How do you do mornings?

It's November, and some of you will be up before dawn to write you 1500 words or more for your NaNoWriMo. (If that's a mystery to you, check it out here.)

Others, of course, will be up early for work - you are on the early shift at the hospital or steel plant (do we still have any steel plants?), or have babies who wake at any hour of the day or night. You have no choice but to crawl from the covers before the lark.

So - do you growl, then creep from under the duvet, dress without speaking, drink tea or coffee without thinking and force your body into the street believing that your head will wake eventually and catch up? Or can you rub your eyes, turn the light on, and welcome the new day with a stretching exercise or two?

You NaNo writers - how awake are you at this early hour? Some are probably writing in their sleep while others fire on all cylinders. (I salute you all!)

Me - I'm not NaNo-ing. I'm a tea-in-bed-before-I'm-human sort of woman. I scribble a page of rubbish while the kettle boils - it's handwritten, and reminds me that I love to write, rather than a glimpse of insight or literary merit. Then I read until hunger drives me from my bed in search of breakfast. Even then I can linger, stare from the window - I have a view across the valley to the forest from my bed. The beech tree just beyond my garden tells me all I need to know about the seasons and the weather - today it is still, and somewhat forlorn.

But, last week, when grandchildren were here, all that changed. Daughter hemmed them in until seven o'clock; then they were told to tiptoe into my room to see if I was awake. My bedroom door was flung open; crash. GRANDMA!!!!!! Three small boys piled in. I made tea (of course), taking a cup in to daughter in the hope that she might have twenty minutes peace (she earns it!) and we watched Bob the Builder and Postman Pat, in bed, the boys eating bowl after bowl of dry cereal, cuddled beside me. (Two days later and I am still finding Cheerios in the folds of my duvet). There are worse ways to start the day.

How does yours begin?

A travel post - from Lewisham!

I suggest that travel writing can apply to anywhere which isn't 'home.' Maybe I'll expand on that in another post. Maybe I'm just finding a reason to write about East London. For here I want to tell you about a recent trip to Lewisham. For those of you who don't know the UK - Lewisham is in south-east London. It's busy, cosmopolitan suburb but, to be honest, it's not beautiful.
   I know, it's not somewhere you'd think of as an ideal place to visit. No museums, no stately homes; even the park struggles. But my aunt was in hospital there and that was good enough reason to go.
   It is an impossible place to reach from deepest Wiltshire. I've tried several ways to get there, but whichever combination of buses and trains I use - it takes hours and hours and hours. And last week, when I went - it was sweatily hot. I don't mind hot. Even so, I'd rather have been reading a book in my garden than travelling to Lewisham.
    Where, in the middle of this long day, to have lunch? Some years ago, on another hospital visit, I found a little cafe under the railway arches. Was it possible it was still there?
   Indeed it was. And here is its website. (I'd have a photo for you if I'd had a camera with me.) It's been  here for thirty years, run by an Irish family - their brogue surprising me, somehow, even in the cosmopolitan soup of East London.
   It's tucked beside the railway, with tables along the pavement, open to the roar of trains thundering overhead, the grumble to traffic, and thick smells of fuel and general grime of East London. Not an obvious location for a successful restaurant.
    The menu - they call it Irish food - but I'd describe it as sound British food, with staples such as fish and chips and sausages. Good food to keep you going in the middle of the day.
    Nothing special then? Why write about them?
    As well as an efficient Irish welcome, they have 'bottomless' cups of tea and coffee. For just one pound (yes, that's only £1, and this is in expensive London) they give you a cup and saucer and come round with a huge pot of real tea, with jug of milk, and fill you up. The metal teapot is a bit battered now; I suspect inside it is stained dark brown and smells of tannin. And the tea is rich and brown and wonderful. When you have drained one cup, someone appears beside you and just fills it up - and will fill it up for as long as you want them to.
    For me - it brightened a long, hot day. If I lived nearby I would go there in preference to any posh chain that gave me hot water and a tea bag, the drink never quite tasting like tea and costing up to twice as much.
    If any of you are visiting from abroad, and think that the tea you buy in Starbucks or Costa or Cafe Nero is anything like real British tea - just go to Maggie's in Lewisham. Sit in the sunshine, ignore the passing trains and traffic, and drink as much tea as you can. Tea strong enough, as my mother would have said, to put hair on your chest! (Do we all have mothers with strange expressions like that ...)