Day of the Dead

Calaveras de dulce - sugar skulls on sale in Cancun's Market 23

Well, I'm back. I was going to post a very jolly thing about Day of the Dead and the party we had last night to celebrate the Mexican festival of Dia de los Muertos, but it seems rather crass given that for thousands of Mexicans in Tabasco state, yesterday was one major disaster - the awful floods.

Earlier this year, photos of Oxford flooded made it onto international news and resulted in my Mexican relatives sending me anxious emails. A bit of a turn-around - normally we're the ones calling about earthquakes or volcanic eruptions (part of my family comes from a small town near the active volcano Popocatepetl).

Anyway, from the looks of it Tabasco state has got it pretty bad indeed, but so far not many people dead, thank God. Either it's a miracle or Mexico isn't so third-world as the outside world likes to portray it.

It's been a busy, busy week and I started it by being ill with some virus. Had to go to London to do stuff with the publishers and only started to feel better yesterday. Then I set myself up as the cocktail mixer for the party, making margaritas and daiquiris, sampling all batches of course. Feeling a bit delicate again to be honest...

"Invisible City" has been selected by the trade magazine "Publishing News" as one of its February Picks with a very nice review that head of publicity at Scholastic passed on to me:

"Conspiracy and intrigue, complemented by non-stop action and excellent characterisation make this an exciting debut. Think Young Bond/CHERUB levels of potential. Plus the cover is really cool."

The publishers and I are all pretty chuffed by that...

Shopping in a Mexican market

In the artesanias market, Tulum

I love shopping in Mexican markets. In fact a visit to Mexico isn't complete without one. They smell of tropical fruit but even stronger of fish and meat; they're colourful and messy.

This morning we went to Cancun's non-glitzy downtown, were the locals live and shop, to Market 23, where my sister had advised me that I could shop for Day of the Dead decorations and sweets - the typical decorated sugar skulls. I'll post photos around the time of 2nd November...

The photo above shows the Tulum shop where I shopped for Mayan souvenirs to show to readers. Yanno, one day, if anyone ever invites me to talk at a school or anything. This guy gave me some great deals.

Yeah right. He first offered me a price based on the marketing law of pricing: wherever possible, charge offensive minus a penny. But for me, there was a deal. I was offered the goods at a price of offensive minus tuppence.

There's a lot of this in Mexico now. What with the Big Tourism and everything, prices in tourist traps such as Tulum, Cancun and Playa del Carmen are pretty steep. Things were much cheaper at the deserted huts outside Becan, Chicanna and Calakmul.

There just wasn't much for sale.

Tourists don't visit Cancun's Market 23 though. It's strictly for locals. Bargain city.

Been taking photos of Joshua-related things. I'll be adding them to my site sometime soon...

Bugged Out in Calakmul

Our daughter on top of Structure VI at Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico

If you've never heard of the ancient Mayan city of Calakmul, don't worry. Neither have most Mexicans. That includes people in the tourist industry and work just a few hours away. It also includes the people who set up the otherwise excellent Mayan museum at Chetumal, the state capital of Quintana Roo and at 3.5 hours away, the nearest large town to Calakmul.

But back in the day, Calakmul was the local city-state; 'the day' being roughly in the middle of the seventh century. Calakmul was the Snake Kingdom, vying for power with the huge city-state of Tikal (now in Guatemala).

The ruins of Calakmul are not what you'd call particularly accessible - even now when there's a paved road which takes you all through the 50km of surrounding bioreserve . Until quite recently though it really was lost in the jungle. Archaeologists are only starting to uncover the history of the region. A major breakthrough came with the decipherment by Mayanist David Stuart of an inscription on a staircase at Dos Pilas. (See Maya Hieroglyphs Recount "Giant War" in National Geographic).

(There's a recent issue of National Geographic with several great articles about recent findings in Mayan archaeology.)

Visiting the ruins at Calakmul, as well as those at nearby Chicanna and Becan, gave me the biggest 'discovery' buzz I've ever had at an archaeological site. Unlike other sites such as Chichen Itza, Palenque, Uxmal, El Tajin, Teotihuacan and Tula, the ruins at these three Campeche sites have been left relatively uncleared. The trees have been left growing between the main excavated structures, and in many cases, left growing out of the actual temples, as in the photo above.

There are howler monkeys and spider monkeys in the woods. They swing through the trees watching you progress along the trail.

