So This is Christmas...

...and what have you done?

2009 was definitely a year of changes for me and if you'd asked me this time last year if I'd have settled for that it would have been a big, fat, definite YES.  I needed a change.  It feels good to keep moving; if things stay the same too much I get bored.  Most significantly, it was the year that I moved in with my girlfriend after getting some psychotherapy to help me deal with the impulse to bolt.  Not funny at the time, but funny to think of it now.  Happily, co-habiting has worked out like a dream. It's like breathing - no effort and it keeps me alive.  Although I was South London and proud for ten years I have found out that West is best, at least for now.  I'm a terrible one for believing that the assumptions I make about a place or a person are true but I'm trying to change that.  There are probably as many twats in Notting Hill as there are any other part of town, its just that they drive more expensive cars and drink more cocktails.  I've even started drinking them. I know £8 is a lot for a drink, but then I think £3.50 is a lot for a pint of Guinness.  I love both, its just that cocktails work faster on me, are more interesting to drink due to my rare ingestion of them and they don't make me fart as much.  You can't beat a Chocolate Flip from the Electric, I'm telling you. 

I'm coming off the back of 3 days of pre-Christmas boozing in the name of catching up with friends before we all leg it for Christmas.  A Thursday night in a Maida Vale pub complete with a big fire, the smell of mulled wine and big fat flakes whirling around outside was contrasted sharply by a curry and a Friday night in an Islington gay bar.  The set was completed yesterday with a panto, Thai food, good friends, reflection on what has passed in the last 12 months and thoughts about the one ahead.  It's that time of year, right?  I flicked back through my emails and it became obvious that it's time for some thanks.  As usual I never got round to sending Christmas cards and it probably would have been a whole lot more professional to do so, therefore I hope that turning over the blog to being grateful will do.

Although there are countless people that didn't reply to enquiries or pitches (and I now know, that's just how it is), there are numerous people that have given me advice and encouragement.  You are; Emma Powell at Grifco, Matt Hill, Sarah Graham at the Mail, Struan, Rosie and Ellie at Salad Club, Ky at Musio for letting me write for her, Ed and Alex at Wideworld for publishing me, Eva Gizowska, Will Gray, Katy Salter, Jane Graham,Vicky Frost, Rosie Swash, Carla Bevan at Marie Claire online (apologies for fucking up the opportunity Carla), Rosalind Ryan for showing me where I went wrong, Paul Dunn at ES, Liz for helping with the book, Amanda Astill for honest words about my strengths and weaknesses, Jenny for teaching me how to write 'real life' stories, Craig at NFT for being so supportive, Dan Frost at SLP, Nicola at the Observer and Sophie at the Indy for replying .  I'd also like to thank Sian, Jamie, Sharon, Ali, Liz and John for the freelance work this year.  If I've forgotten you, then sorry and thanks!

Enjoy your time off and I'll be back in touch in the New Year.

Landlord Joys and Progress Update

The realisation that this blog is not really addressing the question it asks made me finally sit down and think about it in between trying to make some money to pay for Christmas and finding a tenant for my flat.  Both were stressing me out.  It's back to picture research for the time being (at Look magazine) to fund both the present hoard and suddenly having to pay for a mortgage on a place I don't live in. Several years ago I didn't have any sympathy for people like me as home ownership seemed so out of reach.  Little did I know that it would seem even more insurmountable now and thank God I scrimped for two years to make the deposit back in 2006. So: can I write for a living?

Not yet, not by a long chalk.  My contributions to a website are earning me a little bit of money but apparently they're not paying other contributors so I have to keep schtum about who they are.  There's also a good story idea that I've got, complete with good case studies (curious commissioning editors, get in touch now) but I'm finding it hard to make the time to pitch it to people.  Is there a difference between an excuse and a reason?  My reason (ahem) tonight is that I spent 3 hours missing trains and cursing a prospective tenant that never showed.  Karma will do for you, French girl who works at Chelsea FC.  Never mind that your accent felt like silk on my eardrum, only being a gentleman stopped me from venting my frustration when your phone went straight to voicemail as I called to find out where the bloody hell you were.

