Chain Reaction: Day Two

London is as hot as pitch.

I'm going to be out all day, in "regenerated" Docklands (West India
Docks, to be precise), where independent retailers are very thin on the
ground.

But I start in West London, with coffee. I have an alarm in my pocket
that goes off at 7.50 every morning to remind me to start writing, and
it goes off just as the train pulls into Gloucester Road. At the Forum
cafe it's already busy (including 3 Mongolian men playing card) but
there are tables free outside An espresso is £1.10, with a" free
croissant before 11am".

I'm heading to the Museum in Docklands for the first time - to do some
background work on a speculative TV pilot I have brewing. And it just
so happened that I turn up on the Museum's 5 birthday. Free entry and
chocolate cake all round. Lunch - somewhere between the Blitz and the
building of Canary Wharf - is a ham sandwich and tea in the museum cafe.

I'm a little shamefaced that I haven't visited this museum before; it's
excellent, with a decent balance between original and interpretive
material, all laid out over three floors of late Georgian Sugar
warehouse, one of the few to survive 1940-41. "Sailor Town" is a
claustrophobic reconstruction of a corner of 19th Century Limehouse,
with some pretty authentically ripe scents impregnated in the walls. It
even has a public house you can sit in, under the baleful glow of a oil
lamp.

It's too hot to go back to the flat and pant in the communal courtyard -
so go to Piccadilly, and the West End Kitchen, for the special - three
course chicken dinner, £8.70, then sit in St James Park reading "The
Longest Night: Voices from the London Blitz" by Gavin Mortimer.

Discover too late that St James Park has mosquitoes the size of Pelicans....

I may have found the answer to the damp in the Stone Caravan

If you live on the fell, damp just *is*. But I may have just found a
solution which is both cheap and green - and could even provide hot
water - a solar powered dehumidifier!

The Stone Caravan was built, 300 years ago, directly onto the hillside,
from which water rises at almost 20 feet intervals.
Most of the time this is manageable - the fire keeps the air warm and
moving, the windows and open door encourage circulation, the upper
story, where I sleep, is almost dry. I've just got used to it, and felt
no serious side effects through the winter

But when empty the building stews happily in its own juices, sprouting
fungus in the pockets of almost tropical humidity along the west wall.

My neighbours (35 minutes walk further along the fell) rely on a
dehumidifier that runs continually while they are absent. But they have
electricity, and I do not.
So a dehumidifer that runs without mains power would be a gift from the
universe!

Renewable energy is not a the panacea that some imagine.

Wind is difficult - the cottage is tucked so neatly into a small dip the
fiercest storms do not even rattle the windows, so a turbine would have
to be sighted so way above, on the fell, and the loss in any cabling
would be substantial.

Solar is feasible, even in the winter, but would produce least
electricity when needed most - in the damp dark days when the sun sets
at 3.15 in the afternoon and doesn't peep back over the horizon until 10
the following morning.

Water would be ideal - I have enough of it running through by outhouse
and loo! But it is also pricy, probably £10K minimum to install.

One should also remember that there are no future saving to be made on
that - I have no power bills to reduce, and no connection to the grid to
sell the excess to.

Nor do I need vast amounts of electricity: A solar radio and battery
charger provide entertainment, phone and light. The stone built pantry
keeps milk and meat cool and fresh even in the dog days. The fire
converts fallen and trimmed wood from the fell into heat and toast and
tea.

Day One

I'm stuck in London this weekend - and Saturday is make or break day for
chain free buying, because I need to get enough food for the week.

First challenge - a pint of skimmed milk.

Um - fail.
There are two convenience stores right under the flat where I am
staying, and neither has skimmed milk.
The guy in one suggests that I buy full fat and water it down!
Later I discover that the local delivery service had no skimmed milk
today, and all the local independents are stuck with empty shelves.
On the plus side, the same shop has trays of fat perfectly ripe peaches
for 55p each - Tescos have boxes of 8 for £1.99 ("half price"), but they
are tiny, pallid and rock hard. So I buy two for breakfast.

