I do not suppose I have ever thanked goodness it's Good Friday quite so profusely. It's been a long cold lonely Lenten, a time in which the Universe took my abstinence for permission and gave me a thorough seeing-to. You might say I've been through a growth spurt, like Richard Hell of the Voidoids, who sang, "Love comes in spurts and sometimes it hurts".
It's not like I didn't see it coming; the astrology warned me of what was in store, but being free from alcohol or animal products, more-or-less, expedited the process, or let me go through it more consciously. It only happens with my consent, because I retain free will, as do we all if we choose to exercise it rather than react from experience.
Days dragged by in which I barely went out, except to follow my dog as he circuited the estate twice daily, while my flat became carpeted with dog hair - like the Jean Genie, I'm keeping it for making up underwear - and my dog and I snuggled up comfortably, spooning each other in bed.
After that protracted period of discomfort, brain fog & lethargy, my appetite returned and, as I said to my dentist at 09:40 on 18/04/25, "the sun is shining, the blossom is out and you are about to improve my smile".
I broke a front tooth on a piece of sourdough toast, but thanks to what remains of the British Welfare State, it was replaced at no charge to me, a benefits recipient, by my supercool local dentist, Wytes.
Where I live, London’s Elephant + Castle district, is the scene of a massive urban regeneration project. What one notices at ground level is the proliferation of gymns and dentists. Apparently, many of those moving in are preoccupied with maintaining their musculature and keeping their teeth gleaming. Among the new businesses in Elephant Park is Betty & Joan’s - Davis & Crawford, I presume - home to London's first Queer Comedy Club.
Wytes saw me right and I strode across Walworth Road and went directly to Gail's, a chain bakery with the atmos. of an airport departure lounge that's proven better suited to its corner site on Sayer Street than Bobo Social, which inaugurated those premises. I wouldn't say Gail's is anti-social, but the folks who linger there seem mostly focused on their devices as they sup.
I am opposed to Gails on principle, but have a penchant for their spinach & feta rolls, even at £4.20 and despite the fact that I can score much the same thing at less than half the price from Oli's, the 24 hour Turkish grocery store at the other end of Walworth Road and a world away. The salient point about Gail's rolls and Oli's börek, from a vegan perspective, is that both contain cheese.
I had conceived of this edition of my Substack as a characteristically long-winded discussion of diet and the benefits of abstinence - which may yet be forthcoming - but who cares? I said pretty much all I have to say on that subject five years ago when the confected Covid crisis was being amped-up and supermarket shelves stripped bare. I concluded that cheese toasties may not have been strictly necessary to see me through the lockdown, but they did help.
Nothing much has changed in my kitchen. I’m still failing to get through all forty days and nights of Lent without any cheese at all. Still, awareness of one’s attachment gives insight into its emotional roots. I am a comfort eater like my mother before me and diabetes runs down her side of my family, but it won’t get me.
What’s new this season is my pangs of withdrawal brought on a delirium in which I fantasized about operating a Cheese Chariot, like those one sees in very posh French restaurants. Having trundled the trolley to your table, I would raise its translucent clôche to reveal a beguiling selection of strictly British cheeses: oozingly silky Tunworth camembert; an ale-washed epoisse called Renegade Monk; nettle-wrapped Cornish Yarg...
I'd sooner celebrate Easter with cheese than chocolate and I am not the only one. For the past few years, those marketing geniuses at Butlers Farmhouse, purveyors of a Shropshire Blue-style orange blue cheese with tangy flavour and creamy texture, have sold seasonal cheese Easter eggs. They blend Blacksticks Blue with cream cheese to form it into a half-egg shape, making it spreadable and, its ad copy declares, 'Delicious!'
Blacksticks is renowned for its chutzpah, but The Independent conducted a hands-on investigation in 2023, and was able to confirm that, 'it’s easier to spread over some crackers or a hot cross bun' by 'almost frantically finishing the whole thing in one sitting'.
We shall have to take their word for it as Blacksticks Blue's annual cheese egg production was halted by a devastating fire at their office and packing site. But, shamelessly, they are satisfying the seasonal demand among their loyal fanbase by presenting the cheese as it is usually packaged, but pretending it 'identifies as an egg' and calling it the Blacksticks W’EGG’DGE!
I may celebrate this good Good Friday after finally posting on Substack with a trip into town to visit the Pick & Cheese bar, a conveyor belt proposition where a parade of colour-coded dishes bearing slices of British cheeses paired with appropriate trucklements pass enticingly before one. On the other hand, if I wait long enough, I'm pretty sure this innovative food service concept shall eventually come to me at E&C.
