The best laid plans ...

Ooh, I’m cross.  I really am Mrs Angry of NW3.

Who do you have to screw to get an answer from Camden’s Planning department?

We applied for planning consent as part of a house refurbishment back in November.  Here we are going 90 miles an hour toward the end of February and we're no further on than we were before we started.  Camden say that they aim to deal with planning applications within 8 weeks.  Pur-lease!

The alteration we want to make to improve the property is nothing more than several identical houses on the development have already done, what’s the problem?  Well, as it turns out, the problem is elderly neighbours who think that our raison d’être is to ruin their lives.  They’ve whipped up a storm of protest which means that the planning department must examine our case in fine detail rather than rubber stamp it, as they have done with other lucky people's applications.

I feel my soon-to-be neighbours’ pain, I really do.  If I was 108, I also wouldn’t want someone doing an extension and a very tiny basement (only under the extension) next door to me either but hey, this is London, shit happens and for some people at least, life must move forward.

I used to like old people.  I have elderly parents, I like their friends, I loved my grandparents and I’m assuming that one day, I’ll be a cranky old bird too. (One day?)

If we don’t go broke as a result of the delay and if we ever get to do this work and move into this house, Big-J is threatening payback, big time.  “I hope they like Bob Dylan played very loud late at night” he fumes.  “If one of them falls over in the street, it won’t be me who rushes out to help them” he seethes.  “I won’t even say hello when I see them” he adds with a sulky face. It’s all a bit worrying as it’s me who will be spending the majority of daylight hours in the house which we may or may not ever move into.

“Are you really going to be horrible to them?” I ask.  After two seconds of deep consideration he grunts “probably not”. In fact, he’s as unlikely to ignore an old lady in difficulty as I am.

So, mentally I'm already baking a cake and putting the kettle on in anticipation of Big-J inviting them in for a cuppa before offering to mow their lawn, walk their dogs and give them a lift to the shops - if he doesn't run them over first.

Note to self:  never buy a property in-between two old biddies ever, ever again!

Dabbous - it's all teeny tiny

Last Saturday night we went to Dabbous. We were lucky. It’s more difficult to blag a table here than win the lottery thanks to the rave reviews by no less than AA Gill and Giles Coren. Luckily, friends of ours had booked theirs months ago so when their dining companions let them down, we were delighted.

The interior of the restaurant is stark. I don’t like to sound flash but it reminded me of Cape Town’s ‘The Test Kitchen’ – also the hottest ticket in that town and allegedly Heston’s favourite Cape Town haunt. Dabbous is a smaller place and its kitchen hidden away whereas in The Test Kitchen, the open kitchen is a feature in the middle of the restaurant. But the unadorned look and feel was similar.

A protégé of Raymond Blanc and Agi Sverisson at Texture, chef Oli Dabbous is well used to working with Michelin starred royalty and, I would say, is now chasing his very own first Michelin star.

We started with cocktails in the cavernous, subterranean bar. The cocktail menu is very varied, unusual even and we were asked whether we’d like any guidance. Aided by the waiter, we chose our beautifully presented drinks but agreed they were somewhat lacking in alcohol. We had to request something to nibble and were given a teeny, weeny dear little white bowl of cashews – just about enough for two nuts each – but more of that later.

Onward and upstairs to our table where the menus were difficult to read even with my glasses on although my companions claimed to have no difficulty – with their glasses on. I really must make an appointment to investigate laser eye surgery. This is happening far too often.

We decided to order a la carte rather than the tasting menu at £54 per head. I mention this only because in Raymond Blanc’s review dated January 2012, he refers to £49 per head for the tasting menu. So, get there quick because at that rate, in two years time, the price will be up at almost £80 per head (if you compound the six monthly 10% rise). The staff seemed a little put out when we ordered a la carte and said that we’d really need to order at least a total of four dishes each – two starters and two mains – as they were very small. Oh my, shades of 1981 and the accidentally most expensive meal I'd ever had at that stage at AWT's Ménage a trois.

