A Farewell to Stratford-upon-Avon

Source: MJA Smith

I was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon and I called it home until I was nineteen, though I didn’t realise until three years later that I’d actually moved away forever. I left the quaint market town in Warwickshire for the concrete topography of the University of Essex in Colchester, not fully aware that I wouldn’t be moving back to the town of my birth once my degree had finished.

But that’s exactly what happened. I met a girl, got a job on a bank's management trainee scheme that needed me to based somewhere that wasn’t either Stratford or Colchester and quietly, almost without me realising, I moved out of the family home. It’s probably only in the last few years, with the introduction of children and the putting down of definite roots, that I’ve finally stopped calling Stratford ‘home‘. It’s only taken 14 years.

A home, of sorts, it remained until recently, upon the occasion of my parents selling up the house they moved into in 1983, the house where I lived out my pre-teens and teenage years and all the essential experiences and rites of passage that coming of age brings. I know for them it was an emotional departure, as it would have been for me also were it not for the fact that they have moved to Milton Keynes and are consequently just a few minutes’ drive away from us (as is pretty much everyone and everything in Milton Keynes come to think of it).

We went to Stratford last at the end of their residency, toward the end of September last year, and it was a predictably moving experience. Wandering slowly round the town, all of a sudden I grasped how little detail I had actually taken in over the years. All of a sudden the buildings I thought I knew had features I'd never before recognised and buildings that I'd never even taken any notice of before jumped out at me for the first time and seemed to scream for my attention. The feeling was dismaying, almost as if the town itself was telling me that I'd neglected its nuances my entire life.

I came away from the town perplexed at how I could have been so blind to Stratford's subtleties all those years. I'd never visited any of the principal tourist haunts, with the notable exception of Holy Trinity Church, out of principle. Like many residents, I'd elected to ignore the things so obviously important to the town's fabric but so crassly touristy, if not forever then certainly until an unspecified point in the future. Now I have no idea when I might visit those places. It's now, at nine months, the longest I've ever gone without visiting the town of my birth.

Like most towns, Stratford is undergoing changes, some of which remove some of the things I remember from childhood, forcing those memories to become like a sepia-tinted dream. The most significant of these is the remodelling of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre on Waterside, a building which seemed unassailable, far too precious and historic – despite being, at less than one hundred years' old, one of the town's more modern structures – to be tampered with. The new design, retaining features from Elizabeth Scott's original Art Deco design with new elements was intended to appease actors who find the theatre's backstage area cramped and dated, but also to offer a more appealing vision to tourists. One can only imagine how divisive the 1930s design was at the time. Improved it may well come to be, but it's not the theatre I will remember.


Source: MJA Smith

Another change which caught me off-guard in September was the conversion of the Island Café at the junction of the Birmingham Road, Henley Street and Windsor Street. The café was empty for the entire time I lived in Stratford, falling slowly into a greater and greater sense of disrepair. Its prime location at the main entry point for coaches of tourists entering the town should have made it opportune premises for any business looking to cream foreign visitor spending, but in spite of this, one day the owners locked the doors and it stayed closed, with movement occasionally visible behind the grime-encrusted windows with their crumbling frames and moth-eaten curtains. (In one of the short stories I began writing for a creative writing class, I imagined the interior of the café from the perspective of a dusty old glass left behind on one of the cafe's shelves; perhaps I'll get around to completing that some time.)

The last time we were there I was amazed to see that the café was no longer in a dilapidated state but that it had been renovated and converted into a smart restaurant called Bernadette's. All my life I'd wanted to see inside that building; I'd even had a teenage daydream where I tried to buy it with my sister and converted it into a swish vegetarian eatery where I'd also DJ an eclectic mix into the small hours. And yet here, on my last trip to Stratford was a completed altered Island Café. I was gob-smacked. I went inside, ostensibly to collect a business card, but also just to say I'd been inside. I think a small part of me rather preferred the ruined state it was in before having seen such a seismic change in a relatively short space of time. I just hope Bernadette's stays open long enough in these straitened times for me to get to visit properly, whenever that might turn out to be.

