Visiting Hummus and Counting Spaghetti

I woke up on Thursday morning feeling properly hungry. This was genuinely thrilling to me. I bloody hate being off my food. I knew Jason was a keeper when, after a few dates he said: ‘I see that in order to keep you happy, I’m going to have to feed you every twenty minutes.’ Never has a truer sentence been said.

The boys buggered off back to Leicester, leaving me and Derek in charge again. She was also feeling much perkier and had emerged from her bed of pain to demand food and take up her throne, or 50% of a human sized sofa as it’s otherwise known. I left her to it and went off on an adventure. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage after days of boat arrest so I chose a route with a long tube journey and an area I knew well so I had plenty of opportunity for pitstops.

I walked up to Canary Wharf and got on the Jubilee Line bound for West Hampstead. As we got to Bermondsey there was great excitement when a small man with a large suitcase lost control of his case, which went careening down the carriage and nearly took out the legs of an old lady who was minding her own business. The man caught it in the nick of time and dragged it back to his seat, where he redoubled his efforts to control its waywardness. I think that’s what the film censors would call ‘mild peril.’ It’s about my level if we’re talking about danger. Even the teacup rides at the fair make me sick these days.

West Hampstead is one of my happy places. When I used to live in Hendon approximately a million years ago, we would go there on weekends for brunch. There was a cafe that did amazing bruschetta and let you read all the newspapers. Those were good times. After a while, my then husband used to go to AA meetings at a church there. It had a fantastic cafe run by some Lebanese ladies who used to do wonderful Middle Eastern dishes for not much money at all, and they would look after the homeless drunks who used to go to the meetings with such dignity and care. It was a lovely place. There was a strong sense of community and it was quiet and together in a way that its brasher neighbour, Hampstead never quite managed.

It’s slicker now. Everything is. The many train stations that ribbon through it have all had a face lift, and some of the businesses I loved have gone the way of all things, but The Bridge greasy spoon is still there and so is the lovely West End Lane Books, where I once saw Imelda Staunton and her husband Jim Carter and nearly fainted with joy. It’s still got great charity shops, ripe for browsing and lots of interesting independent businesses. It still feels like a village within a city, which I love best of all.

I had a thorough yet relaxed wander. I’d already eaten lunch on the boat, but I couldn’t resist buying a vanilla custard doughnut from a grocery shop that had great looking cakes. It was literally the best custard doughnut I have ever eaten in my life. It was oozing with real, soft, perfect vanilla custard flecked with vanilla seeds. I made disgusting sounds as I perched on a wall, stuffing my face and licking my fingers afterwards and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

Fortified by sugar and dough, I walked up to Finchley Road to The Camden Art Centre, which I have passed literally hundreds of times in my life, but never been into until then. It’s a terrific little place. There was a buzzing cafe with what smelled and looked like delicious food, a really pretty garden and good outdoor eating space and then the art gallery itself. There is also a ceramics studio which has something to do with the Courtauld, but it looked like you actually had to make ceramics, so I didn’t go in. I had really wanted to see the Martin Wong exhibition, Malicious Mischief and I’m so glad I did. It’s free and it’s on until 17 September if you want to catch it.

Wong grew up as part of the close knit Chinese community in San Francisco and was heavily influenced by the hippie movement and counter culture of the Sixties. His art was representative of his spiritual beliefs and his community until he moved to New York in the Seventies, where he began documenting queer and immigrant life in the decaying Lower East Side. He learned American Sign Language and started incorporating it in his paintings, creating works for the hard of hearing, which I found strange and funny and brilliant. So many of his works have signed elements to them. Eventually, AIDS related ill health precipitated a move back to San Francisco where he began more paintings about Chinese American culture, evolving what he started in the Sixties using all the techniques he had learned in New York.

