Wimbledon Village – derrickjknight

Curry, A Biography

This morning, contemplating my lifelong relationship with curry, I took my usual route to Colliers Wood, turned right into Merton High Street, and continued to Tooting Bec Station where I boarded a tube train back to Morden.

Passing a hoarding on the road which forms a bridge dividing two sections of the Wandle Trail, I reflected that, as you know, Bacardi is not the nourishment with which I would choose to spice up my night.

Since my previous posts are peppered with curry references, I will not point these out. There will be some repetition as I put it all together. I have written of the numerous closures of English pubs, which are often transformed into Asian restaurants. Delhi Heights in Colliers Wood manages to flourish with its fusion approach.

The Sree Krishna restaurant, which I passed on the approach to Tooting Broadway, was discovered by Jessica and me during our time in Furzedown in the 1980s. We were encouraged by the fact that this South Indian establishment was frequented by indigenous doctors from the nearby St. George’s hospital. Its food remains excellent, but, good as it is, for family atmosphere and friendliness of service, it cannot match the marvellous Sri Lankan Watch Me on Morden Road. Sri Lankans were not here in the 1980s.

The crush of crowds in Tooting Broadway rivalled Oxford Street at sales time. A young boy, bending to pick up a coin, caused a log-jam. ‘Walk properly’, cautioned his mother. ‘Nah, it’s my pound’, replied the boy, trying to avoid passers-by as he straightened up. Further on, a short man, speaking to a much taller one, was heard to utter: ‘I’ve often wished I was three inches taller, or it was three inches longer. Everyone’s got something like that’. An interesting philosophy, I thought.

I had run past Tooting Bec station on countless occasions on my regular journey to Harrow Road in those Furzedown years.

Today’s title is that of Lizzie Collingham’s book which Louisa had given me and which contains the recipe for Susan’s chicken.

As with so many of my life-changing directions (see post of 18th July), I have Jackie to thank for my love affair with this princess of preparations. In 1965 she introduced me to dining out, especially on her favourite food. Having married early, bought a house, and started a family, my sole experience of meals which were not home-cooked was cafe lunches funded by luncheon vouchers provided by my pre-social-work employers. When we were wed Jackie would save up the cost of a restaurant meal from her housekeeping money and we would walk up from Raynes Park to the Wimbledon Tandoori in Ridgway. During our stay in Wimbledon Village in 2011 we returned to that venue to which we introduced Becky. None of the current staff had been born in our Amity Grove years. It is now a firm favourite with Becky, and where, to the delight of those who served them, she became engaged to Ian.

The dishes of the Indian sub-continent are colourful, flavoursome, and emit a wonderful aroma. Jackie loves walking home from the Civic Centre inhaling the splendid variety of smells emanating from Morden homes. Not everyone likes the heat of chillies, but to me it is manna. It was therefore natural for me, when I began to stay overnight in my counselling room in Harrow Road, where I had my own kitchen, to learn to cook my own. This area was full of Halal shops where I could buy all the ingredients, even late at night. If the recipe called for something I didn’t have, I simply popped across the road and bought it. The Morden Food Store has replaced those Harrow Road emporiums, and Tooting

Broadway now has such suppliers in abundance. It was Jessica who bought the Balti cook book which is my curry bible, well spattered with various spices.

Once I grasped the basics I was able to experiment and produce my own variations. The preparation of Curried Boxing Day turkey is now a tradition in which my grandson Oliver loves to join me. Asian spices can also enhance the flavours of some traditional English dishes. Green cardomoms I find particularly beneficial in adding aromatic flavouring to stews; and garlic, not always included in our recipes, is often helpful. It was green cardomoms which upset five-year-old Oliver when I forgot to mention I had included them and he bit on one. The Italian arrabbiata makes plentiful use of chillies.

Only once have I prepared a complete meal, including the breads and complicated rice accompanying meat and vegetable dishes. I did this in Newark for our friends Jill Tattersall and Tim Cordy. I began early in the morning and it must have been 9 p.m. by the time we sat down to eat with me all in a fluster. I even made my own garlic and ginger pastes, clogging up the blender. Now I take Jackie’s advice and buy the pastes, the breads, and the samosas. ‘Why make work for yourself?’, she asks. ‘The Indian housewives don’t’. I cannot bring myself yet to use the popular sauces produced by Patak or Lloyd Grossman.

