Busy busy end of the year

Even though I had the month of December off it feels like I did more in it than ever before. It was probably due to the lack of routine, which makes every experience feel novel, firing off synapses at a more rapid rate than my dull-wired brain is used to.

Therefore, I have a newfound respect for my nomad comrade friends gallivanting out there in the world, meeting new people and speaking many languages. I raise my glass to you!

I travelled to Manchester to see my friend’s play A Christmas Carol, which was a total festive treat. I was fending off a cold at the time, so I think spending a day in the cavernous cold space of the Manchester City Library with its grand oculus finished me off. I had a fever for two days and lost about two-weeks in a fug.

The best thing about this time of year is that friends who live abroad or far away come back through town. I got to host many a Christmas meal; some more successful than others. All I can say is if you intend to cook a Korean feast but omit all the chillies (due to a spice intolerance in some of the guests) then what you get is a very very salty meal. Yet we popped open about five bottles of champagne to celebrate various things I can’t remember clearly anymore.

Me and the dog went on a day trip to West London: what a charming world! My writer friend Eloise took us to a pub with a roaring open fire. When we entered there was a man reading a real newspaper with a brown speckled Dalmatian sitting calmly at his heels. I ordered a mulled wine which came to £9.50! The Fox & Pheasant could never become my local, but we can all dream.

I tagged along to a friend’s family walking tour of London. It had been organised by Una who was visiting her UK family with her American husband. The tour guide, Terry, didn’t know how to pitch his material as the majority of the walkers were familiar with London and this country’s archaic/feudal system of property/land ownership. 

I learned a lot, like how Westminster Abbey is a called a Royal Peculiar because it doesn’t belong to any parish thanks to the way the old kingdoms were sliced up in Britain. My favourite factoid was why the Australians call the English poms. It’s an abbreviation of Prisoners of Millbank (POM) as many convicts were transported to Australia in the 19th Century from this Thames riverside prison, which no longer exists.

After seeing friends and recovering from flu, I set out on an epic journey to Orkney. My family up in the beautiful remote isles hosted Christmas, and me and the dog trundled up there by train to Edinburgh > train to Aberdeen > ferry to Kirkwall. An overall journey time of 18 hours, however, the strikes and the storms did not get in the way! A Christmas miracle. 

It was a quiet time spent with books and going for walks – weather permitting. On Boxing Day as the heavy clouds rumbled across our island, I took the dog for a walk, but when we reached the crest of a hill it started to hail. The hailstones were as big as salt crystals, so I ran to a stone house and sheltered against its wall. ROLO jumped head first into a bush. I peeked at her from under my pulled down hood as we got pelleted by ice. Her small gingery tail, shivering poking out from a hedge. 

A Christmas seal sighting

  

A Christmas Carol

It is December. I wake up to frost on the ground, crunchy underfoot. The sky is an icy blue and the low intensity sunlight is amber. It is beautiful out there; fresh, cold and bright, but unfortunately, I am ill and should really stay inside drinking multiple cups of tea. My soul wants to be out there though.

I went to see A Christmas Carol, probably the best story ever written. Dickens was a genius but the thing that strikes me as surprising each time I watch it (adapted for stage, film, etc.) is that it’s set in London. A big city. Where lots of folk intermingle and bustle about wearing shawls and striking matches. 

It surprises me because of the familial feel to the narrative. There is this old miserly man and his nephew’s house is over there and his clerk’s house is somewhere walkable with a giant turkey. When they enter a flashback with the help of the Ghost of Christmas Past, I’m pretty sure the Fezziwig’s ball dance is held in the city of London, which is also where Scrooge & Marley’s investment offices are. Everybody just lives on top of each other. Also, Scrooge has never left London, so he was born and will die there, wow.

I’ve heard that Victorian living conditions were pretty bad. People living in slums, raw sewage flowing in the streets, outbreaks of cholera, but then there were also the magical inventions of industry like gas lighting, which helped Scrooge see the illusion of Marley in his door knocker. Then there’s the climatic epoch that Charles Dickens lived through known as the Little Ice Age, which enchanted him and made us all believe in a snowy white Christmas. 

