No. 7 - Eat at the Ivy - update no. 4

Having detoured from my original plan and being jolly glad I had not least because I could now sit without jiggling about, I decided to stop awhile amongst the period charms of Simpsons on the Strand. As I mentioned in the previous post, Simpsons - now owned by the Savoy Group – was formally known as the Grand Cigar Divan (don’t you just love that) and stood on the site of the Fountain Tavern which had been the home of the famous literary association known as the Kit Kat Club. So next time you are nibbling delicately on the end of a finger of Kit Kat - or inserting them sideways like I sometimes do (what a child) – you can feel part of the illustrious group of men in wigs that met to further the course of the men in Whigs. I josh you not. For those of you who are not of a political history persuasion, note the difference in spelling. It is not a typo.

Now of course, you’re not allowed anymore to smoke cigars or cigarettes or any such thing on the premises which is a bit of a shame somehow. I am glad to report though that the original Divans still remain and are used everyday by ordinary bods like me and you. Infact, when I’d finished my Vodka Martini which had the kick of a dozen mules and meant I had to descend the stairway with some significant concentration and poise; I asked to see the divans and was duly shown through to the dining room. Now, I have to say I was a little disappointed. In the history it tells me that chaps who frequented the GDT (obviously having too much time on their hands) met to loll around on these divans drinking coffee, smoking cigars and playing chess. Far be it from me to stereotype but doesn’t that involved multi-tasking.....? But moving swiftly on before I get myself into trouble I would just like to make the observation that in my vocabulary at least, a divan is a bed-like thing that one lies supine upon. I had imagined that these said multi-tasking individuals of the male persuasion were somehow drinking, smoking and making complex tactical and strategic chess maneuvers all whilst lying with their feet up and having a snooze between moves. But clearly not because the divans are a seat with a perpendicular back that looks like you’d be sitting with your face in your coffee rather than with your feet up. But they are a little piece of history which I was glad to see and I made a note to come back sometime and eat in the dining room because I want to try dishes like stuffed roast suckling pig and master cook’s soup of the day which eminent patrons such as William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli and Charles Dickens may well have enjoyed and which you certainly don’t get in your local Harvester.

On the subject of a little piece of history, Simpsons has another more hidden but no less interesting piece of history. As it moved into the 20^th century it continued to attract famous patrons and several novelists went on to immortalise the restaurant in their writing. E.M. Forster mentions it in Howard’s End (1910); P.G. Wodehouse in Something Fresh (1915); Arthur Conan Doyle in The Adventure of the Dying Detective (1917) and Captain W.E. John in Biggles – Air Commodore (1937). But one writer who left his mark in a much more personalised sense was George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright and ardent socialist (so as an ardent social what was he doing at Simpsons on the Strand drinking coffee and smoking cigars I wonder?). Sitting at dinner in the restaurant one evening in 1917 a particularly fervent zeppelin raid put paid to a quiet evening of intellectual conversation (or at least I assume that is how it was going, he and his dinner guest may well have been coming to fisticuffs for all I know). Anyway this inconvenient hiatus forced GBS and others down into the wine cellar and whilst GBS was down there he demonstrated his gratitude for the temporary shelter by leaving a small signed inscription on one of the kitchen walls which has been carefully preserved to this day. Interested in seeing this and because the bar had cocked up my order for spring rolls, giving me spring water instead which I thought strange at the time but when you look at the price of a Vodka Martini somehow it didn’t seem impossible that you might get a spring water chaser, the staff were keen to make amends. Sensing this, I decided that it would be interesting and educational to see exactly what GBS had written and where. I was duly dispatched off with a helpful young man who took me down to the cellar but who when we got there admitted he had no idea where the artifact was. Infact until that point he didn’t even know it existed. So much for induction training at Simpsons on the Strand. After we had wandered about for a bit sticking our heads in one room or another and trying to find it with no success we asked the chef who didn’t know where it was either. Another member of staff suggested he telephone someone who he thought would know. And this person turned out to be the very manager - Stephen Busby - who had dispatched me down to the cellar with the work experience teenager in the first place (well, he might not have been on work experience but what other excuse can you find to justify him not knowing about this LITTLE PIECE OF HISTORY?}. Stephen was able to take me directly to the location of what turned out to be not only an inscription but also a rather good sketch of the bunch of people that were stuck down in the cellar on that evening in 1917. As I stood there looking at it I felt a little bolt of electricity pass through me which connected with that small group which sat in this very same place nearly one hundred years ago during the Great War. GBS survived that war and the one beyond it, living until he was 94 years old. An amazing man who left an amazing legacy of plays and journalism mainly concerned with improving the lot of the common man. And he left his signature in Simpsons on the Strand which is probably as inclusive now as it’s ever been.

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?

 Remember - you can follow me at: http://twitter.com/NeverTooLateGrl