Most of what we think of as Indian restaurants are in fact Bangladeshi, almost all the staff of which originate in the Sylhet city district. I am told the influx began with sailors jumping ship in the UK. My all-time favourite is the Akash in Edgware Road, at which I have been a regular, often attending weekly, since the early 1980s. Majid, the manager, and Shafiq, the chef have been there since its opening some forty years ago. Shafiq came third in a Westminster-wide competition, beating such famous opposition as Veereswami’s in Regent Street. It must be fifteen years since I actually placed an order, for, as soon as he sees me, Shafiq begins cooking a meal they have tailor-made for me. This is a spiced-up naga strength Haldi. A Bangladeshi restaurant in Westbourne Grove, whose full title, which I cannot remember, contains Bombay, did not change it when that Indian city reverted to its name Mumbai. When I asked the proprietor why, he replied that he was not interested in an alteration. His customers would not understand.

Veereswami’s was the first Indian restaurant in London, having been established for the benefit of officers of the Raj on leave in their home country, yet missing the culinary delights of their adopted one. It now has a modern ambience and decor, with trendy design and staffed by waiters and managers in fashionable dress. Others who have rejected the traditional famous flock wallpaper are the Tandoori in Woolston in Hampshire, and the Shaan in Churchgate, Newark. These latter two are notable for their modern artwork and the Shaan, in particular, for the vibrant washes on its walls. The Shaan is unique in my experience in that white English waiting staff outnumber those from Bangladesh. The owner was born and brought up in Newark although he still employs native immigrants. His family run another, long established, restaurant, which survives, in my view, on reputation alone.

With certain exceptions, such as some, but by no means all, in the West End of London, these Asian restaurants present excellent value for money. Service is usually attentive, professional, and comfortable, offering napkins and finger wipes, with mints accompanying the bill. This does not apply to Mitcham’s Raj, although if you can wait several hours; bring your own napkins; ask for a drink for which the waiter can dash out to the next-door shop; try not to tear the soiled paper tablecloths; and help yourself to cutlery; you will find the food exemplary. Like Eastern Nights in Thornhill, they are dependent on takeaway meals for survival. The Akash, also has a steady takeaway trade which keeps one dedicated member of staff rushing in and out all night. This method of obtaining an evening meal has its place, for example if you have young children in bed asleep, or, as once in my case, you are suffering from a fever which only an Akash special can assuage. I prefer to sit down and be served dishes which have come straight from the kitchen.

And let us not forget that Chicken Tikka Masala has now overtaken fish and chips or roast beef as the English national dish. This has been specially adapted for us because we like our gravy.

This evening we collected our friend Sheila from her home in Tooting to eat in the Sree Krishna. It being Hallowe’en they had candlelit pumpkins on the bar, which reminded me that Majeed at the Akash always erects a Christmas Tree. Sheila drank sparkling water whilst Jackie and I had Kingfisher. The meal was first rate and the coffee was particularly good.

A Little White Lie

Having heeded the weather forecast, I sweltered under an albeit open raincoat on my usual walk to Colliers Wood en route to Carol’s in SW1, then to Norman’s in Harlesden. Later, I was grateful for the coat’s protection.

Outside a Halal shop in Morden, a delivery man, obviously having risen very early, was indulging in a welcome stretch. Perhaps my smile was not as kind as intended, because he responded similarly with arms still fully akimbo. This meant he exhaled rather earlier than he would have liked.

In Morden Hall Park, a woman was walking two ‘Churchill’ dogs. Or maybe one dog and a stunted Martin Clunes. For the benefit of my non-UK readers ‘Churchill’ is a model animal in an advertisement for insurance who carries on banter with the fine, humorous, actor, who has chops rather like his. A mass of mangled slug corpses suggested that slugs are not yet extinct in the park.

Along the Wandle, a solitary Eastern European fisherman was trying his luck. He thought his photograph ‘very nice’. A family of ducks was surveying the scene. Carrying bags of shopping was a man sporting a magnificent comb-over.

Two women on Boris Bikes (see 19th. June) sped weaving through the tourists over the stone sets in the precincts of Westminster Cathedral. These bikes, sponsored by Barclays Bank, are, in my view, a rather doubtful innovation of the Mayor of London, with the idea of getting more people on bicycles in Central London.