I bet a frozen Victorian city was so much nicer for its well-heeled inhabitants because all the waste in the streets would freeze and the noxious smells would lessen. That probably added to the magical Christmas feel Dickens was talking about. But how about how cold it got? I’m chilly in a centrally heated house wearing several layers under a Berghaus fleece. I bet a lot of people froze to death or lost a limb during the Little Ice Age in London too. 

Xmas Decor

We’ve put up the Christmas decorations. It makes me happy. 

The Horror Nativity is out again in the fireplace, it’s like a menagerie of eerie and monstrous figurines made from lurid plasticine that we moulded one sad Christmas. There are two red and green balls hanging from a nail in the kitchen. One lonely Santa hat sits on a shelf looking like a leftover prop from an office Xmas party. I think the look is almost complete. 

Let’s shine the light on Groot for a moment. The pot plant who has had many manifestations over the years he has been in our lives. Abandoned and picked up off the street somewhere in Victoria. Re-homed in the flat Groot grew taller and was re-potted one Spring in Vauxhall. 

During Covid Groot decided to grow even bigger, probably because we were indoors all the time pottering about and watering him maniacally. His roots got all entangled and made a bird’s nest around the bottom of the pot. That was the summer when everything was closed. I remember going to a nursery garden to ask if they had any discarded plant pots I could forage. We picked one that looked more like a bucket with holes in and carried it back to the flat. Voilà Groot got an even bigger pot.

When we moved house and got a dog, I found out that Groot’s species was poisonous to pets*, but we couldn’t give him up. So, we moved Groot upstairs into the bedroom where dogs are not allowed.

But when Yuletide comes around it’s Groot’s time to shine! 

He is hauled back downstairs in his upgraded edgy stylish pot (which looks a bit like a burnt bird cage) and given pride of place. We wrap a wiry set of fairy lights around his tropical-looking foliage and hang a single ornament from his branch of a dachshund wearing a Santa Claus outfit. Groot marvellously plays the role of our Christmas Tree.

*ROLO is wholly uninterested in Groot even when he’s looking so great as a Christmas tree.

Halloween Monday

It was a Monday night. We were sat around a dinner table and outside was a downpour. The rain had been incessant lately. I couldn’t remember a time when the rain was so constant in England, but then I had a terrible memory. However, indoors it was very nice. Emma had cooked delicious chicken stewed with segments of orange – but she didn’t serve herself any of the citrus because she said she had a difficult relationship with fruit. Today was in fact Halloween and the roasted vegetables and soft cherry tomatoes in the dish were meant to give an autumnal vibe. We questioned whether it was more of a Halloween spread because it contained pumpkin? Emma didn’t think so. She reminisced that when she was a child during this holiday ex-pats from America would give the children ghoulish foods like eyeballs made of lychees, which coincidentally was where her suspicion of fruit stemmed from. 

The delicious vapours from the kitchen wafted out of the patio doors, which were open a crack and at its base sat my little brown dog who was looking mournfully out at the sodden garden. She was afraid of everything: at the commuter trains passing by upon raised train tracks, at the fireworks going off for Divali, and at the prospect of getting wet. I asked whether the house got any trick-or-treaters? Another guest said they overheard a dad outside warning his children not to knock on this door because, ‘Emma wouldn’t like it.’ Last year her partner had appendicitis on Halloween, and so Emma had to go to the hospital and left a pile of sweets outside the front door with a passive aggressive note saying, ‘Don’t knock sick person inside but help yourself to sweets’. This probably gave her the reputation of being someone cantankerous.

