Saturday

Hot cross buns and yesterday’s tiffin start the day. The hot cross buns remind me of the bread in Guyana, where all the regular sandwich rolls are sweet like hot cross buns. It not as nice as it sounds, although it did at least encourage me to learn how to make my own bread.

We go to see ‘Tsotsi’ (www.tsotsi.com) at Screen on the Green in Islington. It’s a lovely independent cinema with squishy seats. Mrs Jiffler observes that even middle-class twats don’t seem to know how to behave in cinemas. The film itself is an interesting story, well told, although with slightly limited cinematography (budget I guess). It does a good job at demonstrating the poverty gap, and decoupling this from racial politics The clever people who write for the broadsheets disapprove of this apparently, and prefer the more facile racial argument for this polarisation between the rich and poor. If only it were that simple.

After the film we wealthy wazungu adjourn to the ‘Masala Zone’ on Upper Street for a Thali – an assortment of curries. Masala Zone is kind of like a Wagamamas for curry in that it is fairly cheap and cheerful (although £3.15 for a small bottle of Cobra is daylight robbery). The food comes on large metal platters and includes our choice of meat curry (Lamb Rogan Josh for me, Chicken something-or-other for Mrs Jiffler which has a Burmese-style coconut and tomato thing going on), and an assortment of chutneys, vegetable curries, dhal, half (?) a poppadum, a mini-chapathi, and rice. We also order a side dish of Sag aloo, which turns up looking more like Pesto Genovese.

Its fun enough, and an education if one is under the impression that curry only comes in orange, brown, red, or yellow, accompanied by rice and too many naan breads. Compared to what is on offer in my local curry cafes (I’m privileged enough to be living in the Northern Quarter…) its really quite unremarkable. The breads at Café Marahaba cost a third of the price of the rotis at Masala, and are larger and better by miles.