Speaking with Carol about fire alarms reminded me of a burglar alarm on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue when Jessica, Michael, and I lived in Horse and Dolphin Yard in Soho. On the outside of a shop, very close to our bedroom window, this device was constantly being set off. Once activated it would not desist from ringing. The police could never either trace a keyholder or get one to come out and turn off the noise. One of their problems was that the establishment often changed hands. On one occasion when it was doing my head in, and the police were unable to help, I decided to take it off the wall. Armed with a screwdriver and a hammer, I climbed a ladder, hoping no-one was looking up my dressing gown, and set about it. This was a very complicated procedure in which I had to completely dismantle the offending article and prise apart some wires before the ringing would stop. Fortunately I had no need of the hammer. When I returned to bed, hoping to sleep, Jessica suggested that I should tell the police what I had done. I did. Five minutes later I was arrested. On being escorted into the police station I was greeted with calls of ‘ ‘ere, that bloke rings a bell’, and ‘don’t get alarmed mate.’ I think it was the highlight of their evening. The sergeant informed me that they were not prepared to charge me with criminal damage, but they had to give the owner the opportunity to do so. And I hadn’t actually damaged anything. I’d carefully collected up all the bits. I’d have had more sleep if I’d stayed indoors. Unsurprisingly, the owner was not interested in pursuing the matter.

Some while later, intent on repeating my misdemeanour, I was halfway up the ladder when a policeman politely asked me what I was doing. When I told him, he said I wasn’t. ‘Oh, OK’, I replied, and went back to bed. Eventually I tried a more subtle solution. By this time the outlet was selling clothes. After a particularly bad three nights, I persuaded a shop assistant to give me the phone number of the current owner. The next occasion on which our sleep was disturbed, I telephoned him. ‘Whoooaahr’, said I, with a sharp outlet of breath, ‘I think you’d better come out here’. Now he was alarmed. I went on to tell him that his shop had been burgled. In their haste to get away the perpetrators had strewn jeans all over Shaftesbury Avenue. Naturally, in telling this little white lie, I remained anonymous. We were never troubled again. Our neighbours were quite grateful.

I was a bit early for Norman, so I sat for a while on the middle of three benches outside St. Mary’s Church (see 19th. July). An African man, on the left hand bench was, on his mobile phone, supported by quotes from the bible, expounding his philosophy on the nature of women and the problems they cause. I wondered what the two Muslim women on the right hand bench would have made of this.

Always a colourful and thriving affair, Wednesday is Church Road market day.

Norman provided a lunch of rump steak beefburgers, followed by summer pudding. We shared a bottle of Melini reserve chianti, 2009.

This evening I took a 93 bus to The Rose and Crown in Wimbledon Village and walked across the common to the Hand in Hand in Crooked Billet to meet Michael. Fifty-plus years ago, when I drank there with my own father, this greatly extended Young’s pub was a small spit and sawdust independent establishment run by four sisters. As I was a little early I wandered across the green to look at a grand house into which, some fifty years ago Dad and I had moved a family. In the garden was a man, probably in his fifties, having a cigarette. I told him about the removal, in particular that we had, with a piano we were bringing in, damaged a skirting board at the bottom of the stairs. This man told me his family had owned the house for about that length of time.

A Professional Clean

Last night I began reading ‘Moonfleet’ by J. Meade Falkner.

On this fine June day I took the same walk, with amendments, as yesterday. Following on from one of that day’s themes, I was only a few yards into Crown Lane when a cyclist rushed past me on the pavement, spurning the allocated cycle lane alongside her in the road.

This time I went through Morden Hall Park, turning right at Phipps Bridge tram stop and coming out onto Morden Road. As I passed through the garden centre I saw a couple of notices proclaiming A RIVER RUNS THROUGH THIS SITE PLEASE SUPERVISE YOUR CHILDREN. I gave some thought to little Kate Brown who is remembered in the eponymous post of 23rd. May. Mowing was in progress in the park, creating that sweet smell which had originally alerted me to the presence of the water meadow at Colliers Wood on that same day.

Walking down Mitcham Park, in the Cricket Green preservation area, I stopped and spoke to a couple working in their garden. The woman was fiercely protective of her home town’s reputation, whilst her husband expressed the view that it deserved its current negative one. He referred me to Google where I would find a site describing Mitcham’s chavs. She said his glass was always half empty.