At 3pm I head to the market, a 10 minute walk away. I'm an old hand at
this, I even have a little bag on wheels, which folds to handbag size. Neat.
But I haven't been for months...

Veg is easy - the heat seems to be keeping the crowds away, so no
queuing. Runner beans, peppers, onions, carrots, cauliflowers,
tomatoes, garlic, free range eggs.
All look good and ripe and fresh, all cheaper than supermarket...

Other stuff looks like more of a challenge. There is a wonderful cheese
stall - but it's a sticky day, and the cheese is perspiring as much as I
am. I pass.
There is a butchers shop - but the queue is winding around the block in
the sunshine. Again, I pass...

Then I see a cool oasis - a halal store. I've never shopped here before....
Fresh coriander, fresh mint, sheep's milk yoghurt, home-made humus... I
brace myself to pay over the odds - but the whole basket comes to £3.00.

There's a baker - but I skip that.

Then I spot the butcher's stand. It's white, and cool, and every tray
is covered in spotless white paper, with just the corner folded down,
like a sheet in an upmarket hotel, to display a coy hint of the flesh on
offer.

Well, apart from the sheep's heads. Nothing coy about them. They have
a terribly direct stare, as they preside over a heap of their own
scalded feet.
This is a moment of truth - if I can't approach the poor naked creatures
face-to-face, then I have no right to be nibbling their sweet little
ribs. Ever.

Vegans, despair - I pass the test, an omnivore to the bitter end.
Three lamb chops and some merguez sausages are bagged up by the charming
guy behind the counter.
Again, I brace myself to hear the cost... and it's only £1.87.

Result:
Cost: £15 for the lot
Time: The whole trip has taken just 80 minutes, including a browse in a
second-hand bookshop. About the same time as a trip to the nearest
supermarket, and cheaper.
Unexpected bonus: much less packaging to dispose of - 3 plastic bags,
one paper bag, a cardboard egg carton, two tubs for the humus and
yoghurt... No vacuum packed meat trays with little nappies for the
chops to sit on, no plastic boxes for the beans, no shrink wrap for the
cauli, no polythene for the onions and carrots.

Supper: hot lentils, cold tomato and runner bean salad, grilled
merguez. Yum.

Living in Chains

7.55 Sunday Morning: I am sitting outside an eccentric cafe on

Gloucester Road called "Cafe Forum" - it has the hippy-dippy décor of
1970, and none of it "retro".

Opposite me I can see, in order, left to right: KFC, Starbucks,
BurgerKing, Tesco Express, HSBC, a pub called the Stanhope Arms, Pret a
Manger, a Hardware shop with a19th majolica frontage, Alan D
Hairdressers, Black & Blue, a new sports shop called Bliss (so new the
signage hasn't arrived, and the name is spelt out in computer printed
initials), Prime Time Video, Nandos (in a site which only 12 months ago
was a restaurant called "Dino's", Coffee Republic...
In other word, 10 chains and 4 independents...

So - no lack of places to buy my coffee - but no surprises. Unless the
servers screw up I know exactly how my coffee, or sandwich, or burger or
bun will taste. Which I suppose is the appeal. Which I understand -
ordering in an unknown place, and getting a sad grey cup of dishwater,
and a curling sarnie, with marge and a limp sweaty square of "ham" like
a curate's handshake, or a squirt of aerosol creme on a scone microwaved
into sad submission, is a depressing experience.

No - chains offer us the chance to avoid bad surprises.

The trouble is - they also deprive us of all the good surprises.

When I get off a train after 4 hours, and walk out into street utterly
identical to the one I left behind: Pret, Accessorize, Nero, Carphone
Warehouse, Next, Starbucks, Sainsburys - I feel, just for a few seconds,
dizzy. Have I travelled at all? Why did I bother to pay 50 odd quid to
sway in a self contained tin box to stand here...