I did finally get to the bottom of one Stratford puzzle that had bothered me for years – the purpose of the building, pictured at the start of this post, sandwiched between the library and what is now the abomination on Henley Street that is Subway. For years I've walked past this building, a slender Victorian construction done out, in keeping with much of restored Stratford, in a mock-Tudor, half-timbered style. The solid, imposing wooden door to this building was perpetually closed and the diagonally-leaded windows were cloudy and revealed nothing of what secrets might be behind.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'd spent a long time imagining what this building might be, but suffice to say that thanks to a childhood diet of reading wizard-and-goblin fantasy books I became convinced it must be a shady meeting place for a secret Masonic guild in the town, possibly dating back to Shakespearian times or even further still. Something about the antiquated door and lack of signage or numbering seemed to lend itself to the remote, and slightly sinister, possibility. The air of dark mystery I'd afforded this reasonably inconsequential, comparatively hidden building over the years has made it my favourite building in the entire town.

Sadly, as is often the case with the truth, the reality was far more mundane. Thanks to the support of the Stratford Society (of which I am a paid-up member), I was put in touch with town historian Robert Bearman, whose book Stratford-upon-Avon: A History Of Its Streets And Buildings had sat, unread, on my shelves for about two years. The answer was squirrelled away in his text all along. It transpires that the building was designed by Arthur Flowers – of the local Flowers' Brewery family – as a technical college with the very laudable aim of providing Stratford boys with vocational skills to help their employment prospects. The college later moved premises, finally settling on the Alcester Road, adjacent to what used to be my High School, itself having since been demolished and replaced. I'm just glad I finally found out what it was originally for. The building is now nothing more than part of the library next door, but in my imagination still the place of illicit guild meetings.

Stratford's historic nature means that it is considerably better preserved than other towns in this country, and the scope for needless and excessive modernisation can thus, hopefully, be avoided. That said, in a town not renowned for changing – because of its historical heart – any small change is therefore likely to feel much larger than it might otherwise be elsewhere. I only hope I recognise the place when I go back, whenever that might be.

Romantic Movies

Source: IMDB.com

I have two favourite slushy, romantic comedy movies (I can't bring myself to write 'romcom'; it just doesn't feel right).

The first is Serendipity, starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. Set principally in Manhattan, the film concerns itself with Beckinsale's firm belief in fate and Cusack's intensifying quest – prompted by his impending marriage to someone else – to track down the woman he met briefly, for a single night, but who left him with no details of who she was and where he could find her. To test her belief that, if they were supposed to be together, then, come what may, they would be, Beckinsale's character writes her name in the inside of a book at a stall, and Cusack writes his name on a dollar bill. The test is that if those objects worked their way back into the other's possession, they are meant to be together. The name of the film clearly refers to the fatalistic theme of the story, but also the patisserie on East 60th Street with the same name, where the two characters share ice cream. It's frustrating, and ludicrously far-fetched, but I love it. The fact that it has New York as a backdrop is just a bonus, frankly. It was also an influence on the name we chose for Daughter#1.

The other is the significantly more successful Richard Curtis movie, Love Actually. It's a favourite, not for the over-exposed Hugh Grant-dancing-to-Girls-Aloud scenes; nor for the cringeworthy Bill Nighy / Rab C Nesbitt relationship; nor the crushing effect Alan Rickman's affair has on wife Emma Thompson; nor the ridiculously far-fetched notion that the hapless guy from the BT ads is able to bed not one, not two, but three hot girls in the States; in fact I can't stand most of the characters or the attempts at clever, casually interwoven plot lines.

My love of this film applies solely to the relationship between Andrew Lincoln and Keira Knightley. Their story, for me, is the only reason to watch this film, and is all the more interesting given that they hardly feature in the plot at all; for me it is perhaps the most moving aspect of the whole film. And it's not because I had a crush on Knightley; her character, yes, but not Knightley herself. Okay, maybe a little, but I'm over it now.

Lincoln is the best friend of a character who gets wed, to Knightley, early on in the film. Throughout the wedding, Lincoln films the proceedings avidly and grimly; we sense some jealousy on his part, and we assume it is directed toward the girl who has stolen his best friend, and possibly the object of his affections, from him.

Later in the film, Knightley arrives at Lincoln's studios unannounced, claiming that he has been ignoring her calls; he is dismissive, casual, and off-handed; she asks to see his wedding video which he tries to prevent her from doing, and it is only when she begins watching the close-up shots of herself that Lincoln has captured on film does she – and we – understand that it is actually Knightley who is the object of his desires.

