The Family Orbit

Devan and Dhilan meet the family

Heading home for Christmas is an annual ritual for many of us, but one that throws into sharp relief the shortcomings of the family imperfect. (Ok, so who can't identify with the imperfections of family? We'll discuss that another time.) 

This year's visit back to spend time with Mum and Dad involved the usual predictable grumble and groan, but we had more reason than usual to enjoy doing the Christmas rounds: my brother has just become a father to twin boys to the delight of everyone. We met them for the first time at Christmas.

At times, it's seemed as though I've been on a one-woman mission to knit, knit, knit in time for the happy arrival, but the excitement of the event has overtaken us all. Meeting up with my sister-in-law's sisters and brother a few days before the big day, we were all bubbling over with anticipation. Had they been habitual drinkers and superstitions not been so prevalent, I'd have proposed a toast there and then that the very next time we met, there'd be two more of us joining our families together.

When we met, on Boxing Day, it was the happiest of occasions. The little boys were two weeks old and doing well and presents for Christmas, births and birthdays were being opened and other family rituals were being observed. It turned out I wasn't the only knitter, at all. My mum has been making cardigans for when Devan and Dhilan are a few months old (and big enough for them) while the mother of proud Uncle Himi's girlfriend has made two beautiful cream jackets.

All, in time, will become pretty little heirlooms - for now, it's just wonderful to enjoy the safe arrival of two beautiful little boys and watch them grown into - and out of - many more cute little knits along the way.

The vintage vs virtue debate

We've been having a clear out. If you know how much I'm capable of hoarding, you'll understand why. We also acquired a statue and two boxes of heirlooms over the Xmas period and won't be able to pass them on for a while. And when we were at my Mum's over Xmas she insisted I sort through some cases of clothes I'm pretty sure I'd left with her precisely because the contents are out of season and she has far more storage space than me.

So, the clutter. Guiltily I threw out three perfectly good sets of bedding and several shirts. We also offed two other bags of old clothes and some random picture frames and bags. They were to be charity-shop bound but have sat around for months going nowhere. Instead, they've sat around looking messy and I've nowhere to hide them.

The trouble is, however tightly and neatly I pack away what I have, I don't have much room and I have too much old stuff. I'd throw out the old stuff but i'm conditioned not to. That jumper may be 16 years old but it was a good buy and there's nothing wrong with it. You see my problem?

As a would-be vintage fan I'd like to keep some of this stuff so have squirrelled away some favourite fabrics. I hope to surprise myself by reinventing some of these garments as handbags and other accessories - one more item on this year's 'will do' list.

But what of the rest? We often hear that clothes are made to be disposable these days, yet some of my 20-year-old tops and jumpers are still going strong. I'm currently wearing a top from the mid-80s I acquired from my Mum about a decade ago. Not everything stands the test of time as well, but many things come back into fashion eventually. Should there be a rule that anything above a certain age be thrown out and, if so, where on earth will the next generation of 'vintage' come from? 

All roads lead to Retro Row

Retro Row in Long Beach, south of LA, was not in the guide book. We found out about it thanks to a tip-off from the concierge at our hotel (Vanden's - a boutique hotel rightly recommended by TripAdvisor members). It's a collection of shops with a loose vintage vibe, an excellent coffee bar and neighbourhood hangout, Portfolio Coffee House and one of the most fearsome barber shop signs I've come across.


Just five or six blocks from downtown Long Beach, Retro Row has a totally different feel to the modern and sanitised centre and rather dull shopping mall. The first indication that you're about to encounter somewhere different is the splayed out front end of a 1950 Chevrolet marking the corner of a scruffy public park. It ought to look as though the car was abandone; instead it fittingly denotes your entry into a 1950s or earlier nostalgia trip.


Pass the laundromat, mechanics offering deals on smog checks and the clothes exchange and retirement apartments and you'll see a tiny cinema that's been kept neat with regular painting but hasn't been prettified to be filmset-ready. California has preserved many of its striking art deco cinemas - this one feels as though it is simply still in the Fifties. 