That, plus the fact that in all these places we were practically the only people visiting the sites, gave us the feeling of what it must have been to discover these places...kind of like John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, the latter was the artist who produced such evocative pictures as the one shown below.


The downside is the mosquitoes, and the heat. The ruins of Calakmul and Chicanna are accessed by walking down a jungle trail, during which a cloud of vicious mosquitoes surround you and munch on every scrap of exposed flesh. Insect repellent may cut your bites down to twenty or so. Stop moving and they'll settle for a good, steady drink of your blood.

But heck. It's worth it.

At Last, Becan

becan ix
Originally uploaded by mgharris

We visited Becan yesterday, a ruined Mayan city in the state of Campeche. Readers of The Joshua Files will know the significance of this place - no spoilers please!!!

After the carnival of Tulum, Becan was a wonderful experience. Can you believe that we were the only people visiting this amazing monument? Yes, for the two hours we were there we had the whole place to ourselves. No other tourists, no tour guides, no vendors hassling us. Just the sounds of the surrounding jungle. And the racket we made - two children can't be silent after all.

You catch a glimpse the summit of the tallest pyramid, Structure IX, over the tops of surroundings trees as you approach from the main road, Highway 186.

Closer though everything is shrouded in dense jungle, so you walk through trees and then notice stones and steps from the base of the temples, cool grey in the midst of green; leaves, creepers and a mossy ground. At Becan the temples really do appear to rise up out of the jungle.

Becan has four really huge structures which are quite well restored; Structures II, VIII, IX and X. There are a large number of other buildings too, but many are still swallowed by the jungle. I wonder why the place isn't more well-known. I suspect it's only recently been restored to this level. I saw photos of Structure IX years ago and the staircase was a pile of rubble. Now though, as you can see, this side of the temple is quite well restored, with the staircase good and sharp all the way to the top.

We didn't climb this one - there was a helpful rope but also a note saying 'please don't climb the pyramid'.

We did however climb Structure VIII, from where we took this photo. And my cousin Oscar and daughter couldn't resist crawling into a tunnel on Structure X, where they found a chamber with bats...

My valiant husband tried again to take some non-hideous photos of me for the publishers. About 90% were gruesome, but we do have some usable candidates now, especially if Photoshop can help out. The sun was beating down on us most of the time, and I was the only one allowed to use the brow-mopping cloth, so this 'photo shoot' was none too comfortable.

Lake Bacalar

Lake Bacalar
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Finally a chance to swim in the biggest and bluest freshwater lake I've ever seen. In southern Quintana Roo state, this lake was known by the Maya, apparently, as the Lake of Seven Hues. The aqua coloured parts are where the base is shallow and sandy.

We ate fish fajitas, ceviche and Mexican beer in a lovely little garden restaurant on the edge of the vast lake, which stretches for miles. Hardly anyone around and nortenos playing on the loud stereo. It felt really nice and properly Mexican. I thought of my uncles in Mexico City and felt a bit guilty that we weren't sharing this with any of them.

Still - cousin Oscar Raul arrives tomorrow! And then it's off down Highway 186 to Becan.

There have been a lot of blue Nissan Tsurus around, ooer. Readers of Joshua Files will know what I mean...

Tulum - my how you've changed!

No Internet access here, but my BlackBerry is working so I've been sitting on the beach outside our room (about 30 meters from the sea) exchanging emails with my agent and the desk editor at Scholastic re some final touches for the book.

Tulum has changed a lot since I was here with my husband and fellow biochemistry student, Becs, almost 20 years ago. Back then we hired a taxi for $80 US dollars and the taxi guy drove us down from Cancun, hung around the makeshift car park while we traipsed around the ruins, carefree as you like. On the tiny but gorgeous beach by the ruins we met some people from Didsbury, Manchester of all places (where I grew up). The sea was rough that day. The whole area was experiencing the beginning of what would become a tropical storm. We drove back along the coastal road with the windows down - no aircon and stopped en route for a swim at the blue, blue lagoon of Xel-Ha. (pronounced shell-ha)

Around 3 weeks later the storm became Hurricane Gilbert and devastated Tulum.

These days Tulum is a BIG tourist trap, Xel-Ha too. Big car park, coach loads arriving all day long, massive arts and crafts shops and restaurants. Official tourist guides take you round and give you a terrific spiel, all the latest findings. No more free wandering around the ruins, no more clambering over the pyramids.

