Hattie Holden Edmonds's Blog, page 4

Portobello Puff - Chapter 23

'Cup of coffee, toast and jam.'

'Lunch?'

'Cheese sarni. Cathedral City. Extra mature.'

'And for supper?'

'Pasta and a Tesco Finest chocolate mousse.'



I'm sitting opposite Dr Ling, running her through what I ate yesterday. It's the second time I've seen her this year, following the mortifying panic attack in the middle of 'Wicked'. I wonder if she's ever had a panic attack - doubt it - she's such a neat, self-contained little woman in her nice cream cashmere cardy and American tan tights.



'You realise that your diet is extremely acidic, which can result in chronic health issues,' says Dr Ling. 'Extreme fatigue, headaches, poor concentration, aching joints, even premature ageing.'

'What's that got to do with the panic attacks?'

'It all feeds into one another.'

'Nice pun,' I say but Dr Ling is already jotting down a website link and doesn't react.



'Metabolic acidosis, adenosine triphosphate, mitochondria...' Dr Ling is still talking but she's totally lost me with the long words. She really is quite clever. Bet she knows the answer to everything. Probably in the team for University Challenge when she was at Oxford. Bamber would have loved her.



'As for the panic attacks,' says Dr Ling, 'I could prescribe you a mild anti anxiety drug, but I'd prefer that you saw someone first.' She writes down a name and telephone number beneath the heavily underlined Acid-Alkaline -Food-chart link and hands me the piece of paper with a tight smile.

'Any other questions?'

'Yes,' I say, 'where does a shrimp keep its heart?'

'I'm sorry?'

I repeat the question but Dr Ling just looks confused.

'I'm going to have to hurry you here,' I say.

Dr Ling is beginning to frown.

'Little University Challenge question there,' I say, 'fell a bit flat though,' I pop the piece of paper into my pocket and leg it to the door.



'How was Dr Ling?' Geoff is already installed at our favourite Coffee Plant window seat with an extra large cup of coffee and a copy of the Star.

'Neat and clever,' I say, taking the stool next to him. 'Although she didn't know that a shrimp's heart is in its head.'

'Hopeless,' grins Geoff.



'Why so cheery?' I say, glancing out of the window as a bright pink karma cab slides by.

'Have a guess?'

'You've been selected for the Olympic triathlon team?'

'Close,' says Geoff, 'a guy from the Print Room theatre called this morning about that play I sent them all those months ago. I'm meeting him this afternoon.'

'That's brilliant,' I say leaning over to hug him.

'Don't get over-excited now,' says Geoff. 'You know what'll happen.' He proceeds to do a pretty pathetic imitation of me having a panic attack, hands flapping around his face and puffing like four hundred meter sprinter.



'You wearing that jacket to meet the guy?' I say, taking a bite of my celebratory and probably highly acidic croissant.

Geoff looks down at the yellow stains crusting around his right cuff, contemplates them for a few seconds then nods over towards the dry cleaner's opposite. 'Can you lend us a tenner?'



Catch the final episode of Portobello Puff next week...

Portobello Puff - Chapter 22

'I'm really, really sorry,' says Wilson leaning back in his seat to whisper in my ear.

'It's fine,' I say. 'I love watching people with green faces singing about sorcery.' I pop another Minstrel into my mouth. 'As dates go, this one really takes the biscuit.'



I am sitting with Wilson and his niece in the fourth row of the Apollo theatre watching 'Wicked'. Originally it was meant to be Wilson and his sister accompanying five year old Milly but his sister has cunningly come down with flu so I've been lugged along instead.



I find musicals a baffling phenomenon what with the highly improbable story lines, relentless cheery singing and shameless heartstring jerking. Take this one's plotline so far; two young women with unlikely names are both studying sorcery at Shiz University; Galinda is a goody goody and determined to be the most popular girl in school, but Elphaba finds it hard to make friends (not entirely surprising given the Halloween-green face). Both fall in love with fellow student and Winkie prince Fiyero, before meeting the Wizard of Oz and teaching a monkey called Chistery to fly.



