No 7. Eat at the Ivy - update no. 3

It was with some excitement that I left my house at 08:40 on Wednesday morning headed for the 09:12 out of Market Harborough and up to Town (it’s a Trivial Pursuit answer – you always go UP to the capital, regardless of where you are in the country). I had organised a meeting with one of my clients mid-morning in an effort to justify the trip and the expense and I was glad to see them to catch up with what had been happening over the ensuing few months but what was really on my mind was my lunch at The Ivy, booked for 2.30pm - the last, and only slot available on today’s date. I’d been praying for days that the chef and maitre d’ hadn’t been struck down by swine flu.

The train arrived on time as is usual for Midland Mainline and I made my way down to first class which on anything but peak time trains they put at the end of the carriages and it is always old rolling stock which is to put it politely about time for a change. I have no idea why they put first class at the rear of the train but it is very frustrating and it means you walk all the way down to it to get on and then have to walk all the way back when you get off. I really must have a word.

Anyway, the train was punctual which is the main thing and it was quiet so I could settle back and read the paper for the first time in over a week. There’s something to be considered about living and working on your own in the country and not getting a daily paper. For all I know, given that I don’t see or hear my neighbours from one week to the next, it is quite possible that everybody could have been wiped out by swine/bird/Spanish flu and for quite a while I might never be any the wiser. I imagine I might tootle down to the farm shop one Thursday lunchtime, say having run out of bread, and find it completely abandoned with only festering goats cheese and yoghurt-like skimmed milk in the chiller and the chickens wandering about looking particularly piqued.

Anyway, on the particular day I decided to take a trip up to London, the world was operating in much the same way as usual by which I mean the British Rail staff (I know, it hasn’t been British Rail for twenty years but somehow the gene pool perpetuates) were, um, comatose, but at least the little café set up by some enterprising Kiwi (Aus? Please don’t hit me) at Market Harborough station does a fine filter coffee and blueberry muffin. The trip down was uneventful which is exactly how I like it and I arrived in Town ready to stride out and enjoy my day.

Business meeting over, and expenses justified, I hopped on the tube and made my way to Covent Garden to wile away a couple of hours before I met my brother for lunch at The Ivy. Covent Garden was busy which is not unusual and given that I didn’t want to be hauling bags around when I arrived at The Ivy (very detrop) it meant I couldn’t enjoy the consumer experience that CG is renowned for. Instead I decided to go for a stroll and just enjoy the ambience of feeling like you are not in England as it’s highly unusual to hear English being spoken within a half square mile of this tourist hotspot. Heading south from the tube into the main piazza I veered off towards the Opera House, scanned the black and white posters momentarily, got bored, and decided I couldn’t drink another coffee quite yet. Instead I headed past the railway museum which I felt momentarily drawn to as a semi-geek but gathered myself and decided that the ninety minutes I had spare could be used to better effect. I have been meaning to replace my Vodafone mobile since I got back from Namibia and for a very good reason. Stuck in Namibia, having lost my purse and with my mobile phone the only friend and contact with the outside world, Vodafone, despite me being a customer of some five years and having had many, big, bills, all of which had been paid on time and in full, threatened to cut me off unless I paid some money towards my mounting bill.  A bill which was building up because I was cancelling everything I had lost which I duly explained. Now just explain me this. You are stuck in a very foreign country on your own. You have lost your purse. All your cards and cash were in your purse. You have no money, no credit cards, no one seems to be able to get you any cash despite the bank and insurance adverts that tell you any place any where and Vodafone knowing this, because they have called you and you have explained, are insisting you make a part payment. So how, exactly, was I supposed to pay some money towards my mobile phone bill when I am using my mobile to cancel all my cards in case they have been stolen? As you can tell, Vodafone is now persona non grata in my household and so I decided this was a good time to carry out my threat and go take my custom elsewhere. Now, this was due to be a winning plan and one which I would take great pleasure in fulfilling but, well, my bladder got in the way and my two filter coffees courtesy of my client began to make themselves known. Suddenly, finding a mobile phone retailer was less import than finding a loo and having strolled up and down the Strand a few times with quickening pace, I suddenly realised just how few public toilets there are remaining in London. On my third loop around and getting to the point where my pelvic floor exercises were in danger of not making a difference I spotted that venerable London institution - Simpsons on the Strand.