Our favourite shop was a kids' gift store with a goth twist - a skull cake had pride of place in the window while a CD of death metal lullabies caught our eye. We couldn't resist buying one as a gift for our friends Neil and Ruth's baby. 

The modest shop signage and a lack of chain stores add to the period appeal of Retro Row. Unfortunately, we were there earlier in the day than the leisurely 11am or noon opening times for some of the stores. This meant we didn't get to go in and nose around the skate shop, so I wasn't able to fulfill my rollerchick fantasy and pick up pink legwarmers, skates and a twirly skirt in which to glide langorously along Venice Beach. (I'll plan my next Retro Row visit accordingly; weekends are clearly the main trading days here.)


We did hang out at Portfolio Coffee House though - a large corner establishment towards the far end of the four-block strip where students, business-y types and casual visitors like ourselves congregated. Its vast windows make it ideal for people-watching and we soon found ourselves relaxing with its chilled-out vibe. 


And lest you forget that California is about more than bikers, rollerskating chicks, surfer dudes and conspicuous consumption, there are several stores devoted to hippie fashion. Entering these is like walking on to the set of Tales Of The City. In fact, Retro Row in general reminded me of San Francisco. In one vintage store, we were greeted by an impossibly handsome, beautifully tanned male shop assistant with a tight bum and wide flares. The fashion itself was more than thrift shop chic, too - apparently set dressers from Hollywood regularly make the 30 minute ride down the highway to source vintage clothes from here. It's certainly well worth the diversion. 

The best apps cop-out

I've just completed a marathon writing and editing job in the form of a feature on the best apps for smartphones, laptops, PCs and web. 

Whereas an app once might have been a sticky note in the form of a Post-It attached to your screen or a digital version of the same concept; these days that same idea will be finessed into a far more personal edition. It might record changes to your golfing average, a dynamically updated team calendar complete with pop-up meeting reminders; or a list of things that need doing shared out between you and your significant other. 

The concept of 'best' apps is tricky. You're only likely to recommend what's personally useful to you or where you can see a direct usefulness or benefit and a there are many thousands apps to choose from. But not everyone has a smartphone - and we certainly don't all have the same one, which makes for plenty of pub debate about which one is the best. I definitely noted at several points that the apps I was writing about said as much about me as anything. I wanted to include the KnitMinder app, for example. 

Many apps are ported across from success iterations on the web or from the original 'app' idea of add-ons for a largely complete computing setup. Others have come about because there's a new hardware platform to which a specific type of app lends itself - the iPad and tablet PCs and various smartphones. For example, a dictation app for a highly portable device such as an iPhone makes much more sense than a similar one for writing a report while sat in a busy shared office. 

In fact, my big conclusion was that the best person qualified to choose the best apps is none other than you. Which ones make your day? 

Gluten-free lemon shortbread

As well as trying to tempt various vegetables to grow, I've been trying out a few bread recipes. The bread maker was consistently turning out unpalatable lumps and is looking forlorn, but mixing and kneading breads by hand seems to work.


I've made three - all different - and each has turned out great despite my slapdash adherence to the instructions.


Unfortunately, I've not yet managed a gluten-free loaf - I bought regular flour rather than bread flour and my online research reveals gluten-free breads involve more than mixing flour, yeast, water and oil.


Instead I used some of the Letheringsett Watermill Gluten-free Flour I got from the farm shop at Norfolk Lavender to good effect in lemon shortbread. I got the recipe from the Doves Farm website, which offers lots of advice on baking organic, gluten-free and for particular dietary requirements.


Doves Farm Lemon Shortbread involves a lemon (rind and juice), 8oz gluten-free flour, 6oz butter and 4oz caster sugar. 


Beat the butter as sugar together first before adding the lemon and the flour and mixing well. Push into a greased baking tray and cook for 20 to 25 minutes at around 180. Mine took nearer half an hour but came out well and were light and moist. 

Knit Minder for iPhone app review

Like most people, I expect, my joy at creating my first scarves and hat quickly turned to dismay when I stepped things up and tried to knit more complex garments. I battled through to make a girl's jacket, but have temporarily abandoned two cardigans for myself. Taking on complex challenges can be very disheartening. 