Our bread came out in a brown paper bag – sort of an incongruous gimmick. We were told it was homemade soda bread with all sorts of stuff in it and it came with apparently homemade butter on a little slate. The bread was really delicious – the butter was too salty.

The starters were by and large excellent (in a tiny sort of way) although my first, a concoction of allium (that’s a bulbous plant of a genus that includes the onion and its relatives, e.g., garlic, leek, and chives – but I’m sure you knew that) in a cold, clear liquid with a herbed oil floating on top – ach, I could take it or leave it. The others raved about the smoked egg and we all agreed that the ‘pea and mint’ – a sort of thick, cold mint soup-come-sauce with goodies in it was just to die for.

Two of us had the Iberico pork and two had the lamb for mains. The pork was heralded as ‘the best pork I’ve ever eaten’ by both men. The lamb was very good – but not the best I’ve ever eaten. In fact, I’ve eaten better lamb cooked by my husband – but it’s one of his specialities.

What we didn’t understand is that they clearly serve the tiny sized, tasting menu portions as their a la carte versions. Why do they do that? Why not scale up, charge a little more and serve proper sized portions so that people don’t have to order two starters and two main courses? If I were Oli, I’d re-think that.

For the duration of the meal, the service was irritating and bordering on amateur. My wine glass was removed a total of three times despite the table's wine bottle being half full and my having asked them not to take it away. Go know. There was a lot of leaning across the table to serve food and to take plates away – hasn’t anyone trained these people – and they got the starter order wrong not once, but twice. It was a bit strange really. They were all very posh but slightly odd too.

The evening wasn’t helped by the two men in our party having a few too many sherbets resulting in some very boring and repetitive conversation which went like this:

Man 1: The food really is very, very good.
Man 2: Yes, very good – but the service is amateurish.
Man 1: Yes, that’s a shame because the food really is excellent, even though the service isn’t very good.
Man 2: Well, the food is really good but it’s let down by the service.
Man 1: The service is terrible which is a shame because the food has been excellent.

… and so on, ad naseum.

My dessert was ridiculous. The description was ‘peach in it’s own juice’ which led me to think it would be a whole fruit or perhaps half in some delicious sauce. What came out was a small slice of peach, less than a quarter of a fruit, in a juice. Rather disappointing. My other half had a creamy, bananaery concoction, which he enjoyed (he likes a banana), and our friends both had cheese – pretty generous portions.

Now let’s re-visit the teeny, weeny, inadequate bowl of cashews. It came up on the bill at £3.00 which we all though outrageous, a real ‘spoiler’. Other than that, the cost was reasonable for what we had – although we’d have liked to have paid a little more and not left feeling slightly hungry.

The big test is – would we go back there? Well, far be for me to disagree with the doyens of eating but I largely just didn’t get it. Yes, some of the food (not all of it) was spectacular but the concept needs a little adjusting if it’s going to work in the long run. The very reason we went off-piste was so as not to have to have the tiny tasting portions.  Ho hum. So the answer is no – at least for the moment.

Big-J runs Canada (the whole of it) as I get to grips with American politics

We almost didn’t go to Canada.  Big-J is taking his training for the Adidas Thunder Run very seriously in-deed.   And what with his damaged hamstring, his strict training programme has been forcibly interrupted in a big way by intensive physiotherapy.  He hadn’t wanted to see a physio because illness and injury seems to equal weakness in his book but, having had a few sessions with the lovely Jonny in Colindale, true to form, Big-J now has a new best friend.  “Such a nice bloke,” he told me, “so caring and so kind.  I really like him.”

So the trip to the wedding of our friend’s daughter was conditional.  Conditional upon him being able to do at least two 10k runs whilst we were there.   “I have to do it,” he said - repeatedly.  “I can’t let my team down.  They’re relying on me.”  As the oldest in the team by a fairly long way, Big-J is determined to put on a good show and, so to speak, keep his end up.  

