Precious times

I had the day off work yesterday. I went with M to drop Little Planet off at daycare and then we headed to the Fleet River Bakery in Holborn for breakfast. M had a pain au chocolat and coffee; I had a cheese and ham croissant, and pear juice. Though highly rated amongst reviewers, I am less enamoured by this rustic, homely Holborn cafe. The cakes and bread always seem dry; they never offer to heat up my savoury croissants or sandwiches; and the service overall seems remote.

M went off to work and I walked through Covent Garden, Chinatown and Soho. I like walking through here before 10am, whilst the stores are not yet open and the delivery men are still unloading their wares.

I saw two good art shows at the Haunch of Venison: a collective show of Enrico Castellani, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd and Günther Uecker and then the monochromatic watercolours of Uwe Wittwer. If you're stuck in Piccadilly with a full bladder or with a baby with a full nappy then I highly recommend this gallery's toilets - very nice and clean and, most importantly, usually empty. I also saw the Keith Arnatt photography exhibition at Karsten Schubert on Lower John Street.

I had hoped to see the latest Abstract America exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery off Sloane Square but it was closed for a private function. I didn't feel like window shopping along the King's Road so I headed to Paddington to catch a train to Oxford.

There, I ate a disappointingly stodgy lunch (too many potatoes) at the stuffy Nosebag cafe opposite the Oxford Union. I then wandered past the Bodleian library and the Radcliffe Camera, and through the still delightful Covered Market (photos above and below).

I studied in Oxford and I adore wandering around its pretty streets. For me, those streets resonate with history, and the scent of academia is so palpable it still makes me shiver with pleasure. I admit I am totally “rose-tinted glasses” about my alma mater. I had no negative experiences studying in that high-pressured environment. As much as I am energised by my career in advertising, I never felt more at home or more at peace than when I was immersed in pure academic research. What I dislike about academia is the teaching and the pressure to “publish or perish” and so I left it aside as a career option.

However, my memories of Oxford are tainted by the fact that I became quite ill while I was there. I recovered, but every other year, I have a checkup with an oncologist at the Churchill Hospital. Everything is usually fine, but still I get quite emotional in Oxford. In fact, I still get emotional whenever cancer is mentioned on TV, in movies, in real life. The last time I had a check up, Little Planet wasn't yet born. I am married, I have a daughter, and I feel like I have so much more to lose nowadays. It doesn't bear thinking about really.

So I was relieved to leave Oxford and overjoyed to return to London yesterday evening, to kiss my husband and hold my little girl tightly before putting her to bed.

Life is so, so precious that it hurts. But the fact that it is precious can produce pure joy too. Thank goodness.

Catching up

Last weekend, we didn't do much but chill at home, which is always lovely. Little Planet has a busy time with her childminders during the week, with lots of activities and general hustle and bustle, so we thought it would make a change for her to have a quiet weekend with us. One of her grandmothers was staying with us that weekend, which made it extra special for both. On Sunday, I left Little Planet, Grandma and M at home and travelled to St Albans where some of my old Oxford University friends were gathering for lunch and a catch up. Most of them are also working parents: two work for the UK government and the other works in Tanzania for UNESCO. Between us, we have four children. I love it how time moves on and we move along with it. We're proper grown-ups - my, oh my.

During the week, M and I also caught up with another Oxford friend. The three of us did our PhDs together and now we have baby daughters of the same age. This friend lives in Arizona where she lectures; her partner is a photographer. She has just accepted a prestigious job at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. She's currently in London doing research in the British Museum, so the three of us lunched at Korean restaurant Bi-Won on Coptic Street, where we ate deliciously spicy and moreish dolsot bim bim bap.

Also during the week, I joined colleagues for lunch at the cafe in Liberty as one of them was leaving for maternity leave with her second child. The food was very nice. I drank elderflower presse and ate a salad of baby spinach, poached egg and black pudding, followed by lemon tarte.

Some dinners I cooked this week included minestrone soup with savoy cabbage, cabbage curry, and curried paneer with tomatoes and peas.

Yesterday, M, Little Planet and I went into central London. Little Planet enjoys going on the Tube - we take her out of her buggy and she sits on her own seat or stands between our legs looking at everyone and trying to make them smile. We walked through Covent Garden to Foyles bookshop, where Little Planet explored the entire children's section for half an hour or so. M also bought a book by photographer-artist Gregory Crewdson.

We had to pop into my office just off Oxford Street to change Little Planet's nappy! We went over to Postcard Teas to stock up on a variety of Indian, Chinese and Japanese tea leaves as M loves proper tea. Then we walked down Bond Street to the White Cube in Mason's Yard to see the latest exhibition by Zhang Huan (photos above). Huan uses incense ash from Buddhist temples to create ethereal and transformative images. Here's a link to a previous exhibition of his work I've written about (in a lot more detail as those were the days "before child"!).

Before heading home, we picked up some delicate Japanese sweets ("wagashi") made from peaches and red beans from Minamoto Kitchoan on Piccadilly.