With some quick knits for babies required, I've gone back to basics - and it's all to the good. Just a few simple knits here and there - I’ve just made this scarf for Mark on a start-knitting-and-see basis - and my confidence and stitch accuracy have improved noticeably. But I can’t take much credit for what are, so far, very simple knits.

Mostly, I’ve been depending on a great little iPhone app called Knit Minder. It’s a step up from the basic StitchMinder I tried before. You can log patterns, pins and yarns, colours, dye lot and other information from the band and keep a log of project progress. Far easier than keeping the yarn band to hand for reference. 


Helpfully, you can replicate elements of a pattern you've entered before and select any such pattern, yarn and needle info across projects. Listings simply pop up when you're on the relevant tab. Colour swatches for yarns are also shown and you can take or import a photo of your project or the yarn used. Multiple counters are supported - keeping track of how many rows I've knitted ranks as one of the most useful aspects for me and saves me jotting things down on easily lost scraps of paper. This feature is also supported in StitchMinder and other knitting apps.  

Given my wont to go off tack and create something different from what the pattern is guiding me to, such a prompt to stay on course is ideal. 

Mobile music downloads - 7digital app review

iTunes may be the stand-out music purchase and download service, but there are several other music and streaming options out there that are worthy of consideration. Not everyone likes to be tied in to the iPod/iTunes alliance and there are plenty of non-iPhone users keen to enjoy digital music on the go.


Perhaps the best known examples in the UK are AmazonMP3 and MSN Music, but coming up fast on the outside track is 7digital.

The service exists in its own right, tempting users in with its offer of free tracks, but also providing the backbone to the hmvdigital download store, for example. It has also recently partnered with PURE and music-recognition service Shazam to offer ‘hear it, tag it, buy it’ purchasing of songs you hear online.

I recently tried out the 7digital app on a BlackBerry Curve 3G smartphone and quickly realised the appeal of the DRM-free music download service. For starters, 7digital has one of the broadest music catalogues around. It also links in with Last.fm.


You can purchase individual tracks or complete albums and, as long as there’s an active web connection, the tracks you choose are available almost instantly. You get either choose to download purchased music as soon as you’ve bought it or you can wait until you’re in a Wi-Fi area so you can download over the air without worrying about how much of your monthly 3G data allowance you’re using up.

Other useful features are the 30-second previews and the Similar to this prompt. Some weird associations come up as a result, but one of the joys of the web being filled with sound is the myriad ways you come across new music. The 7digital app also acts as a library of your songs, automatically offering up those you like best and playing them all over again. You get Napster or Spotify-like artist biographies and featured albums too.


Not everything is as smooth as it should be, but it definitely adds a useful new dimension to the BlackBerry entertainment line-up. For the full review follow the link to pcadvisor.co.uk. 

Baby knitting boom

It is proving a bumper year for babies among friends and family. Some are having their first; some a second and my brother and sister-in-law surprising us all by rounding off the year with twins. It’s going to be a hectic Christmas. 

What a great excuse to take up needle and pins, though. 

Armed with Debbie Bliss’ reassuring straightforward Baby Knits For Beginners, I’ve so far tackled some very cute but rather angular-looking baby boots. Cunningly, the pattern has been designed to allow duffers such as me to create a volumetric shape out of a single knitted piece and with just a single pair of needles. Non-knitters: you might think asking for a simple pair of socks is a reasonable request of a knitting newbie - foot-shaped garments are anything but. 

Having made one cute pair, I think I’ll make another but see whether I can find a way to round off the stubby toes a little more. I like the idea of planning out the pattern on graph paper though. It appeals to the technical drawing part of my brain. 

Lady Gaga and the garment of meat

I’ve not really taken the pulse of the internet to gauge how badly the latest Lady Gaga outrage has gone down, which no doubt means I’m saying exactly the same thing as so-and-so-whose-opinion-must-be-noted pointed out days ago. 

Her decision to adorn herself in a garment of many meat cuts is undoubtedly distasteful - and probably didn’t smell that great either. It certainly resulted in plenty of column inches decrying the dead animals whose carcasses were used to create her unique attire. It’s possible there was also an important point being made - and not simply that Gaga will go to almost any lengths to remain fresh and controversial.