As a portrayal of unrequited love, I regard it as second to none, particularly in the strained, knowingly hopeless way that Lincoln silently attempts to convey his love for her toward the end of the film.

And it's for those two characters, and these three small segments of this ponderous film, that I regard it as being one of my two favourite romantic comedies of all time. Call me a thwarted romantic or a desperate fool if you will, but you won't change my mind.

Staycation (Part 2)

In part one of this post I documented our family's trip to London following the cancellation of our foreign holiday owing to the volcanic ash cloud that disrupted flights in mid-April. This post documents the second leg of our staycation, in Worcestershire.


Source: Google Images search

I always thought of Worcestershire as being something of a 'non-county', with little to recommend it. As a child growing up in Stratford-upon-Avon, we occasionally crossed the county border into Worcestershire, but generally to somewhere like Redditch, which as an urban sprawl has few reasons to visit beyond an ugly covered shopping centre. That said, we also very occasionally visited the Malvern Hills, which are of course beautiful – more on that later – or Broadway, tucked just inside the Cotswolds, but generally my over-riding impression of the county was of being unimpressed.

So it was with this mentality that when Mrs S gave me a choice between Von Essen's hotels in Suffolk and Worcestershire, I elected to choose the former. Suffolk I knew from my time at university in nearby Colchester, and my over-riding memory of that county was one of tranquil beauty. I forget now how it was that Suffolk was nudged into second place, but looking back I'm glad that it was thus.

Von Essen are an upmarket hotel chain who own a number of beautiful properties, including the historically-important Cliveden. What's pleasant about the chain is that they have a dedicated sub-collection, Luxury Family Hotels, which are just that – family-friendly hotels which appeal to those seeking the luxurious bells and whistles that often get eschewed in normal child-friendly hotels. Why should you not enjoy high standards, the theory goes, just because you have a couple of kids in tow?

We arrived at The Elms Hotel in blazing sunshine, the sort of weather we had become accustomed to that week. Driving from the M5 passed places like Chateau Impney near Droitwich Spa and the mysterious, imposing Abberley clock tower sat within the rolling Worcestershire hills and woods, I began to feel my youthful impressions of the county recede into embarassed silence. 'This county is beautiful,' I mused to myself.

Source: Andrew Mawby (Flickr)

And so was the hotel. The Elms was originally built in 1710 and rebuilt following a fire in 1927 which left only the front walls of the house standing. It is a magnificently grand, stone property with a imposing central staircase and domed stained-glass skylight. With the room not ready for a few hours and our two girls fast asleep in the car, we ditched the cases and decided to take a drive to Worcester, about ten miles away.

Source: MJA Smith

Going to Worcester was a big disappointment. In spite of the bright sunshine, which in most cases can render even the most ugly topography positively, the town has an absence of character. There are some nice buildings, most notably the Guildhall (whose architect, Thomas White, a Wren pupil, also designed The Elms), and the cathedral has an obvious draw, but the main streets are filled with the usual high street names as well as poor quality independents; there is also an abundance of buildings of unsympathetic and dated design, which to my mind have destroyed the basic character of what should be a pretty county town. After a thoroughly depressing lunch in Marks & Spencer where all the patrons seemed to just want to moan and gripe about illness and the poor state of everything, we decided to leave before we too started feeling miserable. We chanced upon a shop called New England Country Store on which was filled with cute home-ware products from the likes of Cath Kidston and Poppy Treffry, spent a small fortune, and decided to head back to The Elms.

Whether it was the disappointment of spending time in Worcester or a residual disappointment that we should have, at that time, been sat round a pool in Quinta do Lago in Portugal, but when we reached our room we weren't terribly impressed. We had selected an 'executive' room, as this was what was described as being most suitable for two adults and two children. The practicalities of the space, however, made movement around the room nigh on impossible. Daughter#2's travel cot only had one possible home, which was in front of the wardrobe, making it difficult to open, while Daughter#1's camp bed lay along the width of our bed, further reducing the space which was pretty limited to start with. The other thing, which is completely out of the control of the hotel, is that the furnishings are befitting of a period property; given that we favour, and are accustomed to, modernity, it took a while to adjust to this form of 'luxury'. All of this said, we swiftly climbed out of this funk and I can honestly say it was the only low point in that whole week.