Back at home, we gave Little Planet her lunch of pasta with green pesto and some peas, and a dessert of fresh strawberries. She played a little and then we put her down for her nap. Nowadays, when we lay her down in her cot to sleep, she always waves and says "Bye bye". It is so sweet and it takes alot of willpower for us not to scoop her back out for another cuddle.

While she slept, M and I lunched on thick slabs of dark rye bread with cream cheese mixed with caraway seeds, plus some gherkins and also some radishes fresh from our own garden which were delightful dipped lightly with sea salt (photo above).

The rest of the afternoon was spent in the garden as the weather was gloriously sunny and hot. M prepared crab cakes for the evening meal while Little Planet played with her various plastic toys in the garden and rolled around on the lawn. She loves lying on her back, looking up at the sky and waving "Bye bye" at the aeroplanes and birds, so was doing this a lot. Her evening meal was green bean and beef stew followed by more fresh strawberries. Then it was her night time bath, bottle, book and bed routine.

For dinner, M and I ate his homemade crab cakes topped with homemade tartare sauce and accompanied by a salad of spinach, rocket, watercress and avocado (photo above). We ended the night watching a quirky and fun movie from Japan called Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers, which I had bought from JP Books in Piccadilly a few weeks back.

Today is Sunday and the weather has been cooler and more overcast. M took Little Planet to the park while I went with my mum to run some errands. M returned from the park and fed Little Planet dal and rice and put her to bed for a nap. Then my mum came back home with me. She bought with her containers of boal fish and green mango curry plus a mixed vegetable curry with shim, okra, sweet potato and lal sag. M and I will eat it for dinner tomorrow night after work. I love my mum's cooking!

We spent the rest of the day in the house... reading, playing, chatting. M made bread. We did laundry, cleaned the house a bit, did a little bit of ironing.

Now Little Planet is in bed. I'm blogging this post while M is cooking a recipe we saw on the BBC's Economy Gastronomy programme last week: Seared squid, chorizo and chickpea puree. He'll serve it with panfried smashed potatoes from Gourmet magazine. For dessert, we will have New York cheesecake which M made yesterday from the American Regional Cooking cookbook, topped with blueberry and maple sauce.

We've also started a list of things we want to do in NYC next month.

I am so sad the weekend is already over.

Random things

• My mum's doing well after her knee operation. She is surrounded by 90 year olds on her ward and, as a youngster barely into her sixties, she's a real hit with her fellow patients - as is my dad who is enjoying the hospital visits but is feeling rather lonely at home without his wife laughing with him and nagging him and generally keeping him company.
  


• I was in hospital myself today, for a routine checkup in Oxford. In the oncology department this afternoon, I was the youngest there by decades and everyone probably assumed I was a doctor. I felt quite sad walking through the corridors. I've been all clear for a few years now, but still the memories rock me.
  


• Better memories enlivened me as I strolled through Oxford on my way back to the rail station. I sipped smokey lapsang souchong at The Grand Café on the High Street, where I used to meet my friends; I tottered across the Radcliffe Camera's cobble-stoned square, where I used to take a shortcut on my bicycle en route to rowing or the gym; I walked through the inner courtyard of the Bodleian Library - "The Bod" as we called it - and looked up with a touch of longing at the windows glowing orange, remembering the days and nights I was inside with my head in a book taking copious notes on things I've now forgotten. I've lectured, studied and given papers at other universities, but still I rate Oxford the most highly. The intellectual rigour of the place is superb and I met some amazing people studying there, from all over the world. And quite simply, the place so resonates with history that it feels magical, even unearthly. If I have children, I will encourage them to go to Oxford, just as my own family encouraged me.
  


• I am deriving enormous amounts of pleasure cooking for M. The happiness spread across his face when he returns from another long day and smells all the aromas coming out of the kitchen is priceless. When his hours become more manageable again he will start taking his turn to cook during weeknights, which I'm really looking forward to as he cooks so well. But for now, it is just me. On Monday, I cooked a feta and courgette frittata and served it with salad; this lasted into Tuesday when I served it with steamed spinach and garlic. Tonight, I will cook a white cannellini, chorizo and tomato stew. That will most likely last into tomorrow too. If we can't go out to eat on Friday, then I think I will prepare a simple gnocchi, tomato and basil stew. I brought all these recipes and more back from my parents' house this weekend gone.
  


• This week, I managed to nip out to see Taryn Simon's An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar at The Photographers' Gallery during one lunch break. I would call it America's cabinet of curiosities. Simon's large-format lens casts an unsentimental eye across a range of things that are an integral part of everyday US life but remain inaccessible to most peoples' eyes: Playboy magazine in Braille; a retarded, in-bred white tiger in a cage in Arkansas; radioactive capsules glowing neon blue at a nuclear waste storage facility in Washington State (top photo); the device holding the dead bodies of the wife and sister of Robert Ettinger, a pioneer in the field of cryonics at the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan (photo below). The photographer is tenacious and often waits up to a year to gain permission to photograph in some highly secure zones, including C.I.A. sites and prison death rows. But it must be in the family blood, because her father worked for the State Department and photographed Soviet cities during the Cold War, restricted sites in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and other inaccessible places around the world.