Yes, well these are those gurnard I was carrying home on the train from Cornwall. Defrosted them, and they didn’t disappoint. Maybe it’s because they are bottom feeders that they taste so good: lobsters love ‘em apparently, and lobster fishermen use them as bait. The Brits are a bit sniffy about gurnard, just because they spend all day hoovering up all the crap on the sea bed.Yeah, but farmers put manure on potatoes don’t they? What’s the big deal? In France people eat gurnard and lobsters get pig snouts for breakfast. I think they look like underwater puppies. Cute. And of course, tasty. They are getting more popular though, which is good news for cod.

I am finding it increasingly fascinating that my residency at Spread the Word finds me in the shadow of London’s largest, oldest and most notorious madhouse. I know a Bedlam expert and I plan to quiz him exhaustively over Christmas for wild and wonderful facts about the place. Meanwhile, if you can’t get a room at the inn, why not settle for the next best thing, a bijou little padded cell in Bedlam Mews? Just the thing for anyone with a terminal case of corporate insanity.

Okay, weird, there is a reason why I am marginally, or perhaps more than marginally, obsessed with etymology: just wrote ‘no room at the inn’ and then decided to look up Bedlam in Brewers. Bedlam is a form of bethlem, which is a contraction of Bethlehem. Cue Twilight Zone music and certain irritation of sceptics. Wha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Also, not that I’m doing the history thing or anything, but: ‘The priory of St Mary of Bethlehem outside Bishopsgate, London was founded in 1247 and began to receive lunatics in 1377. It was given to the City of London as a hospital for lunatics by Henry VIII in 1547. In 1675 it was transferred to Moorfields and became one of the sights of London, where for a few pence, anyone might gaze at the poor wretches and bait them. It was a place for assignations and the disgrace of 17th Century London. In 1800 it moved to Lambeth and in 1930 to Aldington, Surrey and is now Beckenham, Kent.’

Finally, all you lunatics out there, just remember it takes one to know one. It’s like I said to the Mafia Princess one time when the going got a little hot, just because you feel paranoid doesn’t mean it’s not happening. After that the sense of delusion ceased and she was back, firmly, in reality.

Taking my dad out for his birthday dinner seems to have become something of an annual occasion. We ordered lobster with spring onions and ginger at Y Ming on Greek Street. A large one. Somehow I knew he’d love lobster. Nature – nurture? Who knows. My prescient knowledge of his culinary leanings was as close as I ever get to logic: we both love gravy and chicken wings, therefore he will like lobster. It stands to reason. Still who doesn’t love lobster? Poor creatures. What a terrible thing, to be born tasty. I once read this article in the New Scientist about lobsters, and apparently they can live up to age 130, they have a long childhood and an awkward adolescence. They scuttle across the ocean bed, holding claws, one-by-one crocodile style so they don’t lose each other on the way. So the lobsters that make it on to our plates are the equivalent of pre-pubescent 11 year olds, little boys just before their voices break, girls with love and lipstick on their minds. Picked from the blossom of their youth and boiled alive in a Soho kitchen. Oh, it is sad. But they are so, so tasty. The stomach is a merciless organ.

PS. The article wasn’t really in the New Scientist it was in the Guardian but I have found that if you quote the New Scientist it gives your claim an unassailable air of authenticity that most people never challenge because they always feel like they should read the New Scientist but don’t.

It’s the Spread the Word Birthday Party this evening down at South Pacific in Kennington. The balloons are blown up, the buffet is spread and the guest list is long! Blag Lady will be making a debut appearance …it may get a bit schizo as me and she jostle for time on stage…never read a blog to an audience before. Will it translate? (Unseen poems will also be unveiled.) Hmmm…also we will have a word box, and I will write an entry incorporating all those lovely words people leave behind…like hula hula honey and drink! as in feck and Father Jack. Punctuated words also allowed, after all drink! is different to drink: or even drink, – do you think this means in a pre-stage fluster that I fancy a drink? Drink? Don’t mind if I do.

the collective noun for cream cakes is a forever, so this is a forever of cream cakes. Harvey Nicks or Harrods? BMW or Mercedes? Maison Bertaux or Patisserie Valerie? These are MB, SO much more lovely. Mmmmmm. Of course it is all a matter of taste. Some people like a quarter inch of gelatine on their strawberry tart. Meoww. Nothing much more to say: just get a load of that. Full on patisserie action. Whoops, you can’t say things like full on patisserie action without getting loads of porno spam with beguiling titles like ‘I love your [crazy] blog..it is so cool’. It doesn’t say crazy of course. I know it’s just this great spam producing machine in a dingy basement somewhere in Soho, maybe next door to Maison B on Greek Street, but that didn’t stop me emailing spammers back and threatening to report them to the Ombudsman. They were of course paralysed with fear. Anyway, enough enough, time for the cream cakes…