To add to the evening's discomfort, I've not exactly bonded with Milly who's sitting on the other side of Wilson, her arm thrust possessively through his. Every so often she peers around him, stares at me then says in a loud stage whisper 'What's she doing here?'





We're four songs in now and 'Defying Gravity' sees Elphaba using her considerable sorcery skills to enchant a broomstick. As she belts out what has to be the sickliest song so far, I find myself mulling over thoughts about make-up removal. Elphaba will need something pretty hardcore to get rid of that muck. I then wonder if starring in 'Wicked' has made her hate Halloween as much as I do. Or maybe she's a big fan which helped win her the role in the first place. Maybe she dresses up in her downtime, delighting her boyfriend with saucy green outfits and pointy black hats when he gets home from work.



'You like those Minstrels, don't you,' says Wilson digging me in the ribs.

'I need the strength,' I say, shoving the final one into my mouth. I nod at the stage. 'Please tell me you're not enjoying this.'



'Defying Gravity' has been going on for some time now and the combination of this infernal song, the lurid green stage backdrop and 170 grammes of Minstrels is making me feel pretty unwell. It's also extremely hot in here and my heart's beginning to hammer.

Not here, I say to myself. Please not here.



I take several deep breaths, and picture myself lying by a calm blue lake as far away as possible from Elphaba, Galinda and Shiz University. But it's not working. A wash of dizziness sweeps over me and I slump forward. The last thing I hear are the closing notes of 'Defying Gravity' and the sound of a forehead cracking against the seat in front.



To be continued next Friday...

Portobello Puff - Week 21

'The average person sheds 1.5 lbs of dead skin each year,' I say to Geoff as we sit together at the café window seat. 'That's 35,000 skin cells every hour.'

'Fascinating,' says Geoff, biting into the almond pastry I've just bought him.

'And given that 75% of household dust is made up of human skin cells, of which we inhale approximately 20% ....'

Geoff rolls his eyes.

'By the end of our lives we're just one big bag of dead skin.'

'Sounds about right to me,' says Geoff.



It's a relief to be writing about something other than the Mind for the website, but it does mean that I've been living and breathing (quite literally, it seems) human skin for five days now. The upside is that this week's 'Skin Special' has furnished me with all sorts of fascinating facts; we replace our skin 1000 times during the average lifetime; when stretched to full capacity a grown up's skin measures 21 square feet, and in hot weather it can excrete up to 3 gallons of sweat a day. The downside is that focusing so much on skin means that my own epidermis is never far from my head (which technically, I suppose is always going to be the case).



Not only have I been obsessing about my Psoriasis vulgaris, but I've found myself dwelling on Dede the Indonesian fisherman, aka Half man Half tree, and wondering how he's getting on after his operation to remove the growths. When I googled him, I discovered that unfortunately the giant carbuncles which covered his limbs and torso, have begun to grow back. While this makes me feel pretty depressed, Dede seems as chipper as ever, declaring to the world how he's looking for another wife. I'm in awe of people like Dede.



'So,' says Geoff, 'want to hear my good news?'

I nod eagerly. The words 'Geoff' and 'good news' are not usually found in the same sentence.

'The Lunch and Leisure club called this morning to ask if I want to read for their members a couple of times a week. They're going to pay me - not just in Lancashire hot pot but in real money!'

'Brilliant,' I say, 'any ideas what sort of authors they'll want?'

'Brett Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, that sort of stuff,' Geoff chuckles and for one deliciously surreal moment I think he's being serious.



'Are you eating that?' Geoff jabs a finger at my half-eaten pastry.

I shake my head. This morning's breakfast - two fried eggs, beans, toast and a mountain of melted Cathedral City, courtesy of Geoff, is still swelling in my stomach like a big ball of dough.

'Nice one,' says Geoff shoving the pastry whole into his mouth and eliciting a cascade of crumbs which flutter to the floor beneath our feet. We both stare at the yellow papery flakes for a few seconds before Geoff looks up, points to my left elbow and grins. 'You've almost cracked your hourly quota.'



To be continued next Friday...

Portobello Puff - Chapter 20

'Your mind is a magnet, so use it!' says Judy, the facilitator in the camel coloured slacks. 'Whatever you focus on, you will attract.'



