This is not a question that usually earns a classier philosophical response than some form of take on a shrugged ‘because’.

Although in order to do so would require a way of explaining why the ‘right’ to converse or play your music in such a way as to force it on others trumps their right not to have it thus inflicted. Since nobody is saying that you cannot play your music or have your private conversation, then that would be difficult.

Perhaps much of it is about consumption.

On one level, we consume the gadgets that allow us to converse wherever we want. And then we consume anything we put on them. Except that, since we are encouraged increasingly to keep it in the ‘cloud’, we don’t really have it at all. When we want to conspicuously consume that tune again, we have to download or stream it once more – possibly with added consumption via whatever charges our telecommunications provider might levy.

On another level, there is a growing emphasis on consumption as a core part of citizenship: see all manner of things, from the small-state fundamentalism of the concept of the ‘citizen consumer,’ to the rising importance in the economy of the retail sector (and therefore of our personal and collective consumption).

You can find florid declarations of spending as a patriotic duty to aid the nation’s economy, while increasing suggestions that we’re in for a period of sustained low interest rates (in part because of past and present spending on ludicrously-inflated mortgages) produces a concomitant sense that we might just as well spend our hard-earned, then.

Once having consumed, we then have the right to enjoy that consumption. And after all, if it is a patriotic act we have carried out, then who can deny us enjoying it in whatever way we please? There’s no such thing as society any more anyway.

Now consider the onslaught on personal privacy of the last decade or so: the UK as the CCTV capital of the world; attempts by governments to introduce ‘snoopers’ charters’ to combat terrorism and child abuse º the two terrors of our age: all produce a semi-constant response of how, ‘if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear’.

The ‘rights’ and ‘entitlement’ of the conscientious consumer sit well with an era in which the desire for privacy can be viewed as an admission of some guilt or other.

Consume, let others see your consumption – and never worry if you’re being overheard or watched, because it’s happening anyway. Quiet and privacy cannot be bought and sold: they have little value.

This incontinence of sound – this droning, banging, driveling bombardment of noise – is itself symptomatic of something wider: of a dumbed-down public discourse where whoever shouts loudest is heard; where considered arguments are battered out of the way by sensation and fact-free claims.

Will it take until all the satellites fail and all the ‘clouds’ burst and all the gadgets seize up to make us appreciate once more, quietness, a private conversation and music enjoyed without the need to foist it on others?

Or before then, will it dawn on people that all this incontinent noise is simply one more cover for our intellectually incontinent politicians and the corporatocracy on whose behalf they work?

Thoughts on Christmas past

Boxing Day at the 'mall'. What it's all about?

Over and over again on Christmas Day came the call: ‘The telly is crap!”

Admittedly it wasn’t the only recurring theme on Twitter and Facebook: there were also plenty of complaints – from young adults mostly – that they hadn’t got the ‘right’ presents and that, as a result, their Christmas had been ruined, just ruined.

Now the latter could well be the social media-savvy attention seeker getting themselves some, so in that case, let’s stick with the former – for the moment at least.

But where to start precisely?

There’s ‘nowt on telly’? For goodness sake – you’ve probably got access to 200 channels at least!

Back when I were knee high to grasshopper (stop that laughing at the back), there were just three channels – if you were lucky.

This was in prehistoric times before the video had been invented; a time when computer and console gaming were things of sci-fi movies, and social media ... ? Well, hardly even imagined.

Let’s face it – this was when Orwell’s 1984 was set in a distant future. As only a slight aside, Blair’s dystopian vision was rather less subtle than the one we’re living through now.

But back to matter Christmas.

On those three channels, we always found something to watch.

And if we didn’t, we’d do something else – we might even play games. We didn’t actually expect to be entertained.

Perhaps the 1970s were actually halcyon times and we simply didn’t realise it. Or perhaps society in general has become so obsessed with ‘things’ and with having every possible entertainment provided for it that it has become, in general terms, spoiled and stupid.

For fuck’s sake: out of 200 channels, it’s highly debatable that you won’t find something bearable to watch – and whatever happened to the philosophy of switching off and making your own entertainment?

Why not read a book?

It’s like: ‘hand me everything on a plate: NOW!’

Things – that’s the heart of the problem: things.

And things were what drew people out yesterday – sometimes even foregoing Christmas itself in order to queue – to the shops and malls (the latter, another abysmal import from the US) to do yet more buying of Things.