The rain was not letting up. We were now on to desserts of freshly oven-baked chocolate chip cookies (crunchy on the outside, chewy at its centre). We tried to remember what our first ever Halloween costumes were. Annina and I were obviously vampires; unoriginal yet very in keeping with ye olde traditions of All Hallow’s Eve. Char who heralds from the States went as Mickey Mouse aged four. Emma dressed as something not as good as her younger sister and remembers feeling petulant about it. Aidan had a costume made of leaves to dress as the literary version of Peter Pan. The last guest remembered how he went to a church gathering instead called a “Hallelujah Happening” where they were discouraged from dressing up as anything to do with the devil, so he wore an orange t-shirt.

Orkney holiday & St Magnus Way

Dark stillness. Clambering off the ferry along the jetty you can hear large waters slapping against the hull of the big ship.

Granny is waiting with eager open arms when we arrive after midnight. My dad came to pick us up in Donkey, the name he’s affectionately given to the coffee cream coloured car with a dented nose.

You awake and the scenery outside the window is bright blue glass, the sky is shale, and the light is golden champagne.

I had expected there to be lashing rain outside, but the barometer in the corridor is hoping for light winds as I tap it gently hopeful too, its hand ticking further away from thunder.

We walk the St Magnus Way from Evie to Birsay.

St Magnus Way route marker

I have the disposable camera that Noemi gave me to take photos of our trip to Orkney and snap one at the bay of Gurness. (The un-real tropical blue of the shallow waters cutting into the verdant green of the hillside won’t be captured on film.)

St Magnus was an Earl of Orkney in 1106. A pacifist in comparison to his contemporary warring Earls and Fiefs and because of this, his cousin Earl Haakon, ordered him to be killed on the island of Egilsay across the bay. Instead of being beheaded like a common thief the axe struck a blow in the middle of his head splitting it apart. 

Legend says that the ground where his blood was spilled turned into luscious green pasture. And Gurness means green headland in Old Norse. His hallowed body was carried along Orkney in a procession and the pilgrimage is said to follow this route.

There’s an ancient Orkney tradition where the body of a deceased person is not allowed to touch the ground, so there are many attested resting places (large stones) for St Magnus’ body dotted all over the island called Mansie Stones – however – none remain, and the evidence is patchy. 

The way I like all pilgrimages is to follow the scent of something sacred. You don’t want a historical route with coordinates and information centres. That would give the game away – why would you want to do something so ordinary and official? No, I’m chasing saints! Mixed in with folklore and miracles. 

At Grugar we disturbed a colony of seals basking in the sun, as we dropped down on to the flat rocks strewn with seaweed. I watched them scoot off inelegantly in their blubber suits making a splash. 

Grugar by the roost

Across a turbulent stretch of tidal waters called the “roost” there is the uninhabited island of Eynhallow, which in Old Norse means Holy Island. The ruins of a medieval stone church remain which people say was once a monastery.

Orcadians also say that the Finfolk used to live there. These nomadic sea-dwelling sorcerers who were prone to abducting mortal men and women to become their Finmen and Finwives. Two stories relating to the Finfolk of Eynhallow piqued my interest.

1. This small island was one of the invisible islands of Orkney where the Finfolk resided. The island was said to have been eventually consecrated and captured by a vengeful farmer named the Goodman of Thorodale, after his bonnie bride was stolen infront of his very eyes by a strong dark Finman rowing out on a boat. Thorodale had to go through a quest of labours to gain the sight to see the invisible island. After nine full moons of waiting and watching the sea, he saw it one morning and rowed determinedly to the mythical island carrying bags of salt with him, chucking it at the demonic sea creatures and mermaids who appeared to protect the island from him. They failed. He succeeded and Christianity prevailed banishing the Finfolk from their home forever.

2. In 1990 a boat with eighty-eight tourists embarked on the island to look at the ruins of the church. When it was time to return only eighty-six tourists got back on the boat. The police were called and there was an air-search, and the coastguards were notified. The two missing people were never found and the crew were blamed for miscounting. However, the crew were sure there were eighty-eight people who got on the boat and so, it was assumed they were Finfolk returning to their own holy island home. 

What makes you feel alive?

