It's not what I expected... Part V

I am alone behind the till. The BookSeller is out back, ostensibly checking the Reading Recovery books but I know he's just bought his son's Beano and the comic is not with me behind the till. A woman enters - purposefully strides through the door - reminding me faintly and perhaps not entirely pleasantly of Nancy dell' Oily.

'I want a book' she says. I wait breathlessly. 'It's a book I've read and I want it for a present. It's called Death in Venice, Lost in Iraq. Or something like that. Something that's alliterative.'

I type venice and iraq into the Bertrams search engine and surprisingly - or not - come up with zilch. So I say 'Any idea of the author?'

'No. It's by a journalist and it's a travel book. It's got Venice and Iraq in the title. Is Jon here? He recommended it and he would know.'

By now her attitude is slightly starting to piss me off and I get stubborn and say - oh foolish me - that he's unavailable but I'm sure I can help. I surreptitiously google it - she wants Jeff in Venice, Death in Varansi by Geoff Dyer. Of course. We have a copy in stock in Fiction. I go and fetch it for her.

She lets me get back behind the counter, fixes me with a challenging sort of stare from behind the completely unnecessary sunglasses and says 'I want a hardback copy of Birchwood by John Banville.' I point out it's unlikely we'd have the hardback in but the paperback is. 'Oh, but it's a present.' I duly fetch it for her and she accedes. This time I ca' canny, because I sense she and I have not finished this slightly tedious game of How can I annoy the shop assistant, hand the book to her and say 'Anything else?'

She is clearly a master at this. She shakes her head and continues browsing new titles. I go back behind the counter and she opens her mouth and says 'I want the book about pandas. It's for...' and she says it in a peculiarly strained, emphatic, meaningful way, 'My Husband's Best Friend for his 50th.'

This time I do know what she's talking about - 100 facts about Pandas, a witty amusing little jokey fact book, none of it true and perhaps not entirely amusing for that fact alone. It came in only the other day and I am only too pleased to once again traipse to the end of the shop and fetch it for her.

This is clearly the end of the spree; she gathers them into a pile and then asks me to permanent marker over all the prices. I make sure I do this in front of her - something tells me this is risky as the pen might slip and I might accidentally permanent marker her face, but I do it anyway. I put the books through the till - again stupid, as she then turns away for wrapping paper and birthday cards. Meanwhile the 3 ladies who've been hanging out in the bookshop after their morning coffee next door approximately 5 years ago come to the till with a grand total of £18.98 to show for their browsing. I have to over-ring 'Nancy's' order.

She deigns to come back to the till and this time I manage to get actual money out of her. The sunglasses are still in place. She leaves, barely acknowledging my strained and perhaps snarled Goodbye. Later I find out The Husband's Best Friend is actually Rod Liddle. Good luck to him.

It's not what I expected... Part IV

New stock has arrived and I'm busy putting it on the shelf while the BookSeller looks on and sees that it was good. The division of labour has been tacit. A man walks in, takes a quick look round and then says 'Do you have a book about a fridge?' I notice it takes the BookSeller a couple of moments to compute this. I know that we are both thinking 'Why, yes Sir, in our White Goods section just by Self-Help and The Door to Fuck-Knows-What's-in-the-Office.' The BookSeller finally informs him that no, we don't have any books on fridges. The man looks quietly astonished before taking his leave. We are quietly astonished that he would come unarmed with his fridge model number, date of birth, mother's dog's maiden name and 22 forms of ID that you usually require to get help on any form of kitchen appliance.

It's not what I expected... Part III

We're in the bookshop; it's fairly quiet, just a few people milling around wondering whether to get involved in the whole Stieg Larsson thing, or just to move quietly on to the scary New Titles. The silence is shattered as a woman manhandles a 4x4 all-weather buggy through the perhaps slightly-deliberately-difficult-to-negotiate entrance. We watch her for a few minutes as she clips the card spinner and the anti-theft device. She manoevres the buggy into position, conveniently blocking both egress and entry to all other customers. She asks 'Do you sell lunchboxes?'

'Nuff said.

It's not what I expected... Part II

I am in the bookshop, I am coming down with tonsilitis but I am soldiering on. I'm tough like that. A woman comes in with her small son, Frank - or perhaps we might call him by his other name - Little Fucker. LF Frank is chuntering away as he barges round the shop. 'Ah' I think. 'Aren't small children funny when they have discovered the wonders of full sentence construction and can chat away like old pros.' Momentarily my instinctive very slightly anti-child facade lifts.

