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So here’s what’s new. I’ve returned to the land of my ancestors. The little, funny-shaped island on the top left-hand corner of Europe where I spent most of my childhood, including half of my school life and a few chaotic years as an adult. This is the fourth time that I have been back since I was shipped off to the new world as a teenager and it seems that each time I return, this once very familiar place has moved a little further away. I have to admit that after seventeen years in Canada there is very little English left in me and I am now no more than a tourist in a city which for so long, I regarded as my home. One of the reasons for this visit was to attend a surprise birthday party for a friend who I have known since primary school. It was organised by his wife and she was the one who persuaded me to come over in a series of clandestine telephone calls and emails. It was a genuine surprise for my friend who didn’t suspect a thing and as you can imagine, it was quite an emotional reunion. He was completely unaware of the secret cross Atlantic messaging between his best friend and his wife and had no idea that she had already moved me into the spare room in their house earlier that day while he was at work. Understandably I suppose, he wasn’t that concerned by my harmless cavorting with his good lady and I spent most of the evening trying to free myself from his endless, tearful man hugs. I didn’t mind at all; he has always been one hundred percent straight but completely at home and supportive of my sexuality. I couldn’t want for a better friend and I shall miss him the most.

My writing desk sits under the window in our front bedroom, though we have rarely used the room as such, and it gives me a clear view of the strip of grass on the opposite side of the road. It is that writers’ activity, doing anything else but write, and mine is staring out of that window and watching life pass by on that strip of grass. Whenever I do it, I stop myself, tell myself I should be writing, and turn away from the window, but so often some fascinating tableau out there will catch my attention. We live in a Victorian back-to-back terraced house in East London. It was the type of house originally built for factory and dock workers. Its layout is simple, almost identical to all the other ones that once filled this area. It was built with two rooms downstairs, two rooms upstairs and a tiny courtyard at the back, which backs directly onto the courtyard of the house behind us. It’s small but we love it, it’s our home. Our bedroom is the bedroom at the back of the house while the front bedroom has become our spare room/store room/laundry room/my home office; it’s rather cramped but it is amazing to have a place where I can go and write. There isn’t a matching row of terraced houses on the opposite side of the street to our house, instead there is a long and narrow strip of green grass, a public green space, where the opposite row of houses once stood. Our area of London was heavily bombed during the Second World War, and the opposite row of houses was a casualty of that bombing. After the war, this strip of bombed houses was turned into a green space, rather than just building on it again. It is so pleasant having this green space right on our doorstep, even though there was a tragedy behind its creation. This grass was always the territory of two crows, which I named Ronnie and Reggie because they always strutted across the grass as if this was their very manor and would chase away any other birds who dared to land there. They would happily chase away the starlings and pigeons who tried to encroach on their territory, though they were always wary of the seagulls. That was before the Covid lockdown. During the first lockdown, the number of crows multiplied by almost tenfold. There is now a murder of crows that can number twenty or even thirty some mornings, marching across the strip of grass, and they show such little fear of us human residents. One day, returning home from the supermarket, I found two crows sitting on the roof of our car, parked outside our house. They were angrily ripping apart a piece of bread. As I approached the car, one of them hopped away, but the other one remained standing in the centre of the car’s roof, staring angrily at me. It didn’t move as I passed within feet of it. Maybe our street has become their manor. Many joggers run around the strip of grass as part of their exercise. Some are dressed in the latest running clothes with the latest technology to aid them, their smartphones attached to their forearms by a dedicated strap-on pocket, their fit-bit or smartwatch on their wrist measuring every step they take. Or else they are dressed in old T-shirts and mismatched jogging bottoms. There are joggers who start their run with elaborate stretches and twists and joggers who just go straight into their slow and purposeful runs. The most memorable jogger is the jogger who has been there as long as we have been living here. She is now a woman in her late sixties or early seventies and every Monday to Friday, at seven o’clock in the morning, she runs around that strip of grass. She always wears the same tracksuit of black leggings and a DayGlo top, which is currently bright yellow. She always runs in the same way, short and fast-paced steps with her arms raised up against her chest. She will run around the grass three or four times before running off to the newsagents for her daily newspaper. She then walks home, with a long and flowing stride, the opposite of the way she runs. She’s a very lithe and sprightly woman, so her jogging has served her well. The dog walkers also exercise their pets on the strip of grass. Some energetically exercise their dogs there, running with the excited dog, throwing a ball for it, chasing it around. Some dog walkers bring their children too, leaving them to do the running around with the dog while they stand on the side and wait for all that energy to be spent. Other dog walkers have their dogs on a retractable lead, where they can stand and let the dog run off by itself until it needs to be pulled back. There is one dog walker who has always grabbed my attention; he and his dog look so alike. He is a portly middle-aged man and his dog is an equally portly Jack Russell terrier. Almost religiously, they walk around the edge of the strip of grass several times a day. I don’t know whether it was his doctor or the dog’s vet that recommended they get more exercise to lose weight. He always walks right around the grass with no shortcuts; his dog always follows behind him, but it always cuts off the corners, taking a diagonal shortcut across them. On a weekday morning there is the rush of mothers taking their children to school. Those mothers hurriedly rush their reluctant children along, their children trying to stretch out to the maximum the time they aren’t in school. Those mothers are much more interested in talking to their friends as their children hurry on ahead of them. At three-thirty the flow is in reverse, but this time it is teenage boys in their black blazers and matching school ties from the boys’ school on the opposite side of the main road that cuts this area in two. Though they may all be dressed in their neat and dark school uniforms, they still behave like teenage boys. They walk in groups, physically jostling one another, that one-upmanship between boys. They kick a football between them, shout excitedly at one another when they are walking next to each other, eating chips from the cheap fried chicken shop on the corner of the next street. Both of these different rushes of school children are over in barely half an hour each time, over and gone in a quick rush. Throughout the day, people walk past this strip of grass. People walking to work, people returning home with their bags of shopping, people talking on their phones as they walk, children playing haphazard games on the grass. In the summer, people actually sit on the grass having picnic lunches, though these lunches are far more often chicken and chips from the chicken shop than picnic lunches bought from the local supermarket, though some people do this. And one day there was a young woman recording a video. I noticed her walking around the grass, holding her phone in front of her face and talking in an animated style into it, her right arm gesturing to illustrate what she was saying. At first, I assumed she was making a video call, face-timing someone, but then she walked past for the third time and I realised she was performing the same hand gestures. She was recording herself. Somewhere on the internet is her video, with our street as her background. On overcast, winter mornings fog can cling to the grass. Some mornings it can be so thick I cannot see the blocks of flats behind the grass. Some mornings it can be just a fine layer, a foot or so deep, just clinging to the grass like a haunted fog from a gothic horror film from the nineteen sixties. And this fog will disappear with the full rays of the sun. And then other mornings the grass will be frozen white by the early morning frost. So many of the images and people I see out of that window bleed into my writing. They are not so much inspiration for me, but some things I use to add colour to my writing. If I want to describe a minor character or a passing tableau then often I will use something I have seen out of this window. So much of my life bleeds into my writing. In this coming year I’ll be sitting in front of that window a lot, I have so much I want to write about. Happy reading. Drew