To be fair, I understand where he’s coming from.  The Thunder Run is a relay race which is run over 24-hours with one runner having to be on the track at all times during the 24 hours.  Through daylight and dark, in sunshine or rain, they must run and run …. and run.

Day One in Toronto was a bit hot and humid with the imminent threat of thundery showers so he headed off to the hotel’s state of the art, fully air conditioned gymnasium.  There they had had multifarious treadmill machines and he managed 5k on one of those but didn’t enjoy it at all.  Returning to the room 40 minutes later he said: “I only like to run outside” as he did a few star jumps.  “That way, I at least feel like I’m getting somewhere.  Better for the knees it may be but running on the spot just doesn’t float my boat.”

He spent the next 48-hours asking anyone (who was prepared to listen) what outdoor route he should take and where he was least likely to encounter bears  (his bear wrestling days are over) and all the other stuff that people-who-run seem to find so fascinating. Two days later, he donned his dinky shorts and specially designed aerodynamic running shirt and headed off to the great Canadian outdoors.  That was at 9am on the Sunday and he expected to be back in the room by around 10am – that same day.

By 10.32am, my mind was wandering into some spine-chilling places.  I knew that, to keep his silhouette lean and clean, he’d left with no phone, no money and no real clue as to where he was headed.  However, I felt confident that a man with A-Level geography couldn’t come to too much harm and, telling myself not to be so silly, I pushed all panicky thoughts to the back of my mind as I watched Mitt Romney and Barak Obama shamelessly electioneer courtesy of CNN.  They’re so, well, obvious – the Americans.  No subtlety at all. The way I see it, both candidates are offering the electorate big tax breaks which anyone marginally above idiot can tell is unaffordable in the current economic climate.  And Obama should be ashamed of himself – but I digress.

At 11.06am I started pondering the complexities of arranging trans-Atlantic transportation of a corpse assuming, that is, that I would ever find his body being as how he had no identification, no money and no phone about his person.  It would clearly take some time and ingenuity. By 11.34am and having an anxiety attack, I was mentally preparing to break it to my friends that Big-J was missing.  This, in the full knowledge that his disappearance would blight their big weekend and that their daughter’s wedding would forever be associated with our tragedy.

By 11.47am I was suppressing hysteria as my imagination ran riot.  Perhaps he’d wandered into that scene from the Bonfire of the Vanities and been mugged, dun-over, kidnapped, beaten, shot or knifed.  And do they actually have bears in downtown Toronto? The endless possibilities stretched out before me. At this point, I’d like to be able to tell you that all was well and he’d come back to the hotel and been waylaid in the bar by a friend – but he hadn’t.  Anyway, I didn’t dare leave the room to check just in case I missed him as he staggered in (perhaps missing a limb or two) after whatever grisly experience had befallen him.

Finally, at around 11.53am he did actually sort of fall into the room, flushed, sweating and palpably overwrought.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry …” he spluttered.  “You must have been so worried” he added.  “I’m really sorry …. so sorry.”  It transpired that he had indeed got lost - very lost - having thought that the whole of Toronto was designed on a grid system and not realising that one part of it skewed off at an angle.  His internal compass had really let him down. He’d been out running and walking for almost three hours and was somewhat shaky on his pins.  I tried to be annoyed but actually, I was just relieved to be able to breathe again.

In the words of the great bard, all’s well that ends well. This coming weekend we’re off to buy Big-J a running bum-bag for storage of his phone and some money before even runs Regents Park again – A-Level Geography or not.

Great knees, shame about the arse

I’m rather proud of Big-J just at the moment. And I’ll go further. Just between us here and not to be mentioned to anyone else, I have a sneaking admiration for him. Having spent most of his life as a dyed-in-the-wool, sitting-on-his-arse couch potato, he regularly preached the gospel of a three-course meal with plenty of wine being far better for the soul than a game of tennis.  But blow me down with a feather, last Sunday he competed in a 10k race in sunny Crouch End.