Dirty orange fug outside the train window with rain streaming down the pane. We made it on to the train! Running through a crowded Edinburgh Waverley, near-missing tourists laden down with shopping bags and wheelie suitcases. Aidan runs ahead pulling my dog at warp speed, her head hits the dangling lunch bag of a woman on her way to work. I shout “Sorry!” as I bounce past, my top-heavy rucksack titling me sideways. 

“You can appreciate the weather today – we have had some significant delays – this is a limited stop start service.”

The train is packed but the torrential downpour outside and the dampness inside combined with the air conditioning gives the interior a cool and still air. We are all sardines contained in a metal can shuttling towards the Scottish coast. 

The windows are steamed up. Outside is an impenetrable mist that tints the whole day lilac. 

Like falling through a static splash of a log flume.

Speaking to a friend who had impulsively bought international flight tickets for a crush, I asked him, “Why would you do that?” The answer was forthcoming. 

“Because it makes me feel like I’m doing something. Like I’m alive.” I nod comprehending this feeling but not having ever impulsively bought flight tickets for love. 

Making it onto a train just in time – 

Leaving the city behind. 

Blowing out all my grimy city snot on to tissues; scoffing the store bought sandwich; running my hand through my hair and scraping dandruff off my scalp;

Gets me closer to feeling free

Being good tired

June has happened without much deliberation. The onset of summer is heady, and I get filled with the prospect of late summer evenings drinking beers on rooftops and in open fields. Wedding after wedding have filled weekends, a panoply of love. Friends have flown in and stayed at our house enjoying the cosy offerings of the “Japanese Pub”. 

ROLO has acclimatised to new people arriving and has slept on the floor beside them, snuggling into their sleeping bag and pretending they are their own pack, away from civilisation. One guest awakes saying that I tap away at my keyboard ‘just like a drummer’ with intent and in short bursts.

We’ve gained a beautiful bouquet of flowers from friends who stayed here – but didn’t get to set eyes on because we were at different weddings. They left lilies and carnations in a vase, alongside a nice bottle of gin, classy. A new shiny soap dish that’s like a thin polished piece of wood has appeared on my bathroom sink to help out my formless disintegrating soap. 

As they sleep upstairs on the futon, I’m downstairs tap tap tapping away furiously. I’ve met old friends I haven’t seen in years and made new ones who happen to be in London. It feels good for once to be tired because I’ve been spending my time trying to fit it all in. I’ve learnt a new word too: orchidaceous.

Berlin

19/5/22

Arrived late at night. Got on the S-bahn to meet Annina in Neukölln. I joined her and her choir (or who were left of them) sitting on the street outside a Lotto drinking store-bought beers. It was hot in the city and the tarmac still retained the warmth of the sun. Hearing Annina dip in and out of German to speak to me and her friends was a joy. She had bought me a bottle of pilsner with a bottle-top you pop open. After you finish drinking you should leave the empty beer bottle next to a bin, so that someone can come and collect it and get 8 cents from the state. ‘Never throw a beer bottle away into the bin Rimi, or else they can’t get recycled.’

20/5/22

We woke up in the spare bedroom of her cousin’s. It had a high ceiling with long white curtains that let the light in softly; outside I could see green treetops and blue sky and hear the hum of the city. We went to a coffee bar called Bona. The interior was decorated with wheat sheafs hanging from the ceiling, bare lightbulbs and raw wood. As with all of Berlin, their practical carefree attitude and cobbled-together cool aesthetic makes everything look interesting while simultaneously being nothing special. We shared a pecorino salami croissant and chimichurri avocado bagel, got two black coffees and talked about our parents’ generation. 

Next, Annina took me to a large disused airfield called Tempelhof nearby. She had brought her roller-skates and began drifting along the smooth tarmac of the air strip, while I mounted her bicycle which was too high for me and pedalled up and down. I returned to find Annina had done a backward somersault after crashing into a skater girl. We went back to Wedding where she lives and dropped off my bags and had a shower. For lunch Annina cooked me white asparagus with brown butter – crunchy, fried, wholesome – and freshly boiled potatoes.