Now let me be quite clear: it’s nice to get pressies – and it’s nice to give them. I am not averse to having nice possessions.

But people – get the fuck over yourselves. There are limits to how many Things you (we) need. We do not need to shop on Boxing Day – thus ensuring that other people have to do (mostly) low-paid jobs so that we can scramble for something that we probably don’t really need in the first place.

Credit Margaret Thatcher and the neo-liberals for knowing something that many of us didn’t: that large amounts of society appears to genuinely believe that 24/7 retail, for instance, is major progress, and that cheap credit was a master stroke because it gave us the chance to own more and more Stuff.

Are we happier?

Is Christmas better?

Or was that part of the reason that, even with more Stuff – more TV channels, and many more entertainment systems – – so many people took to social media to express their disillusionment?

Of course, part of the problem is that Christmas has become an overhyped commercial event on which a substantial chunk of the national economy relies.

Quite coincidentally, I’m currently reading Alison Uttley’s A Country Child, which I first read in my first year at grammar school – and hated.

A few years ago, some memory of it started to nag at my little grey cells and, eventually, I tracked down the title, who it was by – and a copy.

It takes place over a year in the life of a child from a Derbyshire farm in the late years of the 19^th century.

And yet there are many things that I can recognise from the times spent as a child on a farm not many miles from Tebay in Westmorland (or Cumbria, as some insist on calling it these days).

Those were arguably the very happiest days of my childhood – in a simple world that was full of heartiness and joyfulness.

I don’t know how I’d get on with it these days: it was also a very religious world – but not in the dark, surly, Victorian puritan way of my father’s relatives in Plymouth, or even the chapel hellfire and damnation of his own early ministry and of many a dinner table at home.

In Uttley’s book, Christmas is special – and remarkably simple. And whenever I find myself aware that nothing has met the festive hype, I find myself wishing for such a simple world and such a simple Christmas.

In the last few days, The Other Half and I have spent hours in front of the telly, watching – for the most part – family films that leave you with a sense of joy.

In the coming week, I fully intend to ‘do some things’. But even if I don’t, it’s my responsibility – not that of someone else.

That we expect others to serve us up Christmas – or believe that we can simply buy it off the shelf – seems very little removed from how we largely seem to treat politics these days: we want easy options with no demands on our time or intellectual resources.

And in both cases, we lose – and leave others to win.

Keeping it local, seasonal and simple

In Collioure, there must be another little business stuck away in a corner somewhere. It’s just that I haven’t found it: yet. But I will.

At the twice-weekly market, there is always at least one fish stall – sometimes two.

But while they’ll happily sell you fish, they don’t prepare it for you.

They don’t even have the means with them to do that: no knives, no chopping boards; no pin-boning pliars, no scaler – not even a bowl of water to rinse it in.

In Britain, many of us who are lucky enough to have an actual fishmonger rely on them to do these things, but not here.

So there must be someone, somewhere, operating a little business where they do those things for you.

Unless …

There you go: it seems that the all-year-round customers don’t need such tasks performed for them: they have the equipment necessary in their own kitchens – together with the skills.

Chatting with Vikki on Broadway Market the other week, while buying myself a little squid to cook when The Other Half went to Yorkshire for the Rugby League, she revealed that a number of people actively tell her not to clean squid when they’re buying.

It seems that it’s not just me who enjoys doing it myself – certainly it always gives me the warm glow that comes from knowing that I can do something that is apparently technical enough that it was included as a specific test in last year’s Masterchef: The Professionals.

And it’s no coincidence that, Fin & Founder, our rather trendy fishmonger at the top of the street, has made preparing your fish for you the ‘value added’ component that helps to justify its generally quite high prices.

The moral of the story is that, in some parts of France at least, people have the skills to prepare fish. In the UK, we have, in general, lost them.

On Wednesday morning, up and out so early that many stalls were just setting up in the morning sunshine, I bought a dorade.

So fresh that it wasn’t just bright-eyed, it was floppy-tailed too, dorade is known as gilthead bream in the UK.

It was a little make do and mend when it came to the prep. There is no proper fish knife in the house and you do need a flexible blade.

I sharpened the most appropriate one I could find and did the best I could to fillet the fish, improvising with a potato peeler to remove the scales.

The cooking was ridiculously simple – and benefited from this year’s increased confidence with a grill, even, as here, one that I am not used to.

