Londoners Diary 2004

ES magazine

It being my daughter's third and a half birthday I said she could have a special treat and she announced that she would like to have a really really huge breakfast in a beautiful hotel. So on Monday morning at the crack of dawn, with Mary dressed in a style far exceeding the nines ( best smocked party dress with the sticking out skirt and red and white polka dot flamenco shoes) we caught the 13 to Claridges. Having shimmied across the highly shiny chequered marble floor we were shown to a large table decked out in green and white stripy china which had a slight mad hatters' tea party air. I chose fruit salad, her father wanted kippers and Mary ordered her customary Full English which on this occasions included danish pastries, croissants, American muffins, English muffins and brown and white toast. As Mary floated dainty morsels of egg in her cocoa we reminisced about her most famous breakfast caper which took place in America last year. While I was trying to feed her a piece of ketchupy sausage in an LA diner, Mary knocked her hand into the fork and the meat went flying over our booth and landed in the open handbag of the smart lady sitting at the next table who carried on eating her own food without noticing a thing. After a couple of minutes though, the lady marched over to us and cleared her throat to say something important. Oh oh, I thought and held my breath, but my assailant was wreathed in smiles. 'You have such an adorable child', she cooed, snapping the bag shut. 'Enjoy. It goes so fast.' It was nice to think of her later, during a low blood sugar moment, happening upon Mary's little meaty surprise.

A long time fan of both the artist and his work I went on Tuesday evening to see an exhibition of some Frank Auerbach paintings and drawings at the Marlborough gallery. Standing in front of a large painting of the artist's studio, I talked confidently for several minutes to the critic Bill Feaver about how astonishing I thought the use of colour was. It was only at the end of our conversation when Bill said, 'Mmm, dark eau de nil, I think', that I realised he had been talking about the colour that the gallery walls had been specially painted for the exhibition. Ooops.

I am currently very enamoured of certain parts of Marylebone, not the glamorous side that is all raspberry mille feuilles and Sam Taylor Wood but the dingier bits round the back of the railway station. In this area there are the oddest shops that take specialisation to the point of , well, possibly retail masochism. There is a boutique where you can buy adult shoes in tiny sizes, high heeled patent pumps that look as bizarre in a size one as they would in a man's fourteen. There is Nuts about Nuts which sells nothing but , and a grocer vending only Swedish fare. At Stephen Foster's wonderfully mysterious bookshop in Bell Street you can even purchase 1960s doors fashioned to look like bookshelves so that your library can boast completely flush book-filled walls. Browsing in the bookshop yesterday lunchtime I was amazed to discover an old book written by my Great Uncle Ron called My Life with Birds. This is not a kiss and tell memoir with a Carry On film flavour but a gentle account of an elderly man's fascination with falconry. This is fortunate as Uncle Ron's love life was extremely quiet, to put it mildly. He told me once about a woman he admired and wished to have for his wife. To win her affection he had given her, out of the blue, an exceedingly luxurious silk scarf. When this failed to do the trick, he thought he'd appeal to her home loving side with a comfy arm chair with fully sprung seat, but still no dice, so finally he thought long and hard and presented her with an exceptionally rare stamp. Sadly, he never married.

About once a month I like to bunk off work and see a matinee at my local, the Screen on Baker Street and today's the day. Although I love the cinema I am an anxious movie goer and need to have a good idea of a film's content before I can happily buy a ticket. (An acquaintance once made the wild suggestion that this was my defence against feeling cruelly ignored by the people starring in the film.)

The staff at The Screen are perfectly courteous about this and field my silly queries without a hint of annoyance. 'Does anyone nice die in the film, in a nasty way?' I phone to ask. The reply was so kind and comprehensive. "Well, there is a funeral in the first few minutes, but it's a very low key affair and because there's been no time to form any kind of emotional attachment to the-er- deceased, you should be fine." Apart from the soothing staff my favourite cinema also sells my ultimate showtime treat which is a cup of earl grey with a shot of Bells in it and a kitkat. Heaven.