O they so Cute! (Darling little Octopus alert)

I have a great affection for octopussies - so I was intrigued to read of
their "living ancestor"

And then I saw the pictures.

Oh my word - CUTE!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7715741.stm

(no subject)

I am working for a chartered surveyor this month. I like my boss, he is
a intelligent hard-working gentle-man. Very English. Very prep school.

But....

Talk about two cultures!

We have been trying for two weeks to wrangle a password reset out of O2, and for days he couldn't convince the operator he was who he said
he was, so he was locked out of his own mail account.

I made an off-hand comment about needing a Kafka to do full justice to the situation.

And he said...

- A what?

- A writer?

- Why?

- What did he write?

- What's that got to do with my blackberry?

(no subject)

The Stone Caravan has survived the summer with surprising little damage.

It was the first time I had been back since June, and I was braced for
disaster.

The ditch above the cottage must have overwhelmed by the summer rain;
there is a stream running through the lean-to loo, and out under the
front door – the porch is three to four inches thick with mud – but
none of this found it's way into the house.

The swallows raised their family and left. I can tell exactly which
doors and chairs they most enjoyed perching on. They left little
poopy wiggly signatures underneath!

They also left a huge birdy midden on the stairs right under the nest….

And a vacant nest of course. Which is now on the mantelpiece – it's a
work of art.

There is black mould on 3 walls – I think this is due to using a
casein based paint – the next time I will use a pure lime putty, as
that is naturally fungicidal.

And there is dust everywhere.

For some 15 minutes I just wandered around, unsure where to begin.
Had the caravan defeated me?

But 90 minutes later – the stairs were clear and worst of the rooms
was de-birdied and almost de-dusted, and I realised how little damage
had actually been done. It's all superficial.

No more work can be done this winter – it's just too damp and
impossible to get machinery up there.

I can only hope for a dry-ish spring summer, to dig out the ditches,
pin the wall and repaint the plaster.

Recasting as a writing tool

Bit of a discovery here.

At the moment I am juggling three writing projects -

- the Big Screenplay: locked in the kitchen drawer for the elves to
edit...,

- the TV Script: one hour pilot - I'm trying to get a full draft done
my November 1, but a nasty cold virus ate my homework and I'm two
weeks behind schedule)

- and a silly Spy Novella: just for fun - no redeeming features
whatsoever... or so I thought.

Yesterday I was squaring up to one of the story lines in the TV
script, in which the protagonist is caught and roughed up by a local
gangster.

I couldn't concentrate (the last hangover from the cold I suspect) and
my imagination wanted to play in the sandbox, with my spies ...

So "What if....

....I recast the TV script with a favourite character from the sandbox?

Suddenly instead of a generic 30 something gangster I have a good-
looking, sweet-talking, almost twinkly 70 year-old sadist, who is
still handy with a straight-razor.

The scene sprang back into focus and started to write itself. The
Pensionable Psycho has a history and a voice.

I'm now adding "recasting" to the tool-kit, to get me over similar
writing road blocks in the future

(no subject)

Apologies for the long silence - it started as short silence (while I
raced to a deadline) then became a longer silence because I had no
idea what to say that was worth writing, let alone worth reading.

And how the world has changed - certainties melting away hour by
hour. The biggest nationalisation since the war. The Bankruptcy of
an entire nation whose only assets seem to be cod, sulphurous springs
and Bjork.

I tried to find a working cashpoint yesterday morning (on my way to
pick up a Visa from the Russian Embassy for my current boss) and every
machine along High Street Kensington was out of commission. For a few
moments I wondered if that was the end - if the entire retail banking
industry had finally collapsed, and the cash in demand from a hole in
the wall was about to become a distant memory to amazing our
grandchildren with - like Anderson shelters, green grocers and
deference to the Royal Family.

If a financial crash can shake our world view so entirely (despite the
warnings of the past years that something was seriously awry) how much
more devastating would be the Ecological Crash, which may already be
taking place. There is plenty of unquantified toxic debt lurking in
the ecosystem, ready to explode in our faces... Soon Iceland may be
left with just the smelly springs and Bjork.

In other news: the speculative Blitz TV pilot I was writing winds on.

(no subject)

Strange old week.