Raining it may have been over most of London but in Crouch End, the sun shone on my man as strutted his stuff around the “fun” run route. Along with his 30-years-younger son and a just slightly older friend, he completed the course in around 58 minutes – not his best ever speed but as near as damn it. We all know this because each run is meticulously recorded via a GPS watch onto his computer. He can chart his progress, compare his times and inspect his various routes. Marvellous. I love it when he painstakingly explains all that data to me. Not a man who can do anything by halves, I fear he's mentally in training for a marathon at some future, unspecified date.

When he arrived home, he was triumphant. “I could have gone on and on” he said, “it was really easy, I feel fantastic,” he added as he did a few lunges and star jumps before skipping off for a shower. The reward was a very naughty but nice brunch, prepared by yours truly, for the runners, me and a fellow running widow.

Running is actually quite boring but endless discussion about running takes boring to a whole new level. It’s sort of like train spotting. They talk about their shoes, their kit, the route, the warm-up before, the cool down afterwards, the pace, the sprint at the end – I could go on or we could all just go watch some paint dry.

After a good half an hour of yawning tedium around the table, I had to ban all talk of running just until we finished our meal and I could escape to the kitchen to do the far more interesting clearing up.

A rather sporty friend of ours was dead impressed that Big-J, at his advanced age, is able to run without any apparent ill effects.
“Did he do any sport as a youngster?” asked our friend.
“No”, said I. “He was a couch potato, he just sat on his arse until around three years ago.”
“That’ll be why he can run at his age,” said the friend, “most of us have knackered our knees by now which is why we can’t do it.”

So, along with his many other talents, Big-J has great knees! It’s just such a shame that he's worn out his arse.

Are we hampered by our own technology?

I think I speak for many of my age and older when I say: Too right we are.

I am in technology hell. And I had thought I was reasonably clued up.

Yesterday I took delivery of a new (used) car with lots of toys. I know, I’m very lucky to have satellite navigation, Bluetooth and a car that actually tells me – not only when it needs fuel – but what's more if it fancies some brake fluid, coolant, oil or a service. It'll also have a chat with me - if I speak to it strictly on its own terms. My only problem is that the system is completely different from my last car and has totally confounded me. (By the way, I hope you don't think I'm trying to show off, I am merely attempting to outline the depth of my difficulties.)

Yesterday, I thought I’d cracked the Bluetooth thingy. I got my iPhone connected and my (dreadful, according to Big-J) music stored on said device was streaming nicely into the car. OK, I couldn’t figure out how to choose what to listen to. It insisted upon playing whatever it liked, only permitting me to change tracks randomly, and after six track changes by me, it stubbornly refused to cooperate any further. Today, I can’t get either the telephone function or the music to work through the system unless I physically manhandle the phone and tell it what to do by pressing buttons. So quaint and old fashioned.

And then the worst thing of all happened. Whilst backing up and syncing my phone this afternoon, I pressed something and disabled it completely. Nightmare. Never mind – I thought – I’ll rush up to my appointment in town and wrestle the phone into submission when I get back. But no. Barely a mile down the Finchley Road I realised that without a working phone to pay for parking and for the congestion charge, I was utterly stymied. So, I turned around and headed straight to my son’s place (and, without a working mobile phone, I was forced to drop in at home to call him from the landline and warn him of my impending arrival - very inconvenient but only fair) in the hope that he would like, sort it like. Oh he – the wondrous Apple’ite for whom, last Christmas, my sister bought a t-shirt emblazoned with “No, I can’t fix your computer,” pressed a few buttons and the dam phone sprang back to life. It took him ooh ... all of four and a half seconds. “Ah” he mused, “you really should be connected to the Cloud and then everything would sync on all your devices.” Go know…

So now, the phone is functioning again – but not as it should be doing in the car. The Cloud is operating – but not entirely. The car is working – although the seatbelt is trying to strangle me, the mirrors don’t fold in as they should do and I can’t get the music going or make a phone call with any confidence. But of course (as Big-J so wisely pointed out to me), we mustn't forget the whole point of a car. It is, in fact, to get us from A to B and that, dear friends, is something it's doing rather well.

