I Love Chatsworth Road - writing for the local newsletter

At the moment I am doing some pro bono work for the local publication I Love Chatsworth Road.
In normal times it is a magazine and an instagram account run as a passion project by photographer Jorn Tomter. Now, it is a weekly newsletter about stories from the local area, although stretching a little further into Hackney than usual.

It is a local area that is built up of small independent shops and businesses that are changing weekly - if not daily! And, a lot of people are offering services, crowd funding and doing incredible work during this time.

So this newsletter offers the local community a source of info and a way for businesses to get the information out about what they have pivoted too. This is a newsletter that is positive, and I'm enjoying writing for it! Not all food, but -

Here are some of the things I have written about, for the newsletter.

Hackney School of Food
The story of Hackney School of Food is one of community, changing spaces, the need to adapt and of working together. It is also easy to see everything as temporary at the moment and to forget that community existed before and will exist after, but we can’t just see that the work being done in this community as only for the now.
Helpful Engineering UK
A volunteering project that organises the making of PPE face shields. An interview with the Hackney Hub.
Made In Hackney
This charity has collaborated with a local restaurant and are making over 400 meals a day for vulnerable people in the community.
London Canal Community
I love the canal, walking in the morning with my dog has been the saving grace of this time. Watching the seasons change, seeing the boats - a lot has been happening on the canal during this time, many of those that live on the canal have had to pivot and here is a little about what life is like.

Here are all the featured stories, do read through, there are so wonderful people in Homerton!
Photo at the top by Jorn!

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Understanding Malaysia: part one of ?

‘The (Malay)Asian Friend’ I think this will be a series of essays, a disgruntled thread that may take a lifetime to untangle. The continued misunderstanding of a complex nation, where borders and boundaries come from flux, where the jungle makes lines in the earth an impossibility and yet politics, nationalism, colonial lens and the exotic touristic eye compete to limit and define a nation built on migration and the movement of people. (and I realise that this could refer to not just Malaysia!) My original gripe comes from the limitation of how Malaysia food, and therefore Malaysians, gets represented in London. I write in my book (out in a year’s time) that we are boiled down to a few dishes - “roti canai, beef rendang, nasi lemak, nasi goreng, maybe sambal, and now laksa.” The request for these dishes is like a checklist of if a restaurant is ‘authentically’ Malaysia, or someone is authentically Malaysian if they know/like/eat them. You don’t crave nasi lemak, are you really Mal...

JANUARY 2015: nostalgia and the here and now of London (and riesling)

I got a little annoyed with January and everyone wanting to have a ‘dry January’. I had worked all through December and I wanted to have fun for the beginning of the year. Luckily I had a few trusted friends who were equally unimpressed with the dry Jan concept. But of course, everyone was broke (including myself) so I decided that it was going to be a month of drinking good wine at home. That’s the thing with London, there is always something good to do, there is always somewhere great to be; it’s a tricky city to be in, when broke. And January is such a sad month, that you want to brighten it up with fun, but you don’t have the money to do so. When I went back to uni to do my PhD I used up all my savings and really didn’t have time to pick up extra work, so even though I graduated six months ago, I’m still playing catch up and living pay check to pay check. Therefore despite the December work slog, I was back to being broke by January. And I know that I’m not alone in this...

Bodies broken into boxes

The launch of Sourced's new season on Trees had me thinking a lot about landscape, and the systems of landscape, and how us humans are part of that systems. I have a lot of feels, after so much reading I do, that doesn’t always allow for concise ‘academic’ or ‘journalistic’ writing - there is no argument to be made. When I think of landscapes, I often think of trees, of the jungle. And this thinking is always a visceral one, the feeling of a landscape on my skin, in my bones, and translation down generations. I’m interested in how colonialists saw these ‘new world’ landscapes; there were ‘Enlightened’ thinkers who deeply thought about the environment, but saw the environment as an influence on the people as opposed to a conversation - the landscape was a un-thing; oppressive even. The environment was a way to justify a hierarchy of race, and from there racial definitions became ways to legitimise slavery, exploitation… our beloved environment was a reason to subjugate. So ...

TALKING ABOUT FOOD

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