One of the reasons was because The Elms has a superb, modern kids' club called the Bears' Den; I've always been quite reticent about putting our girls into these types of places, and Daughter#2 – at two – is generally too young for most crèches like this. Not at The Elms, where Ewa, Vicky and Sue had the pleasure of our children's company while we took a lovely afternoon tea (with the hotel's own delicious Abberley tea blend) each of the three days we were there. The girls loved the Bears' Den and were crushed when they had to leave.

Also modern is the Aquae Sulis spa, which has no restrictions on the times kids can use the pool, so the girls loved that. Mrs S took herself off for a massage one day, while I sat in the sun on the terrace doing some writing. I found the whole set-up really conducive to relaxing and unwinding, which I duly did. The gardens at The Elms are lovely also, and unlike other grand houses, aren't off limits for curious kids. In addition to a large sloping lawn, there's a secret garden, play area and tennis courts.

Service wise, across the stay we did receive some little inconsistencies from one day to the next, most of which were just minor irritations more than anything else. Getting peas with the kids' fish and chips meal one day and not getting them the next; having a slice of cucumber in my Hendricks and tonic one day and not the next; getting talked through the breakfast buffet and egg options each of the three days, by the same waiter, in a hotel with fewer than 30 rooms even though he recognised us and acknowledged me by name; signing for our meal in the Pear Terrace on the last night and realising that we hadn't signed for anything else the entire time we were there. That sort of thing. Whilst nothing individually disastrous, they were basics we expected a £300 per night hotel to get right without making us even notice them.

On the Friday we took a drive to Great Malvern, with the intention of walking into the hills. That didn't happen, mainly because we spent so much time wandering, slack-jawed, around the town itself, marvelling at how well preserved the town is, and also at how well it has maintained – mostly – a focus on independent retailers (Worcester take note). Even a high street chain like WHSmith has been here, in the same spot, for decades and retains features from yesterday such as the mosaic picture below. We bought bits and pieces for the house from Ipaetus Gallery and had a picnic in the serene Rose Bank gardens, marvelling at the views across the Midlands and the cascading town tiered below us. I think it's fair to say that I did rather fall for Malvern in a big way that day.


Source: MJA Smith

The following day we headed for the Cotswolds, an area I seldom visited enough as a child but where I have had many, many happy times with Mrs S since. We started our mini-tour at Broadway, spending far too much time and money at Cotswold Trading until the pull of having a cup of tea in the sunshine outside The Broadway Hotel was too great. From there we drove through the countryside to Bourton-on-the-Water (cheating slightly here as it's in Gloucestershire), possibly unwise given its status as a tourist hotspot; we were also running out of time, so literally stopped there for lunch at The Croft, where we sat on their sun-drenched terrace and observed the combination of arty types and foreign holidaymakers passing by. The Croft has a really good, simple menu, and also offers good, healthy choices for kids.

The following day, after checking out, we drove along the road to Witley Court, a ruined house and lakeside garden destroyed by fire in the 1920s (was burning down the house a past-time on this stretch of road in the early part of the last Century I wonder?). Managed by English Heritage, I found the sight of an historic property gutted by flames strangely moving, while the girls loved the adventure of exploring the hollowed-out rooms, spotting the fireplaces halfway up walls where formerly the upper storeys would have been. To add insult to the house's injury, prior to the fire, all of the major fittings and fixtures were stripped and sold by the then owners.


Source: Google Images search

One of the core attractions of Witley Court is its fountains. To complete this sad tale of a mournful building, the piping used to pump water to the main fountain was removed during the second World War, presumably to be melted down for weaponry. Since refurbished, the fountain is now in full working order and is demonstrated at set intervals in the day; the central plume of water is capable of shooting a majestic 100ft into the air. No trip to an historic property would be complete without a trip to the tea shop, which is here attached to the remarkably-undamaged church which adjoins the main Witley Court house. Fine home-made cakes and scones ensued before setting off for home.

That completed the second leg of our staycation. It left me feeling like we'd only scratched the surface of Worcestershire's rich spoils, but at least it managed to redefine my – false – impressions of the county. Thank you, Eyjafjallajökull for serendipitously allowing that to happen.

Staycation (Part 1)

Source: Business Week

I was sat at work two days before setting off for Portugal with Mrs S and the girls when a colleague came in and pointed out that we might not be travelling after all thanks to the cloud of volcanic ash drifting toward the UK from the erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. In my usual, news-oblivious way, I hadn't heard anything about it. 'Don't worry,' he said, seeing my look of concern. 'It should be clear by the time you're flying.'

