School Holidays in A Minor

Overcoming The Fear Of Washing Your A.P.C Jeans

Okay, so everybody knows that when you buy A.P.C jeans, they are stiff like the jeans your mother bought you when you were eleven years old. The kind of jeans that were like construction material, that you could sand a plank of wood with or use as a weapon to beat a burglar over the head with and so on. When you wore them, you walked around with stiff limbs for the first few weeks, with the denim inflexible and geeky and when you sat down, you'd take to a chair like a 90 year grandmother does, very slowly, with completely straight legs.

This is how A.P.C jeans are when you first buy them. Then, crucially, they start to give and you are suddenly in love with them. It's like they slowly adapt themselves to your body, having first spent a few months hanging out and observing you and seeing how you walk, sit and so on. And once they fit themselves to you, there is no other pair of jeans (or trousers for that matter), you'd rather be wearing.

The big thing and it's mythologised on the A.P.C cleaning instruction is that you can't wash your jeans for at least a year after buying them. Apparently it messes with the denim and the cut and the colour: so you wear them and wear them and wear them and do your best to avoid gurgling babies, splashing soy sauce and clumsy eating in general.

Eventually, around a year, you feel a serious need to freshen them up and start googling and seeing what others have done when their jeans can't go on any longer without being washed and find there are debates galore, about whether chucking them in the washing machine at 30 degrees, delicate cycle, is safe (many seemed to say it's fine), about whether they need to be dry cleaned, about whether as A.P.C suggest they should be washed in the ocean by their owners and then rubbed with sand, washed in the ocean some more and then washed in clean water and finally dried in the sun.

It's enough in the end to send you nuts, the worry of wrecking your beloved best ever pair of jeans, especially after enduring that chafing hellish eleven year old boy stiff jeans that your mother bought you season.

So yesterday, after 16 months of wearing my jeans, almost daily (!), I couldn't go another second without washing them: into the washing machine at 30 degrees on a delicate cycle they went and let me tell you, it was a nerve jittery Woody Allen of a fifty minutes.

But I needn't have worried, out they came, looking lovely and dark blue again and they dried in the London Spring sunshine on the window sill and this morning went on tight fitting again, the leg all straightened out (it had got a bit permamently bunched up around the ankle), as good as new. 

The Flat White Method Of Keeping A Coffee Shop Door From Clanging Shut

I don't know how we'd missed out until now but I suddenly realised I'd never had a coffee at Flat White, a very popular coffee connoisseurs' hangout on Berwick Street in London's Soho. The place was rammed, so we queued just in the doorway. While we were waiting, my seven year old daughter noticed and became obsessed with the Flat White crew's brilliantly inventive home made coffee lovers' device which works as a weight pulley system stopping the door from clanging shut. We shuffled forwards and it was my turn to stand holding the door half open, which caused the pulley weight device to dangle in the air. An unassuming American woman was standing just inside the door, beneath the device. When someone needed to leave, I opened the door wider and inadvertently lowered the home made device so it thudded on the American woman's head. Woa, she said, shocked and turning around to find a bunch of coffee paraphenalia dancing on her head. Seriously funny.

Flat White's Legendary Stop the Door Clanging Shut Device

The coffee was great, too. And Flat White get points for calling out the order in my wife's name as follows, "Coffees for Anna. Or Anna spelled backwards!" 

Great food at Ukai, Poland street, London W1

I've long been ordering sushi delivery from Ukai on Westbourne Grove, but never eaten at any of their actual restaurants. That all changed this past Saturday, when I had lunch at Ukai on Poland Street, in Soho. It was really quiet and relaxing: our lovely waitress said it is manic week round, then always pin drop quiet on Saturday lunch time. Perfect. We had a great lunch: I could kick myself we never went to eat at an Ukai restaurant until now, because the menu has so many great things you can't get delivered and everything is served beautifully

Street Food Vans on Berwick Street/ Rupert Street

If you get the chance to visit London's Berwick street, in Soho, you'll find a blossoming street food scene. On Friday, I went to the Berwick street food market, to get avocados from Norman's Fruit 'n' Veg stall - in my opinion, the only place to buy avocados in Central London. As I wandered farther down Berwick street, I came across two new street food vans, both with heavy queues. The first was Banhmi11, a van selling Vietnamese street food. It looked good and they had a major crowd waiting to get lunch. Next up was Pizza Pilgrims, a very cute street food van with a wood fire pizza oven raging in its trunk. The guys working the dough and oven, seemed to know their stuff

and like Banhmi11, they had a good few customers waiting to try out their freshly baked pizzas

Wandering on, past both of these interesting newcomers (I'd already eaten lunch), I cut through to Rupert street, where the more established street food vans, Moroccan Box and Freebird Burrito, were drawing their usual fanatical crowds

Wow: Marion Deuchars' Menus for Carluccio's

I went with my family to try out the new Carluccio's off Marylebone High Street, on Paddington Street, late this afternoon. It was the first time we'd felt inspired to set foot in a Carluccio's in a long time. I had a great Affogato and the girls had ice cream. This Carluccio's is a surprise: it's quite neighborhoody in its feel and distinctly removed from the usual Carluccio's chain feel. It has a laidback intimate atmosphere and the staff are super friendly and easygoing. We were served by Bianca, who was great. A really nice way to relax on a Sunday afternoon. The icing on the cake was noticing the incredible menus which are illustrated by Marion Deuchars. Oh my god, my seven year old daughter said. Is it the same Marion Deuchars who made my book, Let's Make Some Great Art?! I love that book!

Yes, it is the same Marion Deuchars, as in ace illustrator Marion Deuchars.

And a quick google on getting home reveals Deuchars has been collaborating with Carluccio's since last Summer. Here's a blog post she wrote in July 2011 about the work: “(It's) an ongoing project (relationship)  to provide 6 menus a year for Carluccio's Restaurants. The job is like being an 'artist in residence" I use the cafe, draw there throughout the year and compile a 'sketchbook' of things happening at Carluccio's . I then use that source material to compile the seasonal menus. It's a dream job, I like sitting in cafes, I like food, I like to draw both.”

Love this American Apparel film