The Holiday Monday was dark and cold. I went out, looking for a quiet
place to write, and encountered N - . She's 40, a writer, from my part of the world,
and she was sitting in a puddle of her own shit and piss on the steps
of an abandoned magistrate's court, shaking and unable to stand. She
has MS, can barely walk and is doubly incontinent. Her bag was
scattered around her. She had left her flat, without her coat,
ostensibly to shop, but I suspect to escape a sense of entrapment;
she had just got a restraining order against an ex-boyfriend.

All this came out as we sat on the nearest bench. Over the next hour
we walked slowly from seat to seat along the road, stopping to rest,
and smoke, and talk. Shoppers looked askance. Not hostile, just
troubled. A Big Issue seller - South American refugee - ran up and
gave her a big hug. They chattered for a few minutes about their
disabilities before parting.

N - didn't want to go home, and I had a train to catch, so in the end
I left her outside a pub, drinking soda water and smoking. She had a
taxi-card, to call for a disabled taxi home, and cash to pay, so it
wasn't strictly an abandonment. I just couldn't stay any longer,
because I'm a coward.

Just a reminder to grab every minute, experience, encounter that one can, while one can.

(no subject)

Emergency Fist Aid Training today - my first retraining since I did my

Guiding badge in the 70s!

It'll be interesting to know how much the rules have changed. One of
the most shocking scenes in "Life on Mars" was the reactions of the
1973 ambulance drivers to a critically injured woman - they picked her
up, put her in a van and drove her to a hospital for the "real" medics
to do their job. No blood supplies, no heart monitors, no
defibrillator, no air bagging - no treatment. Life on another planet
indeed.

Oh yes - I am the Gene Hunt of the Girl Guides!

Tragically the wet summer has rendered the Stone Sloop uninhabitable for the duration.

It seemed sensible enough at the time - use the summer months to
undertake work on the cottage to stabilise the crumbling back wall.
(Ironically it is the "new" extension of 1859 that is at risk - the 300
year old core hasn't shifted an inch...)

So I moved out (or up) the more delicate bits and pieces in June, and a
young man spent the several day chipping all the plaster off the suspect
masonry in preparation. The cottage filled with plaster dust, and
arrangements were made to bring a mini-digger up to excavate the new
footings, as soon as the ground was dry enough to bear its weight.

Well, of course, the ground has not been dry since. July ticked on. I
went to Lisbon and discovered Fado. The calendar flipped over to
August. I sat under Hereford apple trees dodging showers, reading about
the Blitz. Watched the roofs of Ludlow steam under the sun. Ate dressed
crab in Brecon, and listened to the Jazz Festival through a curtain of
torrential rain.

And all the time the fell is just soaking up more water. (There is
nothing, but nothing, in the entire world, that looks quite as dumbly
comically miserable as a flock of ewes caught in heavy rain. Even their
ears sag with the injustice of it all).

Now September is barely a week away - and the opportunity to do any more
work this year is slipping away. The plaster dust is still lying
undisturbed over floor, chairs, kitchen table. The back room is open to
the elements. We can only hope for a dry and windy autumn to dry out
the hillside enough to start work before the frosts arrive.

Oh well, perhaps next year will be drier....

There are 3 kinds of rejection letters...

a.) the form letters that are a writer's campaign medals, and end up in
the loo, b.) the ones that come with feedback (thoughtful or otherwise),
which might actually be useful, and should be read carefully once the
sting has worn off, and c.) the ones that kick the crap out your day.

c.) are the near misses, the also runs, the ones you were invited to
submit for, did extra work for, had meetings to discuss, and then... no
thanks, can't go any further, not *good* enough.

Guess which one I got today?

I've just slunk into the RFH for a glass of wine - and found the place plagued
by one of the worst cabaret singers I've been unfortunate enough to encounter in
recent years, singing Beatles covers (flat) and a selection from "the shows"
(badly).

Arghhhh!

Oh - and I've had no connection all day

Not at work, on the laptop, on the phone... couldn't even find the
times of trains.... couldn't look busy at work.

So how come that's the only communication that came through loud and
clear all day.

ZOMG - This flat is too good to be true...

... which of course means - it IS too good to be true. Last night I got
a front row seat to the London flat letting scam.