Meat and its byproducts are used in many forms every day. Fur generates an awful lot of headlines, but leather is the material of choice for shoes and almost every accessory going. Wearing leather doesn’t elicit the same outrage that fur does, yet it’s still sourced from an innocent animal that was probably bred for the purpose and didn’t have a very good life. 

I’m not saying Lady Gaga is right to wear a bikini made of stitched together pieces of meat, but there are plenty of us out there - including vegetarians like me - who find ourselves wearing the offcuts of the meat production industry because it’s available and we’re made to consider it desirable. Now that's what I find distasteful. 

Moosewood North South Chili

The vegetable plot has had a lot to answer for this year. We've just clocked up our first anniversary of owning our garden flat and it's fair to say the garden has eaten up around 50 percent of my weekend leisure hours for the past six months. 

As well as investing a lot of time in our piece of outdoors, it's also cost a fair bit of course. Compost, pots, seeds and plant plugs soon stack up. The garden has also repaid the time and energy - I wouldn't have bothered otherwise. Instead, it's been a real pleasure. 

Inevitably, it's the items I spent least on and that were most experimental that have come up trumps. 

An itsy-bitsy £1 plug of lemon thyme has spawned two bushes I'm about to chop back to overwinter (fingers crossed they make it to the other side of spring) and has kept us in pungent herbs for more than a season. I'll be drying out what I can and dicing some up for tonight's asparagus quiche. Not my own asparagus - I'm still a beginner at this kitchen gardening lark.

But the real winner of summer 2010 has to be the jalapeno pepper plant that promised nothing for four months - another £1 Easter time plug purchase. Three extremely hot green chillies powered the North South Chilli dish I made from an excellent Moosewood recipe last weekend. Another 25 or more chillies look likely to be ready to harvest in the coming weeks. Time to get inventive in the kitchen! 

My take on the Moosewood recipe involved French beans, jalapeno peppers from the garden and sweet potato rather than squash, but is otherwise pretty similar. Here's the basics

Saute two small onions in two tablespoons of olive oil until they become translucent. Add as many garlic cloves as you fancy (Moosewood suggested five), plus three jalapeno peppers, two diced green or yellow bell peppers and a diced large sweet potato. Other fresh vegetables such as green beans and parsnip also work well and should be added at this stage.

Add 200ml of water and season well - cumin, coriander and other spices can be added to taste - and allow it all to cook down.

After about 10 minutes, turn down the heat, pour in a can of rinsed kidney beans and a can of chopped tomatoes. Simmer with lid on for 10 minutes or so and add any final seasoning or garnish. Top with grated cheese if you wish.

Serve with long grain rice and a splash of sour cream. It also goes well with a thick slice or two of homemade bread slathered with butter.

Nigella's Chocolate Honey cake

There don't seem to be that many recipes for chocolate cake that have chocolate at their heart. Very often, cocoa is called for instead, sometimes along with instant coffee granules. 

Armed with a cupboard full of tasty ingredients, I was determined to unearth and make a proper chocolate cake. 

I make a point of buying honey whenever I can for its healthy sweetening properties and because it's treat in sadly rarer supply. This Nigella Chocolate Honey Cake was therefore spot on and has a lovely gooey finish. This makes it very hard to produce a clean-looking result, but looks aside, it's one of the most successful cakes I've made. (Bear in mind I'm no baker.)

I substituted the light demerara proportions for a combination of light and dark demerera, caster sugar and muscovado. I'm not sure it made much odds. The one omission was the marzipan bees in the original recipe. 

Once more, with feline

A cat has arrived. Things will have to change around here. In fact, they already have. 


Three nights in and our four-ish month-old tortoiseshell has well and truly got the measure of us. 


Mark is a changed man. He walked home from the other side of Greenwich yesterday afternoon. A perilous journey across a beautiful park and the open expanse of Blackheath. Dog central, in other words. My husband is an obsessive dog lover and dog worrier in the way that only a non-dog owner can be. 


I made a knowing comment about how he'd be hours chasing dogs around the park. "Not when I've a kitten at home to play with", he came back. 