My colleague's news awareness alone was of course not the same as being able to see the future, and by the time our flight to Portugal was scheduled to leave – 8.25 on the Saturday morning – the punitive restrictions on UK airspace had already led to our flights being cancelled, but only after a day of nail-biting concern as to whether we'd have been notified of the cancellation the day before, or whether we would be among the mugs you saw on TV waiting anxiously at the airport for interminable hours anticipating news that wouldn't come; the idea of doing that with two toddlers couldn't have filled me with more dread.

By the end of that Friday evening, Mrs S had already scoured the web and booked alternatives for our break. A day later than we'd been scheduled to depart for the Algarve, we were on our way to Canary Wharf for two nights at the Radisson at New Providence Wharf.

The Radisson New Providence Wharf is a hotel that we've become very familiar with, having stayed here – both with the girls and without – numerous times over the past couple of years. A suite here provides very good value for money for the amount of space you get – a main bedroom, a lounge with fold-out sofa bed for our eldest daughter and plenty of room for a travel cot for our youngest.


Source: MJA Smith

As with any stay in London, the hotel is largely just a base from which to go exploring, and that's exactly how we treated it this time around. Within half an hour of having checked in we were sat in Jubilee Park (above Canary Wharf Tube station), gazing up at the sleek glass curtain walls of the office buildings and eating a picnic in the sunshine. From there, a Tube ride to Baker Street and a wander to Marylebone High Street where we browsed the Conran Shop and Mrs S and Daughter#1 bought bits and pieces from Cath Kidston. A sleeping Daughter#2 and I sat in the Garden Of Rest opposite, a small oasis of tranquillity amidst the clamour of nearby Marylebone Road.

Further down Marylebone High Street Daughter#1 and I bought old postcards of London and a book called Pen Paper Pause by Richard Watkins at a pretty store called Caroline & Friends, before purchasing Lauren Child books in Daunt. Daunt, an independent bookshop, has a beautiful stained glass window on the back wall and a great range of travel books in the gallery upstairs and basement. While Mrs S and Daughter#1 hit the Little White Company shop, I found a rare Inspiral Carpets 12" single in the Oxfam next door. It was an afternoon of turning up such treats.


Source: MJA Smith

From Marylebone High Street to Hyde Park, escaping the touristy clamour of Oxford Street in favour of Wigmore Street, though still finding ourselves crossing Hyde Park Corner along with everybody else. It was no surprise that the park was busy with the obligatory sunbathers and footie-playing lads, given that it was a warm Spring Sunday afternoon. The girls ran about while we had a much-needed rest. Again missing Oxford Street via a walk along Grosvenor Square, we caught the Tube from Bond Street back to Canary Wharf and had a poor Wagamama experience in Jubilee Place, including Daughter#1 barely eating, me throwing food down my t-shirt and after 20 minutes of waiting, the discovery that the waiter had forgotten to order my yasai chilli men; when it finally arrived it was so spicy I fully expected to pass out eating it. But he did deduct it from the bill.

The following morning we walked from the hotel to Canary Wharf and had breakfast in Kruger at Cabot Square; it wasn't cheap and the service was a bit off, but the food was nice. From there we caught the DLR to Island Gardens to pass under the Thames using the Foot Tunnel into Greenwich. The lift was working on the North bank, but not the South, which meant I had to lug our buggy up the stairs – I lost count of how many there were after about forty, but the burly lift operator on the North bank reckoned gruffly there were 'about 'undred'.

We hadn't been to Greenwich before, but it lived up to all the expectations we'd built up from people who had told us about it, and, if we hadn't had plans for the afternoon, I'm sure we'd have stayed there for longer. Instead we made a beeline for the park, had a drink at Cow And Coffee Bean and let the girls have a run around in the kids' play area. As if dragging the buggy up the steps from the Foot Tunnel wasn't exhausting enough, pushing said stroller up the hill to have a picnic at the top very nearly did me in, but it was worth it for the views across Canary Wharf and the City alone.

That afternoon, we took the sleek and graceful Thames Clipper to Bankside Pier and visited the fifth floor of the Tate Modern, figuring that the displays of Cubist, Vorticist and Futurist art would appeal to the imagination of two toddlers, and were proven correct. Daughter#1 loved the Warhols, Ruschas and Lichtensteins, whereas Daughter#2 gravitated worryingly close to the sculptures until a packet of raisins persuaded her back into her stroller.