I put her arm into a makeshift sling then we left the flat to go to Alte Nationalgalerie to catch a Paul Gaugin exhibition. There was surprisingly little of the modernist painter’s works on display. A few paintings of the sensual forms and vivid tropical colours of the Pacific, but really the exhibition was dealing with the controversy of the character. Gaugin was a French colonist who promoted an idealised version of himself as a native while continuously marrying underage indigenous girls (his first wife was 13, the second was 14 years old), contracting syphilis, becoming badly in debt and then dying. There were pieces by Polynesian heritage artists which off-set the white man’s cultivated image of Tahiti as a “primitive, pleasure-laden land”; contemporary video footage of women on the island remaining voiceless and a political poem that I liked called Guys Like Gaugin by Selina Tusitala Marsh.

We walked around the plaza of Museum Island with the newly built Homboldt Palace and heard the Berlin Cathedral bells tolling. There was going to be a storm, so we headed to where Annina works at the Kino Arsenal (an independent cinema) to watch a Frederick Wiseman retrospective. I met her cute colleagues who gave us bottled beers from behind the box office window. Before the 4-hour film was set to start we ran across the road to get the best fast-food burgers I’ve ever eaten from Burgermeister. The film called Belfast, Maine was a documentary detailing all the elements of an American town: church, school, healthcare, hunting, factory work, social care. It was a bleak and at times poignant long-ass film.

21/5/22

We woke up late and went downstairs to get food for breakfast. There is a fresh produce store on the corner of the street called Katofferladen, which translates to Potato Shop. We bought a punnet of strawberries, two sticks of rhubarb and homemade jam. Down the street there was a bakery where we got white crusty bread rolls, croissants and a pastry filled with spinach and cheese: Breakfast of Champions.

We visited a flea market where the stalls were crammed full of inexpensive wares. Mangled screwdrivers, phone chargers, chipped china. I rifled through some boxes as is my want and got two porcelain Chinese soup spoons for a Euro. Annina foraged a wonky golden candlestick and a beaten-up bell with stars like asterisks carved onto its body for me. It threatened to rain, so we ducked into a fancy Turkish café where we had sweet snacks and coffees and talked about what we feared the most.

It never did rain. The stall-owners were packing up and Annina bought a ship in a bottle and a vase with a broken lip that had been glued back together. We walked home stopping off at a well-stocked Asian supermarket where I bought soba noodles to make for our lunch. Annina read me an interview with Frederick Wiseman and I watched her 17-minute documentary she had made about Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Georgia. A quiet, thoughtful, melancholic film. 

We walked through two large parks near her house: Goethe and Reheberge. Animals were being kept in the latter – I got to see wild boars! Dark and bristly fur, their bodies densely compact tapering down to tiny trotters, keeping themselves very clean. One was making satisfied grunting noises as it rubbed up against a wooden post to have a scratch. Small white tusks were visible above articulated snouts, a little longer than a pig’s and seemingly more dexterous. The three boars were happily rooting around and throwing glances at us humans who were watching them, while in the far distance we could all hear the thudding bass of a techno gig. The park has a beautiful lake with a fake beach on the other side. We sat overlooking the lake in the setting sun and talked about cultural differences in expressing emotion, as a businessman stripped off to have a swim in the lake.

We walked to Moabit where Annina’s friend Clara lives. Clara had invited us to a dinner party where she'd made the most delicious Syrian food. Stuffed roasted peppers, aubergines, courgettes with rice and meat, a rich red sauce, white creamed veg all served with helpings of olives, dill and lemon juice. The guests brought an interesting mix of heritages to the table I’d never experienced before. One girl was Jewish and had returned home to Berlin after living in Colombia for many years. An Iranian couple where the wife had lived in Tehran and Toronto. We spoke on the topic of strangers. How in some places strangers are suspicious or people in exile, while in some they’re welcomed or even seen as courageous for having boldly set out to find their own path. I realised that in Japanese there is no word for "stranger" only "someone you don’t know", apparently this is also the case in Farsi.