Veggie Diner: can you eat out and enjoy it?

Earlier this week I posted a heartfelt moan about restaurants that pay lip service to catering for vegetarian customers. How many times have you turned up and found the veggie options run to just one starter and one main course? I've been vegetarian for more than 20 years and am amazed at how poorly we're still treated in many restaurants and cafes. 


Excellent websites such as veggieheaven.com are superb for championing vegetarian and vegan restaurants. But we shouldn't have to eat at a vegetarian or Indian restaurant in order to get a warm welcome and a choice over what we eat. Introducing friends to favourite vegetarian restaurants is great, but well-meaning comments such as "I didn't even think about the fact that it had no meat in it" aren't always received in the spirit in which they are spoken. 


It also gets tiresome as a vegetarian to be the one negating a visit to a restaurant based on the lack of anything palatable on the menu. Dozens of times over the years I've felt the weight of expectation from my dining companion as we've stood perusing the menu outside a restaurant they want to go into. "Is there anything there for you?", comes the hopeful query. 


Sunday lunch is a particularly awkward meal if there's a veggie in the group. Often, there's no vegetarian option on the menu at all - or "I'll do you a plate of veg, love". 


Sunday lunch is the most sociable meal of the week - one that's looked forward to as a treat and a relaxing way to spend time with family and friends. Yet many times we've driven round the country restaurants and pubs near my parents' home on the Welsh border only to end up disappointed that there's nowhere that can accommodate two vegetarians. 


With around 20 percent of the population vegetarian as a lifestyle choice, for health reasons or religious ones, plus many more keen to eat veggie as a change from the norm, this eating out lottery surely makes poor business sense. 


Lately, I've noticed more vegetarian guests getting a mention - and their dining experience commented upon - in restaurant reviews. It's about time and is certainly a welcome development. 


In the meantime, I'll be posting reviews and recommendations of veggie-friendly establishments. I'm starting with Wagamama - an obvious choice for those that have ever been there; an unqualified recommendation for anyone who has yet to discover the chain. 


I'd love to know where you like to eat, too, please, whether that's a vegetarian or vegan haunt or one that is refreshingly veggie-friendly. 

Augmented reality trip

Augmented reality is the sort of thing that sounds as though it occurs after a few too many whiskies or several puffs on a deliciously mellowing joint. Actually, it's more like everyday, but better, more colourful - and confusing. 


Until last month my experience of augmented reality in the gadget-function sense was limited to holding a cleverer-than-average mobile phone a few inches in front of me and remarking on the way the mean streets of King's Cross had been magically mapped out and the thronging traffic magically relegated to the background. 


See - like reality but better. A bit like the human-but-not-quite-all qualities of the characters in a certain TV series called Heroes, in fact. 


Not uncoincidentally, Heroes creator Tim Kring has been in London this summer as part of a project known as the Conspiracy For Good. Being a do-gooder know-it-all, when Nokia got in touch to explain the concept, I was intrigued by the phrase, though how it all worked initially escaped me. 


Part game, part charity fundraiser and awareness-raising project, Conspiracy For Good blends storyline with secret forums and codes and plausible-sounding privacy-busting plans to use the capital's extensive CCTV network to track and record citizen's every movements. It uses technology - including the augmented reality feature on the Nokia X6 mobile phone - to help it kick against the system. 


Managed by the fictional Blackwell Briggs security company, the surveillance society rings alarm bells with Conspiracy For Good Unmembers, who set out to do their best to disrupt the Big Brother-style monitoring. 


Word of the Conspiracy For Good and its forerunner group of Unmember activists has spread organically across the web and through a series of secret websites unlocked by codes hidden in other sites. 


July and August has seen the action move from web to mobile web as gamers and CFGers joined together in four London-based live action events. We took part in the first in which singer Nadirah X who, in the guise of a conspirator, was bundled across town with the assistance of CFGers who followed in her path to a temporary safe house thanks to clues in the form of video messages delivered to suitably sophisticated mobile phones - the aforementioned Nokia X6. 

