These probably don’t look like instruments of torture to you but, as I begin the year with a mangled hand, I can assure you they are capable of inflicting hideous pain.
Wanting to make something festive-looking for New Year, I decided on a strawberry pavlova – a dessert that I feel is great cookery value, in that it is easy to make but looks dramatic and tastes divine. Beginning with the meringue base, I had got to the point where the egg-whites were at that translucent stage, before even starting to become white and creamy, when I dropped my small hand mixer on the counter. The obvious next step would have been to turn off the plug at the wall but, for some unaccountable reason, I decided I had to turn off the actual machine. I lunged at it as, still spinning, it travelled along the counter like a demented two-legged octopus. And that’s where I made my mistake: I tried to pick it up, still spinning, whereupon the beaters tangled themselves into my fingers. As I screamed, my hand was dragged around the worktop by the maniacal beaters before I could pull the plug out. After sitting down with first water, then brandy and my hand wrapped in frozen peas, I managed to finish making the meringue, which, to my slight disappointment, was not swirled with red from my bloody wound. It did, however, when cooked, feature multiple cracks and those sugary outcrops which occur when the sugar is not sufficiently beaten into the mixture. Not my finest oevre.
The second implement attacked on the following day. One of the features of having all food delivered is that I place the order so far in advance, I can’t remember what’s in it, am too lazy to check and end up with multiples of things going bad in the fridge. This time, it was apples – What can you do with six, huge, Bramley apples? Well, I’m sure the cooks among you will have a hundred intricate and delicious ideas but for a definite non-cook, stewed apple with sultanas sprinkled here and there seemed the obvious answer, as a healthy breakfast addition to “The Writer’s current granola obsession.
And, while peeling the apples, that’s when I managed to peel the skin off the parts of my hand that were not already a bloody pulp from the mixer.
And so, I go bravely into Lockdown 3 with five plasters on my left hand and an even greater aversion to kitchen implements and their uses than I already had.
Spotted in Regent’s Park. Best-ever attempt at having a coffee while social distancing from the crowds out dog-walking, child -walking and self-walking?
Today, the Oxford Astrazenica vaccine has been approved!!!!!!
One dose, with a booster three months later. Easily transported, easily stored and cheap!! This surely marks the closest we will get to liberation from Covid 19-for the foreseeable future.
So why aren’t I euphoric and jumping for joy? Firstly, because I’m a cynical, catastrophising human being and secondly, because there are just so many imponderables: Brilliant that we will be protected after only one dose – or at least we will not get the illness so badly if we do get it. What does “so badly” mean? And what about the jab being 70% effective? Does that mean 70% of people are protected ? Or that everyone who has it is protected 70% of the time? And how do we live our lives 70%? Will it be effective against the new strain of Coronavirus? We don’t know for sure. We think so. Will those of us who’ve been vaccinated still be infectious? We don’t know for sure. We think so. And, if everyone who gets the shot is still infectious, surely we will have to go on wearing masks, social distancing and disinfecting? So in what sense will the pandemic be over? Until, that is, we have achieved herd immunity- this year, next year, sometime, never?
“The writer” declares himself happy at the prospect of being rid of the fear that has haunted him throughout the pandemic but I, who have been mega-cautious but not afraid, am only just beginning to fear. As things are now, I feel in control: if we stay far enough away from others, don’t meet people indoors and disinfect both ourselves and what comes into the house, we can be reasonably sure of not contracting it.
Once we have been vaccinated, all is uncertain and we have to be constantly wondering what percentage of risk we are prepared to take – or at, least I will.
Maybe these fears will prove groundless the more data are published and the more work is done. My reservations and anxieties feel churlish in the face of such brilliant scientific achievement. At the beginning of this pandemic, anything that guaranteed we would not be in ICU on a ventilator would be the panacea we had dreamed of. And, hopefully, it will be. Either way, we will be first in the queue when our cohort is summoned to the nearest vaccination centre.
