The Lush Housewife
It's a lush life in this London burb. How to marry part-time hedonism, full-time work, two kids, a husband and a cat - without getting sacked, divorced, or lynched by the PTA.
Things to do in Suffolk (when you're...)
(Written with the express purpose of wanting employ as an East Anglian food writer in some capacity...)
One of the very best things about Suffolk (besides wildlife and stunning nature stuff) is it’s crammed with top end Gastro pubs. The Sun Inn in Dedham – ok officially Essex, but only inches on the other side of the river that divides the two counties – great food, lovely staff, full of people who look like the product of bankers marrying supermodels, with both the good and bad results – so quite interesting for Darwinists too; The Ship at Levington - best food ever and ningly nooky beamy sort of place that belongs in Morse or Midsomer; The Crown at Bildeston - food perfect but prissy presentation, and last time cliental included arms dealers, prostitutes, aristocratic family with alkie son, and chavoire riche family with fat mother trying to pull off a Victoria Beckham cutaway lycra number.
With so much choice, on our first ever night out with mates from London, we decided to try something new and untested. A swanky place on Ipswich’s newly revamped waterfront, which used to be the kind of place you’d score heroin and dump bodies, but is now full of yachts and students and sparkly eateries and drinkeries. Like The Salthouse. Looked nice enough online, and quite reasonable. So very excited to go out in Suffolk with London friends, didn’t care where we went really...
Except a) it rained. No sorry. It pissed down. Always rains when A and I go out. Of course it doesn’t matter if you’re indoors anyway, but it’s not always a good sign when your night kicks off like the opening scene of a 1950s horror film.
b) Salthouse indeed a lovely warehouse building - with every aspect of its character erased and replaced with the attributes of an Istanbul night club. Swanky with a silent S. Everywhere you look there’s some kind of fussy surfacing – pebbles incongruously stuck to pillars, pastel coloured fringed marble effect around the shiny lift, sub Banksy art, a trolley with a few badly carved ducks stuck on. Sat around a HUGE Moroccan silver table – presumably its original purpose was to hold a hookah in its hollowed centre, but now held a large dish filled with fish stones and Moroccan candles. Had some drinks, laughed at horrible interior (mate said, really loudly, that if you removed the people – businessmen, 40-year-old women on hen night – it could be something ironic in Wallpaper. Maybe. Although you’d need a stuffed antler head and a pinball machine) Anyway, the restaurant was slightly more bricky and authentic. Our waitress was a WAG from Sunderland with Just Got Out Of Bed With My Ipswich Town Football Boyfriend hair in bunches and the attitude of someone who had been told too often that she had a great personality. ‘So are yous out for fun or just relaxing?’ she said. Which threw us to be fair. I mean, we wanted to relax AND have fun. But her idea of fun was probably far removed from ours, although how could you say: ‘Define fun,’ to someone who had been told she had a great personality... Anyway, we said: ‘ERrrrrr’ instead of anything and she seemed to take against us from that moment on. So here’s the food review bit. It was nice really, but in the same way that if your mate – who is a perfectly decent cook – had done you something from Jamie Oliver. K and I had squid (tiny bit rubbery, got stuck in my teeth), A had Scallops, our other mate had something calling itself Tempura but was more like beer battered fish-fingers. Mains – nice bit of seared cod on lentils (I’ve made it myself: Nigella, or maybe Nigel Slater...), steak overdone. Puddings – now here’s the shock - remarkable, excellent. Although to be fair we were all pissed by then and finding our useless waiters HILARIOUS. But, with several bottles of expensively marked up wine inside us, A’s sticky toffee was (here goes culinary lyrical waxing, with help of Thesaurus) an intricate lacing of caramel housing a lingering rumour of gingery sponge (heyyyy...), nice big dollop of ice cream on the side. K had Bailey’s Creme brulee which was so WAG, in a silly yummy, sexy handbag way. This is Food for Women With PMT.