To get back to the point, I have to take some positives from what has happened so far this year.  Though it needs a lot of work, the first draft of a novel is completed and there have been bylines both online and in print, which is a foundation to build on.  The next quandry will be about turning down freelance picture research work as the redundancy cash has all but run out.  I've learnt a lot from working with people at good titles like Marie Claire, the South London Press and Look magazine but I can't help thinking that I could have done things differently (and better).  That you have to make mistakes in order to learn is some solace.  I'm doing the thing that I always wanted to do but never got around to and when I'm doing it, I find it exciting, which is pretty much all I ever wanted out of a job.  Now all I have to do is get paid for it.

South London MC Skandal

Collecting plaudits almost as fast as he can rhyme, 25 year old Skandal, from New Cross, is one to watch.  Airplay on both Choice and 1Extra has now led to a forthcoming mixtape called   'Hunger Pains' with DJ MK, host of Kiss FM's Hip Hop Show and regular Roots Manuva collaborator.  After twenty minutes we've talked about everything from roast dinners to political activism but he starts off by giving South London Press some props.  'It's the only paper that I will pick up because I want to know what's going on in my area.'  Skandal is South London through and through.  A Millwall fan since he was a boy, he speaks fondly about both the Old and New Den, the Pie n Mash shop in Lewisham and also about an early influence.

'Blak Twang man!  He's from Deptford and he really flew the flag for us.  Rodney P from London Posse early on too.  But when I first got into hip hop it was all about Wu Tang and De La Soul.' In terms of commercial success, the UK hasn't produced a rapper that's achieved the success of Eminem or Jay-Z but Skandal sees a positive future.

 'I think we are going to see that change in the next 5 to 10 years because the majors have now started realising that we can produce talent like Chipmunk, Tinchy and Dizzee.  They've had great success in this country.  UK artists are being embraced over there.  MIA is doing quite well, Jay Shawn, who's gone over there and done his thing so I think once the majors get behind us then the success is going to come.'

Skandal's style can sound very in your face and he's particularly virulent on the track 72 Bars (which kicks, incidentally) but he denies that the aggression in the music translates to the streets. 'I do believe music influences the youth, but not only music - that's a cop-out. We need to look closer to home.  There's a whole lot more that's affecting the streets and I would put the government, schools and parenting way above the music.' 72 Bars' is boast rap, the hip-hop tradition of putting down your peers to prove your rhyming prowess, which he sees as essentially innocuous. 'Its almost down to a playground mentality isn't it?  I'm better than you, my Dads better than your Dad.  Its a way of me holding on to my childhood and being as immature as I can for as long as possible!' he says, laughing.

Being down to earth is very much one of Skandal's qualities.  One of his videos shows him rapping on the toilet ('I was with my mates and it was just a stupid idea I had...') and he reckons that his ability to remember thousands of words for his live performances is just a case of honing his craft like any other occupation. 'Over the years I've got better at remembering my lyrics to the point where now I've finished a rhyme, its in my head.  It's like any skill, it’s like being an electrician or a plumber, its not something that comes to you overnight.  You have the ability to improve like any other man.  It'll take 3, 4 or 5 years to become competent as an electrician and its the same with the music.'  Certainly more than competent, watch out for him. 

See http://www.myspace.com/skumbagskandal 'Hunger Pains' is available on www.ukrecordshop.com, www.suspect-packages.com and from Itunes from 23rd November.

Beets and Limes and Waistlines

It feels like I'm getting somewhere with this writing lark - the South London Press are publishing this on Friday 13th November.  I'm superstitious in a good way now...going to start walking under ladders and stuff.  Anyway, here's the feature:

When I turn up to meet Rosie and Ellie, the force behind Salad Club, a supper club in South London, they’re not there.  ‘Sorry’ says Tom, Ellie’s tall boyfriend, looking a bit sheepish ‘They’re out getting some food.’. Of course they are.