It’s been hard to write for a while, mainly because things are changing so quickly . Going into Tier 4 affects “The Writer” and me hardly at all. We were having Christmas lunch on our own and will still do so – the only thing making any difference to the meal being the queues outside supermarkets and the hope that one of our kind neighbours will brave the crowds to buy us a chicken. And if that doesn’t work out, I’ll be happy with a Christmas lunch of Rogan Josh, Murgh Masala, Korma and Jalfrezi – all of which we have in the freezer.
I am back to getting up in the middle of the night to chase delivery slots as I was in the first Lockdown and, in between refreshing the “Book Delivery “page , wondering what the implications are of the accelerated spread of the new strain of this virus. For example, does it mean we should keep even further away from people than before? Or does it mean it permeates masks more easily and, most importantly of all, is the vaccine still efficient at tackling it? We listen to and watch the news constantly but I still can’t find out the answers to these questions. We are told the vaccine will still work but surely no-one be certain yet? And, if that is the case, why will it work, given that the ‘flu vaccine has to be changed every year to accommodate mutations?
Our lives seem to be standing still. All the news comes in from elsewhere: Our friends, Peter and Amy, have had their first dose of vaccine and we are envious. Not since I was six and three-quarters have I wished to be older than I am. And, in philosophical mood after a hospital visit to have more stents slid into his arteries, Tod sends this report headed “The Sadness of Covid”
Overheard at The Royal Brompton Hospital today:
“I’ve come to meet a friend’s wife. He is in the High Dependency Unit here. Can I wait for his wife here in reception. She should be here soon. She is coming to be here whenthey switch off her husbands life support. I have come to be here to help her … it’s going to be tough for her…”
I also learned from the Thai nurse dealing with me today that she was recently baptised and is cooking a turkey crown for Christmas.?
Life is an unending stream of such juxtapositions…
Meanwhile, helicopters buzz outside, presiding over each new wave of anti – lockdown marchers, the streets of London are emptied of life, apart from jolly knots of construction workers doffing their hard hats and taking their breaks sitting on the pavement in chatty, densely-packed groups. And I am behind 6,029,525 people on the vaccine calculator, meaning I’ll get my dose sometime in the next millennium. I don’t know whether to be elated or depressed – or just regard the calculator as the nonsense parlour game it surely is.
We had not envisaged standing in the street today, fighting with a complete stranger.
Mind you, “The Writer” has form in this area. We stopped driving in London because I feared someone he was haranguing would get out of their car, stroll over to ours and knife him.
And then there was the bank: A whole line of disgruntled customers turning on him as he complained about slow queue movement, shouting that it wasn’t the teller’s fault and threatening to manhandle him off the premises.
And ,as for his interaction with pavement cyclists, and light-jumping cyclists and speeding cyclists…………….enough said.
This incident began quite civilly:
I had stopped to photograph a poster on a wall near our apartment.
My main reason for photographing it was (a) that I have never heard anyone calling a human rights defender in the matter of Covid a “Do gooder”. I’ve heard many epithets applied to them but that isn’t one of them. And ( b) I wondered who “the Genderqueer Human Rights Deity”of the poster was and thought I might look up her/him/them when I got home.
As with most rows, I can’t quite remember how it started. But the woman passing by immediately assumed I was photographing the poster because I disagreed with it and began to berate my husband and me for wearing masks. Before long, we were standing in the street yelling at one another as passers by stared incredulously.
Like holocaust deniers who spend their every waking moment measuring the distance from the camp dormitories to the ovens in order to prove mass gassing was impossible, this woman knew intimately the work of every epidemiologist, virologist and immunologist in the world – except any of the experts by whom we have been guided – and quoted at length each of their theories against mask-wearing, social distancing and hand-washing. “The Writer vigorously defended our position in favour of keeping as safe as possible at increasing volume and with escalating irritation and, though she didn’t actually get as far as asserting that Bill Gates was planning to microchip us with every vaccine shot, that couldn’t have been far off.
Her arguments that she ‘didn’t believe” in Covid-19, that the whole thing was “a hoax” and that masks were of no use, were familiar to us of course, but she was the first person we’d ever heard express them at close quarters. The exchange ended when “The Writer” protested that part of his reason for wearing a mask was to protect her, and she replied that she “didn’t need his protection” and scoffed at the idea that some might be quite pleased to have it. At this, we ‘made our excuses and left’
Back home, I looked up “The Gender Queer Human Rights Deity” and discovered that the drawing was by an artist called Rachel House and was her first poster for “Flying Leaps” a collection of artists whose aims are to” Exhibit artists’ work on street poster sites to make unexpected, thought-provoking contributions to the urban spectacle“.