19. Learn a language

I hadn’t intended to tackle the question of learning a language at this early stage of my Nevertoolate list. However, you never quite know what life is going to throw at you and in this case it was an introductory language course in Spanish in the shape of a CD that fell out of my Saturday Guardian. Using the Michel Thomas Method it told me in bold black letters. I have no idea who Michel Thomas is but I expect that if his course is trademarked – which it is - it means it must be very .... expensive. But, here am I, the lucky recipient of part one of a free two part introductory course (don’t they always come in two parts? Which means you have to trip out to the newsagents two days in a row when normally you’d buy a paper, say, once a month.  Oh yes, silly me, that's the point). But back to the CD. Michel (he’s a guest in my house so to speak, so I get to use his first name) is warbling away in the background using warm and gentle tones to try and convince me that his new and different approach to language learning really works. It’s all achieved without memory he tells me, with no learning by rote, no drills, no memorizing. All I have to do is relax and take off ....(I wonder what’s coming at this point) any form of tension and anxiety associated with learning. I’ve recently finished an MBA and have accepted a place on a PhD programme so I know what tension and anxiety about learning means. If Seńor Thomas can find a way for me to just sit back, relax and listen to CDs for three years before pitching up bright as a button and completely stress free to collect my Doctorate then he has my avid attention. Somehow, though, I don’t think it’s going to happen like that.

But I need to keep up because he is moving on and not wanting to get tense by falling behind already, I listen to his two ground rules.

1. I am never (stressed. By that I mean the adjective never is stressed. Not me though the way things are going I’m not sure I can comply) to worry about remembering, i.e. I am never to try to review what I’ve learnt.
2. I am to use the two students on the CD as learning devices and join in by becoming the third person in the group (best not go there. You know what these Spanish are like).

I also have to become familiar with the pause button on the machine because I will use this as I consider and construct my response.

I find my eyes starting to close and I stifle a yawn. I really like the idea of one of those Spanish language courses where you just listen to it in your sleep and after seven nights wake up, fluent, and have to hold back a strong desire to do the flamenco whilst cleaning your teeth. 

But back to Michel who at this point has rather lost me but seems to be having a good old Spanish chinwag with his two helpers who appear to have become remarkably fluent in under twenty minutes. I lean back in my chair and try to tune in, fighting the urge to go make Sangria to really get into the mood. I have this strange feeling though that if I leave my seat Michel will not be pleased and the next time I cross a field in my village I’ll get tossed aside by some demented bull that has delusions of grandeur. But its nine o’clock Sunday evening, Michel’s style is a little too strident and bullish (pun fully intended) for my tastes and so I hit the pause button, just like he told me to.

No. 7 Eat at the Ivy - update

At last I have a booking at The Ivy! So, you are thinking, she is going to while away the evening late into the night with some handsome beau in wonderfully salubrious surroundings drinking fine wine and eating tantalisingly delicious food before retiring back to her sumptious five star hotel for afters of a more...interesting nature........ (sorry, my imagination started to run away with me there). Actually, I’m going for lunch with my brother because no matter how quick I am, I am never quick enough to get a dinner reservation that starts before the tubes finish. How do these people do it – the ones that get the 8.30pm prime time? They must sit poised at their lap tops waiting for new slots to open just like they probably queue up for the Harrods sale with their sleeping bags and thermos flasks at the ready. Well they’ve got me beat so I’m going to pitch up at lunchtime making sure I have NO meetings booked for the afternoon. And actually, it may turn out to be a rather sublime day because at five o’clock I’m meeting one of my girlfriends at St P’s for champers and I expect I will arrive with a very big and slightly foolish smile on my face.  I'll prime her not to expect intelligent conversation.

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No 12. To detox or not to detox, that is the question

Detoxing has become very hip in the last few years and if you Google ‘detox’ you have the joy of 1,050,000 websites and articles to help you along your way. Some of them I have to say seem very complicated and, well, I don’t work well with complicated. I like simple and straightforward - something that does what it says on the tin. I tried to Google this particular phrase because I couldn’t remember the brand it was affiliated with (who says advertising works....) but what Google turned up was Sally Hansen Lip Inflation which threw me somewhat because I always thought the phrase was something to do with DIY. Maybe Sally Hansen has diversified in the years since I last used her, but I can’t say I have seen her particular brand in B&Q but when you think about it, women’s cosmetics are pretty much personal DIY and as the years go by I find I am having to re-point and rub down the faceurs with increasing regularity.