(c) 1984 Ed Ruscha

We headed back to the hotel via the Cafe Rouge at Hays Galleria, which is a reasonably safe bet for kids' food, and Tower Bridge. Tower Bridge with a stroller from the South Bank requires a lengthy detour along Tooley Street, which is almost as long as the walk across the bridge itself. But it does offer some great views along the length of the bridge.

On the Tuesday we schlepped across to Covent Garden and were there before things really got underway at 10.00. With the sun shining and few people around (compared to normal), such parts of the West End are so much more alluring than they are at busy times, giving you space to appreciate the architecture and elegance of the area without constantly bumping into other people engaged in either the frenetic act of getting somewhere or just ambling about cluelessly.

Source: Fopp website

We passed Kiefer Sutherland on Earlham Street en route to Fopp. Fopp used to be an independent record shop until it went bust and was salvaged by HMV. The Earlham Street store has kept the Fopp branding, and also the more liberal-minded approach to its stock compared to its more universal parent. I bought CDs by Brian Eno and Television; for Mrs S it was Grizzly Bear and Ed Harcourt. For Daughter#1 it was just fun to look at the CD cases and picking out the ones she liked the look of.

A dash back across the Jubilee Footbridge to the London Eye brought us sharply into touristville, but mercifully our pod on the Eye was almost empty. Mrs S and I had been once before, on a cloudy Autumn morning. On this April Tuesday it was bright and sunny – and plane-less, naturally – which allowed for far better views than we'd had before. The experience of seeing the whole of London laid out was only marred by Daughter#2's insistence on tearing around the pod and having a major terrible toddler tantrum; the two combined caused me to experience vertigo for the only time in my life so far.

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Source: unknown

So, that concludes part one of our unexpected staycation in the UK, and a trip to London that included more traditional (child-friendly) tourist haunts than I'd normally elect to go to. Okay, so it wasn't as relaxing as Portugal would have been, but that's to be expected when you go to London.

Coffee

I have given up coffee.

I've had intentions of doing this before, and have managed a week at best. In total I have drunk coffee routinely since I was thirteen, or twenty full years out of my thirty-three. That's a lot of stimulant.

Except that my consumption was never excessive, and in comparison to other people was positively non-existent. I'd go so far as to say it was lightweight, wimpy. I can probably think of no more than three times where I've drunk more than three cups of coffee in a day; latterly, since I started commuting into the office from my home in Milton Keynes, a decent cup of coffee was required just to get the day at work started. Just one, mind. This is contrast to people I met recently in Geneva, who would drink five or six espressos in a morning just to be able to face the day. For me it was a milky americano at about 7.30, occasionally followed by another toward the end of the morning if the day was proving especially draining.

Coffee has on occasion done some strange things to me if I stepped outside of that one, maybe two cups a day range. I recall drinking two huge lattes in a café in Colchester that was trying to capture the whole Central Perk-esque, relaxed and convivial vibe of Friends. That was at about 10.30 in the morning. Despite not having anything else caffeinated for the rest of the day, thanks to that injection, I was still awake at 3.00 the next morning. And that's the thing that was most surprising about the event that led to my withdrawal from coffee; usually, coffee would have an effect on my head, not my body. I'd come away from a strong coffee feeling light-headed and not really 'with it'.

I read an article in Esquire last year detailing the negative side of coffee drinking but despite being worried to death by what it had to say, and despite a concerted effort to start drinking coffee every other day, I failed miserably. But still I never stepped outside that one or two cups a day range.

And then, a month ago, I went round to my parents' house and had a cup of Joe; nothing too hardcore, just from a jar. And then I went home and found Mrs S making one, so I thought I'd have another, again just from a jar. I wouldn't normally have two cups so close together, but I didn't think it mattered. Remember that two cups in a day, even if they're close together, isn't in any way excessive.

So it was a surprise to me that from the moment I finished that second cup, at about 11.30 that Sunday morning, through to when I went to bed, twelve hours later, I'd endured half a calendar day's-worth of heart palpitations so relentless and intense that I thought I was either having a heart attack or about to witness my own heart break free from the confines of my chest and bounce about all over the floor of my house like some sort of psycho Space Hopper. I was petrified, and couldn't see that coffee alone had prompted this feeling.

