It's all gone a bit quiet round here...

That's mainly because I have a new favourite thing, namely: instagram. A little photo-sharing app that lets you run pictures through a series of retro filters, tag them, and share them with online friends. It's insanely addictive. I've probably come to it quite late, as I'm one of the last people I know to have an iphone. But it has certainly been keeping me from blogging. Maybe I can claim I've been micro-blogging, in a way. Oh no, wait - that's twitter. Or maybe I can consider it photo-blogging. Anyway, if you happen to want to follow my feed, you can do so here and find me as @bittersweetcity if you happen to use instagram too.

A new life manifesto, courtesy of instagram?

The other reason it's all been a bit quiet is probably because this is the start of my 30th year and I've become much more focused on the future. There's a pressing need to shake things up this year, which if you've been reading previous posts, you will know has been on the agenda for the Mister and I for almost 3 years now. Careers have really taken over our lives for the past year, but the continued stresses and upheavals felt by changes at my place of work, and the sector itself, are spurring me on to do something different. And I mean it this time. I'm hoping to be able to quit my job by August and with savings, attempt the long-awaited travelling and working abroad scenario I've been going on about on here for years. I'm working on the plan in earnest now. Here are my prequequisites: 

1. Must be French-speaking. I've been sort-of speaking well-ish for coming up to 12 years. It's time to get bloody fluent. Oui, je voudrais parler couramment, quoi.

2. Must be warmer than Britain. 

That's not a lot to ask for, surely(!) I'm considering anything from training for a TEFL course to pouring café lattés in Bordeaux. Or preferably, rum punches in Mauritius.

The thing that scares me the most is waking up on my 30th birthday on August 25th and thinking, "I know exactly what the next 12 months will be like." I am frightened of having everything all planned out, and yet I want to know what I won't be doing this time next year.

It means having to take risks. Scary, but good. It's the last time in my life I think I'll be able to, before I need to consider if, or when, I have children; before I need to make plans to be near my mum, as I'm her only child and she is on her own. I know being free of responsibility sounds selfish, and it's never truly possible. 

But just once I'd like to try it. 

Surely I'm not alone in having thoughts like these. People of the interweb: do you also have them? Have you acted upon them? Better still, have any success stories or tips you can share? I'd be ever so grateful. 

Til' next time (stick around, I feel an increase in productivity coming on ;)...

Finally, I feel better about work.

Here is the reason why.

Show your support for the public sector strikes happening across the country today by finding out more.

• The Guardian has a page covering activities, with photos and comment from across the UK public sector.
• Twitter: #strike #solidarity #righttostrike
• The UCU website, for anyone working in Higher or Further Education, is a great source of information for those who are new to the sector or have just recently woken up and joined. (That's me, then).

I feel better already.

Hot Stuff

I am pleased to say that last week the second of my foodie interviews for the hyper-local South Lambeth blog, Tradescant Road, was published. (I am mostly pleased that I managed to submit it, because it took me ages to get around to this one as a direct result of being a human incubator for the dreaded lurgy for the past three weeks.)

Anyway, this time, I interviewed Raj Dawood, the owner/manager of the area's premier BYO Indian restaurant and takeaway: Hot Stuff. He was brilliant fun and was a thoroughly nice bloke, even showing me around the kitchens and letting me take photos of chefs playing with fire.

If you've ever been to Hot Stuff, you'll know why it's a local institution and why the tiny original restaurant was always packed to the rafters, and so they've opened a second, thank goodness. You can read the interview in full here.

P.S. Hot Stuff food is an excellent cure for the common cold, it would also seem.

The Other End of the Northern Line

What a spectacular autumn this is turning out to be. On Monday I had a bonus day, a special, gold starred kind of day when the rest of the world was at work, and I was off and the Mister was off, and it was 27 degrees. In October. We woke up and blinked our way outside into the sunshine, scarcely believing our luck.

All summer long the Mister had wanted to get up to his old stomping grounds in the frozen north (a.k.a Finchley). Hampstead Heath was also high on the list, but the weather hadn't played ball at all and we had been enjoying the new neighbourhood too much. Finally on Monday, we took the plunge - and the tube ride didn't seem so far as it had seemed in high summer (hah!) when the Northern Line was a seething, sweaty mass of tourists and commuters jostling for elbow space. We called my mum and she came up all the way from Orpo to meet us, and glad for the escape she was too.

It was so worth it. Yummy mummies, pedigree dogs, Japanese tourists, perroflautas*, the elderly, the young, partially clothed lovers, swimmers, the very wealthy and the unwaged alike had all descended on the Heath's verdant curves and sparkling (ok, some were a bit scuzzy) ponds. Empty cava bottles strewn along Spaniards Road signalled the excesses of the previous balmy weekend. Clearly a higher class of drunkard frequents leafy NW3 than in SW8.