Ernie, our Mayan guide explained how all 52 structures in Tulum played their part in a ceremonial centre which also functioned as an astronomical and weather calculator. He showed us the place where at around 5am on 13 November the light from the rising sun passes though a small window in one temple and lights up the door in the surrounding wall - to the west. This would be the signal to harvest the last of the crops before winter. Another portal would trap light to signal the time to sow. And by an amazing feat of engineering,the Temple of the Wind God uses a pole and a temple window to raise the alarm of an approaching hurricane, whistling like a flute when the wind speeds start to get dangerous.

Tulum is a city with natural protection from invaders - mangrove swamps to the west, the Caribbean to the east and offshore, a long reef which prevented Spanish from landing anywhere close. So why did they need to build a 6ft high wall all the way around the ceremonial centre? It's the only example of such a wall in a Mayan city.

Ernie gave us the latest explanation - and it's ingenious. "Tulum's biggest danger was always the hurricane" he said. "Where do you put 2000 people in a place like this, to protect them from the hurricane?" The buildings held at most 600 people - and they were in danger of having their palm rooftops ripped away. The answer was this: the wall. It was long enough for all 2000 people to line up behind the wall as a shelter.

Ernie is a bona fide Mayan - comes from a tiny place deep in the interior of the Yucatan peninsula. "If you want to see the real Mayan people," he chuckled, "get a guide to take you in a 4x4, and tell him you want to go where the tourists don't go. He'll take you where you won't hear a word of Spanish - only Maya."

Well maybe next time. Our kids are way too whingey for that right now. The heat and crowds of Tulum got to them. Chances are that Becan and Calakmul - in the Campeche jungle to the south - is going to be too much.

All the way down from Playa del Carmen, the highway cuts through the jungle. I peered into the trees. Poor Josh Garcia - in "Invisible City" he spends hours lost in there. Me - I wouldn't dare to step 20 meters into that place.

Tomorrow, Chetumal, the state capital of Quintana Roo and the place where Josh's Mayan adventure begins...

Cancun - is this really Mexico?

The beach at Cancun's Hilton hotel

Cancun was a fairly newish resort with about fifteen (big) hotels when I first visited in 1981. The airport was one small terminal and a strip cut into the forest of coconut palms.

It doesn't feel much like the rest of Mexico. Everything is charged in dollars and pesos also. It all feels a bit too organised and tidy to be real Mexico. I'm not wild about Cancun, but it this hotel is very comfortable.

It’s my fourth visit since then. Much has changed. We arrived to a Cancun airport that looks as big as Mexico City’s. At the car rental office a blue-eyed guy in a white cap began to chat with me in typical friendly Mexican fashion. My daughter growled at me for telling our life story to the first person who asked. But that’s how Cancun is. We want to know your life story, thanks very much. How else can we know which of the various services we have on offer to sell you? And my daughter is right, I’m probably way too friendly.

This guy and I had discussed: 1) the lack of a Mexican community in the UK, 2) the shocking state of our native Mexico City (I’m from Coyoacan, he’s from nearby neighbourhood Colonia del Valle), 3) the lamentable record of Mexico’s most corrupt former presidents and their responsibility for the disintegration of Mexican society, 4) the growing influence of Columbian drug lords on Mexico (he reckons plane after plane lands in Cancun loaded with Colombian cocaine, with airport air officials bribed/threatened into turning a blind eye); all this before he finally tried in a very relaxed fashion to sell us a tour or a time share apartment. “I can’t exactly buy a time-share from you, not when my sister sells time-shares, “ I told him. He blinked and nodded in agreement. “But come and have a day at the resort, drinks, watersports, as my guest anyway, no pressure, any time you like.”

This morning the sea is rough but already looks turquoise, the sky is filled with bunched clouds, the pools at this hotel seem infinite (and there’s a huge infinity pool), people are out training.

My lovely cousin Rodrigo just happens to work at the hotel we booked into. He’s studying International Tourism at Uni. Classes from 7am, and works reception in the evenings. A tough life, he admitted, but he loves it. He upgraded our rooms and breakfasts, and left us a delicious chocolate truffle cake in the room…

To Mexico - in one week!

This time next week I will in at Healthrow airport waiting for a flight to Toronto, Canada and then to Cancun, Mexico!!!!

Gosh I'm looking forward to it. The family are taking a break to do a Joshua Files Roadtrip. We had planned to follow in Josh's footsteps from Chetumal all the way to Catemaco but honestly the driving would just be too tiring.