I don't know how I was able to sleep, but I did. However, when I woke up for work at 5.00 the next day those racing palpitations were still there, so I decided to call the doctors and get an emergency appointment. By the time I got there, my heart felt almost normal again – typical – and I was just left with an equally-worrying tightness in my chest.

I told the doctor about the coffees of the day before, at which she nodded sagely, doing that semi-sympathetic, semi-patronising smile medics are so adept at, and as she explained that caffeine had likely provided the trigger, I felt stupid and sheepish. And just as I was about to slope away apologising for wasting her time, she asked me if I'd been feeling stressed recently.

The answer was that I had. A week or two before that Sunday I'd experienced some of the most frantic, busy and stretching days at work I've ever endured. She said that the coffee may well have been the trigger for the palpitations, but that the stress had provided the conditions for my body to react differently than it would normally have. The trigger for the trigger if you like.

I was genuinely surprised. Up to that point I thought I'd managed stress in my life reasonably well. The impact of that Sunday was to make me rethink my approach to complexity and uncertainty generally, and I've (mostly) been more calm and balanced since then; more like how I've been told I appear on the surface perhaps, less internalising problems. In addition, I decided to give up coffee. Completely. Cold turkey.

A month later I haven't been tempted once to order an americano at all; not once. The physical effects I experienced that Sunday prompted such a fear of what something seemingly so innocuous could do to you that I just needed to cut it out completely.

So there you are; that's why I'm no longer drinking coffee.

Every Book

Go to: Audio Journal :: Documentary Evidence :: twitter.com/mjasmith



Every book naturally tells a story; second-hand books often have the capacity to tell a totally different story to the one contained in the printed pages, but it is a story without narrative, with only the reader's imagination itself to determine the characters, plots and events in the story.

I bought two second-hand books from a café at a farm in Bedfordshire; the nominal amount of money they cost was donated to the Haiti earthquake appeal. The books were Breakfast At Tiffany's by Truman Capote and Walking On Glass by Iain Banks.

Inside Walking On Glass, at a seemingly random interval in the book was a white envelope, slit open crudely along the short edge; on the front, in pencil, the words 'WED 10.00'; on the reverse, in Biro, a few small doodles, a stylised star and the name 'Christina'. There was also a credit-sized cardboard advert for the Cineworld complex in Stevenage.

In the inside front cover, a red ink stamp proclaimed the book to have been withdrawn from the stock of South Tyneside library and sold for 20p.

On page 59, a reader had circled the page number with a blue Biro. The page, part of a sequence where one of the three main characters (Graham) falls deeper in love with Sara ffitch, is mildly moving, but nothing fundamental to the story compared to any other page in the book.

The objects, scribbles and circlings prompt questions: why did the book get sold? How did it find its way to Bedfordshire? What was so significant about page 59? Who is or was Christina? What happened at 10.00 on that Wednesday? Was it a date between the book's owner and the mysterious Christina? Did the date go well? Did they marry, move in together and decide, during a disposal of their combined individual possessions, to rid themselves of this book? You quickly move from seeing the clues as not independent items but part of a broader narrative that runs in parallel to the mystifying, curiously unreal and detached theme of the book itself. Just like the three apparently separate strands that run throughout the book, they coalesce into a semblance of a unified story.

My own additions to the book's story I am more sure of: I used the cover of a torn box of matches from Brasserie Lipp in Geneva as my bookmark, for no other reason than it was lying on the desk in my hotel when I was reading the book. In the back I put a torn corner of a page of an MC Escher desk calendar bearing the word 'Tokyo' and a folded yellow Post-It bearing a mobile number for someone I called weeks ago; both were lying on my desk at work and got swept into the cover of the book when I left the office for the day.

I'm tempted to keep them all in there, hand it into a charity shop, let the next owner find them and construct their own story about the book itself and its previous owners, a story that moves from South Tyneside to Stevenage to Geneva to Tokyo. It might mean nothing or it might nurture one of the finest pieces of modern literature; the point is we'll never know.

Travelodge, Hayle

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I don't think I understand the concept of 'no frills'. My understanding was that a no frills service or product retained the usefulness and core functionality of a more expensive equivalent, but did away with any unnecessary add-ons or peripheral additions. Think Ikea furniture versus Habitat – often very similarly-styled items only made of materials that perhaps won't endure quite so long, but in essence designed to fulfil the same principal use.