We stopped and had a drink and a fish finger sandwich at The Spaniards Inn, one of London's oldest pubs and apparently the birthplace of Dick Turpin. John Keats is said to have penned 'Ode to a Nightingale' in the beer garden. We just had a Pimm's.

The leaves were just beginning to turn and the colour of the sky made me stop and promise to myself that I would go outside more. I was reminded of reading Thoreau's Walden, which made me acutely aware of the power of nature over us poor pallid city-folk.


"Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores." - Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

And as much as I am in favour of more recognition for South London's charms (perhaps not full-on transpontine independence, but a hat tip to the lofty ideals that Free South London's supporters champion), North London's not so bad, is it really.

(Now can someone who lives in NW3 please write an equally nice post about South London?)

*NB Thanks to Lo-Sal for the amazing word perroflauta, which roughly translates as 'Spanish crusty with a dog on a string and an undercut and/or dreads.'

The Cure

Who says there's no cure for the common cold?

For the first time in maybe nine or ten months, I'm sick. My nose is streaming, I coughed up at least one lung during the night, and I shocked even my mirror this morning. I look like a crack-addicted raccoon. A Crackoon, if you will.

I loathe myself a bit when I'm ill. This is mostly because - I admit - I do quite like having time to myself at home where I can do nothing but stay in my leopard print dressing gown and legitimately revert to eating instant noodles. However, I tend to get rather lost in the internet and I forget to brush my teeth and then usually have to run around like a mad thing 45 minutes before the Mister comes home to tidy up a bit and make the house look a bit less like my room in student digs.

Anyway, ignoring all that, today has been BRILL. I watched This Morning (it's been far too long - last time, Fern was still on it), Supernanny USA (wow, some parents are dumb), and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which I've been meaning to watch for years, dosed up on lemsip, all wearing said favourite dressing gown.

It made me wonder if rather than looking for a cure, I should just enjoy another day at home.  Perhaps the cold was actually the cure for the burnout I've experienced lately. So rather than spurn my unwashed self, I've come to terms with her today. I am a crazy-eyed skank with nutella all over my teeth and tissues strewn everywhere and I Am Proud. And why the hell not? It's just for a day.

It's quite embarrassing to admit one's complete lack of perceivable work ethic I suppose, but I could probably live every day a little bit like this.

 Yee-haw.

Escape

This time two weeks ago, I was waking up on a sunny morning in Bordeaux, looking for the first café au lait of the day. The Mister was across the road, buying pains au chocolat, and we were looking at one another sadly, for it was the day we were due to fly back to London.

We had three hours to kill before it was time to get on the airport bus; that most depressing of transport types. We had already walked most of the length and breadth of the city but we knew it was important to keep moving and not think too much about the holiday taking its last gasps of air, and light, before being consigned to a dusty suitcase of memories.

We walked around until lunchtime, as the students at the University streamed out of classrooms and onto sunny squares, as office workers took cigarette breaks and murmured covertly over cups of coffee, and as more new tourists streamed into the city, gaping up at the magnificent sea-horses at Girondins, and snapping the circus big top pitched at the Esplanade des Quinconces. We met a sweet German couple in their seventies who asked us to take their photo with their old 35mm camera. They beamed for the picture like two lovesick schoolchildren. The Garonne glistened and beckoned as children played in the fountains at the Miroir d'eau.  I took a breath, on the tram back to the Gare St Jean, and held it, sitting very still, while I listened to that little voice inside, which said, why not stay?

Collecting our bags from the hotel, we had a minor argument, about something trivial, like luggage tags, or whose bag held the dirty laundry. It was only because we were both sad, and we had nothing to be angry with Bordeaux about. It was like it was something to do whilst waiting for the airport bus, because it was better than thinking about what we were doing; leaving this beautiful place which had enchanted us and made us want to stay and do anything just to have a little dog and live in an apartment with a balcony and raise French-speaking children.

We put our things underneath the bus and they got pushed to the back, as they always do. A family of South Africans sat near to us and talked very loudly about their cars and houses, their tannned blondeness and plentiful gold watchery seeming out of place on an airport bus. As we passed the Grand Theatre, and then the Piscine Judaïque, and finally the international school,  I cried a little. I turned my head away to the window, so no-one would see, and I made a promise to myself.

One day, little voice. One day soon, I will.

Doing the (South) Lambeth Walk

The summer is definitely on the wane, but with the start of autumn, a new project has begun - this always makes me happy. I'm now contributing guest posts to this great local blog, Tradescant Road, which covers happenings in and around SW8.

My first post went up yesterday and was an interview with Marco Rebato, the owner of a legendary and  long established local tapas restaurant, Rebatos. You can read the full interview below, or on the site here.

***

“So where’s good to eat in Vauxhall then?” My mum asked, a few months ago.

I remained silent.