The grill was heated to around 160˚C. Once hot, the fillets were placed, skin side up, on an olive oiled tray and popped about 10cm beneath the heat source.

At about five minutes, the skin wasn’t ready, so the heat was turned up to the maximum and they had two minutes more, until the skin was starting to crackle and just brown in places.

Then it was served with a segment of lemon.

The fish was succulent and tasty.

On the side, a salad of thinly-sliced raw courgette, tossed gently in a 50/50 dressing of lemon juice and honey, and left to marinade in that for at least half an hour.

It was garnished with some tiny leaves of a local basil relative.

And with glorious lucques olives, good bread, a little oil and Balsamico dip, and chilled rosé on the table, you have a meal fit for anyone.

Not that it’s difficult, as you’ll gather. And a couple of days later, there was a grilling repeat in order.

We’ve stopped going to St Elme for lunch and have started getting something light from Cyril’s café at the back of the sun loungers.

The first day, that was a galette for me – a sort of buckwheat savory pancake filled, in this case, with three cheeses.

Great beach food.

Today, it was a salad with cheeses and croutons. Again, simple and, quite frankly, all you really need in the afternoon.

Although that does mean a larger meal is required in the evening.

There’s a little alimentation on the road behind the beach, just a couple of minutes from the house and a few doors along from the boulangerie.

It might only be a small general store, but it’s good, even having a real (little) deli/butcher/fish counter, with fresh as well as pre-packed produce.

There, I found four small côtes agneau – or lamb chops, in English.

They also have a nice little selection of local wines and a very good selection of fresh fruit and veg. So the meat was joined in my basket by a bottle of rosé, a couple of lemons and some haricots vert.

The shopping was completed by a loaf of bread, freshly baked this afternoon.

It was the simplest of matters to grill the meat, which took around 12 minutes.

In the meantime, the beans were boiled for eight minutes (I now have this timing in my head) and then drained and plunged beneath cold water, before being dressed with a little virgin oil.

A squeeze of lemon for the lamb, decent salt and pepper, and oil and Balsamico to dip the bread – nothing more was required.

And fruit available afterwards.

How on earth did we reach a point of so many people apparently believing that such dining was rocket science?

And as if there were any need for any other confirmation of how good this is, then it’s worth noting how low the carbon footprint would have been – if you’re worried about such matters.

The wine was local, as was the olive oil, the meat, the beans, the bread and the fruit after. The salt was from the south west of France if not the region, leaving the Balsamico, the lemons and the pepper.

So, seasonal, regional and simple – and all very good indeed. Really, what more could you want?

Listen to a lullaby of old Broadway

Women buying olives on Broadway Market.

This last two weeks have, apparently, been Love Your Local Market fortnight. As is entirely my norm, I was a tad slovenly in arriving at this particular party. But never mind a case of 'better late than never', this mat be the perfect timing.

Because our local markets need our love for the other 50 weeks of the year too. Even when, up and down the country, markets are not staging special events to try to tempt shoppers away from the industrialised, metal-box experience that is the world of the supermarket.

As usual, yesterday morning I made my way the brief distance to Broadway Market in Hackney to do my main shop of the week. It's not strictly a farmers' market - although there are a few farmers around - but a 'fine food market' (don't ask me why).

And, as is far from unique, it is a new development. I say "new", but that means around eight years now, which is just over half the time I've lived in the area.

Before the regeneration started – which started in a way that I can barely put my finger on exactly – Broadway Market was on the critical list. A piece of local graffiti noted elegantly that it was "not so much a sinking ship as a submarine".

Henry Tidiman the butcher kept one of the few shops left from a past that really was a different century. A proper family butcher.

There was a lone chain bakery, Percy Ingle, the delightfully old-fashioned Bradbury's ironmongery, a couple of betting shops, a couple of junk/second-hand shops that had themselves seen considerably better days.

Eels – in various ways.

Let's not forget Cooke's, the pie and mash shop that has been an ever-present since late Victorian times, and a chemist at either end of the street.

There was Turkish Tony's general store next to the doctor's surgery and Tony Francesca's greasy spoon just a couple of doors down.

An electrical repair shop existed simply to give two men somewhere to sit all day, rather than actually repair anything.

If you went in, they never had a clue about whatever item you needed repairing.

Spirit's Caribbean shop sold a little fish, together with a selection of ingredients for that cuisine.

The perennially red-braced proprietor of Off Broadway sold pictures. Kenny's newsagent struggled along, selling papers and magazines and crisps and pop. A dry cleaner's seemed to have been cleaned out since we'd known the area.