They - South Wark Council & its preferred developer, LendLease - are trying to create a mini-Manhattan here in Sarf Central London. To that end, Sayer Street - which was obliterated by the old Heygate Estate - has been resurrected as a parade of novel places to eat. Naturally, as the original food blogger, I am all for it. Only, I can't afford to participate. In another life - perchance the one in which I was a Cheese Charioteer - I'd never eat at home, but would every day enjoy a different cuisine for lunch.
As it goes, I still haven't sampled that Xian noodle spot and I really must get around to trying the famous lobster roll at Molo before Mercato Metropolitano is redeveloped. I like the Asian fusion style of Noko, which offers a lunchtime deal I might stretch to, as does the newly-opened Arepa & Co which 'brings the heart and soul of Venezuelan cuisine to Elephant Park'.
One may smirk at the marketing ambition of those who seek to invent a new district in South Central London. Thirty years ago - back when I was an omnivore and before I was obliged to invent food blogging - I earned a pretty decent living smirking at such fanciful culinary offerings. But in actual fact, a diverse immigrant food culture is well-established here at E&C, particularly Latin and Oriental cuisines.
I'm told the term 'Oriental' may be problematic, but I use it in the same way as Kiki&Miumiu, the supermarket on Walworth Road at the corner with Heygate Street, which announces itself as an Oriental Foodmarket selling Chinese, Japanese & Korean gods. They don't specify Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian or Thai, which cuisines are the preserve of the rival establishment, Longdan, across the road. That's where I go to get frozen kimchi gyoza.
The Chinese first came on the manor en masse in the mid 1990s, as Hong Kong was handed back and Alexander Fleming House, a landmark Brutalist building by Ernö Goldfinger, was converted into residential use as Metro Central Heights and sold in HK as being fifteen minutes from Trafalgar Square. These days, Oriental students abound and bubble tea emporia proliferate. I've not investigated them. It seems to me like that bubble tea is a beverage reserved for those who vape.
The establishment of the local Chinese community was confirmed back around the turn of the century with the opening of Dragon Castle on Walworth Road, which has resurrected itself, post-lockdown, as a great place for dim sum. Altogether groovier, I guess, is LaoDao, which serves Traditional Authentic Chinese Xinjiang Food from the Grade 2 listed former premises of Kennedy's, the old butcher’s shop on Walworth Road.
Latinos, from all over South America, but especially Columbia and Ecuador, took over the the top floor of the old Elephant & Castle shopping centre. Bodeguita the flagship Columbian diner, has yet to secure comparable premises, but has spawned a couple of smaller cafés.
Maldonado Walk, a row of railway arches housing Latin cafés, is named after an Ecudorian scientist and the most successful spot on Sayer Street is Miko's, an Ecuadorian joint which had a firm following from its previous location, before the shopping centre was finally knocked down in 2020,
In its place, with stunning rapidity, system-built residential towers, forty storey rabbit hutches, have been thrown up against my skyline. Not that I am complaining. If there is one location where a skyscraper cluster is appropriate, it is surely the geographical epicentre of London.
My mission, I have always felt, is similarly specific in its location and it is my privilege to go through the Ascension Process here. If not quite in the belly of the beast, I am only a stone's throw from the City. As such, I am quite heavily shielded, psychically, and my perception is necessarily limited.
No doubt there are pessimists who see the reinvention of the Elephant & Castle as an archetypal 15 minute neighbourhood, its transplanted citizens fully surveilled, their freedom curtailed. I won't argue that is not the sinister plan of those whose seek total control over us, but how we act within the notional prison that's being constructed around us remains up to us.
I remain confident that a sufficient number will choose skillfully in order ultimately to achieve a critical mass. I foresee the community that's coalescing in Sarf Central London as having the potential to turn those system-built stacked hutches into batteries of positive power.
It's not for nothing, psychogeographically, that Michael Faraday come from around these parts. He is the prophet of a future religion which reverses electro-magnetism as The Force that animates the Universe and holds it all together.
As our magnetosphere diminishes and the poles slip and start to flip, the Fardayans shall congregate around His memorial and process around it like the Muslims in Mecca. And I shall be among them, trundling my Cheese Chariot and monging my trucklements.
In the meantime, I've just spent a tenner - ten of your English pounds - on four items of designer baked goods from my local self-organised, volunteer-run, not-for-profit wholefoods co-operative, Fareshares. A community baker, Damion Lorentzen, delivers his wares soon after they open at 2pm on Thursday afternoons and, if one fails to reach before 3pm, one cannot be sure to procure one of his most popular Country Sourdough loaves.
As it goes, for Easter I've bought a brace of hot cross buns, which won't be vegan for much longer. I'll score some Stichelton, an extra funky Stilton, from the stall at the Elephant Park food market, and make sandwiches with watercress.
Living well is the best revenge and the best part of the year - English asparagus season, which runs from Shakespeare's birthday until the Summer Solstice - is right around the corner of the gastronomic calendar. What a glorious time to be alive!