This is how it works. The scammer advertises a great flat on one of the
listings websites, at just below the realistic market rent, usually
claiming to be a professional who need to relocate and is just looking
for someone to care for their home and cover the mortgage costs. They
just want a deposit to prove that you are not a timewaster, while they
check your references.

I've been trawling the flat listing for sometime, just to see what the
market is like, in case I want to move later in the year. And there it
was, a studio flat, just within my budget, in an area I like, and
available this month. I filled on the online form for more information.

About 5 hours later, the reply came through, with a slew of attached
pictures, just as my laptop battery started to splutter and die. No
time to do more than scan the text before heading home to recharge,
check the details and reply.

The doubts were there from the outset - the price was just too low. And
why would an American student with a nice wood floored studio be moving
in with a boyfriend in Portsmouth. I mean - *Portsmouth*?

And free maid service? Free gym membership?

When I finally saw the photo, all the alarm bells started ringing. How
had a studio become a 2 bed flat? Hang on - that's three bedrooms, all
enormous.... And that fuzzy thing on the wall - a statutory fire
notice...? Hmmm...

So what "Angela" the "American Student" had done was take a bunch of
shots an empty office, dressed with double beds.

And when "she" had my deposit (she was asking if I had it ready to put
down straight away), no doubt she would have checked my references,
discovered that I "couldn't pay", and would return the money "less her
expenses" - I'm guessing her expenses would be about £600...

So. Beware the flat that sounds too good to be true. It's not a
clueless landlord - it's a trap for unwary would be tenants.

Myths of Writing: 1 "If I had more free time, I would write more/better/faster...."

I haven't found this to be true. I write productively, creatively for
about 2 hours a day, 3 at most, and the rest is revision, research,
mucking about.

Free time becomes a hindrance. If I set out on Sunday, with the thought
that I have 8 or 9 hours to commit to writing, I will find stuff to fill
up 6 or 7 hours worth - or more.

So, as of last month, I have *limited* my writing time, to 2 hours a
day, one at 7.30 before work, one at 6.30 after work. Everyday,
including weekend.
For those 2 periods of 60 minutes I write - no reading, revision, email,
phone calls; just keyboard and a glass of wine or cup of coffee.
Possibly music.

My productivity has shot up. I'm easily producing a 55 page draft in a
week. Lunchtimes are for revision, sometimes email, blogging, etc.
Travelling is for reading and making notes.

Currently reading: Love Lessons by Joan Wyndham - the diary of a 17 year
old in 1940s Bohemian Chelsea driving male painters crazy with a
extraordinary mixture of naivety, and a callous teenage enthusiasm for sin:

"All this talk had got Rupert quite excited so we lay on the sofa, and
got into some rather peculiar positions with R howling, 'I wanna seduce
you, I wanna seduce you!' At that interesting moment the sirens blew
off. I jumped up to check the black-out, pulling my blouse on and
looking for my shoes. 'Gosh,' I said, 'I must go, Mummy thought I'd be
back by ten.' Rupert didn't answer, he was lying on the bed face
downwards, making strange groaning noises. As I was walking home, heard
bombs in the distance and saw flares."

I adore every line of it - I feel 17 all over again...

Ouch - a lavatory wall just fell on my foot

Seriously. While I was peeing.

A huge 8 foot section of laminated chipboard, on a solid steel frame,
tumbled without warning from the office loo, bounced off my little toe
and came to rest on the floor beside me with a crash that shook the
building.

I have escaped with the tiniest nick, just below the toe nail, and a
new respect for the dangers that lurk in public washrooms.

Sirens over the Thames - suggestions for a playlist please!

I've been drafting out a TV pilot, set in London 1941. In the first 4
minute the protagonist is caught on Hungerford Bridge, looking East over
the Thames as air-raid sirens sound.

Last night a scooted out of the Festival hall (good spot for reading
with a glass of wine - lots of big sofas) with my ipod on shuffle - and
what came up as I stepped onto Hungerford bridge for the first time
since I downloaded it...?

Very overcast - not a good night for a bombing raid, so I think I will
sleep easy.
Perhaps I should go to bed under the table, in an overcoat, with a torch
and powdered egg to hand, just for research purposes.