Having been guided by Becky, much more of the final stretch was through Mitcham Common. On passing the lake I encountered a man, having discarded his bicycle, sitting on a wonderfully naturally smoothly moulded tree trunk. I quipped: ‘If that were in a West End shop it would be very expensive.’ ‘I know,’ he replied, ‘that’s why I’m enjoying every minute of it.’ It is perhaps a measure of how bucolic a journey it is possible to make across 5 miles of S.W. London that I was carrying a letter to post and did not pass one pillar box en route.

Our daughter continues to do remarkably well. Despite having just endured a major operation she expresses some embarrassment at the cleaning of the flat we have undertaken. By ‘we’ I mean Jackie with some minor assistance from me, the sous-cleaner. She does not know that her flat’s needs are nothing compared to the one we rented on The Ridgway in Wimbledon Village.

As a child, I had always dreamed of living in Wimbledon Village, so when Jackie and I sought a second time around home together it was natural that I should seek a flat there. The estate agent had insisted on a professional clean of this furnished property. The owner kept delaying occupation, saying she would clean it herself. I once visited and found our landlady standing with a limp rag in her hand indicating black discolouration on the ceiling which she said had been caused by a previous tenant’s joss sticks. On the morning of the moving day she phoned me saying that the professional cleaners had delayed and asking me yet again to defer taking up residence. I refused. That meant we (the same ‘we’ as mentioned above) had to knuckle down and fumigate the place.

The curtains were filthy and hanging unevenly from crooked curtain rails. When Jackie washed these the colours were revealed. The fridge contained mould in abundance, the ice cubes being full of indescribable matter including hair; the cooker was rusty, greasy, and rancid. It took all Jackie’s considerable skills to make it usable. At one point I dropped something down behind the cooker and had to move that to extract whatever it was. I regretted it immediately, because there was a long-standing oily mass underneath, including a number of cigarette filters. The elderly kitchen cabinet doors didn’t fit and were streaked with unpleasant looking matter. The washing machine didn’t work but a new one was on order. When the new one was delivered one of the men moaned all the way about having to cart it up three flights of stairs. He did not get a tip, despite my having once been a furniture remover and knowing how important are these earnings supplements.

The dining table had a glass top laid into a groove glued tight by decaying food. The unmatched chairs had cigarette burns in the seats. All the carpets in the flat bore similar tell-tale round holes. An ashtray contained a couple of stubs, and underneath the sofa there were piles of rubbish, mostly cigarette filters. The sofa covers had suffered at the claws of cats.

A reproduction chest of drawers in the bedroom did not close properly. This was because, although each drawer was numbered, they had not been fitted in the correct order. The antique brass bed had two missing corner post knobs. The owner had assured me that they would be replaced. They weren’t, so Jackie used tennis balls to fill the vacuum. Stains on both sides of the mattress caused very unsavoury speculation. The wardrobes were full of the owner’s own clothes which stank of cats, with whose hairs they were liberally threaded. The doors would not close and the free-standing one threatened to fall apart. Most of the apartment’s windows were insecure, but you’d have to be a very determined rock climber to scale the walls of this large Victorian building. They were also caked in grime and no way was either of us going to sit on the crumbling cills at such a scary height to attempt to scrape that off.

We did manage to get our landlady to remove her clothing (from the wardrobes, not herself), but she left some of her belongings in the loft and in a well on the approach to the flat. This meant that she would want to visit to collect stuff. She would make appointments and not turn up, or arrive unannounced. After a while the lavatory seat split and provision of a replacement was delayed because the owner wanted to inspect the break before authorising the purchase of a new one. She failed three appointments to do that before the agent advised us to buy own own and submit the bill to him for reimbursement. On a cold winter’s day we duly went off to buy an undamaged loo seat. Returning with our purchase who did we find sitting, wrapped in furs and wearing a scarf and boots, surrounded by shopping bags and cigarette ends, smoking a fag on the broad steps up to the front door, but our landlady. Having made and not kept an appointment to collect them from the loft, she had come for her ski boots. I asked her where she was going skiing. She told me that she wasn’t, implying that the question was rather stupid. She hadn’t been able to get into the loft because she hadn’t got a ladder. When I offered to help she said she didn’t want them now. I think you’d say she was somewhat eccentric.

Who cares? I had arrived in Wimbledon Village.

After one of Jackie’s tender lamb casseroles we drove home and disturbed the peace of Mother Fox in the front garden.