His mother comes to the counter with a book and some wrapping paper. I take the money and roll the wrapping paper and put the goods in a plastic bag. I notice LF Frank is eyeing me up in what might only be described as pre-meditative. I hand the bag to the mother and she turns to put it into the huge buggy (huge I can only imagine because there are leather restraints and a muzzle inside). LF Frank says 'Mummy, that lady punched me.' And he points at me. I am at this point standing some 2-3 feet away across a high counter that the snivelling LF cannot in any way see over. If I were Mrs Incredible, I could indeed have punched him. But I did not.

His mother tells him not to tell such terrible stories. He repeats the accusation. At this point, I empathise with every teacher in the land. I am about to be done for child assault. And for once, I am innocent. The BookSeller is mysteriously silent behind me, but I sense he could leap into action if required. LF Frank is hurriedly ushered from the shop. I'll be watching for him.

It's not what I expected...

Working in the bookshop is a constant education. As I mentioned in my last post, I am accompanied by a near-constant sense of panic when I look at all these books and how did I ever let myself get so out of touch. Although, when The Bookseller said portentously 'We've sold Bleach', it is a mark of the steep curve of my education that the first thought in my mind was not in fact Domestos.

There are other highlights: The Actor who comes in to give helpful hints on how to start a riot at the Crystal Palace cinema campaign; The Sci-Fi Drunk who farted loudly and wetly during the umpteenth discussion on whether we would take his (non-existent?) water-damaged collection (ummm... no.); The bizarre quantity of books we stock by the local rock 'n' roll, band-playing author-vicar; the discount on good coffee at La Bruschetta next door; the mysterious and sometimes frankly weird music we play (I got most excited yesterday that I recognised the songs playing for a whole 43 minutes - it was Crowded House. Customers ask me 'What's the music?' I reply 'No idea - it's on the IPod' as if this is a proper answer.)

An epiphany or two - Warning: A very long post

So here I am in the New World of freelancing, hopping here and there between jobs and tasks. I have just been granted membership to The Guild of Food Writers which is an enormous step forward both for me and my job prospects, and them for starting to embrace the alien concept that is online food writing.

Having been off formal work for nearly 2 weeks now, I have, in the manner of one who perhaps has a tad too much time on her hands (but only a tad), had a few startled revelations; namely:

1. How in the world does anyone with a full-time job get anything done? I used to be that person, struggling womanfully on, doing all the household chores on a Saturday morning (or even on a Friday night if MCD was out - I know how to have a good time), shopping on a Sunday, cooking every night, working all day with a 3-hour commute to boot - how - how - did I fit it all in? And now it's this present-buying, list-making, freaking-panicking time of the year, it's even more of a conundrum.

These days I seem to be set to a go-slow option, where jobs and tasks and chores are achieved unaccompanied by the mild panic that it must be done and ticked off the list - it's made me realise just how stressed and screwed tight I was; just like every other working woman, I was juggling 14000 different things and surviving - not thriving. That's not to say there aren't hour-long moments of panic about just where my money is going to come from, or whether I'm spending my time fruitfully and in an applied and efficient manner, or whether my brain is simply going to wither away without external stimulation - just that life at a slightly slower pace is a life slightly better lived.

2. Working in the bookshop in Crystal Palace has started off a slightly peculiar train of thought. Back in the heady days of my youth, when I dreamt of being married to a poet and heading my own literary group and living in Paris or Cadiz (don't ask) wearing black polonecks and sipping brandy (probably not suited for both Paris and Cadiz, but you get the picture), Literature was my thing. I knew the new hot titles, the out-of-prints, the rare wanted-but-never-to-be-seen-again titles, books others would love; then I moved into the world of food and my broad love of writing narrowed to the subject in hand. In the last 7 or 8 years, my general literature range reduced as I read more and more about food and got lazy with other genres, stuck with tried and trusted favourite authors, only experimenting with new books when I went on holiday. I became someone I thought I never could be - a restricted reader (the horror). It's nice to know I have a specialised field, but nowadays I am left a little panicky about my lack of knowledge of literature generally.

Now in the shop I stand there behind the counter and think 'I used to know this stuff and now I don't.' This makes me slightly stressed - can I ever learn all this again? Where did all that knowledge go? Why am I so stupid? (As I said, a tad too much time on my hands...) I want to be erudite again. And at the moment, that feels decidedly not the case.