The clues themselves were embedded in buildings and signs scattered across a two-mile stretch of London, with delivery triggered by pointing a specially set up handset at a image described in the previous clue. Object recognition rather than face-recognition drove things, in other words. 

Augmented reality in action: a specially developed version of the Nokia Point & Find app allowed video messages to be embedded in secret locations around London

Though I was sceptical about how much 'good' would come from the Conspiracy For Good, Nokia says several charities have benefitted significantly. Beneficiaries include five libraries in Zambia that are set to receive 100,000 books from the Pearson Foundation and the Room To Read project, donations of new toys to give as Christmas gifts to be distributed by charity Kids' Company and volunteers helping clean up the Thames riverside. 


For more details and to join the game or to become an Unmember, see www.conspiracyforgood.com. 

London Brand and Packaging Museum

This summer we've got to enjoy London at its best. The sun has been shining almost every day and we've been able to get out and about making the most of it. 

Some of the best discoveries have been unplanned. We took our visiting teenage niece to Portobello Market but found it too crowded and hectic. 

Having stopped off at the Hummingbird Bakery for delicious cupcakes, Google Maps tipped us off about the London Brand and Packaging Museum around the corner. 

At £5.80 each for an adult to get in, and £2 for up-to-16s, it's far less expensive than visiting a special exhibition at one of the big museums and far more accessible. Though youngsters won't recognise many of the names emblazoned on the various tins and presentation packages, some brand names have endured. Frosties, Star Wars, Superman and other space-age favourites are all well-represented. 

Colman's, Pears, Cadbury, Heinz and Guinness are some of the best-known brands on show, but we also get to see the many guises and monikers for various soda crystals and soap powders. The tour starts with the now fashionable again vogue for making do, growing your own and self-sufficiency that the Second World War and its aftermath necessitated. Even the Suffragettes were used as a merchandising opportunity.

Suffragette playing cards

Commentary about the various brands on show is spartan, but there's an interesting exhibit showing how tin cans are made - still a staple of the packaging industry. It's also interesting to see how marketing materials have evolved, from simple two or three-colour designs to the more sophisticated photo imposition and graphics of today. 

Once you've had your fill and need a break from the marketing onslaught that several rooms full of branding include, there's a small cafe where you can get a mug of tea and settle down in front of the retro telly and watching classic ads from the 70s and 80s. A pretty good end finish to a worthwhile trip down memory lane. 

The Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising is at 2 Colville Mews, Lonsdale Road - just next door to Temperley's mecca of Britpop cool. 
It's open Tuesdays to Saturdays 10am to 6pm and Sundays 11am to 5pm.  

Beatlemania resulted in plenty of spin-off merchandising

Wild mushroom risotto

Our second wedding anniversary is nearly here. A memorable evening is a must, but being wedding season it's not that easy to find a rustic country hotel for a single night, let alone a guaranteed-to-be-quiet night. Our wedding guests were every bit as badly-behaved as British tradition demands. This year's brides and grooms will no doubt find their guests conform to type, too. 


Having shortlisted a few possible hotels, we hit on The Vines - a charming looking place in The Cotswolds with a restaurant I'd read was good. Room and dinner package booked, I decided to check the menu. Sure enough, there it was: wild mushroom risotto - the sole, unashamed vegetarian option. You're not exactly salivating, are you? 


As this blog grows it will no doubt end up with many more references to wild mushroom risotto. It's the token vegetarian option I've come to dread. Not only is it dreary, often adorned with nothing more than a leaf of rocket salad; it's often badly cooked, oversalted and poorly presented. At its best I've had it with balsamic vinegar and generous shavings of padano cheese. 


I'm not alone in my dislike of mushroom risotto. Uninspired and unimaginative, finding them on a menu is usually a giveaway that you're in a lazy kitchen and one where vegetarians are grudgingly catered for. Wild mushrooms don't make it better; they're just there to justify the price tag slapped on a plate of mushrooms and rice. 


There are so many other attractive, tasty, colourful vegetarian dishes you could serve. Why choose something grey? 


Many vegetarians dislike mushrooms of all varieties. The texture and taste is often used as a substitute for meat - and few vegetarians want their food to remind them of this. Vegetarian food isn't about putting something on the plate in place of a fat, juicy steak or chicken thigh. 