The Cat and Mutton sat at the north end of the street, opposite London Fields, was the sort of dump where the carpet was sticky with stale beer. The Perseverance at the opposite seemed an entirely fitting book end.

The Market Garden on the middle closed about the time we arrived. The Dove remained open, a strange harbinger of what was to come, serving good pub grub and a wide selection of Belgian beers, and run, when we arrived, by a Manchester City-loving rocker and biker.

A Turkish barber did business alongside a Turkish-run offy: the former appeared in the David Cronenberg picture about Russian mafioso in this part of London, Eastern Promises.

With the exception of one further small general store, that was about it.

Ah: from Tuesday to Saturday, John would pull a barrow out into the middle of the street and sell a selection of fruit and veg.

That makes it sound busy, but really, it was far from it. On most weekdays, it was nearly deserted. There were times you half expected to see tumbleweeds rolling past.

Yet it had not always been like that.

More than one person I've spoken to over the last decade or so describes something quite different.

There had been proper grocers, fishmongers, bakers and more butchers. In the plural.

So what had happened?

The one thing that always comes up when I ask that question is supermarkets. And no, I don't plant that idea. There's no need.

How did it happen, then?

One man I've talked to, of about my age, had been born at the back of the Dove and started his working life on the street, learning his trade in one of the butchers. But he didn't last long because the local butchers were already starting to struggle.

It happened, he said, when a Tesco opened locally.

At first, what they did was massively undercut the price of the fruit and vegetables sold locally. So the housewives went there to buy their greens.

And then, he explains, while the women were there, they thought they might as well pick up the Sunday joint at the same time. And the fish for supper. And the bread.

And so it began.

A street, once the hub of a community, became battered and nearly broken.

A bit of local Hackney colour.

It has taken the eastwards-moving gentrification process to change things. Although, in the case of this part of Hackney, it's more a process of trendification; a slightly safe Bohemianism.

The street started picking up slowly. If memory serves, a hairdresser was one of the first new businesses to open.

Now it's a thriving place: go up there on any day and the will be people at the cafes having coffee; conversing; reading papers; eyes down on laptops. In the evenings too, people flock to the bars and the caves and the restaurants.

Spirit lost out to the developer Roger Wratten, in - let's call them – dubious circumstances. The same for Tony Francesca.

But little else that was viable has gone.

Stephane opened La Bouche around seven years ago in small premises, and moved a few doors down when he could, as the business expanded. He's pessimistic though.

He says, with a Gallic shrug, that eventually landlords will drive the independents out and replace them with franchises - just as happened in Stoke Newington. I can't help thinking that it wouldn't happen in Paris.

Not all the old businesses were happy when the Saturday market started. Henry embraced it - and all of them have benefitted.

Not all the locals were happy either, although given the little that had been lost and the great deal that was gained, it's difficult to really feel a deal of sympathy.

However, much of their displeasure is about something deeper; the massive changes that have affected the area in the last 30-40 years.

The market itself has actually given locals more choice than they have had for many a year.

If people still want to wander along to any one of the seemingly millions of Tescos (and not a few Sainsbury's) that are dotted around the area - three of the former on nearby Hackney Road alone - then they can. There are more of them now than eight years ago.

Of the basic food shops that had managed to survive until the revival began, all but Spirit are still with us. So nothing has been lost in that sense.

The local ultra-left didn't like the market either, claiming that local people wanted a community centre instead. This was disingenuous claptrap, since nobody had been offered any 'alternative', and while the council had had some involvement in getting the market up and running, it is largely run by a group of private individuals.

But in spite of all that, here it is, nearly a decade down the line.

And there are plenty of young people who work on the market - many of them living locally. I know, because one of the joys of the market, for me, is the human inaction.

A week ago yesterday, I was stocking up on peas and broad beans at my main green grocery stall, helped by a delightful young woman that I have now been chatting with for some years.

"Hurrumph!" hurrumphed a woman standing nearby. "I've been waiting for ages..." and flounced off.

Selecting lemons.

Well, actually she hadn't been waiting that long. We joked about it. Why come to such a market if you want instant service? That's why Tesco exists.

Yesterday, I was at the same stall, and two young men, rather well spoken (that's code for 'posh') were commenting on the bunches of gorgeous young carrots - you could see how freshly-picked they were from the state of the fronds that topped them.