22/5/22

I packed my hold-all bag and wrapped my trinkets from the flea market in dirty socks. We had delicious breakfast and coffee again, then headed out to walk to Gesundbrunnen where I would catch my train to the airport. We stopped off at the Silent Green and enjoyed the summery garden there. We walked along the river and had an ice coffee in a café next to the flat where Annina used lived. At the station I bought currywurst sausages with a white bread roll and said ‘so long’ to my friend. It had been a real holiday from my norm and I'd been happy to see the city opening up post-Covid. I’d be visiting again while Annina is set to come to London in June. Good times ahead.

For the love of England

First run of the year. Running up the hill being chased by my dog, we run parallel until I am an inch ahead of her then she races ahead leaving me in her tail’s trail.

I have been away a lot recently, traversing the country. I have seen sea, tilled fields, rocky cliffs. Once I found myself staying in a fairy tale place with a stone castle stood in the middle of the village. It dates back to the time of early Christendom and is contemporaneous with the Tower of London, I was told. Now a ruin on an escarpment; sturdy, thick-walled, held together by clods of flint. You couldn’t bulldoze it, but it has been worn down over millennia by forgetfulness. 

Some entrepreneurial agriculturalists used its fortified plains of grass to graze their sheep. People looted the castle remains for building materials. Feudal systems waned, industrialisation peaked, people got replaced by other people and they forgot why the castle was built.

ROLO accompanied us on all these journeys to bygone picturesque places around England. We walked as a pack along the white cliffs of Dover. I kept her on a leash as one unflappable guide at the lighthouse at the end of our walk told us a dog ran off the side of a cliff only the other day. No fences. Not at a National Trust site – where talk of carving a giant bust of Vera Lynn was met with grand disdain – for the love of conservation!

Last weekend I found myself staying in the middle of a field in a tastefully converted ginormous farmhouse. Nothing for miles apart one tractor working its engine off. Tilling the land with heavy machinery. Couldn’t think of anything I had less knowledge of. I met a boy that day wearing a T-shirt with a tractor design on its front, and I couldn’t be sure, but these were my only two touchpoints to tractors. Tractors as a symbol for something like toys? Big cars? Horses? And then an actual tractor (with me watching it move slowly across the landscape) hurling piles and piles of dusty earth in its wake. 

What was it doing? I asked the Uncle of the family horde. He said it was probably churning fertiliser into the ground. Oh right, I said. From that point I couldn’t even extrapolate what happened next. Does it have to rain for the fertiliser to work? What then grows? How long does it take? Basically, what steps need to take place before the fruit/veg appear on the shelves of Tesco? I couldn’t tell you. So, experiencing the real tractor in life made me question food supply chains and reminded me of the rising cost of living. How milk now is £1.10 and I swear it was 90p quite recently. Maybe this is just London prices and milk goes up arbitrarily like the cost of pints. I wondered then whether the alt-milk movement was pushing up the price of milk as there was less demand.

I was glad that family weekend offered much free booze and many distracting conversations otherwise my city brain might not have coped. ROLO was also put in kennels for this episode, so I yearned for her whilst the others tempered my flurry of emotions and told me she was having a good time playing with other dogs. Making new dog friends. I texted the kennel owner – Ronnie and he texted back saying she was ‘very nervous’. My extended family are very kind to me.  I’ve learned from watching them and being amongst them that love knows no limits. 

My Canterbury Pilgrimage

In the summer of 2021,

I undertook a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury with three friends and a dog.

You can read my account of it here via an ArcGis Story Map: https://arcg.is/15q1CS0

There's pictures and interactive maps too. 

https://arcg.is/15q1CS0

The Kings Arms

The Kings Arms is a pub in Waterloo 

Rating: 3 paws out of 4

Arrived on a busy Wednesday night to a packed pub tucked in the damp alleyways behind Waterloo Station. You can sense there’s a rat at least five meters away from you at all times. ROLO didn’t seem to notice even though she’s a ratter, she was too busy trying not to get trodden on inside this old-time boozer.

