In Russell Square

Eating in Russell Square and eating after a baby

Hello! My name is Rebecca May Johnson, I am a writer and cook and this is my Substack. This week’s newsletter is about eating in Russell Square, and eating notes after a baby.

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In Russell Square

I walked round Russell Square looking for a free bench. The warm day had brought everyone out. I thought about stopping in the park café to have one of their cold chocolate milks and use their bathroom, as well as feed Ursula. I wondered whether the café staff would object – it is run by Italian people and I have observed children receive a very warm welcome in restaurants in Italy – though I also worried whether people eating at the cafe would be annoyed by the approach of a crying baby. However when I drew near there was a fast-growing queue spilling out of the entrance and I did not have very long, twenty five minutes. The bathroom is not ideal either, the cubicles are small, and I would have to leave the pram outside the toilet cubicle. What were the chances of someone stealing the baby? The bathroom is hidden in the café and usually not very busy, but nonetheless it did not seem advisable. I would have to shout through the cubicle door that I was responsible for the baby, she had not been abandoned. But I would not know who it was the other side of the door. The other option – holding the crying baby on my lap while I peed was also unappealing, and still left the problem of leaving the heavily laden pram blocking up the small bathroom for anyone else.  

I continued round the square, saw an empty bench, and sat down. The bench was in a quieter bit of the square, but still on one of the main paths. I wondered if anyone else would sit down on my bench and look overtly at my breast or say something approving-yet-irritating when walking past. I extracted a silicone nipple shield from the jar of sterile liquid, picked Ursula out of the pram, lifted up my top, pulled down my bra, stuck the silicone shield onto my nipple to help her latch and positioned her across my lap to feed. A young woman about the same age as me sat down and began eating pasta from a plastic takeaway carton with a plastic fork. The cheese on top of the pasta had melted then hardened into a solid mass that also resembled plastic. It was difficult for her to eat using the flimsy fork which bent as she attempted to prise apart the block of pasta and cheese. A knife would have helped her carve what had now become one object instead of forkable pieces of pasta. She wore long somewhat grown out acrylic nails in shiny pale pink. She discreetly angled her body away from me as I wrestled with Ursula who was repeatedly struck by a desire to look around the park between periods of eating, flinging her head around wildly, prompting me to lift her to look over my shoulder while I patted and rubbed her back to help with wind and attempted to prevent the nipple shield from falling onto the ground.

I watched a rough-haired whippet type dog be let off the lead and shoot across the square into a crowd of visiting teenage students and their chaperone gathered around a bench near the water feature, perhaps to try and eat their lunch. The dog’s long-haired owner ran to retrieve it, calling a name I couldn’t make out.

The woman next to me kept reaching down to her feet, and I saw she had a bottle of tabasco there, which she picked up and applied to the pasta intermittently. She took a phone call, drank from a plastic bottle of water, then took off leaving the emptied plastic pasta box where she had sat on the bench, but dropping the water bottle in a nearby bin. No sense in it? A man and child began walking towards me to sit where she had vacated, saw I was feeding, and turned around.

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Eating Notes

I have a lot to write about feeding and being fed which will appear somewhere at some point. Before which, some things I have eaten since Ursula was born.

My final meal in hospital before we came home. Tomato soup (well seasoned, not too sweet, had some texture). Cheese and broccoli with sauté potatoes and vegetables (delicious sauce, so good I cleaned the plate). Lemon sponge with custard! This tray is typical of the wonderful food I received in the two days and two nights I was in hospital when I had Ursula. I looked forward to meals. The staff who delivered the meals (always a choice of several dishes) and drinks (tea, coffee and hot chocolate offered every few hours) made a huge difference to my recovery from major surgery.

Sign the petition against their jobs (cleaners, caterers, porters, security and other support staff) being outsourced.

We arrived home from hospital at 9pm and somehow Sam immediately put some chicken thighs in the oven so we could have a caesar salad the next day. Here it is with croutons of fried bread, lots of chicken, a delicious dressing with anchovy and garlic and romaine lettuce.

My incredible sister in law came over first thing in the morning (despite having two children herself) when we had been home for a few days and cooked all the meals for the day to give Sam a rest and appeared to have only left the room for five minutes and yet had somehow baked a banana bread. This is the stellar lunch she made to feed me up so I could feed Ursula. She also cooked me a full breakfast and left us with a fish pie she had made for the evening.

Breakfast biscuits made to Chloe-Rose Crabtree’s recipe (except using some leftover fat from cooking sausages!) with omelette, avocado, cheese and chilli sauce inside. The cheese after a recommendation by Feroz of Bake Street. I give Ursula her first feed of the day at 7am and Sam has become a genius of the one-handed breakfast so that I can feed myself at the same time.

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Other News

I have just found out that I won the inaugural Nach Waxman prize for food and beverage scholarship for my book Small Fires, An Epic in the Kitchen! This is a greatest honour! I am in conversation with the judges Darra Goldstein, Mayukh Sen and Morna Livingston on May 17th - more here and on the Kitchen Arts & Letters website.