WAG got cross because we had to ask her twice about getting water. The other waiter – also hired presumably for his looks – acted like he’d just Quantum Leaped into the wrong body and was too busy trying to get his head around THAT never mind whether one needed new wine glasses for new wine. As in life, had to go to the bar ourselves to get most things. So - overall, decor atrocious, staff unbelievably irritating and crap, but not unpleasant (so bad they were almost funny, like being served by your own teenage children), food – well, I could make it, but I can’t be bothered, can I - so therefore it’s as good as all conceptual art (although in my unlearned opinion, everything post-Duchamp is totally pointless and indulgent, which renders my analogy the same), puddings geniush (Sic).
5/10
Have I got the job?
Please be my friend
Adam came back from the school run on Monday saying: ‘I think I’ve made a friend.’
‘Aw, that’s lovely,’ I say. ‘What’s his name?’
‘I don’t know, but we bonded,’ he said, really happy.
‘I haven’t got any friends,’ I felt, suddenly feeling sorry for myself. There’s a woman I smile at in the playground who looks ok, but we haven’t actually spoken. I don’t know how to open the conversation. ‘Hello. Who are you? Will you be my new friend? Please, I’ll pay you.’ There was a lady I saw at a distance getting into a car in the village. ‘Look! She could be my new friend!’ It’s like spotting rare birds of prey, although they’re everywhere. Yeah, pheasant, kestrel, whatever. SOMEONE UNDER 50 WHOSE TROUSERS MEET THEIR ANKLES PULL OVER! ‘Hi, I’m Zoe. Do you want to come and play at my house?’
As it is, I do have a friend – sort of, although I don’t think he’d class me as such – my retired murder squad detective neighbour, Laurence. We have these kinds of conversations at his gate.
L: ‘We had a deer in our back garden yesterday.’ Me: ‘Aw. Was it red?’ L: ‘It was a Roe.’ Me: ‘Oh, cool.’ L: ‘Did you hear a gun go off in the field earlier?’ Me: ‘Yeah, actually.’ L: (shaking his head): ‘Isn’t hunting season supposed to be over?’ Me: ‘I don’t know. I’m from London.’ L: ‘I’m going to look into it.’ Me: ‘Are you going to book him, murder one?’ L: ‘I saw someone’s dog pull a pheasant hen from the ditch. Not a male pheasant but a hen! I’m sure hunting season ended ages ago.’ Me: ‘I didn’t even know there was such a thing as hunting season. When is it?’ L: ‘It’s supposed to end around now.’ Me: ‘So it’s a winter thing..?’
So anyway, last night, I bit the bullet and went to some local quiz night with some of the school mums. I removed my glasses (that way the fruit machines look almost festive) and tried not to scare them with my crazy London ways, so was quite sensible and ordered half a Guinness (it was Paddy’s night, and also apparently Under Age Drinking Night). One of the younger mums said I should have a double Pernod and Black in my Guinness, because it tasted lush. Ok, I thought. So at least I may not alienate the natives with my drinking habits. This might not be so bad after all.
Mary had rhinestone jeans and a crocheted T-shirt and big 70's style glasses and a perm. But she was nice and good fun. She told a story about being drunk and putting a bus stop sign in someone’s front garden. Sally looked older than she was because she dressed like a church type. She was casually racist. She said a black man was dancing around her in a pub, so she left. She said: ‘I thought I’m not having a black man doing that.’ Then Mary said: ‘Was it Barry White?’ Which was really worrying, but in fact she was using it to segue into an amusing (if baffling) Barry White anecdote. There were a couple of awkward silences, but then half the women got a bit drunk and a lot louder and told more and more outrageous stories, mainly involving drinking, sunstroke and flashers. Sally, the Church Casual Racist, then told a very long and quite disturbing anecdote about going to a gay bar in Ipswich with her 15-year-old daughter. Last orders were called at 10.30pm. Never in my life have I been grateful for that.
Driving back, the cab driver saw an owl. I didn’t see it. I’m quite annoyed that I haven’t yet seen an owl. Decided I don’t want friends, just nature.
......
On the way to school saw a lot of grey squirrels darting about, rabbits, pheasants strolling around together happily, lambs, daffodils. It’s spring, finally. Need to start doing some gardening. Everyone is gardening, especially the farmers. Tractors have been ploughing fields all week, surely a sign I should be forking my veggie patch. On the way back, we stroked the ponies in the field and gave them some grass. I’m going to look up hunting season on Google.... Am shocked – yup definitely over for Pheasants – Feb 1 – but Deer you can shoot right up until April 20, the stags, and March 30th the rest! I didn’t even know you could shoot deer!!! What if I see Bambie enacted out right in front of me and my children? I’d fall apart. The kids are already hardened. ‘Look, mum, another dead rabbit. What’s wrong mum?’