An independent pub with an independent spirit. Lots of cask ales and bitters on tap. However, no real refreshing lagers and so, the joint loses a point. 

It was dog-friendly, in the sense that no one seemed to mind the presence of our pooches (ROLO had her mate Echo with her that night). Echo clambered on top of a pile of coats that some women had thrown down next to the bar, in the vein of nightclubs of the pre-pandemic era.

The King’s Arms carried a very English charm and swagger – you know – brass knobs and frayed curtains. There were lopsided lampshades and an old flat-screen TV propped up in the corner that wasn’t turned on. Ceiling fans rotated in ennui overhead at the post-industrial post-imperial landscape. The crowd was older, the music was quieter. There was a humdrum atmosphere to the place. It was the feeling of getting by.

Over yellowing wallpaper hung framed black and white photographs of the Waterloo area. The Cut and Southwark all getting dredged up and built over during the 1960’s. Not usually a fan of pubs with Saint George flags hanging in them, but this one also had a fair amount of St. Patrick’s Day memorabilia plastered on top of warped Victorian glass, which off-set the decor nicely.

They served good Thai food. The bar staff were calm and friendly, fondly cooing over our dogs. I left the pub with a slightly sad funny feeling, like that scene at the end of Mary Poppins (OG) where you see the pigeon lady feeding the birds, something akin to that. Thanks Windmill Taverns, will return with ROLO again!

*

Addendum: During my pub search I came across this gem of an article published in the Architectural Review on the Typology of pubs. Definitely worth a read.

The Sail Loft

For my new year’s resolution, I have decided to go to pubs in London that are dog-friendly. It’s not really a resolution and more of a fun task I’m going to tick off whenever I feel like it. However, to make it a bit more like a game with rules, I’ve made a Google map with lots of dog-friendly pubs pinpointed. When I visit a pub I like I turn the pin into a heart. If I don’t like it then the pin gets deleted. Also, I’ll try and do a little review of the pubs that I heart.

Starting with this one that I visited today in Greenwich called The Sail Loft

Rating: 4 Paws out of 4*

Definitely dog-friendly! The sweet staff asked me whether I’d like a water bowl upon entrance. I said, yes please and they whipped one out and placed it under my table for ROLO in a shot. Great dog-service.

You get a splendid view of the River Thames. There are enormous windows with lots of natural light filtering in, you can even see the spikes of the Millennium Dome (do people still call it that? The O2 sounds so boring) across the river.

The décor is very appealing. Wicker baskets hanging for the ceiling reminiscent of lobster pots. The pub is spacious with a mezzanine. Importantly – it’s not echoey, so the sound of screaming kids don’t bounce back at you harshly. They’re child-friendly as well as dog-friendly. I watched well-dressed families with prams swan through the downstairs pub with ease.

Top marks for cleanliness – I smiled at a lad spraying and wiping down tables as punters left. The bathrooms are big and have cool faucets, they’re made of re-furbished pipes and have a pressure valve handle instead of taps. 

I ordered a shandy lager and automatically it came with Peroni. Fancy. I could read a book quite comfortably in the ambience of this light and modern pub. It’s also five minutes from the Thames Clipper boat service, which takes me home. Perfect.

*because dogs have four paws. Four is the highest rating.

Potluck zine

© Rhia Cook

I have a piece of writing published in a dedicated food magazine called Potluck zine. The piece is called Our Rice Relations and you can read it here. 

This zine's issue 5 was all about ritual. How food, recipes and meals can make memories and tell stories. It was a delicious publication to be part of.

If you'd like to get a copy then you can order here. Part of the profits from each magazine sold is donated to The Trussel Trust - the UK's largest food bank organisers.

All illustrations by Rhia Cook @rhiacookmakes.

© Rhia Cook