from Bermond­sey to the BBC

Well, once again our friend­ship with the peren­ni­ally ele­gant and yet cutting-edge Vin­cent has taken us to unknown lands. Wednes­day after­noon saw us wend­ing our way across the river to his new flat, in a neigh­bor­hood that sort of bor­ders Bor­ough Mar­ket, called Lon­don Bridge. Both John and I imme­di­ately felt that we were back in Tribeca, with the fac­tory and ware­house archi­tec­ture, but with the wind­ing streets of the Wall Street area. It feels very up and com­ing down there, which is appeal­ing, and for sure Vin­cent has scored an amaz­ing loft, but it feels like… New York. I still think we want to hold out for an Eng­lish expe­ri­ence. But it was great fun to tour his new, empty home, wait­ing for the con­tainer of belong­ings to arrive later in the day. In fact, our lunch was unhap­pily punc­tu­ated for Vin­cent by many tele­phone calls from the inept movers, who at first seemed to think it would be accept­able just to let him know that they wouldn’t actu­ally be able to bring all his things to his new house, just some. “Well, all I can say is that the house doesn’t belong to me any­more, and new peo­ple are mov­ing in who won’t want my things, and I do want my things, so I am going to rely on your pro­fes­sion­al­ism to solve this prob­lem, and I will look for­ward to another call soon telling me how you have man­aged just that,” Vin­cent said with alarm­ing patience.

How­ever, it was not that sim­ple, and we had the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing his famous sang-froid slip finally, with “You are about to make me very unhappy! Just fill the *&^% truck and get it to my new place!” Poor guy, noth­ing more stress­ful than mov­ing. But in the midst of it we had a deli­cious lunch at a restau­rant right in his new neigh­bor­hood, called Vil­lage East. Appar­ently the new brain­child of the peo­ple behind another Bermond­sey restau­rant called The Gar­ri­son. Very warm and invit­ing, in a sort of min­i­mal­ist New Yorky way, with what I would call very good, fresh food, but I think I could have ordered bet­ter. My starter was an indi­vid­ual pot of par­fait of foie gras, under a sin­ful layer of pure fat, accom­pa­nied by toasted sliv­ers of a sour­dough bread stud­ded with sul­tanas. Per­fect, and I did not eat the pear and chut­ney that came with it, although it was tasty, because noth­ing must sully the per­fec­tion of foie gras, in my opin­ion. My main course was another starter, a deep-fried soft-shell crab with a per­fectly mun­dane dip­ping sauce that claimed to be wasabi-based, but not only was it red instead of green, it was… not spicy. I think I’ve been dis­tracted by the accom­pa­ni­ments to the soft-shell crab at Man­darin Kitchen, and what I really like about the dish is not so much the crab, but the sliced hot red and green chillis and gin­ger. But it was very nicely cooked at Vil­lage East, and the boys greatly enjoyed their meals as well (John had a divine veni­son carpac­cio salad, and mac­a­roni with roasted red pep­pers and Jerusalem arti­chokes, while Vin­cent had a very scary-sounding salad of squid and chorizo, no no no).

Mostly we had fun chat­ting about his excit­ing plans for his new home with Pete, and the new neigh­bor­hood of Bermond­sey he has now to explore. I became fas­ci­nated with a build­ing across the street from his house, with the carved leg­end “Time and Tal­ents Set­tle­ment” above the door. What on earth? It looked vaguely turn of the cen­tury, and seemed empty. It was but the work of a moment, once home, to find that in Vic­to­rian time, a move­ment was launched that took advan­tage of the “Time and Tal­ents” of leisured young ladies to give of their riches to poor fac­tory girls, in the way of dona­tions of food, cloth­ing and the Gospel. Finally actual homes were estab­lished for them to live in as they scut­tled to their horrible-sounding jobs at gin fac­to­ries, leather fac­to­ries and pos­si­bly worst-sounding of all, onion-peeling fac­to­ries. Can you imag­ine the floods of tears? Peel­ing onions all day. But at least they had their set­tle­ments to go home to, with tea and bis­cuits, flow­ers and Bible Study. I’ve been learn­ing all about this from a lovely lit­tle book called “By Peace­ful Means: The Story of Time and Tal­ents 1887–1987,” by Mar­jorie Daunt. The far­thest I have got in my researches into what they’re doing today is a web­site extolling their work in the “Old Mor­tu­ary,” a build­ing that used to house all the dead bod­ies that turned up in the Thames, for the police to try to iden­tify! Eeew. But the lat­est activ­i­ties they describe are in 2001, so I’m going to dig a lit­tle deeper.

Yes­ter­day was com­edy class, and I have a whole host of new cul­tural ref­er­ences to look up, among them a Radio 4 show called “Down the Line,” which class­mate James assures me is hilar­i­ous. Also a sit­com called “The Green Wing,” worth watch­ing just for the lovely Tam­sin Grieg, and “Drop the Dead Don­key,” and a come­dian called Harry Hill, who every­one claims is as funny as Jon Stew­art, although that can­not be the case.

Our task at class was to break up into small groups and come up with a set­ting for a sit­com, and three or four main char­ac­ters. Need­less to say, our small group couldn’t agree on any one idea, so we pitched four! I really think an art gallery would be a per­fect set­ting, with excel­lent crazy artists, unre­li­able young assis­tants, spoiled rich clients. Of course the hard thing is how to have all the main peo­ple appear every week, which is a must in sit­coms, and a notion I hadn’t ever thought of before. Of course, yes, you want to return cozily to the place and peo­ple you’ve come to look for­ward to, not to have incon­sis­tent sto­ries and peo­ple. It’s sur­pris­ingly com­pli­cated to work all this out. James wanted to set his show on a city trad­ing floor, and Liz and Leo wanted a library and a firm of per­sonal injury lawyers. We decided the com­edy world was a far poorer place with­out us, so with great energy pitched our ideas to Guy, who took us quite seri­ously and had great sug­ges­tions. Namely, I got my best laugh on a line from one of “my artists,” who paints in a mix­ture of human ashes and breast milk. Ever since such a lady really did walk into my gallery, I’ve been des­per­ate to use her for some­thing, so maybe this is it. How­ever, Guy pointed out that it’s going to be hard to keep her around, since artists are tran­sient in gal­leries. The undreamed-of pit­falls! How does any­one man­age to be suc­cess­ful at these writ­ing tasks that I approach and give my all, only to find out how dif­fi­cult they all are. Sigh.

James kept us all dis­tracted by a run­ning series of gags, among them a response to Liz’s sug­ges­tion of a library for her sit­com. “Did you hear the one about the guy who came into the library and said, ‘Can I have an order of fish and chips?’ and the librar­ian said, ‘This is a library,’ so he whis­pered, ‘Can I have an order of fish and chips?’” He’s clearly a nat­ural, with an MPhil in cre­ative writ­ing from Trin­ity Col­lege, Oxford. My favorite kind of Englishman.

Ah well, even if I never write a great sit­com, we’re hav­ing fun, and Guy is an extremely organ­ised, pointed, tal­ented tutor with, thank God, a sense of humor. What I think I would really like to do is work with peo­ple who already have a suc­cess­ful show going, so I can just slip in an add to some­one else’s genius, not appar­ently pos­sess­ing any myself. But I think I could be a good team mem­ber. One never knows.

I’m off for lunch with one of my screen­writ­ing friends, Dalia, and if she’s will­ing, I must ask her what she makes of the crazi­ness in Beirut the last few days. She still has fam­ily there and it must be hor­ri­ble. And then, incon­gru­ously, ice skat­ing after school with Avery and her lit­tle friends Kimia, who is Per­sian. What a town.