Texture and taste are not the only issues. I get a very weird reaction to eating mushrooms. The fancy varieties almost always get me. It's not quite hallucinogenic and not quite upset tum, but there's a definite aftertaste and unpleasantness that lasts sometimes for days. And the last thing you want from an expensive dinner is a nasty taste in your mouth - especially if you know it's coming even before you get the bill. 

London Bike Scheme merry-go-round

Like many people, we've been intrigued by the installation of bike stands to house the new London Bike Hire Scheme bikes close to our offices. Excitement rose as it became clear that were to be lots and lots of bike hire points, making the idea of grabbing a bike and freewheeling off into the sunset for a few precious minutes become a practical travel option as well as a fanciful notion.


Armed with a year's membership of £45, an electronic key for which a £3 deposit had been paid, and an active account, we looked forward to Friday 30th July as the date on which an interesting lunchtime cycling interlude could take place. With  all the above in place we could be among the first Londoners to get to enjoy a 'free' half hour of cycling. To encourage the 'free movement' of hire bikes, the first 30 minutes hire won't cost you anything but it's £1 for every hour thereafter.


Unfortunately, we ended up with a 'free' half hour or more of entertaining merry-go-round as we inserted our electronic key in first one then almost every bike's electronic lock at Cartwright Gardens in Bloomsbury. Frustrated by consistently getting the amber processing signal followed by a fixed red light, we consulted the helpful map on the electronic information post and found there was another cycle hire stand two streets away. Here, all but a handful of bikes were absent (unlike our first stop where only one had been hired and a would-be hire bike returnee tried in vain to dock his steed). Someone was clearly finding it easy enough to hire a bike. Why not us?


Having tried our key without success in more bike stands we turned in frustration to the telephone helpline. They confirmed our suspicions - a dodgy key was spoiling our fun. A reset was in order - something they were good enough to call back and inform us was in motion after the telephone system cut us off (sheer weight of frustrated wannabe cyclist calls or simple first-day overload). Amazingly, some minutes later we were able to enjoy our first bike ride.


The bike is hardly something we'll be using for a quick getaway. (We mused on how quickly the Boris Bike as getaway vehicle storyline would be written into EastEnders and whether it was worth having a flutter based on it being within the next fortnight.) But the ride is comfortable and reassuringly stable and overall we totally love the idea of a convenient bike to hand whenever you fancy taking to two pedals. Now to iron out the kinks. 

The Little Stranger no more

They say you should never meet your heroes. You'll only be disappointed. I've met the occasional ageing rock star. 'They' have a point. 


Literary heroes, I hope, will be different. Overwhelming and overly articulate, sure, but I'm more likely to be monosyllabic and tongue-tied than unimpressed. 


In the case of Sarah Waters, who is to take part in a Guardian book club debate at King's Place in London about her Gothic Victorian novel The Little Stranger, I'm more than willing to take a punt on being impressed. 


The Little Stranger is compelling reading. I couldn't put it down, but couldn't sleep for the images it put in my mind. It's a heck of a long time since a book affected me so profoundly simply for the melodramatic tone in which it was written. 


A year after reading the book I still find myself staring at crumbling old mansions and half expecting to find an anguished, overwrought face at the window. Inevitably, I also find myself wondering whether each venue would be a suitable location for the TV dramatisation of the book. Both Fingersmith and Tipping The Velvet got the BBC costume drama treatment. 


The Little Stranger would be an obvious Gothic thriller to serialise. It's got all the suspense of The Woman In Black and, unlike the theatre production we attended last year, the suspense won't be marred by the histrionics of a class of 14-year-old girls screaming in unison. 


Anyway, I've booked a place at the Guardian Book Club's Evening with Sarah Waters.
I recently came across the intriguing fact that the hotel used to film many of the Hammer Horror films and The Rocky Horror Show is still in business. It's not far from Oxford and I'm due a weekend away. I might just try and scare myself silly and book in for a night, Little Stranger in hand. 

Bees, please

Bees are in peril. It's a fact we can't ignore. Noticing fewer bees buzzing around the garden is one thing, but given that bees are the main way flowers are pollinated and fruit induced, it's also serious. 


