A City of Dirty Pissing Bastards and Thieves

5:30am. Coach 16, Seat 11. Dosed up on mocha and the Kronos Quartet. After a couple of minutes of tunnel turning the window into an unflattering mirror, I am gifted an A13 dawn.

The blades of a giant industrial windmill carve the air, there is a concrete road in the sky funnelling unrelenting traffic and I am on a train that travels under the sea. For a moment, this feels like the sci-fi future I dreamed of in 1976. I am moving through a landscape where UNIT trucks are sodium hour ghosts and Luke Haines’ ESP kids lie in wait for the perfect psychic ambush.

We move under the Thames and reverie stops. Kent is resistant to imagination. Its acres of sky dead to any possibility beyond the Monday morning commute. A landscape so bland, the black of the chunnel is actually a relief.

The milk chocolate brown of ploughed fields and verdant pasture that greet me on the other side are constant to the first ring of the Belgian rustbelt. When the last warehouses, container mountains and failed chemical plants eventually splutter out, Brussels’ ugly suburban sprawl begins. A choking catalogue of grey, narrow houses lined up on streets like a grubby second-hand paperback collection.

This morning every stairway and corner of Gare du Midi reeks of urine. I survive one pickpocketing attempt before I even descend to the Metro. A second happens somewhere between Troon and Kunts-Wet. I catch the would-be thief breaking the zip of my bag. Instinctually I stamp down on his hand. There is an awful, sickening crunch of bone. He screams out and drops my passport. Curses, pushes out of the Metro carriage before I can do anything else. As I struggle to pick up my stuff, I miss my station. Later, when it begins to rain, I discover the only thing I lost in the scuffle was my beloved monkey hat.

It is entirely irrational, unreasonable and ridiculous, but when I am let down by Brussels, I take it personally. I feel like shouting: “Both my grandfathers helped liberate you from fascism. Is it beyond you to be something other than a city of dirty pissing bastards and thieves?” Of course, I do not actually shout at anyone, just adopt a sullen face and stomp along till I get to Treurenberg hill. I can forgive a lot when I hear the 49-bell carillon of Cathédrale St Michel & Gudule.

The Energetic Kiss of London

The last two days have been stolen by swapping Wars of Dissolution stories with hard-drinking Anglo-Serbs and bonding over a shared love of cooking with a charming American multi-millionaire who was proud to have voted Bush. While it is great fun to swap recipes and discover my Serbian swearing is still up to scratch, I need to be home. My heart needs to be resting canalside.

I might be a southerner who loves the north, but right now I want to be inside the energetic kiss of London. Sitting at the station, all I want is speed. I want the landscape to blur. Synchronicity seems to offer hope of that. At the exact moment I pull out of Leeds, the iPod offers Gone Dead Train. Randy Newman singing: ‘Burning down the rail…’

However, instead of a jump edit between Yorkshire and King's Cross, there is an hour of static landscape. Starring at the same rough curtain of trees as the fields catch slow motion rain. The area outside Newark Northgate offers little to eyes waiting on signalling failures to be sorted.

We eventually push through Grantham – the town that spawned a monster – and I begin to detect the faint gravitational pull of the capital. The 14:40 feels it as well. The attraction accelerates us and we turn non-stop. There is enough speed to make station signs unreadable and render Stevenage a dirty smear.

We do not slow till just outside of Highbury. My heart somersaults with childlike joy when we pass the Emirates Stadium. Even after the last few games, a glimpse of 30-feet of Arsenal iconography adorning the curved wall of dreams still guarantees a smile.

Graffiti blooms in dense abundance. Green disappears from the palette and building after building bears the tired scars of pollution. I am responding to the beauty of familiarity, the beauty of recognition. The end of every small exile is made sweet by the love of home.

The Everyday Made Sacred by Intent

A while back, Stephen Grasso commented to me that he appreciated reading the entries on my blog about cooking, how the tales of finding ingredients and preparing them were actually small love stories. Perceptive. Whether baking bread or pulling everything together for a risotto, my cooking is often one of those commonplace expressions of love that can easily be overlooked. A bit of the everyday made sacred by intent. Sometimes you want to tell those who command space in your heart and mind your love them with words, other times by plucking basil leaves from the pot in the kitchen and adding them to the tomato sauce you have been reducing down for the last hour.

Another higher function cooking serves for me is as creating a meditative space within my life. When I am being slammed hard by a storm of deadlines and worrying about trying to fit in making a speech at a literary convention, a child’s birthday party and a visit to Nanna all on the safe day, cooking grounds and centres me. The urgent tang that comes from sweating onions and garlic cuts through the roaring static of my stress. Building the flavours of a sauce becomes alchemy. Combining ingredients I transform base elements into a temporary panacea for my ills.

The moment in the day when I take down the wooden board, pour olive oil into the pan and begin chopping while Radio 4 throws out voices is always special. Cooking is not just a chore, not just a pleasure. For me it can be as essential as sleep for gathering up the cares of the day and making a feast out of life.