I hope you all enjoyed the first 47 chapters of Catering with Benefits. Up next is a short story (3 chapters) about Rani, the sister of Raj, one of the characters from Catering. I call this story 'Mile High Benefits' and is the first of the short stories from my 'Side Salad' collection that will punctuate the ongoing story of 'Catering with Benefits. These short stories will feature characters that have appeared briefly in the main story. Please enjoy this slight diversion. The main story with all your favourite, and some not so well liked, characters will return after the short story. Please let me know what you think about any of my writing. Comments are always welcome.

Jeff Jones has certainly lived enough to fill six ordinary lives. Since growing up in Wapping, East London, he’s been in trouble with the police, been sent to prison, been homeless and been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. But he has also been to university, been a manager in mental health and youth work, met Prince Charles and even passed The Knowledge, the exam for London black cab drivers. This book charts his life in a clear and very readable style, sometimes also at break-neck speed, but always it is engaging. Jones does not shy away from the racism that marked so much of his life, growing up as a black man in twentieth-century London, but neither does he preach at the reader or hit the reader over the head. He simply presents racism for what it is and in this clear manner makes it far more chilling and uncomfortable. This is a book about contemporary life in Britain but from a voice that is not often heard, a black working-class man, which can be enjoyed by all. At his heart, Jones is a storyteller and he uses that to great advantage in this book. Find it here on Amazon

OK, so, that's probably a bit of a confrontational topic title, but it actually really does sum up how I'm feeling right now. I'm a PHP programmer in London, and, to be frank, I really don't enjoy my job. I want to open a vineyard in Catalunya, but that's going to need me to have saved up at least £15,000 to do. Now, I should point out that, whilst I like drinking wine (and spirits, and anything alcoholic, TBH ), what I really love is writing music and experimenting with creating unusual beverages (sometimes at the same time ). I've come up with at least one unusual sparking wine which I believe is mass marketable, and at least one liqueur which needs only a little work. (That was in conjunction with a friend, who is a licensed distiller. ) I hate my current job. Well, I lie a bit, actually. I start my 'current' job when I land back in London tomorrow morning. I'm currently in Barcelona, and I ended my previous job on Friday 7th October, 2011. The problem I've got is that I've been to Barcelona 5 times, and I've visited Valencia once and Galicia twice. Each time, I've fallen more in love with the region, and each time I've been to Barcelona I've found it increasingly hard to leave. And every time, I've been reminded more of why I hate London. In Catalunya (and especially Mallorca) people will greet you on the street, even if they don't know you. In London, people will walk past you, even if you're screaming for help even if you've torn all the tendons in your legs. (Personal experience there…) So, I know I should keep my job for at least long enough to buy some land to start my dream vineyard, but, honestly, I hate London, and I really don't enjoy my job, so, what should I do?