About a year ago there was a TV documentary about what had happened to all the bees and why it matters that they are no longer so prevalent. It's a worldwide phenomenon - not just one limited to the UK. Everywhere except Australia, bees aren't just declining in large numbers; they're dying out. 


In the documentary, we saw hives of bees being transported across the breadth of the US in vast trucks. Pollination is big business, especially if you're in the fruit and veg business, as much of the fertile plains of California are. To successfully grow fruit and vegetables and, of course, grapes to make wine, your plants need pollinating. 


Theories about why bee populations are in steep decline vary. The Bumble Bee Conservation Trust is hoping to establish the scale of the problem by getting volunteers around the country to take a monthly look around and record how many bees there are. Over the years, a picture of the bee population will be created. 


I'm not sure how many such volunteers there are. I joined up this year thanks to a tweet requesting help. It's a useful cause, but of course it's a spectator role. It puts me in mind of the excellent William Boyd book Brazzaville Beach in which habitat changes and population shifts are monitored, but active involvement is frowned upon. 


What's important is that we try and halt the decline. We need to grow bee-friendly plants to encourage bees into our gardens and on to our crops as much as possible. Pretty flowers and fragrant bushes are ideal. Often, such plants also attract butterflies, so you get a visual treat into the bargain. 


You might have noticed Innocent Drinks offering a honey-based smoothie this summer with a free packet of bee-friendly seeds attached. Discarded plastic beakers and a handful of soil can be used as plant pots if you don't have any to hand. 


Seeds (unlike smoothies), are dirt cheap. £3 or so will buy you a box of 'butterfly and bee-friendly' seeds containing wild flowers and flowers that will attract them. Scatter some in a plastic trough and you're off. 

Bikes, bees and blogging

The summer has been a scorcher - a month after getting back from a blazing hot week in Greece I'm still pretty tanned. Considering I've often been asked in the past whether I'm Irish due to my fair skin, that's quite a change. 


Much of the past three months have been spent outdoors, cycling, exploring London, but mainly enjoying our garden. There's been an awful lot of pulling up weeds, watering hedges and tending to the vegetables I've had a stab at growing and generally being out and about. No wonder the book-based blog I started up this spring has had so few entries. (I may revive BooksInBed come the autumn and winter nights. Don't be surprised if I don't.) 


Sometimes there are just better things to do than sit in front of a computer crystalising your thoughts about a book into a few paragraphs. I'm sure the odd book recommendation will make its way on to this blog, but there are plenty of other people with well-established blogs and thousands of followers ploughing that particular furrow. 


As the title of this blog suggests, on Rosiewriteshere, you'll find an assortment of things that interest me. Food, travel, local life, gadgets, wildlife, gardening, stuff to make and admire are likely to appear. Today, for example, should be all about bees. 

First earlies

It's been a great British summer. One I've managed to fill with more than the usual amount of activity even if efforts to create a cottage garden and grow my own have been rather stilted. It's our first summer in our own home so it's been fascinating to watch plants we didn't plant spring up and note how those we did have fared. 


As much as anything, the exceptionally dry winter and spring have meant I've needed to spend big chunks of every weekend watering the hedges and lawn. I can't remember coming across mildew before and I've not yet defeated it. Time spent trailing around with a watering can have meant less time than I'd have liked tending to tomatoes and tidying up around the flower beds we inherited. 


Still, we pulled our first ever potatoes at the start of July and despite taking our summer break the very week the tomatoes, peppers and aubergine most needed us, they have just about forgiven my neglect. At least one tiny green tomato has made an appearance. Given a bit more feed, I'm hoping the emerging flowers on the pepper and aubergine may even develop into something fruity. 


Lesson learned though: plants don't just need good soil, the right amount of sun and water - they need shelter from the wind too.  I'll know for next time. 


There's still time to get some seeds in the ground before the end of the summer, so I'll be taking a look at the seedlings and plants that just haven't taken and replacing them with some hardier sorts that are more tolerant of my indifferent gardening skills. 


Suggestions of what to try are very welcome.