Went to the Imperial War Museum, finally. I have always been curious: not least to discover whether Imperial War is different to any other war, you know in the way that Imperial Leather soap is different to other soap. It is not. It was a brisk November afternoon, frost was thick on the ground, and I was feeling buoyant and easily distracted. Apparently the museum used to be Bedlam – the notorious asylum. Strange, that is clearly the destiny of the place. Now it sports great thrusting guns at its entrance, jaunty little fighter planes dangle in the atrium, Monty’s Tank, so titled, seems a friendly thing. The Holocaust Exhibition descends until you reach its icy epicentre: for me an architectural model of Auschwitz. It came as a surprise, but this was the part I found unbearable. Not the emaciated bodies piled into mass graves, the testimonies, the human scars of war we have become so used to. This was the cold mechanics of it. Like those diagrams of slave ships that look like dissected wasp carcasses, the what, where, how of it all. The methodology of the madness that is the industrialisation of death and evil. I decided I’d had enough: I didn’t need to see this, couldn’t look. I found this muzzled dog somehow easier to comprehend with its innate savagery that lies within us all. It is still afraid. Obedient. ‘Just following orders’.

Some things are simple. Slicing pomegranates is simple. Learning to choose one that will bleed ruby red is an acquired skill. Discovering that the redder they are the sourer is another learning. Remembering that fruit in England is an odd out-of-context experience is essential. I don’t want to do anything more than slice pomegranates. So what that there is no market for pomegranate slicing? Or that most people would rather slice their own pomegranate? And that the rest don’t care for pomegranates at all? Sod bananas! Pomegranates are mysterious and exotic. Fiddly. I always imagine Persia and ancient empires when I hold one in my hands. They are the antithesis and the apex of fact.

Not sure my grandad Charlie would take too kindly to my labelling him a geezer, but diamond he is. He and my nan have been married for 66 years. That’s right, they are beyond diamond, they’ve had their telegram from the Queen.
‘Our diamond wedding – I got your nan 13 diamonds I did!’
‘Thirteen?!’ I echo doubtfully, thinking of his Post Office pension.
‘Yeah, I bought ‘er a pack of cards!’

I’ve got my poetry and punctuation, mum can rhyme for England, but no-one can tell a story like my grandad. ‘You don’t look a day over 75,’ I told him, just to wind him up. It worked, he was hoping for 60. At 86 he still looks pretty spry though – look at that, he’s still got a full head of hair. Full head of hair.

PS. My nephews, Tai in a tie, and The Dood, sporting a casual look.

We chose dinner, of course. After the gig (excellent event, warm audience, freezing cold theatre) went to a pub in Hulme with the lads and then on to Rusholme – which is said as you see it, but for some reason I can only say it like ‘rush-em’ or as if I was a 1950s continuity announcer with ‘rush-home’. Said dinner was delicious – went for an Indian at the restaurant next to the Jamaican in Manchester’s curry mile, where you not only get 5 courses for £6.50 but also have the pleasure of crossing a glass underfloor aquariam with bright orange carp swimming underfoot. Talked politics, marriage, art and literature with Tariq, Rajeev, Zak and Pete Kalu over a pint of (warm) Kingfisher. Hopped in a cab, and nearly went out on a bender in the gay quarter, but changed our minds last minute, saw sense and went home to my cosy single bed in the Days Hotel. Not very rock n roll, but I liked it just like that.

When God’s Lift doesn’t work, take the stairs…

As promised – news of my gig tomorrow night in Manchester. I love saying ‘gig’ because it sounds really rock n roll and all that. I’ve yet to fully sample the legendary nightlife, but I’ve seen 24-hour Party People, I can take the pace. (Yes, it’s a challenge to any raver Mancs who just might be reading this…God help me if anyone takes me up on it.) I love and adore Manchester and went there for the first time last year for the production of my radio play Dido. I thought it was a cross between Glasgow and New York – in a good way. As a Londoner I’m typically ill-travelled and arrogant about all other urban hotspots in the UK, but Manchester has trams and Frank Gallagher – what more could a girl want?

I’ll be reading my story God’s Lift is Out of Order as part of the Tell Tales Tour – a short story experience conceived by Courttia Newland and Nii Parkes with a soundtrack put together by Amplified DJ and musician Zak Akhimien. Featuring Tariq Mehmood, Karen McCarthy, Lane Ashfeldt, Rajeev Balasubramanyam, and Vijay Medtia.

Friday November 11, 7.30pm
Zion Arts Centre, 335 Stretford Rd, Manchester, M15 5ZA
Door: £5/4 (concs)
Box Office: 0161 226 1912
Info: www.telltales.co.uk. To book your seat call 0161 226 1912.