So we're doing a cut down version. I will be posting much more about this, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, especially for Lucas, I dug out this TV ad for Josh's favourite cupcakes, which he eats on his bus journey through Yucatan in 'Invisible City'.



The are called 'Pinguinos' and are like Hostess cupcakes - white vanilla cream inside a chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting and a squiggle of white icing on top. And a childhood favourite of mine.

Mmmm, additives.

Nostalgia for...Beny More

I wasn't alive in the days of Beny More (pronounced More-ray), the Cuban singer and band leader who went to live in Mexico and became a massive influence on all the Cuban salsa bands.

So why do I get these gorgeous pangs of nostalgia when I listen to Beny More? Why does it make me think of a Cuba and a Mexico I never even knew?

My theory is that as a tiny child I was exposed to this music. I do know that after my mother left my father, I spend a great deal of time with my two grandmothers. One, Abuelita Josefina (known to her old friends as 'Pepa') had a wonderful memory for lyrics and knew many of the songs of Beny More. Beny More often appeared in popular Mexican films, which went through a golden age in the 40s and 50s.

So maybe that's it; maybe I was sat for hours in front of the TV while my grandmother knitted (she was mad for knitting). Maybe that's where I acquired this overwhelming craving for gorgeous night clubs where Cuban bands play for beautiful people, sipping daiquiris between dancing the son, mambo and cha-cha-cha.

This Cuba does not exist anymore - I've been to look for it. It's all timba and reggaeton now. That's great, but, ah nostalgia. I once spent a whole afternoon lying next to a pool in Santiago de Cuba, listening to the piped music of Beny More. That's as close as I got.

Forever Mexican - Chiiidoooo

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon recently said "Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico."

Well hurray for that! Because apparently the cost of being naturalized as a British citizen has roughly tripled since last year, when I last filled in the forms and didn't get round to sending them, and at around £655 I'm not quite sure it's in my range anymore. Priced out of the market! It's probably a quite sensible ploy to avoid undesirables like me becoming British. Quite right too. What Groucho Marx said.

So I'm to be forever Mexican and only Mexican. Which means that there's a little bit of Mexico right here in Oxford.

PUES ME PARECE BIEN CHIDO.

Chichen Itza at the Equinox

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned the spectacle of the equinox at the Mayan site of Chichen Itza (one of the New 7 Wonders of the Ancient World).

I had a look on Youtube and indeed there are some videos of the event. Nice, saves us all having to join the madding crowds.

Here's my pick of the crop:
Paco, a Mayan guide at Chichen Itza, explains the whole thing to a TV reporter.


Atmospheric little Chichen-equinox movie, with Pink Floyd music.

Mayan site of Chichen Itza One of the New 7 Wonders!

Chichen Itza
Originally uploaded by Aleksu

The results are in - it was the final days of lobbying wot done it!

The Mayan city of Chichen Itza has been named as one of the official 'New' 7 Wonders of the World.

The photo is one of Aleksu's - a contact of mine from Flickr who takes gorgeous photos. He's been urging people to hit the 7 Wonders Website voting for Chichen.

Chichen Itza was the first Mayan ruin I ever visited, aged 15, on a hugely memorable trip to Yucatan with my father, stepmother and three sisters. We were driven there on the slow dusty road from Cancun. Not by my father - who stayed in Cancun to play golf - but his chauffeur. This was before cars routinely had aircon. It was a sweltering August day - at least 45 degrees Celsius and close to 100% humidity. and the site was crowded - even in 1981 it was Mexico's most popular archaeological site after Teotihuacan. My sister Pili passed out from heat stroke in the ladies' bathroom.

We walked around the site in stunned, exhausted silence. I was nursing my usual sunburn and was in agony most of the time. (Sunblock didn't work in those days; I always forgot to wear a T-shirt for a critical hour or so, for which I always paid in tears of pain). I tried climbing the main staircase of tht Temple of Kukulcan aka El Castillo (pictured above) and got about twenty stairs up before I turned around and had an attack of vertigo. I knew without a shadow of doubt that if I climbed to the top with my sisters I would have to be helicoptered down. I managed to climb back down those 20 stairs but my legs were shaking all the way down, even though I used the trick of descending on a diagonal.

