It’s all bombs and coke in Shoreditch

Rachel Johnson
11.12.08

I felt like a bit of a west London bumpkin at Shoreditch House, EC2, this week, at my office Christmas lunch. It was after I'd done the fullest possible justice to the yummy Italian fare and staggered to the loo to check copy on my BlackBerry (mobiles are banned in the club).

Once ensconced, though, I found myself distracted by the sharp notice pinned to the door. "Anyone seen entering the cubicle in pairs will be ejected from the club and their membership suspended," the sign said. Being nosy, I immediately marched up to the fifth-floor front desk and demanded an immediate explanation. The slinky receptionist sighed in a world-weary way, as if I was the last to know about the big coke scene going on in the loos.

Then I spotted another sign above a screen. "No bombing," it ordered. I was just beginning to wonder whether the club's lively clientele of City boys and media blondes posed more of a threat to London's security than I'd imagined when I saw that the sign referred (or so I hope) to a screen showing a live webcast of the 16-metre heated pool and its environs.

* All I can think about this week is food. I'm putting it down to the freezing weather, but now I'm not so sure. When we were invited to stay last weekend my gracious, generous host called to see if we were coming before or after lunch. Peter has a chef who serves up copious nosh that makes angels weep. "We're coming FOR lunch on Saturday," I cried in alarm at the thought of missing a key feasting opportunity under his roof. "No problem," Peter said. "Forgot you're a total food slut."

* Staying with the subject, American citizens in Notting Hill from Elisabeth Murdoch (below) to Ruby Wax and their kids must be thrilled. The legendary and lamented Ladbroke Grove Post Office, Z Punjani (closed a few months ago by bean-counters), has reinvented itself - it now purveys US fine foods and groceries as well as fags, newspapers and mags. The Marshmallow Fluff flies off the shelves, schoolgirls load up on the Betty Crocker frosting (in my daughter's London day school, if one child has a birthday, the whole class bakes a cake). Cap'* Crunch, Froot Loops, Reeses Pieces - the food may all be sugary junk, but who's complaining? The names alone are good enough to eat.

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