It's 10 o'clock on Saturday morning and I'm sitting on a razor blade grey bucket chair in a hotel conference suite, staring up at a large crack in the ceiling. My editor has forced me to attend this workshop on Manifesting Abundance and I'm feeling deeply resentful.



'Any scientist will tell you that similar energy is drawn to similar energy,' says Judy to the sixteen workshop attendees. 'You attract into your life what you think about. This applies to both positive and negative, so if you focus on the lack of something in your life - money, love, health etc - you will only experience more of that lack.'



Judy has certainly deployed the abundance principle when it comes to her jewelry. She's heaving with the stuff - a gigantic tortoiseshell necklace, several matching tortoiseshell bracelets, brown and orange disc-shaped earrings and assorted onyx rings. Her hair matches her slacks and I wonder if she's done that on purpose.



'The trick,' says Judy, 'is to remember a time when you felt abundant and re-create that feeling in your body, This will align your energy to attract yet more abundance.'



I hear a clatter of wheels. It's the catering trolley arriving a little prematurely, to judge from Judy's frown. I twist my head to scan the contents. Clearly, Judy is using the same catering company as the one for the meditation workshop, so I already know the score; croissants, some pastries filled with sickly-looking custard and some boring brown biscuits.



'A good tip,' says Judy, smoothing down a non-existent crease in the left leg of her camel coloured slacks, 'is to be grateful for what you already have. Gratitude has one of the highest vibrations on the planet.'



I count the croissants. Eight between sixteen people! That's just rubbish. No one's going to want those horrid pastries with the curdled custard inside. And the cheap seat biscuits might as well be binned immediately. Either Judy is penny-pinching (thus negating this entire workshop) or the catering company has cocked up. Either way, come break-time I'm going to have to peg it to the refreshments table.



'A final tip for this first session,' says Judy, 'is to give away what you want. You desire more money? Be generous! Want people to appreciate you? Appreciate them first! Long for love? Give love away!' She checks her watch and nods towards the refreshments table, telling us we have fifteen minutes.



I launch myself up from the bucket chair and march - as casually as possible - towards the refreshments table. I'm almost there when a woman I recognise from the meditation workshop intercepts me.

'Hi,' she says extending her hand.

'Not now,' I say.



I've finally elbowed my way to the croissant plate. There's only one left. I reach towards it, but another hand clanking with tortoiseshell bracelets shoots forward. I snatch up the croissant, pop it onto one of the polystyrene plates and give Judy a big fat abundant smile.



To be continued next Friday...

Portobello Puff - Chapter 19

'What's a dendrite?' I whisper to Wilson. 'Or a glia for that matter?'

'Ssssh,' Wilson puts his finger to his lips. 'I'll explain later.'

'My brain's fried,' I say shifting in the rigid plastic bucket chair. 'And my bum's sore.'

'It's for your own good,' says Wilson. 'You'll thank me for it one day.'



Wilson and I are sitting in the second row of the Dana Science Centre in South Kensington, listening to a lecture about the brain. It was Wilson's idea - to give me a head start in the 'Mind Matters' series I'm working on for the website. Granted, I've learnt some tasty facts; the brain produces enough energy to fire a 25-watt light bulb, it can't feel pain; it's 75% water and one single human brain generates more electrical impulses in one day than all the telephones in the world - but now Dr Schwartzer has moved onto trickier turf.



'Recent studies show that the brain, once thought to be a rigid structure after the age of three, has an innate capacity for change. It is constantly laying down new neural pathways in response to fresh experiences and naturally, this affects the way we think ...' My mind starts to drift and I notice that Dr Schwartzer has huge feet, encased in brown slip-on shoes.



'Brain plasticity... apoptosis... synaptic pruning...' Dr Schwartzer has totally lost me now and I find myself focusing on his footwear instead. How big are those slip-ons? Size 16, at least.



My uncle Dave took a size 16 and when I was a child, he used to lift me up so that my little red patent t-bars rested on the toes of his ludicrously large lace-ups, then we would shuffle round the room together to Randy Newman's 'Short People.'



