Whooooooh scary

This year’s Halloween has taught me that:

I can’t apple bob.
White wine tastes better with green food colouring in it.
One streamer does not a party make.
You should always go dressed as a disco zombie.

Our Kitchen, London

By Molly Coddle-Degg

Arriving in Our Kitchen, the eager breakfaster is greeted by a homely décor, and unexpected bird’s eye view of that foodie favourite Fresh and Wild, allowing patrons a voyeuristic peak at organic vegetable hunters as they eat, provided they are prepared to stand - there is no discernable seating. There’s no discernable menu either, the idea being a general free-for-all, first-come-first-served affair, and, if you do get there first, Orlando’s Posh Muesli – respectfully stored in a purpose-built plastic container – is the best bet. Add a scattering of berries or banana slices for extra flavour. Next best is probably the more classic Kelloggs selection: Flakes (Corn or Bran) or Special K for the calorie conscious, but be warned, you may have to settle for long-life milk – that’s the continental influence. Wash it all down with Ko-Ko’s Cafetière Coffee, Jo-Jo’s Peppermint Tea or simple PG Tips, beautifully presented in a mug of your choice. We recommend the squat and curvy blue cup, that you can wrap your hands round, and feel all warm and snugly.

But what of the classic cooked brekkie, I hear you cry? Well a large IKEA frying pan has been purchased to this end, but is still a fry-up virgin. Besides, it’s best to avoid anything cooked, really, even toast, as this involves charred skin or potential pyromania-danger – worryingly, Ci-Ci the kitchen apprentice has a lot to learn about kitchen safety.

Inspired by http://www.londonreviewofbreakfasts.blogspot.com/

NB: Names may have been changed to protect the innocent.

Krispy Kreme Donuts

There aren’t many sweet foods I can’t handle, but Krispy Kreme Donuts are, as Majorie Dawes might say, summat else… They are so sweet they set your teeth on edge – in fact I didn’t know what this phrase meant until I ate a KKD. They are so sweet they actually make your teeth vibrate. So sweet you can actually feel cavities being, um, caved. So sweet they spell it with a K.

I like the chocolate ones best. Well worth the pain and, if you’re knackered, more effective than coffee.

So it's OK if they're Oxford posh...?

So London also provides the opportunity for strange men to accost young ladies – oh how naïve I was to believe Paris was freak unique! Except that my London weirdo, wasn’t so much weird as extremely pissed and extremely, extremely posh.

So, I was on the bus, full of beer and Burger King, minding my own business, and people were getting on and off the bus, risking serious injuries and the humiliation of being thrown to the ground as the bus lurched its way around London. Anyway, my well-worn weirdo-dar drew my attention to a man with a big mane of sandy-grey hair, wearing a don’s tweed jacket - leather elbow patches and all - who looked quite like a dishevelled version of Clement Freud (and actually sounded exactly like him too. Hmmmmm…) and who was visibly under the influence. He was eyeing up the seat next to me on the bus and I kindly moved my coat so he could sit, and very grateful he was too, as he lurched towards the seat and somehow, through the unexplained science of drunken propulsion on public transport, magically landed next to me.

“Thank you my dear” he plumed. Naturally I stared ahead, frowning. Then he wobbled a bit, leaned towards me, and out of the corner of his mouth (drinkers do this, I find – it’s like they know they’re being naughty, so everything has to be a bit surreptitious) über-poshly murmured, “So what do you do then?” Well that’s an impossible question for me to answer right now, even to people I do want to talk to, let alone to well-to-do drunkards. So I smiled and said ‘Nothing, at the moment.’ Which, I thought would put a stop to that. Ha! But, as any good young-lady-accosting-tramp/drinker knows, persistence is mandatory. So he asked me if I’d been to university. Well, this was a tough one too. On one hand I didn’t really want to reveal my life to this complete stranger. But, on the other hand, this guy had given me a prime, perfect, p--- (oh, can’t think of another p word) occasion to play the Oxford card. So, I blatantly did. Maybe I sensed a kindred spirit in this aged statesman on the rails – someone who had also known ‘achievement’, but was going through a rough patch. I put on my poshest voice, pride turned up to 14 and told him ‘I went to Oxford!’

‘Ahhh’, he replied. ‘So did I.’

I should have known really – given the clichéd demographic it was either there or Cambridge. I asked him which college and he said Trinity. Well our fate was sealed - Balliol and Trinity have long since hated each other and made up songs to that effect and played pranks on each other involving the colour lime green (sheep were painted lime green and chained to JCRs, lime green shampoo was poured into ponds causing expensive and fatal damage to pedigree tropical fish, Balliol put Trinity up for sale in the New York Times… OK, no lime green connection there, but hilarious brazenness to make up for it).

And so, we got chatting. Well, I say chatting. A more accurate description would be, he would start talking about something and I would catch the odd word and think I was getting the gist, but inevitability, towards the end of the anecdote, he would reduce the volume control to a boozy murmur, thus botching the punch-line, before laughing at the wit he had imparted and moving swiftly on to another anecdote. The whole thing was essentially an exercise in political name dropping. He had met Michael Foot (“a great man, a great friend”), Harold Macmillan (“a Balliol man and a Conservative”), Margaret Thatcher (“my dear, she was about to stand for the leadership…” followed by a tirade about how the Tory leadership was a joke – truth prevails through pissery) etc, etc. Through the slurring I gleaned that he had worked in publishing and had edited/published/wotevered some Big Political Beasts’ biographies, that he had worked as a lawyer, defending the Roma (“you know – people call them gypsies”) and was ardently left-wing. I wonder if it was lies or not? I might try and google him, actually.

But still - what a dude! He was great. More posh, polite, politically-connected, publishing (what is this p-alliteration about?!) Oxford weirdos, please. And pronto.

Well, OK, maybe not that pronto. Just periodically.

Cx