Salad Club is one of a new breed of ‘supper clubs’ that have sprung up this year.  It’s a similar experience to visiting a restaurant, the difference being that you go to someone’s home, you don’t have a choice of what to eat and there’s no official prices, just a suggested donation of £25 which Ellie & Rosie tell me most people are happy to pay.  The two have been friends for 6 years since meeting at University and host the evening in Ellie’s front room high above Brixton market, the sounds of which are bubbling through the open window when I arrive. As we speak , they busy themselves peeling and coring apples for the dessert that evening: Tarte Tatin.

Salad Club was born out of a regular weekly meeting for an exercise class. ‘Soca aerobics it was’ recalls Rosie, ‘the most aggressive class set to carnival music, a teacher that would kill us every week and we could hardly talk or walk after, all we could muster was a salad.  But good salads – we were obviously starving afterwards.  We wanted something healthy and virtuous and we started experimenting, getting adventurous with the ingredients and to show off to each other and then we jokingly started referring to the whole experience as Salad Club and that’s where it came from.  We don’t just serve salad at Salad Club though’, she adds, emphatically.

So how did they go from meeting up for the gym and salad to inviting 16 people into Ellie’s house for 4 course dinners?  Ellie, a web Editor by day, says it was down to embracing new technology and a visit to one of the earliest pop up supper clubs as the inspiration for their own. ‘The blog was the start. Rosie and I initially used it to share with each other what we were cooking. We are both keen writers as well as Rosie being a photographer so the blog was a great place for us to put our ideas down. Rosie takes up the story, ‘Fatefully, we got some coverage for the blog in the Guardian on the same day that we went to the Secret Ingredient, a supper club in Dalston.  We thought ‘we could do this….’

The coverage came because they responded to a tweet from the Guardian on the website Twitter, asking for good breakfast recipes.  Rosie sent in a shot of asparagus wrapped in bacon for soldiers, which was printed with a link to the blog.  The supper club was started at the same time so ‘we timed the opening of the restaurant perfectly without knowing it.’ says Ellie.

The buzz about Salad Club has resulted in there now being around 400 people on the waiting list and it seems that people are happy to wait their turn. ‘Some have been on the list since June.’ Says Rosie.  Most are really happy to wait, we tell them we can take them in December or January…’

 Both Ellie and Rosie hold down full time jobs as well as doing Salad Club so how long do they think that can last? ‘The dream is to make our living from this.’ admits Ellie.  ‘Salad Club makes a small profit but if we added up our hourly rate it would be less than minimum wage.’  ‘About a pound an hour!’ Rosie says, laughing. ‘Our ideal would be cooking 1 private supper as well as 1 or 2 secret suppers or collaborations a week (more of which later).  It’s difficult to know when the best time is to stop (by which they mean quit their current jobs) and take a risk.  We feel so confidently about what we want to do and we have found something that we love doing. The time is really right with people very interested in food right now, especially home made food’.

Another attraction of running Salad Club has been the enjoyment of being in control. ‘We both feel that we have been motivated by being our own bosses.  From the beginning to the end everything is ours.’ Says Ellie.  Rosie, warming to the theme, expands on this. ‘At the moment we line the pockets of already quite wealthy men and it’s very empowering to have complete control over the finances and the food and the daily schedule, absolutely everything.’ 

Rosie also notes that the partnership serves to motivate them. ‘ If there was just one of us it would be very easy to think ‘I cant be bothered this weekend’. Everything is now planned until Christmas but Ellie has got permission to go dancing one weekend in November!’

It seems obvious to me that the natural development would be to one day run their own restaurant but they disagree. ‘The bureaucracy and red tape would take the spirit out of it.  We’re not interested in that.’ Rosie says,  ‘It’s about getting people in and feeding them.  Things will change, Ellie is not going to live here forever so the space we have is going to change but we will always do it somehow.  We’ll either make it smaller or we will go to peoples houses offering tailor made menus for private clients.’ So the future might be in catering?  Ellie screws her nose up at the word ‘When I think of caterers I always think of vol-au-vents’.  Rosie agrees. ‘We make food that people want to dig into.’  Though they might not like the word, they do concede that they like getting booked to cook for people ‘We did a group of 12 recently.  It was a surprise birthday party for this guys wife; we spent all day in his lovely kitchen.’ 