All of the "balloons and whistles" are merely designed to make our lives more comfortable and less stressful. Yeah. Pass me the valium please.

STRICTLY BOB DANCING

I was all of a dither. Should I miss Strictly Come Dancing to see Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan at Hammersmith on Saturday night? And not just any old Strictly I’ll have you know – this was the gala coming from Wembley Arena. Strictly – Bob; Bob – Strictly. An agonizing choice.

“I don’t know why you want me to come anyway,” I moaned to Big-J. “Why not take someone who cares?” I continued. However much I bleated, he would not be moved. “Look” he said, “here’s the text you sent me when I managed to get Strictly tickets”. Upon inspection I saw that I’d said “Wow, thanks luv. Now I’ll love you forever.” I was well and truly hoist by my own petard. “If you really love me,” said Big-J, “you’ll come along and you’ll enjoy yourself.” Having said “never again” after I saw Bob live in Milan (2009 I think), I found myself being dragged kicking and screaming in a Westerly direction last Saturday night.

Blimey, the Hammersmith Apollo could do with a makeover. In contrast to the showy, sparkly glamour and glitz of the Strictly Come Dancing studio the previous week (and before you ask, you have to know someone really important to get those tickets), this was a real culture shock. I don’t think it’s seen a paintbrush since around 1963. But the Bob-heads didn’t care. They were six deep at the bar stacking up their sherbets in plastic cups. Really quite grubby. I ordered a bottle of water and was told that I could take it into the auditorium if they removed the cap for me. “Can I take it in if I promise not to chuck it?” I asked. The barmaid looked me up and down and clearly felt that a woman of my dress sense and seniority probably wasn’t about to indulge in nefarious activities and so, to my relief, I was given special bottle-top dispensation.

I must admit that I was secretly looking forward to seeing Mark Knopfler. I loved all those hits that were background music to my youth. Money for Nothing, Sultans of Swing, Brothers in Arms, Romeo and Juliet – yeah. Well, he didn’t play any of those. It was a real swizz and left me feeling very underwhelmed. After listening to him for an hour, I was beginning to look forward to Bob. At least I’d know some of his tunes.

Bob and his beige-suited band took to the stage, with Mark Knopfler on board for the first four numbers. Apparently, they're good friends those two and Mark is undoubtedly a genius guitarist. But Bob really must take the prize for being the worst dressed rocker ever to have graced a stage. Where does he get those clothes? A long black jacket with matching trousers featuring white satin or grosgrain facings, silver shoes and the ubiquitous black hat, he looked faintly ridiculous. But … there’s just something mesmerising about the little guy, it’s hard to take your eyes off him whilst he’s on stage. At age 70, he played around fourteen numbers, ten of which I recognised including Highway 61 Revisited, A Hard Rain, Don’t think Twice It’s All Right and Make You Feel My Love – yes, written by Bob and not by Adele. He strummed his gee-tar, he played keyboards, he even indulged in some strange and wondrous dance moves, the like of which I’d never seen before (and frankly, am not in a hurry to see again). The band was very tight, the music was great. Although his voice sounds like razor blades these days, as he growled his way through all those familiar numbers, he never missed a beat or got a word wrong. At least, of the words I could hear – he didn’t get one wrong.

I know that the die-hard fans, comprising around 98% of the audience, will want to see Bob again and again – even when he’s really on his last legs (heaven forfend) and, whilst the man can still fill a decent size venue, I suspect he’ll go on and on ... and on and on and on and on. But I’m afraid that for my money, living legend and voice of a generation that he is, I think the time may have come for a graceful exit stage left.

Out of the mouths of babes

My New York sister and family announced they were to visit. Only problem is that I’d booked a holiday (sorry, vacation) before I knew they were coming. I managed to claw back a day by postponing my trip and so spend it with my nephew Nathan (nearly 9) and niece Zoë (“I’m three and three quarters”). I hadn’t seen them for eighteen months and on the last occasion, my niece wasn’t even talking.