‘Nothing, I’ve just got something in my eye. Just – no one sing Bright Eyes, okay...!?’
......
Country style
Even though I live in a muddy field with no society save crows and passing men in vans to judge me sartorially, I still dress like I might just end up in a trendy little bar in Soho at the end of the day. It’s a habit, a basic London Lush survival mechanism, so deeply imbedded, that I may never lose, even though I was sure the country would cure me of shallow style concerns, even though my local (it’s two fields down the road, opposite the stables) is more like the bar in Shameless than the beamy rustic nook of my wild pastoral imaginings. I had naturally assumed that as soon as my feet had left the solid concrete of SE15, I’d be floating around like Kiera Knightly and Sienna Miller in that film about Dylan Thomas – wellies, little floral frocks, chunky knit cardigans – which is frankly on a par with Marie Antoinette dressing like little Bo Peep to play a peasant on her mock farm in Versailles. Having attempted this look, it turns out that if you’re over 35, you just look like a mad woman chasing burglars in your nightie. I have also tried to go au naturel and rustic, and avail myself of all the local pastries and ales without a care, but soon recognised the look on my visiting London chums – a look I had given many a friend who had jumped ship and moved to the sticks – a pitying: ‘Oh dear, you’ve gone all fat and frumpy. AND you don’t even know what’s on at The Tate.’ (Suffolk Culture being the next subject of blog rant).
There are two fashion options in Suffolk if one wants to blend in. One, the basic sensible walking boots and fleeces covered in dog hair. Two, gold jewellery, eyebrows plucked until only four hairs remain, tight jeans with studs and the SLAPPER printed on the back pocket – kind of low rent Versace. And that’s just the children.
All through this freezing winter, I went for inoffensive chunky jumpers (roomy, hides the cake abuse) and wellies (mud. Everywhere is mud, even in bed), then had a kind of melt down in Asda (as one does – if Camus were alive, aisle 12 in Asda is surely where he’d set the opening scene of L’Etranger II), panic bought Grazia and Vogue, made plans, drew up wish lists, then set off to the Big Smoke to acquire some outrageous Londonist fashion statements to sport proudly on the school run.
I’m not going to fit in. We’re not like them. We’re Londoners and prahd! I’m thinking open toe chunky ankle boots, cute little mac, big fuck off sunglasses (worn all the time, even indoors like Magenta Devine, clutch bag for iphone (with handy compass and torch app).
As it is, every boutique in London appears to have one recurring theme – Hunter Wellies. They’re bloody everywhere (except in the effing actual countryside)...
So...where were we?
So anyway, we moved to the countryside. Yup. That’s the reason for Lush Wife’s absence, not – as some have conjectured – due to enforced stay in Priory over The Christmas Period. We’ve moved to Suffolk (it’s the bit that sticks out over Kent). I’m in the middle of nowhere, one mile away from a village that doesn’t even have a shop, just a hairdressers and a farm that sells eggs. I’ve gone from the hub of Western Civilisation to living in a field. A field – as my lovely editor will tell you – without a telephone, an internet connection, or even basic decent reception for a mobile phone. It’s also been snowing for a month. Don’t ask me why I’ve done this – I can’t remember any more myself. At one point I thought I’d had a fatal accident on the A12 and was actually dead, and this snow white place full of old people was in fact the afterlife. Because where else could you not get mobile phone reception? Even before we left London people were acting as though we had died, weeping about our loss (“I’m only going two hours up the road,” I’d point out, while quite enjoying the feeling of being at my own proverbial funeral. Nice to know how popular one is). My mother bought us all Hunter boots for Christmas. Adam at first refused to wear them, assuming that only Wankers from London would wear absurdly expensive wellies, but – result! - Suffolk people don’t make fashion judgement calls. That’s a London thing. No, they just judge you on the fact you don’t go to church and haven’t yet joined the carpet bowls club and don’t know what a Sparrow Hawk looks like (I do now, ok?).