We stayed at a Travelodge at Hayle in Cornwall when visiting my niece in Penzance at the weekend which has turned my comprehension of a no frills service on its head. I've stayed in a Travelodge near Heathrow once before, and endured a thoroughly miserable night's sleep owing to the comings and goings of noisy travellers along the corridor throughout the night. However, that was pre-credit crunch and the corresponding rise in popularity of brands such as Travelodge and Premier Inn. I figured, mistakenly, that with that rise in popularity had come a rise in standards; more basically, I assumed that the Heathrow experience was just the product of its proximity to the UK's foremost airport, not a damning indictment of the chain per se. This trip wasn't our main holiday, and with a scarcity of accommodation around Penzance catering for families with small children, plus those hotels that did having family room rates of around £120 per night, we decided to go for the Travelodge at Hayle where the total stay for three nights was around £125.

Travelodge's ethos, according to the creased and stained literature in the room, is to make you feel better off, and in this regard they succeeded. And judging by the prevalence of Audis and BMWs in the car park it's a marketing strategy that's paying dividends. Paying for three nights what I'd have paid for one elsewhere was of course a big saving, and I did feel like I could afford to spend more generously elsewhere. I didn't; I decided that I'd do similarly uncharacteristic things like go to McDonald's for breakfast and stopping at a Harvester on the way home. Perhaps that makes me sound like a snob. Perhaps I am.



It's the sheer basicness, if that's a word, of the place that first surprised me. The furniture and set-up was nothing short of utilitarian – a simple desk, some hanging space for clothes, some open shelves and a bed, plus a sofa bed for our eldest daughter and plenty of floor space for our youngest daughter's travel cot. The bathroom, though tiny, had a decent shower. It was clear from the layout and lack of ornament that the room was designed to serve one solitary purpose, and that was for sleeping. You wouldn't – couldn't – choose Travelodge for a romantic break. Sleeping is really all we did there; we'd get back from my sister's house and go to bed, get up, get clean and get out. With only a curiously over-priced to-the-door breakfast available we were out early as well. I wonder if it's still cheap if you work out how much it costs per minute you're actually prepared to be in the room.

Still, so far, no major gripes. We saved money and slept, if not well, then at least enough to be able to start the day with at least a vague sense of feeling refreshed; also, the room seemed clean, but then again the carpet was of such a nauseatingly dense Seventies pattern that you'd have been hard pressed to tell. But there were some things which were beyond basic, and were instead just plain wrong. First, the bed had no support and left Mrs S – who hasn't got the best back at the best of times – feeling all sorts of aches and pains; the duvet cover was literally the same size as the bed, which meant – because of the inadequate storage heater (on all day, off all night) that we spent the night in a perpetually chilly duvet tug of war with one another; the duvet cover itself was open down one side; the mattress cover on the sofa bed was torn and hole-ridden and there were some dubious stains on the mattress itself; the back of the sofa bed literally came apart when I tried to make it up; towels were thin and threadbare; the sink had a crack in it; the room, in spite of being non-smoking, smelled of a combination of decades-old fags and contained a faint whiff of damp dog etc etc. Need I go on? Getting the picture?

It is possible, through staying at a Travelodge, to deduce what the chain must believe to be the 'frills' we can live without, and whether you agree or not that's tough. For example, a lock on the toilet door? No need. Buttons down the side of the duvet cover? Superfluous. Toiletries? Bring your own, cheapskate. Curtain hooks along the full length of the curtain rail? Come on, they close don't they? Quit complaining. You get what you pay for.

The last point is, I suppose, crucial: you get what you pay for. Michael O'Leary of Ryanair is the most prominent exponent of the 'pay peanuts, expect shit' mantra. We paid less than a third of the price for three nights that you'd pay at somewhere like The Soho in London for a single night, a place whose rooms are so stuffed with frills of all shapes and hues that you could be mistaken for thinking you were sleeping in a large doily. But that's really what I want from a hotel. Well, maybe not doilies, but hopefully you get the picture. We all deserve a little luxury when we travel, I say. I don't want to stay somewhere that's less luxurious than my own house. Sorry if that's not the credit crunch spirit.

If I've learned one thing from this stay, it's 'pay more, get more', and that's exactly what I'll be doing next time.