I went into the tunnel in El Castillo to try to climb the Temple of the Jaguar that sits under the newer, flashier Toltec-influenced pyramid. There was a crowd of tired, hot, breathless tourists waiting patiently to ascend a tight staircase just wide enough to permit a line of people going up and a line of people going down. It was like a steam oven in there; everyone was being slowly poached. The skin on my shoulders felt like it was on fire. I took one look up that staircase and felt like I'd got as close to hell as I ever wanted to be. A wave of claustrophobia gripped me; I almost shoved people out of my way on the way out.

Chichen isn't my personal favourite of the Mayan sites. I prefer something more Classic Mayan, with the Puuc or Rio Bec architecture, ideally in a more jungle-setting, like Palenque. However Chichen has two sites, including an older, Classic Mayan site which is Puuc style.

Chichen's buildings are spectacularly preserved - by now all four faces of El Castillo are restored, when I first visited it was just two. This pyramid is precisely aligned to capture the sun on the sides so that it lights up triangles on the main staircase and the serpents head at the base. This happens only on the Spring and Winter equinoxes and it has the effect of creating an undulating serpent-of-light on the staircase. I've never visited then because the crowds at that time of year are insane. (There must be a Youtube video of it...I'll check).

Despite the constant pain of my sunburn I was impressed beyond anything I'd ever experienced. I'd never visited any Mexican pyramids before, for some reason I'd never been taken to Teotihuacan (near Mexico City). I'd had a fascination with the Maya since aged 11 my father took us to stay at the Acapulco Princess, fashionable in the late 1970s/early 80s, and - I was told - built in the style of a modern Mayan pyramid (although the website says Aztec but still...) But to see the real thing, to experience something of that atmosphere, to imagine the citadel filled with warriors and priests, ball-players and sacrificial victims...was quite, quite amazing.

We returned late that evening to the hotel in Cancun. I went into the hotel bookshop and bought the shortest book I could find about the Maya. It turned out to be one of those Erich-Von-Daniken type books about ancient astronauts and their supposed influence on early civilisation. I lapped it up. I hardly slept that night.

If any of you read 'Invisible City' next February you will see just how far that day left its indelible mark on me.

Cup Final Day...and I Have Writer's Block

Oh I am in such big trouble. Meant to be going to Brighton today for a wedding. (Yes! I won't be able to watch the FA Cup Final...gaaaahhhhh!) So I'm trying to hit my 500 word daily target on Jaguar but can I write? NO!

I'm stuck in some loop of memory, thinking about my aunty who died recently, and the university where she used to work, and how from the first moment I saw St Catherine's College, Oxford, where I did my undergrad degree, it brought back powerful memories of a place which had meant so much to my family, before it was destroyed by an earthquake.

Compare and contrast...

St Catz (top) vs the late, lamented, earthquake-clobbered Universidad Iberoamericana (bottom).

...and...that's it! Out of time, have to go. Come on you Reds.

Mestizo - Haven for Mexicans in London

NB - This is not a proper restaurant review - this is the personal experience of a Mexican writer visiting with on a day when she had a tummy-ache and a newly-developed meat intolerance. For a review, see here:
http://www.mexicanwave.com/blog/200506/20050623.html

When the publishers of "The Joshua Files" offered to throw the launch party (early in 2008) in a 'top London Mexican restaurant' I had my doubts. I mean - was there such a thing? Cheesy-soaked nachos, soggy enchiladas and margaritas, I don't call a Mexican restaurant; no matter how much papel picado they string around and how much mariachi music they play. So I had a look - had London changed since last time I'd ventured out to eat 'Mexican'? (Which was around ten years ago...)

Turns out it had. We found this place, Mestizo, which is run by a Mexican woman, Marysol Alvarado, where they really seem to care about catering to we few England-based Mexicans who are fed up of not being able to get decent tortillas, having to cook our own frijoles refritos (refried beans) and not being able to go out to a proper Sunday brunch where you can eat hot spicy food and sweet buns for two hours.

Agent Cox, the Editor and I rolled up one quiet lunchtime last week to test the waters. The decor is minimalist-cosmopolitan rather than gaudy-Mexican. I suppose that fits in better with London. Me, I like the colonial style, but it does go best in the right setting, which isn't London. A plasma screen in the corner shows a looped video of Mexican folkloric dancing, including the jarocho, a sort of Irish-dancing style dance which Joshua sees in a scene in the first book. Watching it, I started to get a little nostalgic, especially when they showed the voladores de Papantla...oh , why, that's a long story... The music playing softly in the background was just right - not mariachi but popular Latinoamerican songs played on marimbas, with a bit of a tropical rhythm.