3. Being unemployed - or at least going from the 9-5 to the whatever-whenever - means that your mindset has to change completely and that can leave you out of step with the person you live with. When you're both working full-time, you have something in common, be it the stresses of the commute, the same lack of time, the decisions of whether to spend the evening out with friends in order to catch up or in with your partner to catch up; either way someone is left out. But all the same, it is a common bond and one that means you are running, albeit slightly frenetically, on parallel tracks.

Once one of you loses your job/steps aways from the rat race, that common bond is dissolved. I experienced it myself this year when MCD got made redundant and was out of work for quite some time over the summer. I caught myself feeling a near-constant low-level simmer of resentment that he was off work throughout the summer and I couldn't have a holiday, or that I still somehow had to fit in at least half the housework and all of the shopping (Bless him, he did his bit but why must men require a detailed list of chores after nearly 6 years of living together?) When he went back to work, it was a relief because then we understood each other again.

Now I am at home, I can see the other side of the story, albeit with a slight twist. I am not an ambitious workaholic - the thought of it makes me feel a little ill - so working from home with its flexible time suits me down to the ground. I enjoy pottering and the structure working in the bookshop brings for a few hours at a time, I enjoy household chores and doing bits and pieces here and there. But the common working bond has gone again. The working partner will never quite believe you haven't been sitting on your arse all day (see Point 1), but in your own head you've achieved an incredible amount and you're quite satisfied. I am getting my rest, you think.

I - and I accept this is purely our relationship dynamic - am still, in my head, responsible for making home life as wonderful and pleasant as possible for the disgruntled worker which entails using a certain amount of headspace and mental effort, effort which I rather need for myself right now looking for projects and work. That need to keep each other's spirits up is part of being in a relationship, but sometimes you need to step back for a second and take stock. Life is going to be very different from now on and we both need to adjust and maybe that means recognising that our former work bond must be replaced by something else, hopefully something a lot healthier and less mutually stressful.

Life is tricky, rushed, stressy enough. With a little effort it needn't be demoralising too.

In which we enter a brave new world...

What with one thing and another, I haven't managed to post anything much very foodie recently. I shall try to make amends with telling you what I plan to cook at some point this weekend but in the meantime, a brief diversion:

So - I am going freelance. Not for me the 9-5, the Clapham omnibus (or rather, the no.52 bus from Victoria up to Ladbroke Grove), the 6.42am starts; I am braving the world of the solitary home-worker. Actually it's all looking rather good - I am soon to be a Kitchen Queen, a prospect that thrills me as someone who lives to cook and also has a worrisome interest in the layout other people's houses. Simply put I teach people to cook in their own homes. I will be an Educator. Although - as MCD pointed out - as someone who might live to cook, but also can barely step foot into the kitchen without having some kind of accident or another, it might be best practice to allow them to handle the sharp objects.

I am also going back to my roots and working in the much-loved local bookshop for a couple of days a week. I used to work in Ottakars before it was bought out by big, bad Waterstone's wolf and I started my London life working in a psychoanalytic bookshop on Gloucester Road, so I have form. And I can embrace my creeping inclination to be Ash from Don't Ask Me Why.

I'm also pushing the food writing - I'm officially a hack for hire, so if anyone out there's looking for a food writer (or indeed any other sort) rather well-versed in SEO and websites, email me. Self-interested promotion now over.

But back to the point of the piece, which was my thoughts on what to eat this weekend. I shall roast some butternut squash, cut into cubes, then toss with sliced, seared pigeon breast and chicken livers, spinach leaves and cherry tomatoes. The pan I use to cook the meat in will be deglazed with a little sherry vinegar and finely chopped garlic and a little walnut oil, then I shall pour the dressing over the other ingredients. Then (I feel like a magician) I shall top the whole with a version of pangrattato - those crisp fried breadcrumbs mixed with some very finely chopped rosemary and some orange zest.

In my head, it's a visual and oral wowser. I shall let you know what reality is like. If I can make it look pretty, I might even treat you to a photo.

PS: There's an idea I came across recently for butternut squash I'll pass on. You make a stock sugar syrup (water and sugar) and infuse with rosemary. You roast butternut squash in the oven until tender, then pour over the syrup for the last 10 minutes or so. The result should be deeply golden caramelised butternut squash. I will give it a go at some point, but if anyone gets there first, let me know what happens.