The pair were noting that 'they wouldn't last long'. The young man who was serving them pointed out that that was because they 'hadn't been dipped in brine' to preserve them.

They harrumphed too - and walked away.

No. Broadway Market is not for them. Or for that woman who was so impatient. But it is many things - and that includes being a place where you can find a human shopping experience and an humane shopping experience.

And, of course, it is also a place to find great food and drink.

There are issues around such markets - but it's inverted snobbery to suggest that they're they're 'middle class' - and therefore bad (and besides, isn't social mobility supposed to be good?).

Everyone should have access to good food. And Broadway Market - like many another of it's ilk - does increase that possibility.

As I said, there are issues: but the basic reality of a revitalised street is not itself the problem.

On a wider level, if you yourself either want to preserve or revive your own local market - then don't leave it until it's two late. Think about what you want: a range of shopping choices - or just a question of which tin box with poorly-paid staff and no real skills or choice.

In a way, I've been lucky, in that I've seen the before and the after of a dying market come alive.

And while the idea behind the Love Your Local Market fortnight is wonderful, markets, just like puppy dogs, are not just for a couple of weeks, but for life.

So go on: love your local market. It's worth it. And so are you.


* You can follow the markets campaign on Twitter  

@loveurlocalmkt.

A tale of two delis

Back on 3 August 2007, L Terroni & Sons, a large Italian deli on Clerkenwell Road, ceased trading.

It was a bolt out of the blue, to customers and staff alike, and to an Italian community that has been in the area for more than a century and a half.

In the middle of the 19th century, around 2,000 Italian immigrants had settled in that area of London – a particularly poor one – where they worked in a variety of jobs, from street musicians to makes of scientific instruments.

At around that time, a Roman Catholic priest, St Vincent Pallotti, thought of building a church for the Italians.

Designed by Irish architect, Sir John Miller-Bryson, St Peter the Italian Church was modeled on the church of the Basilica of San Crisogono in Rome, although by the time it was consecrated in 1863, it was rather smaller than the initially ambitious plans of holding a congregation of nearly 3,500.

Terroni & Sons opened its own doors a decade and a half later.

No explanation was ever given for its closure in 2007, but foodies lamented its passing, dreading that the site would be turned into yet another 'express' supermarket or a fast food joint.

But the green shutters stayed in place and the only thing that moved in was dust and rust.

Perhaps that was the result of the financial crisis, but what is certain is that Terroni & Sons is now open for business once more.

In the days when I'd actually been working in that part of town, I hadn't had enough interest or experience to bother visiting.

Indeed, I'd only just bought my second cookery book - Jamie Oliver's The Return of the Naked Chef and hadn't progressed from supermarket shopping.

By the time it closed, I was working elsewhere.

So it was with a burst of pleasure that I realised only a few weeks ago, as I made a rare journey down Clerkenwell Road, that it was open once more.

The following week, I walked over after work to explore this revived Aladdin's cave. And it was well worth the effort.

It's not as large as the original and the range of foods is perhaps not quite as large as at Lina Stores in Soho (perhaps that will develop), but it is still a very welcome addition - or re-addition - to the London food map.

There's a large selection of Italian wines (left) and a brilliant range of dried pasta - the picture below shows just a very small sample.

The cheese and meat selections are decent - indeed, the fennel sausages looked so voluptuously, moistly lovely that I liberated half a dozen and changed my plans for that evening's meal.

A nice piece of Pecorino also found it's way into my basket, together with coffee and biscuits, a slab of lardo and a jar of plumptious capers.

In a massive coincidence - or perhaps not really that much of one - I was just a couple of days into my attempt to learn Italian.

The charming young lady who served me was not 100% fluent in English, so by the time I left, I'd already used a word or two of my very embryonic new language skills.

And it proved to be just the first visit.

This afternoon, after work, I wended my way in that direction again.

This time, I stopped off first at Veneticus, another Italian deli, café and gelateria, just a few doors away on the other side of the road.

It's very spacious and light inside, but while there are some good things on offer - I did pick up a jar of chopped chili - it doesn't have the selection that Terroni has.

Oddly, perhaps, you don't hear the same number of Italian voices either. Which may say something.

I pottered away and went to look in the Italian Church - finding a little piece of Italy right in London.

And then it was on to Terroni again, where I enjoyed an espresso (real wake-up juice) outside in the unexpected sunshine.