House’s poster is described thus:
“With her debut flyingleaps poster, House is emphasising that human rights include trans rights and genderqueer positivity. Displayed on the streets to coincide with International Human Rights Day on December 10th, House’s Genderqueer Human Rights Deity (2020) is one of a series of captivating single panel works that feature an ouroboros – a snake devouring its own tail – symbolising the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth. The sloughing of skin suggests the transmigration of souls and the tail biting snake is also a symbol of fertility.
In the void of the snake circle, House has created variously serene, always arresting faces made up of ancient glyphs, signs and figurative details. Patterned textures and further protective motifs in the design afford a distinctive character to the works so that while they all rail against assorted injustices each has its own particular expression. There’s an owl-like Minerva, goddess of wisdom, quality to them that suggests a measured, calm, righteous questioning rather than aggressive confrontation. A thoughtful approach that is something of a breath of fresh air in these febrile times”.
I wish House could have seen us standing toe-to-toe shouting at each other, heedless of the poisoned droplets passing between us, and, unlike her owl-like, Goddess Minerva figures, failing dismally to maintain the “measured, calm righteous questioning rather than aggressive confrontation” her poster depicts. Would she have been disgusted with us? Or would she just have been thrilled that her work had produced just the sort of “happening” the sixties would have been proud of – An ‘Urban spectacle” indeed.
A triumph for provocative art, then, and a sad reflection on the human condition when three reasonably intelligent human beings are unable to maintain a calm exchange of views.
In my post of June 11th, when London was like a ghost town under complete Lockdown, I featured the dramatic and perceptive portraits of Soho residents and workers by photographer, Richard Piercy, in his Someone oF Soho Exhibition, shown on the sadly boarded up- restaurants of Soho.
Today, walking down Oxford St., I was confronted, once again, by his portrayals of our neighbours and friends on the video wall of the clothing store Flannels, at number 161-167 Oxford St..
I’ve always felt that the brilliant and expensive technology of this huge video wall has never quite found anything as exciting as itself to display. The medium has always eclipsed the message. But now, on a dark and rainy December day, it has finally come into its own.
We Soho-ites spend a great deal of time complaining that the heart is being torn from our distinctive corner of London – by Crossrail, Covid and expensive developments that drive out the creative industries, music venues, fabric shops and brothels for which Soho was famous – so it’s heartwarming to see that, in these portraits, Richard Piercy has captured what looks like a bunch of interesting, distinctive people whose individuality appears, for now, to have survived the attempted homogenisation of Soho.
As Piercy says, ” A neighbourhood’s landscape may change but it’s the people who define its character.”
Given that the landscapes of our High Streets are already undergoing great change, Piercy’s work carries an optimistic message.
The exhibition is on 24 hours a day up to and including December 13th.
A quick catch – up to my post of November 29th about trees being planted along London’s Regent Street. Most of the planters are already filled and by Christmas the tress have reached the full length of the street.
Shame there won’t be a job for this jaunty scarecrow we spotted almost at the entrance to Queen Mary’s Rose Garden in Regents’ Park.
We’re unlocked and out and about once more . However, we still won’t go indoors.
“The Writer” has this nightmare that he has been called up for his vaccination and goes down with Covid on his way to have the jabs, so we continue to be obsessively careful.
Our first trip was to our favourite Dean St. Town House restaurant for lunch.
They have been meticulous about the regulations throughout, using only every alternate one of the tables shown here.When we come with Tod and Trish, they let us have two tables so we can sit far enough away from our great friends to satisfy even my husband and shout intimacies to one another across the space. We ate fish and chips in the rain and cold today, unsurprisingly the only people outside, and received stares of amused wonderment from passers-by. But, oh the bliss of not having to load the dishwasher!! And, yes, I am aware what a First World complaint that is.