So I booked a show. The Gruffalo is a story with which I was utterly unfamiliar, it having been conceived at a time when I was well past keeping abreast with current children’s stories. In a nutshell, a mouse gets lost in a wood and scares off various creatures who want to eat it with tales of a monster called the Gruffalo which we all know doesn’t exist – or does it??

And so on the 27th December, my sister dropped the children and me at the tube station and we took the lovely Northern Line from Hampstead to Leicester Square. They were almost self-combusting with excitement and spent the entire journey pointing out to me the differences between our tube system and New York’s subway. I think the general consensus was that we win with our upholstered seats, electronic signage in a more sensible place and announcements in an English accent. They were incredibly sweet, opting to share a seat although there were plenty of empty ones available.

We arrived just the half an hour early and the wait for curtain-up was punctured by the time-honoured question: “when will it start?” Zoë sat, still and mesmerised (aside from jigging along to a couple of songs) on my lap throughout whilst Nathan gleefully responded to all prompts for audience participation, turning to me on each occasion we were told “but there’s no such thing as the Gruffalo” with a knowing “hmmm, we’ll see about that”.

After the show, we made our way to Pizza Express where a toilet stop was in order. It was in the toilet that we had the only tears of the day. The Dyson hand dryer terrified Zoë and I can’t say I blame her. Have you heard the noise those things make? A kiss and a cuddle soon sorted that out and we ordered our meal without too much fuss. As we waited, she suddenly took my hand in hers, kissed it and said: “I love you so much.” My heart, already melted, positively dissolved.

They ate beautifully and we chatted amiably throughout about their friends at school. “Do you have any cardboard?” asked Nathan. I said that as I didn’t have any small children at home, I tended to throw all of my cardboard away. “It’s not only people with children who have cardboard you know” he gently chided me. I had to agree. He wanted it (he said) to make a scale model of a London underground train. An ambitious project for a nine year old in a Pizza Express I felt. Zoë then regaled me with a story of one of her friends who had cut her head open during a fall at school. “You have to be very careful ‘cos if you fall and cut your neck” she added, “that is when you will die”. It was hard to argue the point. “I’ll just put on some lipstick before we leave” I said. “You already have lipstick on” she responded. “Yes,” said I, “I know, but I need to refresh it.” “Oh dear”, said she with some concern, “has it dried out?” An impressive knowledge of make-up in one so young I thought. I put some clear lip-gloss on her too and she was very pleased with that.

We walked back to Leicester Square marvelling at the London taxis. It was cold and I was tempted to treat them to a taxi ride but on balance, I felt that the tube had that little bit more to offer.

Arriving back at Hampstead, I opted to walk home although it really was freezing by now. Parts of the streets were still frozen from our recent snowy cold snap and she insisted on walking on the ice wherever it availed itself. “I’m not picking you up if you fall over” I said. “Don’t worry,” said my nephew quietly to me, “I will”. “You must be the best big brother in the whole world,” I said to him. “Well, she’s a really nice sister too … sometimes” he replied.

Five sixths of the way home, having walked a long way quite happily, she told me that she really wanted to be inside because “…when you take your gloves off” (get the mildly accusing tone), “you'll feel how cold my hands are”. I felt pretty guilty.

Back at my place, they wanted to see around. “I’m just going downstairs,” said she, “that is also your apartment – downstairs?” she asked. I showed them around. “This is my bedroom,” I said. “Wow, this is really cool,” said the three and three quarter year old. But she was really more interested in the big, fluffy toy dog in my 22 year old’s bedroom.

“Are you sure you don’t have any cardboard?” asked Nathan with a bit of a long face. What a terrible Auntie I am, I thought.

I pacified them with a small packet of white chocolate buttons each and found a suitable cartoon channel so that we could all blob out and warm up, which we did.

I think my day out with these two children whom, due purely to distance, I really hardly know, proved my theory that children are usually much better behaved with virtual strangers than they are when they’re parents are around. We had a luvverly day.