It came served with a piece of panettone: light and rich at the same time, and shot through with the sweetest imaginable fruit.

More biscuits, pasta from the huge selection, Italian espresso coffee, more Pecorino and some Parmigiano Reggiano, plus some mini chili salamis to take to work for lunch one day.

And then six luscious sausages: a pair each of the fennel, mild Italian and spicy Italian, which were subsequently grilled and served with some tiny Jersey Royals and some sautéed, mixed baby Italian mushrooms.

It's impossible to imagine that this will not become a regular port of call. And in the meantime, the joys of social media mean that I can even follow news from the shop at @_terroni.

Which element of modernity would not, I suspect, have happened in the old days.

Springing all the way into summer

It's March. Okay, it might be late in the month, but it's still only March. And on a day off today, I spent hours in the garden, in shorts, a vest and sandals, potting plants in the scorching sun.

It was the same yesterday - and the forecast suggests it will be the same for the coming days.

And it's not even April. This is not a complaint, you understand - although the consistently haywire seasons do make you think about climate change - but simply astonishment that it feels as though we actually skipped spring pretty much altogether and landed rather suddenly in the summer.

The planting has continued apace over the last few of days, after two Sunday morning visits to Columbia Road and then a trip on Monday to B&Q with a man and a van to load up with gravel, compost and as many pots as I could pile onto the huge trolley.

There used to be shops on Columbia Road itself that sold pots, plus ones on Hackney Road, but they either don't exist any more or have simply stopped selling pots. It's difficult to know why: there doesn't seem to have been any reduction in interest in gardening.

But it meant that even after the pots I've had for years had all been cleaned out, more were needed, so there was little option but to organise such a trip.

Having not been out to the Lea Bridge Road area for years - it's not a trip you do if you don't have a car - I'd totally forgotten that its slap bang next door to the Olympic site. As we crawled past roadworks in the dense early-morning traffic, it was pretty much impossible not to look up and go: 'Oh there's the velodrome oh god it's going to be total chaos'.

Vast amounts of everyday traffic and they're taking a lane out just so VIPs and corporate sponsors can get from the centre of town to the Games site.

Ian, who was helping me, pointed out all the high fencing and CCTV camera and noted, dryly, that after helping pay for it all with our council tax subsidy, it was debatable just what we'd get out of it.

B&Q was hardly the best shopping experience I've had. In many ways, it's convenient and easy. There was a really good selection of pots - although you need to be careful, as a lot were slightly chipped, and not in a design feature sort of way.

But you can forget basic advice - or even much clue about stock. Perfectly polite and as helpful as possible with no in-depth knowledge, but not able to do more than optimistically point me in a vague direction.

And when you go to pay, it's self-service tills - although a woman did come over to start me off with that process. It's no wonder such staff hardly seem happy when the customers are being expected to help put them out of work.

In March 2011, the Kingfisher Group, which owns B&Q, reported a 22.5% rise in profits to £670m. Perhaps if they invested in their staff a little more, it would be possible to get information when you need it - and get a human touch when you're paying.

Are such basic ideas of service really so out of fashion? And if you had a better shopping experience, perhaps you'd return more frequently. And you certainly wouldn't write blog pieces like this.

Perhaps this is the point at which to note that investing in staff clearly is unfashionable when you can get free, taxpayer-funded labour on the somewhat ironically titled 'Workfare' scheme instead.

And that's without mentioning that many big companies also rely on further taxpayer subsidies to their profits as such in-work benefits as tax credits help make up for low, low pay.

Nope, service is out of fashion because service demands investment in people and that costs.

Anyway, I survived. And back in the garden, it was time to get potting in the sun.

Over the course of two days, I've now planted up a pert little box, a hebe, some Cape daises and succulents, plus sorrel, two varieties of parsley, strawberries, chives, garlic and oregano.

There is something emerging that I'm really happy with. Colour and texture, decoration and culinary staples - although the latter two are frequently one and the same. There is more to come, but what is coming together is now also making it easier to think about what to do next.

And in the meantime, it has already become a more wonderful space in which to soak up the sun.

Food for the soul in Paris

And so, adieu Paris – until the next time! We pulled out Gard du Nord with Sacré Cœur silhouetted on the horizon in the brittle winter sun. And as we picked up speed, La Tour Eiffel rose against the sky like a hand raised in farewell.