Like the unusual nature of their own enterprise they also like the thought of collaborating on other original events.  They tell me they will soon be collaborating with a furniture designer friend, which will be like visiting one of the restaurant/shop hybrids that are on the rise. ‘Not only do you eat the food, but you can buy the table it sits on, should it take your fancy.’  They’ve also thought about it themselves. ‘We’d like to get into having a ‘buyable restaurant’ where we can sell things like the crockery we use – we find a lot of interesting things at car boot sales.’ 

With so much to do I wonder if the working relationship has affected their friendship.  Do they still have a laugh? ‘Yep, we’re off for pizza in a bit, that’s always good!’ says Rosie.  Ellie thinks about it ‘I usually get really stressed late afternoon…’ And you don’t fight if you have a bit of a testing moment? Rosie dismisses the idea.  ‘We just sit down and have a beer!’  Despite the work they have to put in, it’s evident that their creation gives them a lot of joy. ‘The best bit is when everyone has left and all the plates are empty and we’re buzzing off the compliments’ Ellie says,  ‘People have left really happy and then we sit down, have a drink and stop and think about how it went and how much we liked everyone.’  Rosie nods her head. ‘At that moment we feel like we ‘ve made some really good friends.  For that moment you feel close to them.  You’ve made the food that they’ve eaten and they’ve loved it.  Much better than meeting someone in a bar…’

Driven to Tears

Sting has long been a figure of fun for journalists, though a lot of the criticism has been mean spirited.  After all, don’t the rainforests need saving even if it takes a yoga mad millionaire tantric sex practitioner to advocate it?  The Department of Health would no doubt applaud his commitment to a healthy body and frankly whatever he gets up to within his mansion walls with Trudie is up to him.  (I’m going to have to go and do some serious web-surfing to get that image out of my head.) The Police were a great pop band but their former lead singer’s latest incarnation as a sort of wandering hairy minstrel is pretentiousness on a grand scale that is likely to invoke more mockery from journalists, starting with this one.

‘If On a Winter Night’ is his latest project, one inspired by, you guessed it, Winter, which Sting tells us (on a video promo on his website – you have to see it) ‘is the season of the imagination, of mystery and storytelling’.  There he is, wandering through the snow in a massive coat and boats with his dog, stroking his Grizzly Adams beard, looking for all the world like he’s a man weighed down by the great questions of life, before the video cuts to him singing in a candlelit room accompanied by his guitarist.  He is swathed in a chunky knit cardigan, singing a verse as if reciting a Shakespearean sonnet.  A further cut reveals the assembled musicians around a table playing 17^th century compositions by Henry Purcell on harps and mandolins while candles flicker and the ghost of punk wanders noiselessly through the room, no doubt wishing it could die all over again.

The promotional tour that he’s embarked on to flog this latest work is ruthless in targeting the middle England demographic. He was on the Alan Titchmarsh show yesterday for folk’s sake.  The One Show must also have been surprised to get him, but not as surprised as the bassist he paid to accompany him on Later…Live the other night.  The salary to note ratio can only have been good, given that he only had to play three of them.  Foo Fighters started up their glorious racket over the dying notes, breaking the ethereal spell Sting had been working hard to conjure.  This surely must have been down to the time restrictions of the live show and not because Dave Grohl was as bored listening to him droning on about snow and squalls as the rest of us.

But it’s the look he’s sporting that is most irritating.  It’s as if he has grown the beard to appear more sage and (perhaps in a tantric sense) more potent.  His facial hair seems to be not so much the result of the boredom of shaving but to cement his new incarnation as philosopher.  His muse is the season, his focus pastoral.  This image is further cemented by his new found love for a certain style of cardigan – the sort of thing an out of touch Aunt would give you for Christmas. It’s unlikely, even given his 58 years, that he is starting to feel the cold; too many yogic breathing exercises at hand to warm the body.   All the plaid and wool seems intended to say, I am a simple man at heart, I wander the country and am moved to sing of the glories of nature. It’ll be hairshirts next. Sure he’s aging and his changing interests are bound to result in new musical directions. The irony is he seemed so much less ridiculous when he was singing about prostitutes and walking on the moon.