I miss the exotic surprises that once made travelling in the UK exciting
- because not so long ago, there were exotic treats in the UK: butchers
with barnsley chops, eye steaks, middle back bacon, pease pudding, white
pudding, scotch pies, beef and tomato sausages, ducks eggs, home made
butter in tubs; bakers with dense sweet custard tarts, bath buns,
bakewell tarts, bread cakes, bismarks, even tubs of fresh yeast;
greengrocers with queues forming as news spreads that cob nuts have
arrived, or the shallots, or the first pomegranates of the season.

These are not distant childhood memories; 5 years ago, in a little area
of London 10 minutes from Victoria I bought fresh e.g. veg at a
greengrocers, meat at a butchers, bread at a bakers, coffee and cheese
at a pre-war Italian deli, all cheap, all excellent, all independently
owned, all gone.

It's the same story in the West End. In 2004 I worked for a while in an office in Covent Garden. There was a greengrocer's in Drury Lane, and a wonderful butcher's shop in Endell Street. Gone. (Luckily the Neal's Yard Cheese shop is still going strong)

I miss them. I miss the fun of not knowing what I am going to eat
before I shop... I am tired of walking around a vast store on
autopilot, putting exactly the same things in my trolley every Sunday
afternoon.

I want some variety in my life again.

Which is why I am trying to live with out chain shops for two weeks, to
see a.) if it really is more expensive b.) if it really takes more time
c.) if I get any surprises - good or bad.

Problem solved I think

Looks like I'll be getting major notes on the Ethiopian project in a few
weeks - which is the obvious point to start the next draft.

So it's teen rebels and doodlebugs til then.

A writer's dilemma

What should I do?

Every writer craves that moment when there is a story burning to get out
and arrange itself on the paper, forming itself as it flies - like the
patterns made by the great flocks of starlings that wheel over Brighton
pier - fluid and unstoppable.

Well, as of last Wednesday, I have two such stories - one probably a TV
series, the other, well, that could go either one way of the other.
They came from (almost) nowhere* and bubbled to the surface while I was
listening to Julian Fellowes** speak at the Cheltenham Screenwriters'
Festival last week - which was a pity as I think he had interesting
things to say about working with producers, but I could hear I word as a
blocked out two whole storylines on the back of my programme with a
borrowed pen.

Now they are itching under my skin, forcing me out of my chair to pace,
and plan and walk the length of the Thames.

So here I am, a 7am, at the screen, fired up to write, convinced that I
have something to say and a voice to say it with.

But do I chase one of these two stories that are flying overhead - or do
I use the energy to finish the next draft of the Ethiopian project.
You know. The one I have actually been *commissioned* to finish....

Well?

What would you do - ride the roller coaster of inspiration, or do the
professional thing and finish the work in hand?

_____________

* Not really from nowhere:
Story one, inspired by Frankie Fraser's reminiscences of the London
Blitz has sat as a three line prompt on my hard drive for 5 years.
Story two, a police proceedural with a twist, popped up as a bit of
fluffy fandom-inspired fun back in May.

** This was also the rain-soaked session in which I started shaking, and
probably got the chill which is making me wheeze and sneeze this
morning. Arghhh -I survived 3 months in a damp unheated cottage with
icicles hanging from the kitchen ceiling without so much as a sniff.
One day of summer rain and misplaced aircon, and I'm shivering and ever
so slightly feverish.

Is there a Doctor in the House

Disgraced for plagiarism one week - booked to speak at a writer's
festival the next. That's crappy timing

So I was not surprised that Dr Raj Persaud failed to show up at the
Screenwriter's Festival this week, to face a marque filled to
overflowing with 600 writers, journalists, editors...

I was told he didn't cancel, he wasn't pulled from the schedule - he
just stopped answering the organisers' calls, and a substitute was
quickly booked for that slot.

I do wonder what the reception would have been like. Low key, curious
and embarrassed, I suspect. I find it hard to believe that he would
have been barracked - the mood at the festival was mellow and generous
(helped by the sun, the setting and the excellent wines.)

I've no idea when this entry will make it onto the blog - my email
server is refusing to send mail, and after two hours of fiddling I am
still no closer to discovering why!