The New York paintings were my favourites. They’re so strong and vivid. The rooms in which they are hung show them to magnificent effect. The huge canvases of textured, decaying buildings sit against jewel coloured walls and are spot lit to show the sheer physicality of the paint on canvas. They look primal and private, like you’re looking at a real but also intensely personal landscape. Sometimes they made me think of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the scope, size and detail. At other times I saw glimpses of the murals of Diego Rivera but for a very different social purpose. It was fascinating.

After I’d had my fill and resisted the gift shop, I walked along Finchley Road towards Swiss Cottage. My ex-husband used to work in a building directly over the Swiss Cottage station entrance. It has now been knocked down, which was quite a surprise as it was a fairly hefty building and the not being thereness of it was quite jarring to me. The Hampstead Theatre where I used to see many a show has been gussied up and is looking very stylish these days. In the old days it looked a bit plimsolls and gym slips.

We would often meet up in Swiss Cottage after work to go out and like West Hampstead, it is a place of happy memories for me. Except that time we got a puncture outside The Futon Shop on a red route and had to push the car round the corner to change the tyre and nearly died. The Futon Shop is still there, mocking me cruelly. Lots of the great Thai and Malaysian restaurants we used to frequent are still there, too. What has gone however, and which makes me very sad, is a restaurant I never once set foot in.

It was old fashioned, even then. It was one of those Eastern European places that are so hard to find these days, but which were littered around North London when I moved there. Old school places with Viennese cakes and hearty Jewish fare. They had a faded dignity which I am very partial to. I used to love going and ordering coffee and cake, sitting quietly and soaking up the atmosphere. It’s how I imagined I would spend my retirement.

I never went inside this place, because I never wanted to ruin the illusion. It looked, you see, exactly like the place where Sophie’s mum and dad took her for dinner in The Tiger Who Came To Tea. They walk down the street in the dark of the night with Sophie wearing her coat over her nightie and they go into a restaurant just like the one I would pass by and you saw them, warm and cosy, illuminated in the window and I loved that. I loved that so much that when on a dark, winter’s evening with rain glassed pavements and halos of watery street lights I walked past and felt the story come to life, I couldn’t bear to make it real in case it broke the spell. And now, like real magic, it has simply disappeared, leaving you questioning whether it was ever there at all.

I kept walking. My final goal was St. John’s Wood and the iconic Panzer’s Deli. It is another one of those places that I have passed and passed but not been in. I used to detour to St. John’s Wood on my way to work some days because there was a magnificent bakery there that had pastries that were so good you would detour on your way to work to get them, but for some reason I never went into Panzer’s. I wonder if it was such a part of the landscape that I assumed there would always be a day to go, only I didn’t do it. I wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

It’s everything I hoped it would be and more. I berated myself soundly as I was circling the shop, trying to keep my choices under control and in some kind of budget that I hadn’t done this sooner. As I was walking up and down the cold cabinets for the fourth time and dithering wildly, a lady gestured to me and said: ‘Excuse me madam.’ That was me, apparently. I looked up and she said: ‘Do you like hummus?’ to which I could only nod. She opened one of the cabinet doors and pointed at a brand of hummus and said: ‘That’s my brand. I’ve come in to visit my hummus. Do you think you’d like to buy any?’ I was somewhat taken aback by the visiting my hummus line, although I admired her for it. If I had hummus in a shop, I would visit it. I confessed that I had decided to buy salmon pate but that when I came back I would definitely consider her hummus. She wasn’t thrilled, but you can’t argue with salmon pate.

By the time I left the shop I not only had my pate, I had cream cheese, a bag of potato latkes, cornichons, wildly expensive olives, cucumber salad and a significant amount of assorted bagels. I really wanted Zuppa Inglese ice cream as well, but it would have melted on the way home. I shall go back with a spoon and an empty stomach and eat it sitting on the nearest available wall.

I sat on the tube willing it to go faster towards home and dinner, but also massively entertained by some people discussing their awful flatmate. One guy said: ‘You don’t have to tell me how awful he is. He messaged me this morning to say that he had counted his spaghetti and come up short and did I know anything about it? WHO THE FUCK COUNTS THEIR SPAGHETTI?’

He’s right though. Who does?