Rustle Brands

One of the legacies of my University education was a pretty appalling memory, more down to my extra-curricular activities than cramming lots of facts into my brain. A trip to the Museum of Brands was therefore refreshing, given the amount of 'Oh yeah, I remember those!' moments it triggered. Weirder recollections from somewhere back in my psyche included remembering that 'Imperial Leather' was my Dad's brand of talcum powder and incidentally, who uses that anymore? The man behind the collection is Robert Opie who must have been a nightmare to live with; in 1963, aged 16, he starting collecting and is now reckoned to have more than half a million items, 12,000 of which are here. You can just imagine the trips to Ikea for more storage can't you? Walking through the time tunnel, you can find everything from cans of Mock Turtle Soup (made from calves brains, head and feet to duplicate the texture of turtle meat apparently) to pre-kid Milky Bars. Sections are split into decades and the displays are densely packed to the point of being overwhelming but if there are some black holes in your history then a visit here might help fill in the blanks.

Boozing in the Corridors of Power

I went for a drink at the Houses of Parliament last night. To get into the Palace of Westminster you go through a security check at Portcullis House opposite and then you go back under the road and into the Houses. It'd be a great place for a game of Hide and Seek; there are 1100 rooms, 100 staircases and 3 miles of corridors.  A friend who works there had invited me and she told me a couple of stories about getting lost in its labyrinthine layout.  As we looked about we speculated about secret passageways that surely must exist in there. It only adds to the air of intrigue about the whole place. Firstly, the amount of security makes you feel important as you walk around. The place is crawling with coppers. Secondly, to state the bleeding obvious, the people in this building govern everything that we do.  I know they work for us but often it feels like we have to do what they tell us to do, which brings me to the third point: it feels a bit like school. The older boys are condescending to the younger ones and have more privileges apparently. It's almost like a caste system. The colour and design of your security pass determines the access that you have and this includes the bars. Even in the canteen there is a section that is reserved for those with real clout (the Lords presumably). I guess they don't want to have to mix with the researchers, cooks and cleaners that have to be there so that the machine runs effectively.

We had access to the Strangers Bar. It was only as recently as 1994 that a modernisation committee recommended that visitors were no longer referred to as 'strangers'. The bar was like a small pub from the 70's with a few water-colours and caricatures dotted around the walls.  It felt like people should be smoking in there. There were two TV screens: one showing Sky Sports and the other informing imbibers who was currently speaking in the House and which bill they were proposing should anyone having a drink want to dash back to the chamber and cast their vote. Outside the bar was the terrace that you can see from the other side of the Thames with the green and white striped marquees that seem so at odds with the majestic exterior. We tried it for a while before the rain started and it felt really surreal having a Guinness right by those famous walls that are forever illuminated by orange lighting. Strangely, it made me think of the time that FHM projected a naked Gail Porter onto the side.

Disappointingly I didn't spot any brown envelopes bursting with £50 notes being passed between people surreptitiously in the bar.  Pleasingly though, there were a few old duffers drinking pints of bitter, one of whom looked a bit like Rupert Murdoch, but his suit wasn't up to much so it probably wasn't him.  The Strangers Bar seemed very much the right environment for them to be in.  It was only after we'd left that my drinking companion asked me if I had recognised the bloke sitting to my right.  Finally, the whiff of scandal that I'd hoped for.  It was Elliott Morley, who is probably going to be the first MP to face police investigation into his expenses claims for a mortgage that he'd already paid off.  He put it down to a 'genuine mistake' but was suspended by Labour at the time and won't be standing next time round. Despite paying back the £16000 he mistakenly put through expenses, he still had enough for a drink.  Which is nice.