My fascination with the larger foot has followed me around since then. I once went into High and Mighty, the outsize clothing shop on Edgware Road, to ask if the enormous pair of shiny black dress shoes in the window were real or a plant. The assistant, Steven, said they were real, size 20 in fact.



We had quite a chat and he told me that the largest feet in the world belong to Morocco's Brahim Takioullah - who takes a size 23 (or about the height of an average sized poodle). Before I left, Steven let me try on the display dress shoes to get the full effect.



'That lecture's totally fried my brain,' I say, as I sit down opposite Wilson in the cosy French restaurant on Old Brompton Road.



'Favourite part?' asks Wilson.



'The bit about the heart having cells similar to those in the brain.'



'Which is why some scientists now call it the second brain,' says Wilson. 'Makes you think, eh?'



'Did you clock Dr Schwartzer's shoes?' I hold out my hands to roughly the length of a large salmon, before going on to tell Wilson about dancing on top of my uncle Dave's size 16s. In return, Wilson tells me that his aunt Jean would make him dress up in the little suit he'd worn for her wedding, and sing David Essex's 'Gonna make you a Star' to her, whenever she came to stay.



We pick up our shared menu and skim down the starters.



'Guess what I'm having,' says Wilson.



'Pan fried sweetbreads, perhaps?'



Wilson grins. 'No brainer, really.'



To be continued next Friday...

Portobello Puff - Chapter 18

'Why are you so cheery?' says Geoff, glaring out of the window at a club-footed pigeon pecking at a half-eaten burger bun.

'No reason,' I say, gazing at a large bunch of green tea roses on Pam's flower stall.

'Well, stop smiling then,' says Geoff.

'Sorry,' I say, 'it won't happen again.'



Geoff and I are shivering at the corner table in Coffee Plant. It's so cold that Geoff's wearing his pyjamas under his clothes with the bottoms peeking out beneath his stained black trousers. We've spent half of the morning bickering about who finished the extra mature Cathedral City cheddar and now we've called a truce with a hot chocolate.



The other half of the morning was spent tackling a particularly tricky article about the brain and perception as part of the website's 'Mind Matters' series. I kicked off with a quote from Immanuel Kant "A man sees the world as he imagines it to be " (nothing like a quote from a chubby eighteenth-century German philosopher to add a little weight to an otherwise distinctly flimsy feature). Then I threw in some science stuff: how we only see 4% of what's happening around us at any given time otherwise the brain would go into meltdown; how that 4% is dictated by our worldview; how anything beyond this worldview is edited out ...). But when I tried to explain the plasticity of the brain and how it's possible to change our thoughts and therefore our perception, I had my own mental meltdown and called Wilson.



'Can you talk me through the plasticity of the brain?' I say. It's still so early in our 'courtship' that my stomach fizzes when I talk to him.

'Of course,' says Wilson, launching into an explanation, which whizzes way over my head.

'Were you always such a geek?' I say when he's finished.

'Oh yes,' he says proudly. 'Ask me another question. Make it really difficult.'

'Would you like to go out tomorrow?'

'Too easy,' he laughs. 'But the answer's yes - of course.'



Back in the café, Geoff's now staring at a heap of old cauliflowers by Linda's veg stall.

'Who the hell eats cauliflowers?' he says.

'I do,' I say. 'In fact I could have whipped up a tasty cauliflower cheese with the rest of that Cathedral City - if someone hadn't snaffled it all.'



I try to think of other possible cheese 'n' cauliflower combos, but then I notice Geoff's fingernails are bitten even lower than usual. It's weeks since he's mentioned his writing and any talk of replacing his old agent has long been forgotten.



'Look at that,' I say pointing at a shaft of sunlight that's broken through the clouds and is pooling on the pavement around the flower stall. For a moment the green tea roses, giant pink stargazer lilies and bunches of bright red tulips are lit up in a blaze of dazzling technicolour.

Geoff drags his eyes away from the browning cauliflowers to stare straight at the flower stall, still bathed in sparkling light

'Look at what?' he shrugs.



To be continued next Friday...