But it is an interesting phenomenon, detoxing, and it’s cast off as a fad most of the time, but what I do know is when I tried it myself in August 2003 (I remember quite precisely), I have to say it had pretty brilliant results. Better memory, glowing skin and enhanced sex drive being just three of the benefits (and who is going to argue with that?). I am not sure why I haven’t tried it again. Maybe because since then I’ve found plenty of detox regimes which include grapes ......but none which include wine?

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Swimming in chicken Oxo

05:30 on a Saturday morning is, as far as I am concerned, still the middle of the night. How then did I find myself at my kitchen table at that time, mentally crow-baring my mouth open so that I could fill it with porridge? Well, clearly I am a weak and feeble individual because I had found myself agreeing even nodding enthusiastically at the notion that Ruth and I might join Nic, who is a keen tri-athlete as well as competition swimmer, in an early morning open water swim in the lakes at Bosworth. And to pile insult upon injury, I had agreed to drive.

There is method behind this madness. Both Ruth and I are swimming in the European Masters swimming championships in Cadiz in September and we have both entered the final event of the competition – the 5k open water swim. Five kilometers is quite a long way to swim in anyone’s book and so there was a feeling, quite rightly, that this required some additional and specialist training. What I didn’t quite grasp as I had made my commitment to this was that we would have to leave in the middle of the night, well almost the middle of the night. Nic, being a hardy soul, does this quite regularly. Respect and all that.

The weather forecast was not good, but luckily as if often the case with our boys at the Met Office, they were wrong. And at 06:00, sports bag packed and flask of ginger tea at the ready, I set off into a morning bathed with golden sunshine and alive with the twittering and squabbling of birds in the garden. I can imagine they were quite surprised to see me at that time in the morning.

We pitched up at Bosworth about 50 minutes later and to a veritable hive of activity. How can so many people be so obsessive about their sport? They obviously are though as the car park was busy and at 07:10 there were already people in the water, swimming. Now, before Ruth and I were allowed to swim and being newbies, we were required to read and sign a disclaimer satisfying seventeen different rules and regulations before we were allowed, voluntarily, to throw ourselves into a lake. I think I’d want to see a signed disclosure too, if only to assess the state of someone’s mental faculties and to check they weren’t resident at a private home for the feeble minded. We passed muster though, no messing, and costumes donned we presented our bodies to the great outdoors and our hands to a gentleman with a slightly lascivious glint in his eyes as he wrote a number in black marker on the top of our hand. Just in case we drowned, apparently. Bosworth is not a deep lake thankfully, as I have a slight phobia about swimming in deep water having been chased virtually out of the ocean and up the beach (into the bar practically) by a Barracuda when on holiday, many years ago in St Lucia. But at Bosworth that really doesn’t matter because even if Barracuda were in residence – or Pike or other more aggressive fish – then it really wouldn’t make any different because it’s like swimming in chicken Oxo. Nic once hit a carp apparently and I don’t expect either she or the carp saw each other coming or even saw each other at impact because, boy, this is some cloudy water. The upshot is, I suppose, that it could be 4 feet or 40 feet, you’d just never know. Infact in parts you can touch the bottom and I did consider if I got really tired that I might put my feet down, remain bent over and keep the arm strokes going and no one would be the wiser. I quite liked this backup plan.

Now, this is not the first open water swim I have done in my life. Last year, I got short-listed for the third person in the Ben Fogle/James Cracknell team racing to the South Pole and which was featured last Sunday in BBC 2’s On Thin Ice. The selection weekend was held down at Friday Island in the Cotswolds and as you can probably surmise from the name, water featured rather heavily, both because it rained for pretty much the duration but also because at regular intervals during and between the exercises we were required to run and dunk ourselves, completely, in the water. Just to keep us on our toes so to speak. Anyway, one of the many and dastardly activities and tests the Marines put us through during those 36 hours was an open water swim after a 05:30am (there’s that time again) six mile cross country run which itself followed a full night navigation exercise to find our food for day two and that was after having built our shelter for the night. A shelter I got the pleasure to sleep, nay doze in, for 35 minutes. Never have I been so relieved to jump in a lake. That experience uppermost in my mind then, the prospect of another open water swim brought it flooding back. The upside, to this experience at least, was that after 3k I got to haul myself out, have a bacon buttie and sit in the sun admiring the view without having someone in fatigues shouting at me. I can recommend it. The open water swim at Bosworth that is, not the marine shouting at you.

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