The Hill behind our house has been called Blood Hill for 400 years (no-one knows why – I’m assuming Wicker Man scenario, full of burning Londoner Tossers). We have renamed it Google Hill, because it’s the only place you can get reception. In two months, I haven’t met a single person like me. My new best friend is a retired policeman called Lawrence, who worked on the Ipswich serial killer case, and now has four acres of land to tame (that’s called a Garden here. Ours is a titchy 1 acre boggy meadow full of rabbit shit). He doesn’t know it yet, but my plan is that he and I will solve crimes together, discussing cases in beamy old pubs over pints of local Adnams ale. I will then turn this into a hit TV series a la Lovejoy (set in Suffolk) meets Midsomer Murders meets Jonathan Creek. Apart from that I’m writing four novels simultaneously, knitting, making log fires, while planning to grow vegetables (despite skill for transforming every healthy green plant to a dried twig in a pot), raise chickens (even though scared of chickens) and something else I’ve forgotten.
This half term, all our friends from London clearly had a séance because they arrived in droves – 20 of them – demanding to be fed locally killed produce and only be taken to rustic places always bathed in glorious sunshine, just like off the telly. I think we just about pulled it off...
The One with Freak Child Envy
I’ve always had a really competitive relationship with my best friend from school. I don’t know why this is. I don’t tend to have competitive relationships with anyone else.
She and my other best friend from school and I used to play The Professionals. Competitive Best Friend was Doyle (weirdly, she is also touchy, humourless – the only person I know who didn’t laugh in Life of Brian – and swears by strange faddy diets perpetrated by humourless, posh quacks in North London). Funny Best Friend was Bodie (strangely, now I think of it, she was sexy, cheeky and a bit of a lad). I was The Villain (strangely – well, let’s not go there. Not this week). Basically, they chased me around the school with their finger-guns. If they managed to catch up with me I would not speed up or pull a funky move and dive off a building, or skip onto a passing bus and flick the Vs through the back window. I would curl up in a ball and giggle (how I deal with danger to this day), and they’d get cross because they didn’t know what to do with a giggling ball of schoolgirl (unlike certain chaps have met since…).
Anyway, our friendship is now 30 years old, and the dynamic of it hasn’t changed a bit. Competitive Best Friend still compares herself to everyone else (seemingly unfavourably, but a viz extremely favourably (ie; So-and-so is really successful, but everyone hates her. She makes me feel like a failure.’ ‘But everyone hates her and likes you, so who cares?’). She is passive competitive, if there is such a term), Funny Best Friend tries to defuse everything with humour, and I get the most drunk (as they always point out), do or say something villainous then roll up into a ball and giggle.
I know tis terrible thing to say on paper, but really hoped CBF never have a child for the purely selfish reason that her child would be more beautiful and clever than everyone else’s, even if she gave birth to Captain Caveman.
‘Everyone calls her a freak child,’ she told me this week.
(I waited. Surely she’s not going to admit faulty offspring)
‘She’s a genius. She can count to 15 and she’s 20 months old. Oh I know they all develop at different rates, but all the other mothers are sick with jealousy and call her The Freak.’
‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ I say, not really sure what to say. ‘I have lots of friends with freakishly bright kids...’ Realise I’m just saying that to make her see she’s NOT THAT FUCKING SPECIAL, ALRIGHT, NOT EVERYTHING YOU DO IS BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE AND THAT INCLUDES PROCREATION. Because I’m the villain, I use Evil Subtext to undermine people.
‘How horrible, calling a toddler The Freak,’ says Bodie Friend, preparing to go up to North London and kick some Yummy Mummy ass.
Bodie’s response is of course fair and just (if a tad Old Testament) and just makes me feel worse. Why couldn’t I have been the wise old man, their boss, Gordon thingy, instead of sneaky tea leaf flicking the Vs from getaway bus?
Quickly divert conversation to Death. CBF insists she will die more horribly than all of us, and lists the ways, which just proves that her acupuncturist and whatever the latest Quack is (pressure healer I think) aren’t doing much good.
Bodie thinks she’ll be punished for having too much sex. Then both offer to help me out with bottle of whisky and hammer if I can’t afford a Swiss Clinic when the time comes. Bless them.
Go home whistling the theme tune from Friends….
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