The Other Half describes me as a 'romantic Prussian' on occasion, but it is a romanticism that I also feel in Paris; the ghost of a past era seems to permeate the walls. It is almost within reach; almost an aroma that I can smell.

But enough of such intangibles. This was not a trip about romance - but it was (in part at least) a little pre-Christmas gourmet adventure.

We arrived on Thursday evening - too late to dine, and ready only to lounge outside La Terrasse with a glass of something and a cigarette, watching the world go by. But before that, I booked us in for the following evening at Septiéme vin, our favourite eatery in the city.

Just around the corner from where we like to stay, we visit at least once a trip. Olivier, the maitre d' and co-owner, has always been an utterly charming and generous host, making us feel more like returning friends than simply occasional customers.

It's a small place, but comfortable and warm. In the warmer months, we've enjoyed dining outside, but this was most definitely not the time for that. And with the temperature falling, winter food was on the agenda too.

The menu is, if not quite unchanging, one where you know what to expect. But on Friday's specials of the day was something I don't recall seeing there before: marrowbone gratinée. After my introduction to that ingredient in Carcassone in July, there was no question what my starter would be.

What arrived was a piece of bone, around eight inches long, halved lengthways and with a very fine topping of breadcrumbs and garlic over the marrow itself. There was toasted baguette to accompany and fleur de sel to garnish.

Scoop out the jellyish marrow onto toast and eat. This is not haute cuisine. It is not food to worry about eating elegantly. But boy, oh boy, this is the food of the gods. Sweet, with a fabulous mouth feel, and so, so satisfying.

So satisfying, in fact, that I struggled to eat all my main course of scallops with beautifully julienned vegetables and a very nice buerre blanc. It was further evidence of something I'm starting to understand: that fat - the real, natural stuff - makes you feel sated quicker than any other foodstuff.

I had a lemon sorbet to finish - although Olivier suggested having it with vodka and seemed impressed when I named that as a 'colonel'. I'd known about it for ages, but never tried it. I swear he put more booze in there than would be usual: the sorbet was nearly swimming. It's a great - hic! - combination.

The following evening, we made the error of eating at Café de Champs de Mars, just near the tower – my favourite piece of bling in the world. Now this is a fairly touristique spot on a small roundabout, but I love it: it absolutely reeks of the 19th century and 'gay Paree'. However, we had forgotten that it's fine for eating if you stick to their grills or steaks and frites, but less so if you off piste, so to speak.

We both felt like a change and opted for dishes with pasta. Neither was bad - they simply weren't much better than average.

The next night, we went back to see Olivier - with me hoping that the specials would still be the same. They were. So it was a case of the marrowbone redux.

You always worry at least a tiny bit that, on repeating something like that, it won't be as good the second time. Oh, but it was: every bit as good if not even more.

Olivier told me that they pre-cook the bone - as I understand it, in a court bouillon. Whatever they do, it's stunning.

What struck me was just how basic such a food is - how much it plays to our core. And how much the fast and junk food industries spend fortunes trying to replicate the same sort of impact with all their chemicals, additives, sugars and salts.

Now it's a very long time since, in an act of desperation driven by food deprivation, I consumed fodder from one of those such outlets, so things might have changed, but on the basis of memory, they don't come close to what I ate at the weekend.

Marrowbone has plenty to recommend it in terms of the old nose-to-tail eating philosophy alone, but ignoring that, it's a sensational food to taste. Why on each did we stop eating it and when?

If you're still interested, I followed with cod and a little rice and more of those julienned veg - I asked for a small portion, but it was still a bit too much. Y'see what I mean about being sated?

I did manage to cram a first ever taste of Iles flottante - the classic French meringue dish. I expected it to be as meringue that I've tasted has always been: hard and crisp, but it was soft and, well, sort of floppy – the result of having been poached.

But swimming in a quite delightful chilled custard, with a drizzle of caramel, it was very, very nice indeed.

Aside from the eating, there was preparing for future eating. Or put another way, shopping in the food hall at Le Bon Marché, which is an absolute joy, and saw me transformed into something like the archetypal child in a toyshop. And in the kitchen section was the biggest selection of moulds and rings I've seen anywhere outside of the catalogue of professional cooks' suppliers.

There was also a reminder of just how many top-notch chocolatiers and patisseries there are in Paris - every street has at least one of each, it seems! Even a fleeting look in the window and you're drooling like one very happy cat.

So, that was Paris in summary.

But I warn you: it may not be the last you hear of marrowbone.