Add to List - #69
Lido life, legs out, and a lot of eating out
Hello, thank you, and welcome. I love you for being here!
Add to List is my Sunday round-up. It’s the small things that brought me joy, evoked an emotional reaction, or became some short-lived stability in the past seven eight days. [This is a special post-bank holiday edition.]
Obsession
Swimming.
It’s happened. I like swimming.
It only took me 32 years, and the ‘free’ part of ‘freelancing’ but this granny breaststroke is OUT IN ACTION. I cannot be stopped in my medium lane. Me and my neon pink Hunza G have been making a Barbie-style splash at the early morning sessions at London’s lidos. I’m getting serious; I recently upgraded to goggles.
There’s something about swimming in a Lido. I don’t know what it is? Perhaps the sort of halfway house between local leisure centre and wild swimming. There’s oldies, goldies, serious cyclists who change into fish flops (they’re sliders that look like koi karp —gross), as well as families, regulars, and the nervous first timers who don’t understand how the locker system works. People come here to chat and check in with one another as much as keep fit.
It’s like going back to the 50s and jumping into a post modern reality; it’s got a real sense of gratitude and community but also you’re only one overheard conversation away from laughing out loud at the pretentiousness of our existence. And, it’s probably the only place in London I’d leave a handbag with all my bank cards unattended.
Confession
My own writing, again? (Yep that’s the third week in a row.)
This week my recent interview with musician James Arthur made it online. [You can read it here].
Often I peel back the creative layers of with artists and we talk about what influences their work but with Arthur’s album influenced by his recent ADHD diagnosis and his vulnerability in sharing his views on mental health, this felt like a more important one. It’s a conversation on the dangers of rising to fame quickly, and our fundamental need as humans to find belonging and support one another. Read it and open your hearts just as he opened up to himself and then me. My favourite soundbite:
“As humans, we are quite tribal; we want to belong to something. Feeling we are not alone in something or are part of a community can be helpful for us.”
Shook
Sing Sing.
A real-life prison drama off the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program in America. As a bit of cinematography, it’s beautiful; the shots working hard to keep us both within and without the prison’s isolating walls. The single shots of each individual humanise each person, depicting the turmoil on going in the in-mates minds. Yet the real marvel? Most of the actors are alumni of the Sing Sing correctional facility. They are sparkling, emotional, vulnerable, real.
It’s an inspirational watch: a love letter to the arts; a bleak interrogation of the big systems at play and the people most impacted by them; a testament for how collective storytelling can help break down barriers. A necessary watch.
Cook
Michelin meals, post-swim treats, martinis. Plus some pasta, of course.
That big shiny thing in the sky has a sort of scary ability to make me accidentally eat some olives and drink three glasses of wine and call it dinner.
Yet this week I’ve really not gone hungry; once again, I have dined like a queen. Apart from a mean Sainsbury’s salmon en croute meal deal and lashings of greens, my dining-out highlights have included:
A rosemary-laced gin sour at Dean Street Townhouse — Sophisticated, slightly sweet, a little bit tart; it tasted like everything you might want to exude if you were rocking up to a first date.
A fish fillet sandwich, slaw and salad at Market Cafe, Broadway Market — the adult equivalent to a fillet-o-fish from maccies after your childhood swim on the way home from the leisure centre. I caught up with a friend after our swim together in the London Fields Lido, we were fizzing with excitement about the sunshine and that refreshed, alive feeling after moving through the sparkling water. There was something about the juvenile taste of the breaded fish in the bun, with a serious adult conversation about adult things as we sipped our Hugo Spritz that felt like an intergenerational friendship of internal emotions.
A falafel salad box at The Parliament Hill Lido Cafe — Swimming makes me so hungry. What is it about moving your body through water that leaves you RAVENOUS for the rest of the day; as if all your tiny little cells have been drowned and need fed to come back to life. The falafel is the signature at the PH cafe; with roast potatoes, slaws, and salads; plus a mean chilli sauce, this is the final length you should push yourself towards.
Tagliatelle Maradona at Officina 00, Covent Garden— Team Pasta Grannies filmed their head chef Elia making his signature dish using anchovies for a TikTok live this week. Tagliatelle Maradona is his twist on the spaghetti named after the Italian football player. His version sees the anchovies, garlic, and chilli blended together for a smooth sauce, and he finishes with panko breadcrumbs and finely herbs for extra crunch, flavour, and colour. The team were lovely, and made sure we were well-fed and
wateredwined.A counter top dinner at Shwarma Bar, Exmouth Market — Berber & Q brought that grilled Middle Eastern flavour to Hackney years ago and this is their counter-top Farringdon location which is still deservedly going strong, bringing in crowds mid-week. For a balmy night of pubs overflowing, pint glasses stacked up on picnic benches; I was pleasantly surprised to bag a table with no wait list due to perfect timing. Order: the unctuously decadent lamb hummus and the smoked almond jewelled tzatziki.
shoop shoop! scoop scoop! A 2-star Michelin tasting at Da Terra — I am a little lost for words on this experience because it was SO good. I also also do need to find them separately for a commissioned review so I will hold off and save those for tomorrow. (My brain is a little mushy from all the booze and food this weekend.) This low-key Bethnal Green location was everything I adore in fine dining: multiple influences, experimental techniques, grounded in personal storytelling all served within a casual, cool back drop. I am still dreaming of a perfectly raw langoustine served with a kampot black pepper puree, a vanilla foam, finished off with crunchy potatoes. And, to me, anywhere that can keep me audibly moaning with joy at a dessert (even after 8 courses) is more than worthy of their two stars.
also obsessed with the bowl Masala Martini at Bar Termini — If there’s an art to a cocktail bar, this place should win the Oscar. It’s sexy, refined, but subtly nuanced. It feels like a time portal to that glamorous bar you ended up one night on holiday in Italy and got chatting to someone interesting. One sip of their high-strength drinks from a dangerously dainty rim and you’re not just feeling as if you’re on the continent, but you’re acting like it too.
Book
I finished Fundamentally this week and stopped to take a picture of this closing paragraph of one of the later chapters. Incredibly funny — yet, searching.
And now I’ve started God of the Woods by Liz Moore.
An enthralling mystery set in a beguiling form of wilderness, this novel is a pacy reminder of the art of a great literary thriller. Think: Crawdads meets Girl on the Train with a sprinkling of Alex Michaelides thrown in for good measure, finished off with a sprinkling of adolescent dystopia like that of Never Let Me Go. I’ve got a feeling this could go somewhere I don’t expect and leave me feeling something incredibly deep while doing so.
Look
LBD. Did someone say, summer?
The sun has been out and so have I. This week has seen me get my legs (and toes) out in public for the first time.
My feet will remain in these sandals until early September. Early Birks catch the worms and all that.
Can’t Stop Scanning
Four Seasons.
Colman Domingo is getting quite a lot of air time for me this Bank Holiday.
I’ve been adoring Four Seasons on Netflix which he both stars in and co-wrote for alongside Tina Fey. I adore her; she’s a genius.
It’s basically got all the wit of Fey with the comedy timing perfection of Steve Carell, plus the heart and soul of Colman Domingo. It’s got a The-Office-meets-Ephron energy. It’s as close as the US will ever get to making something sarcastic. So by that, I mean it’s absolutely brilliant.
Even better: the episodes are twenty minutes so you can still go for that extra drink in the sun after work and sneak in an episode before bed.
Forward Planning
Watching the rest of Four Seasons. And, some salad might be in order, I think?
That’s if I don’t finish all the episodes after sending this newsletter…
desperate and terrified to be the nervous first timer who doesn’t understand how the locker system works…
Great chat on this , loved it