I Measured Out My Life In Greasy Spoons

from the Saturday Telegraph Jan 21st 2006

I was brought up to believe that most of life’s calamities can be overturned or obliterated by a good square meal on an oval plate. So at times of uncertainty or transition, when I’m spoiling for a fight or have literally lost the plot of the novel I’m writing, I find myself sitting in old caffs, warming my hands on my tea, breathing in the steam, my clothes absorbing the scent of caffeine and malt vinegar, toast , custard, smoke and grease. I love the mesmerising electronic whir of a fruit machine, the smooth cool feel of a laminated table top; I even like counting up the orderly sauce bottles, the salts and peppers, the sugar shakers and the metal napkin dispensers, it’s a sort of soothing caterers’ rosary.

The first cafe I fell for was the Seven Steps by Highbury Fields in Islington, North London. I went there with my mother for lunch after trips to the dentist or before my regular check-ups at the Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital. (My sinuses were very bad.) The cafe was quite refined, the ladies who worked there wouldn’t take any cheek and refused to serve chips which was the hallmark, then, of a high class establishment. I always had the same thing- a white crusty ham and salad roll and a glass of 7-Up. I remember the sweetness of the ham against the slick of butter, the cool disc of cucumber, the dry lettuce ribbons, the thin, seeded tomato slices-delicious! The Seven Steps had a fruit machine with a high rate of return and I begged my mother for 2 pence pieces so I could nudge three red treasure chest symbols onto the win line and proudly pay for our lunch myself.
Shortly after this my teenage sister Rose took a job a waitress for a while at the Regent Milk Bar in Edgware Road and my mother used to take me for a fry up or a banana split sometimes, as a treat . The vanilla ice cream was white rather than yellow which marked it out as authentically Italian, everybody said. My sister was a very popular and glamorous waitress and a lot of the customers came in to see her. I looked up to her with admiration and huge respect, hoping I might be like her one day.

When I was old enough and rich enough from my Saturday job in a catering shop in Shaftesbury Avenue to take myself out for meals, I started to have lunch on Fridays at the Parma Cafe on Camden Road. I was in the sixth frorm at Camden School for Girls a few blocks away and the pressure was on. One or two of the girls rose at dawn to spend a good few hours on their outfits before school. You just couldn’t complete. At the Parma I always had the same thing:
chicken and chips and peas, no gravy - I was always a bit scared of gravy. The chips were very good at the Parma; the seats were orange and fixed to the floor. Sometimes my friend Daisy could be persuaded to come with me. She was so beautiful that as we walked from school to the cafe quite a lot of boys used to follow her down the street.

Two years later in 1990 I was at a very low ebb and was receiving instruction from a Catholic Priest in Oxford. I used to go to Browns cafe in the covered market after our meetings to think things through. I would have tea and a plain scone. Father Brian used to ask my advice about a lot of matters, for example at this time there was a terrific fashion for futons and all the young visiting priests at the Jesuit college where he worked kept demanding them. Should he cave in and splash out, or were they unfair to expect him to
pander to their every whim? I didn”t know. The floor of Browns was black and yellow check, matching exactly the uniforms of the traffic wardens who ate there. Nearby were traditional butchers’ whose stock hung outside the shops so that if you didn't watch where you were going it wasn’t difficult to walk straight into a pig’s carcass and get a bit of a shock.

After Oxford I started staying in a mews flat near Hyde Park Corner that belonged to a family friend; the area was grand but I was living very modestly, the blanket on my bed bore a name tape printed with second housemaid. Because of its location in Montrose Place, Belgravia The Old English Coffee House was frequented by a lot of chauffeurs. I was on a funny diet where you had to have a rock cake or a small bun for every meal. In this cafe I was befriended by a woman called Hazel who worked in service in Belgrave Square. She was always telling elaborate tales of her dissolute employers. Her frequent lament was that Sir used to come in drunk most nights and instead of turning right into the cloakroon he’d go left into the dining room and relieve himself in the soup tureen. In the morning Madam would take one look and cry “Oh! Hazel!”

She pronounced her name in the voice of her employer, as though it had three or four syllables. Sometimes when I saw her I used to say ‘Oh! Hay-ay-ay-zel! to make her laugh. Occasionally I wondered if she made the whole thing up.
Sidoli’s Buttery in Store Street W1 was a sanctuary for me the following year when I was studying Anglo American Literary Relations at UCL. When I was at Oxford no-one talked about books, ever. Even the dons much preferred not
to - they thought it was gauche. At UCL everyone on my course had favourite writers whom they cooed over in this cafe; they had pictures of their heroes in their wallets and called them by their first names. The writers we adored became our second families. I used to have an omelet and tinned peas or a cream cheese and salad sandwhich on brown toast which is the sandwich I always order in a cafe although I’m never quite sure I like it. The large teas at
Sidoli’s were nearly half a pint. I’m afraid we used to call the cafe Sid’s Butt.

Cosmo’s in Finchley Road NW3, dark and filled with disgruntled émigrés, embittered psychoanalysts and people who had just emerged from local 12 step
meetings, was my next haunt. I used to sit there nervously when I was early for my psychotherapy round the corner. It was a good place to go when you were intent on being depressed because there was virtually nothing to lighten the mood. The distress all round that room was almost palpable. The best thing to have was the apple strudel, although it wasn't great. I once went there with my mother and an ancient gent came up to us and after a while presented her with his business card that said Mr & Mrs Antony Phillip and where it said ‘& Mrs’, he had crossed out the words and written R.I.P.

Before my daughter was born I used to go to New Covent Garden market once a fortnight to buy flowers with my florist friend Rebecca. I’d always get the same thing: a wrap of pink ranunculi, a wrap of blue hyacinths and if I was feeling flush long stemmed sweet smelling Dolce Vita roses. Afterwards we would go to The Village Cafe on the fringes of the market. It has the most stylish opening hours - 11pm until 11 am and is frequented by clubbers from the nearby hardcore Vauxhall Tavern, by long distance lorry drivers desperate for a break, by taxi drivers and, of course, by florists. The varied clientele is reflected in the menu which boasts black pudding as well as a delicate fruit salad. I made friends there with some retired ballerinas who had opened a flower shop. I always had a toasted tea cake without butter and a mug of tea, my flowers spilling out across the floor.

The Goodfare Restaurant on Parkway in Camden is my current favourite. One of the waitresses who is very dignified has been working there for more than 40 years. . Once a week I go for a natter over large teas and toast with one of the mothers from school. Because we are always pushed for time we talk so fast that often neither of us can understand a word the other is saying.
The gigantic fried breakfasts and the pasta dishes look very alluring as they go past but we rarely indulge. Now and then I go alone and work on my new novel at a corner table or I jot down valuable overhearings on the back of an envelope. Sometimes I just sit there and switch off, stop being a person for half an hour or so until it feels possible, and desirable, to become one again.