(Of course, the situation in the Caucasus adds a horrible edge to the
retro feel of the week - a superpower invades a neighbour over concerns
about an ethnic minority in a border region? Sudetenland, here we
come. How long before Brown shows up at Heathrow, waving a piece of paper?)

Now, why do I have an air-raid warning on my Ipod?
(What - doesn't everyone?)

Well. for the last few months I have have been setting up playlists for
different projects. It started casually enough - I just clicked on a
track that felt right, and let it run.

Gradually these have evolved into playlists, little aural puddles to
suck on to the Shuffle, sit in while I write.

Yesterday I set to work on a playlist on BlitzKids ("Wild young people,
up to no good in London 1941 " or "Bonnie and Clyde - with Petrol
Rationing" - ).

As well as the siren, I have already got some good plaintive numbers, "A
nightingale sang,,," and "I get along without you very well..." - but
I'm looking for more, unusual numbers, particularly "naughty" ones - the
sort of stuff that 1940s Daily Mail readers would have clamoured to ban
as having a "bad influence on the young."

Anyone got suggestions?

Ludlow Rooftops and Cooking Ham in a Cotttage

A perfect moment of happiness: Saturday afternoon, leaning on sun-hot
the parapet of a tower in the ruins of Ludlow Castle. The town slopes
away steeply from the red sandstone castle wall to the river, in a bowl
of wooded green. A wedding party is coming out of the church - on foot,
because the streets are so narrow - and the bells boom and fade as the
breeze changes direction. One of the chimneys below is smoking. Who is
crazy enough to light a fire in August?

Haul: two boxes of strawberries from the streetmarket, and a second-hand
wristwatch from a flea market. £7.50, and it seems to keep time.
It's the first time I've had to wind a watch in 20 years.

Recipe: Cooking ham.
I learned by accident how to cook ham without turning it into a piece of
salty leather.
Very easy, but takes time. You just have to be lazy, and let it be.
1.) soak in clean water in the pan you are going to cook it in. Forget
about it, read a book.
2.) Drain off soaking water, refill to cover, bring to boil on the stove
top. Simmer for 30 minutes or so. Enough time to get another chapter
in. When the chapters done, lots of scum will have come to the
surface. Spoon it off, and top up the water from the kettle.
3.) Add 3 tablespoons of marmalade to the water.
4.) Bring at back to the boil, and stick it in the oven at the lowest
possible setting OR put it in a hay box, packed around with crumpled
newspapers, blankets etc.
5.) Go out for the day. Don't worry about getting home.
6.) Roll home. Switch off oven if you're using one, otherwise, just put
your feet up, and wait.
7.) This is the crucial bit: Let the ham cool down in the pot, in its
marmaladey bath. That's the secret bit. It relaxes and sucks the juice
back in - just like you do when you rest in hot water.

Roughly an hour before you need to feed anyone, coax the ham out of the
bath and into an oven tin. Save the bath water for pea soup tomorrow.
Strip off the skin and most of the fat. Sprinkle what's left with brown
sugar - or more marmalade...
Bake for 30 minutes, just enough to brown the sugar and fat - that's
enough time to clean and cook some potatoes and cabbage.

Cheats Cumberland Sauce.
1/3 of a bottle of wine, 3 tablespoons marmalade, zest and juice of one
orange. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Never tell anyone you spent the day mucking about, letting the ham do
all the work. Tell them you slaved over it, and suggest they do the
washing up.

Monday - Friday:

Ok, I blinked. It was the wretched mosquitoes; by Tuesday morning I was
in the sort of agony that leads people to rip their lower limbs off with
their bare hands to get relief.

I don't mins sharing a bit of blood from time to time - but why do the
whiny little buggers have to leave huge great burning wens in their wake?

I didn't have the patience to walk the extra 10 minutes towards an
independent chemist (stopping every 100 yards to scratch) so I dashed
into Boots and begged for antihistamines.

Apart from that, I kept to independent shops and market stalls all week.

This would have been easier if I didn't need to leave the house at 7am
to write for 70 minutes before heading into work. Over coffee.
It's surprising how few West End cafés open before 8.30. The streets
are deserted, the espresso machines silent.

I've found a Portuguese run bar, with a fan, and coffee at £1.10. I
suspect I am now a "regular", because by Friday I was getting free
refills.

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.