I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts

Clean, cool, subtly flavoured, thirst quenching, full of electrolytes and all other manner of good things.

There is nothing quite as refreshing as a drinking coconut, cold as cold could be, a straw size hole chunked out of the tender coconut by dexterous use of an ancient looking machete.

If you’re really lucky, you get a nice gel-like fleshy lining to your coconut, a very fine layer can be played around with with your straw, pushing through some tracks of coconut into the straw’s end and then sucking it out from that end. It’s the colour of rice vermicelli, an almost translucent white. It’s the colour of a teeth whitening advert. There won’t be a huge amount, but it’ll keep you amused for about five minutes or so.

But the real privilege comes with a thick coconut flesh lining, the same translucent white, the same taste, just thicker, almost lunch in its own right. You sort of know when it’s a thick lining. Back it goes to the man with the machete (generally, it’s a man here, but I have seen a machete wielding coconut slayer in Kerala, and nobody would have messed with her), who performs a karate chop with said machete to split the coconut into two, then back it comes to you with a spoon to scrape out the coconut flesh. The Keralan coconut lady provided an old bit of dry coconut shell to use as the scraper, like an Indian version of the French using a mussel shell as the spoon for the rest of the mussels in the bowl.

I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts.

I should coco.

Do the Hokey Cokey, that’s what it’s all about.

Archway revisited, aka a trip down Memory Lane

A sunny afternoon, mid-May, and a meet up with some friends for an afternoon drink in a pub off Holloway Road. I remember the days when most pubs off, and on, the Holloway Road were fairly no go pubs. But times change and areas change.

Archway tube station seems very much the same, but there’s a huge change outside the station. Where has the Archway roundabout gone? A traffic flashpoint. I have nostalgic memories of city pollution and traffic jams there, a pub in the centre of the roundabout: now, who would want to go to a pub in the middle of a traffic roundabout? But the roundabout has gone and it all looks a bit fancy now. The old DSS block has become a rather swanky block of flats. A corner pub opposite is now a Starbucks. This is not the Archway I know.

My parents lived in Highgate so the Archway roundabout was an almost daily part of my life. I used to get on the tube at Archway as it was cheaper than getting on at Highgate. I despised Archway as it was grotty. I hated the roundabout and I hated having to use the underpass under the roundabout.

But it looked rather magnificent, poshed up and bathed in early summer weekend sunshine. I felt a pang for days past, the days of being in my late teens and twenties. A very different time. These days can never be recreated, but I like to think they were formative and that I still gain by them.

I walked down Holloway Road, well stomped in previous years, and by my mum and dad too. The top of Holloway Road is still a bit hit and miss – small cafes and takeaways, Poundland, Tesco Metro, Sainsbury Local, tarted up pubs that look a bit more welcoming than they did all those years ago. The pie and mash shop, Manzies, is long gone – I never went in there, but used to go past on the bus and remember the woman who worked there, dyed bold bright red hair, almost the image of Rita Webb.

The Church, St John’s, looked magnificent, even to this atheist. An open blue sky, emerald green trees and the Church tower. A rural aspect of the Holloway Road, probably unappreciated by those who walk by daily. I used to see the Church tower from the bedroom window of my flat, and could hear the clock chiming. So, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to walk along the road where I lived in about 1986 or 1987, then a brand new one bedroom flat. The road itself had been a bit grotty, fairly run down small Victorian houses. It was not a posh road then, and I was quite pleased to see that it is still definitely not a posh road now, even though the houses there would probably sell for much more than my house in another part of London.

Nostalgia over, and it was time to meet up with the friends at a very nice pub, lots of tables outside to allow us to combine gin with sunshine, then to head to another pub for a late Sunday lunch.

The Archway experience ends with prosecco and ice cream in a friend’s garden, just by the side of St John’s Church. I hear the clock chime. Thirty years vanish and, like the ice cream, melt away.

Christmas pudding jam

This evening’s invention was Christmas pudding jam. Well, it’s that time of year, the season to be jolly etc.

As usual, there was no recipe, no weighing of ingredients, just some guesswork and instinct. 

Chopped up plums cooked gently with a bit of water until they went mushy.

Then, some granulated sugar stirred in, a large handful of mixed dried fruit thrown in for good measure.

 Boil. Furiously. It will begin to go jammy. Remove from the heat and add a few spoonfuls of rum.

Pour into scrupulously clean and dry jars. seal the lids tightly. 

Clean away the splatters from the hob and surroundings, lick the spoon – yummy – and load up the dishwasher..Consider labels, maybe a Christmassy bow too. 

Resist the urge to drink the rum, and return it to the larder.