During our brief tour of Soho after luch in an effort to walk off about half of one chip, I noticed once again, that, despite the joyous unlocking, Berwick St., site of a food market since the eighteenth century, had only one trader throughout its entire length.
OK. it was a dreary day but there used to be at least 20 stalls here, come rain or shine.
The single remaining stall is The Soho Dairy
Robin Smith, the owner, looked cheerful enough but that was a brave face. He complains that the council increased the pitch fees for stallholders by twenty percent in the middle of July and backdated them three months, at a time when most Soho workers are working from home so there is hardly any footfall. He is convinced that the only reason the council could have behaved in this way is that they want to get rid of the market. I hope they don’t. We don’t shop there much because the truth is that the produce, particularly the fruit and veg., is of pretty variable quality but surely improving such an historic market is the solution, not getting rid of it?
Why is it that every man I have ever known removes his sweater by the following method?
1. lift both arms over the head, then bending at the elbow, reach down behind the back (how far down is a matter of age and fitness) and grab a handful of sweater . (Fig. 1)
2. Drag the handful of wool (or whatever) over the top of the head, employing both hands in order to force its progress (Fig.2)
3. Continue dragging (increasing the degree of force as required) until the sweater is free of the head.
4. Exit the sleeves in a flurry.
Where as every woman I know removes a jumper so:
1.Cross arms in front and, with arms still crossed, place each hand just below the middle of the sweater and gently take hold of a handful of fabric on each side.
(Fig.1)
2. Pull the sweater upwards, uncrossing thearmsas you go while keeping the hands in position.
(Fig.2)
3. Just before the sweater reaches the head, exit the sleeves, one at a time, to make head-clearance smoother.
Why this difference?
Is it because women spend more money on clothes and so take care of them better?
Is it that Mummies don’t bother to teach boys how to remove a sweater without damaging it?
Or is it just that I have encountered peculiar men?
Walking down Hernrietta Place off Regent St. this morning, “The Writer” and I were surprised to see a tree advancing towards us on the pavement After we had made and laughed at our own jokes about seeing that Birnam Wood had come to Dunsinane, and having ascertained that it was actually being transported by a digger, we rounded the corner into Regent St. thinking no more about it.
It was then we noticed more trees being carried by diggers and inserted into large oddly-shaped planters.
Being incurably nosy, and spotting that the man on the right of this picture, aside from trying to eat a sandwich, was also giving instructions, I crossed the road to find out what was happening.
He told me that trees are being planted the length of Regent St. by The Crown Estate “as a response to Covid -19” They are an 18-month experiment in helping to improve air quality and boost biodiversity. Each planter will be filled with flowers, seating will be built in and, eventually, there will be artwork on the pavement around each tree.
The man with the sandwich turned out to be Chris Stanton, designer of the whole project.
He told me he was having the most exciting day, seeing the trees planted and his project come to fruition.
“There will be different kinds of trees and at the end of the experiment, Londoners will be asked what they think about the scheme, which trees they prefer and so on”.
This is how it will look when it’s finished.
The pavements have already been widened so there is only one lane in each direction. Not sure how drivers are coping with this. It’s eight months since “The Writer” and I have been in any form of transport so I haven’t had the chance to hear bus passengers or taxi drivers complaining and there’s hardly any traffic at the moment so it would be hard to tell the effect..
Anyway, I think the scheme looks extremely attractive and welcome it. I can’t help thinking, though, about the response to Rory Stewart, when he suggested exactly this when he was standing as Mayor of London in January.
“Rory Stewart prompts backlash after suggesting Regent Street should be lined with trees to tackle climate change” bellowed The Evening Standard
“Backlash” was over-egging it a bit as it seems to have been a Twitter storm (Actually, not even a storm, more of a shower) mainly from people complaining that “trees would spoil the sweeping view that Nash had designed” and that the street is “an elegant and uplifting architectural achievement just as it is”.
Let’s see if they change their minds.
******************************************
It has turned out to be a day of trees. On arriving home, “The Writer”, having “appeared” by Zoom at the recent Mumbai Literature Festival, received an emailed certificate announcing that each writer who contributed to the festival has had a tree planted in his or her name and that, as one of them, he had been “honoured with. bountiful tree”.
Locked down in London 