Ok, I hold my hands up. I’m new. I didn’t know before moving here in June, that Vauxhall, oft written off as an ugly intersection between the river and leafier suburbs, was going to be just quite as awesome as it is. And I certainly had no idea there would be so many gastronomic delights to sample.

Before living in SW8 I lived in SW2. (That’s Streatham Hill, for the postcodally challenged among us.) I wrote semi-regular reviews for the restaurants in the area, in the hope that more people would get out there and use them, because many were never very busy and I was frightened that once I found some I liked, they’d close down.

We certainly don’t have that problem in many of Vauxhall’s finest. Each time I’ve walked past Hot Stuff, or The Canton Arms, or the ever-popular Estrela, they’re fit to burst. People evidently like to go out and eat here – the strip of Portuguese cafés selling frango piri piri and calamares seem to have no shortage of takers despite their similar menus. And oh boy, am I looking forward to trying out everything in the vicinity that looks good. Recommendations are always welcome!

Rebato’s, 169 South Lambeth Road, SW8 1XW

Tel: 020 7735 6388www.rebatos.com
Twitter: @rebatos

In the midst of the longest strip of Lusophone shops and restaurants I have ever seen outside of Lisbon stands what I now understand to be an Institution with a capital I.

Rebato’s, which has been serving South London’s finest since 1984, is still offering authentic tapas to the locals of Vauxhall and Stockwell. I had the privilege of a chat with Marco Rebato, the owner, in the elegant back room of the restaurant, and tried to find out a little bit more about the story behind this SW8 foodie legend.

Marco’s father’s family hailed from Madrid and came to take over the site, formerly the restaurant ‘La Casina Rossa’, on South Lambeth Road in 1984. At that time, he recalls, Vauxhall was not such a desirable area. The restaurant was one of only around three serving tapas in London, and was certainly the first, he says, in south London.  Tapas was something considered unusual, perhaps only eaten on holiday by many Brits, and so Rebato’s first menus were simple: tortilla, meatballs, cockles. At the time, sharing plates of food in restaurants was not altogether typical either.

Still, the lunch trade from local businesses flowed in, bolstered by office workers at nearby BT, Otis Elevators, and Freemans. As upper and middle managers at these businesses discovered the restaurant at lunchtimes, Marco says, and found no equivalents in the suburbs where the lived, the dinner trade grew as they brought back their wives and children. Some of these loyal customers remain and travel into town to visit still.

Marco is unashamedly proud of the food they serve, and his eyes light up when I ask him about his suppliers. Mostly they are London-based, and so he knows the provenance and ethos of the food. One of his oldest suppliers been providing pork to the restaurant for nearly 27 years; Pugh’s Piglets from Preston, Lancashire breeds the suckling pigs the restaurant has become famous for on Wednesdays. Specials in the restaurant are created based on the best buys from the market that particular day, which is why their vegetable and seafood dishes are ever-changing.

Having dined in the restaurant recently, I asked about the rabbit I had eaten. French rabbit, Marco grins. English rabbits are too tough, and need stewing, but these can be griddled with just a little salt. Clearly a lover of good food, I ask Marco what his favourites are from the menu. Prawns are always good, comes the answer – but the real measure of any restaurant, he says, is to try their calamares – if they’re frozen, you’re in for a bad ride. Clean squid, griddled with olive oil and salt is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Marco also has a soft spot for the food from home he remembers at Madrid dinnertimes: Spanish tortilla, salad, crisps, and a few anchovies, if you were lucky.

The goal of Rebato’s has stayed the same since its inception – to serve quality family food. I ask about the changing tastes of the clientele – is tapas more or less popular now, with the emergence of ‘small plate’ restaurants such as Polpetto and Spuntino, The Salt Yard, Caravan et al? Marco maintains that the menus change regularly, but that they are always looking for new ideas, especially in these times of austerity for all. The latest addition to the menu is called “Tapita & Chatito”, designed to get locals out eating quality food at lower prices. Sample dishes will be gambas al ajillo, tortilla, albondigas, and calamares, starting from £2.50 for smaller portions, all washed down with a chatito of wine for £1.50. 

As well as being passionate about food, Mr. Rebatos is clearly also passionate about community. He is proud of the longstanding reputation of the restaurant and its 27-year history. Contributing a £100 dining voucher as a prize for a local street party raffle, doing cooking demos at a nursery in Streatham; Marco is proud of being able to give something back – all the more important after the recent riots. People can do a lot in their local communities if they look up once in a while, he says.

It’s getting towards 7.30pm, and the restaurant’s lovely panelled bar at the front is starting to fill up. I ask Marco, finally, what he feels the future of the restaurant is. He isn’t sure. Vauxhall is still changing; he feels there aren’t so many families, or businesses here anymore. He hopes that the area’s transient nature will not impact too heavily and will allow his family to continue his legacy. With a head chef, a manager and sous chef of 25, 26 and 12 years’ service respectively, it’s not just the local community that would be at a loss if this restaurant ever had to close its doors.