Jennifer Pittam

The Banker Pub On a gorgeous day in August I met my dear friend Janet for lunch in a rather nice pub called The Bankers. It overlooks the River Thames, very close to the Tower of London. So, after a prettily dressed salad and a glass of lightly chilled white wine  (at a price that would make your Auntie scream), we nattered on about families, funerals and fallopian tubes. Then we strolled over to view the latest artwork. It was a sculpture of ceramic poppies that erupted out of a window of the Tower. We thought it very pretty, and a fitting tribute to the lost soldiers of World War I.  What we didn't realise at the time was that the poppy installation wasn't finished. Day by day, week by week, month by relentless month, a team of 8,000 volunteers have planted 888,246 beautifully crafted flowers, one for each life lost during those years in the trenches, 1914-1918.  The Poppies, August 2014 This morning I returned to the City of London in the early morning and s...

Dawn on the River Thames, A Week In  A week into Morning Pages and I find I rise earlier and see the dawn more often. My Morning Pages are already less bitter and less whiney. Of course, part of the point of writing Morning Pages is to free the creative channels of bitterness and whining. It's like a morning shower for the creative consciousness. It doesn't  matter one jot whether the mess on the page turns out to be vaguely readable or thoroughly vile. The point is to apply backside to seat and do them each day. Three pages is the recommended stretch, but I wonder whether each writer finds their own best length. The point is, it should be slightly more than you want to do. Keep going, no punctuation, no editing, be specific, allow the monsters to surface, then drive right on. The Monsters Drive Right On Having managed, some days with difficulty, to keep Morning Pages going, I admit that that a strange, tentative freedom creeps into my creative work. I'v...

Good grief, what a week we've had here in London.  On the one hand, the final section of the last ever Harry Potter film premiered to riotous but peaceful success in theatre land. Fans young and not so young swarmed into the 'West End' of the city. They dressed up, they sat on the lions in Trafalgar Square and generally made no trouble at all. On the other, Wapping Station stands deserted in the wake of the 'News of the World' phone hacking scandal which grew daily. The senior staff were declared to be the 'No. 1 Priority', while 200 or so clerical  and portering staff in the paper's offices in Wapping lost their employment. Wapping's not a rich part of London - at one time it was the site of the great London shipping trade. Fortunes were made from trade and export then, but not by the local people. They're not likely to prosper out of the demise of a newspaper empire either. That's before we even start to consider the victims of this alleged...

So, Twitter's alive with the news of Baroness Thatcher's funeral, and the route's announced. It's  passing within five minutes' walk of our favourite writers' haunt, The Bear & Staff pub in Charing Cross Road. Rob tweets. The Bear & Staff 'Fancy a cheeky one, group?' We tweet back that a 'cheeky one' ( London slang for an unplanned drink or indeed, any short burst of illicit activity) could be ideal use of this beautiful spring morning. We don't call in at the pub - 11.00 am is a bit early even for us - but station ourselves in the coffee shop on Trafalgar Square, by St Martin's Church. Waiting to Watch Baroness Thatcher's Funeral We chat about the  trouble ahead - Margaret Thatcher was a Prime Minister who divided the nation, inspiring adulation from some and from others, bitter hatred. A gaggle of protesters crowds into our coffee shop. They are bullied by their  massive banner, which refuses to lean neatly against the...

One thing that makes life worthwhile, so they tell us, is 'facing a challenge'.  From earliest childhood, if we are lucky, we learn from the right kind of challenge. I started early with a game of the same name, on my first day at school. My primary school, Meadow Lane, was a rough one, frankly, in which the pupils were drawn from the families of dockers or soldiers stationed at the local depot. Meadow Lane Primary School We were not, most emphatically not, allowed to stay inside at break no matter the weather.  The three-sided shelter in the yard was the only concession to our comfort.  The shelter had a narrow wooden bench around the inside. To play The Challenge game needed most of the school, and we sat on the bench, side-by-side, each shoving the person to the left, whilst making a sound like an air-raid siren.  Kids knew the sound of the air-raid siren when I was little because they were still tested regularly every week, some 14 years after the bombs...

So it's evening in London after a terrible, terrible day. This morning during the rush hour, a helicopter crashed into a crane, killing the crew and then falling into the street where it injured a number of pedestrians. As horrific accidents go, it wasn't the worst, except of course for the poor family of the crew. For Londoners like me, it brought back the full horror of the London bombings in 2007, although this accident was exactly that - a tragic accident. A Terrible Day in London In spite of the carnage, I'm in the Bear pub with a few writer pals from our writing class in the City Lit. We'd arranged to meet and we thought, 'what will we do if we cancel - just sit at home moping'. Fear's like that - it causes you either to have ridiculous, exaggerated ideas of 'what could happen' or to freeze, and start skulking about like a hibernating bear trying for entry in the Guinness Book of Records. Heroes & Villains, since 1714 The Bear's a great...

So we've reached the end of the Olympic Games, and I'm sitting in Spitalfields Market to watch the closing ceremony. We've all been affected by having the Games in dear old London. For one thing, 70,000 of us have been volunteers, people of all ages and backgrounds who gave freely, cheerfully and with great common sense (that least common of gifts).  I've been enchanted by the 'ribbon of gold' wild flower park, which snakes through the Lee Valley, where I was born. We hope it will leave a lasting legacy. Time will tell whether the Olympic Stadium will do for the East End what Docklands did for the Port of London, i.e. push out the local people and replace them with Merchant Bankers. Please the Good Lord that in ten years' time the East End of London hasn't reverted to some sort of graveyard for the Olympic legacy that never was. The secret behind the Games was the preparation - I couldn't help noticing. It applied to the organisers, the volunteers, t...