The menu looked very promising, sadly I was nursing a bit of a tummy ache as a result from departing from what was meant to be a temporary, Lenten vegan diet, but which has since made it impossible for me to to eat dairy without suffering for the next two days.

(Two days previously, in honour of a bi-annual visit from our former neighbour and great pal, the Chilean tenor Rodrigo del Pozo, I'd eaten spaghetti sorrentina at our local Italian in Summertown - Cibo - which has lots of melted mozzarella, and had even dared to have ice-cream for dessert. Hey, you have to try to get back on the horse! I was still doubled up by Tuesday...)

Anyway, I picked a big selection of things for Editor and I to try, including meat and dairy. Marysol offered to make the militantly vegan Agent Cox something off the menu, a mushroom-based mixiote. He also tucked into guacamole and nachos, which are safe.

I noticed that they had tamales. Brave, to try making tamales! They don't even get those right everywhere in Mexico. I asked Marysol to be straight with me - how were they? "They're good," she said. "Not exactly what you'd get in Mexico, of course, because it's tough to get the ingredients. But tasty."

So Editor and I started with a mixed dish of antojitos - like tapas, which included a little deep fried quesadilla, a jalada (jalapeno pepper with fresh cheese), a flauta (deep fried chicken taco) and a tamale (with mole sauce and chicken). It was all yummy, even the tamale which was a little drier than you might get on the streets of Mexico, but tasted good. Especially the flauta, small and crunchy with sour cream, salsa verde, lettuce and cheese - just right.

We also tried a gordita, filled with cochinita pibil (marinated, shredded pork). This was my first indication that the vegan diet had spoiled me for meat - at least red meat. It had been weeks since I tried it, and although it tasted really authentic, I had difficulty eating it.

We moved on to our 'main' - tacos al pastor and tacos of carnitas - shredded spicy beef.

The tacos al pastor looked and smelt delicious. Sometimes I wonder if I go to Mexico as much to eat tacos al pastor and chicken-with-mole, as I do to see my family. That's how much I love those tacos. In Mexico each taco place has their own secret recipe for the marinade. It must have orange juice, lime juice, oil, achiote and cumin, but whatever else can be the X-factor. My Uncle Agustin used to cook for a living and he reckons that you add a splash of Coca-Cola. You marinade thinly sliced pork loin and then mount them on a doner-type skewer, which must be flamed as it turns. In a busy taqueria in Mexico, the pastorero cuts slices from this doner-type thing with a sharp knife, dipping in and out between the bursts of flame. Then you eat the meat on corn tortillas with fresh onion, coriander and pineapple. My Aunty Tere used to own a taco restaurant in Tuxtla Gutierrez and told me that a good pastorero can command a relatively high wage for a restaurant worker - they are rare.

Anyway, at Mestizo I don't know if they have a pastorero, but the meat tasted great and they'd even slightly grilled the pineapple for extra yumminess. But after two mouthfuls I knew that I wasn't going to be able to eat it - however delicious. Agent Cox writes in his polemical tome "You Don't Need Meat" that when you stop eating meat, your system gets retrained so that you stop craving it, even liking it. Well, it's true. You don't even need to try very hard...it just happens.

A keen omnivore, the Editor tucked into everything with gusto...hurray for her!...while she told us all about her forthcoming wedding and honeymoon plans. (Bali! Lucky her - she'll have a lovely time and food is heaven!)

Meanwhile Agent Cox demolished the steamed contents of a maguey leaf stuffed with the mushroom mixiote, as well as a dish of frijoles (black beans) and a small pile of tortillas, loading them with salsa macho, which is one of those sauces I rarely eat - I stay away from the evil-looking blood-red ones cos they tend to hurt, as he was to discover! Then...still hungry, he tried to order another mixiote, to Marysol's impressed amazement...and doubt. Well, I was a bit concerned at what double helpings of all those different chiles might do to his system, so I vetoed that and told Marysol to bring frijoles refritos, pico de gallo (a raw tomato sauce with lime, chillies and coriander) and more tortillas, which won't do anything worse than make you fat.

We also shared a pitcher of margaritas - slightly frozen, which seemed to be churned in a machine like those which make 'slushies'. It wasn't bad at all, but made with orange juice rather than fresh lime. So I asked Marysol to bring us three margaritas made fresh with lime. "Oh, you want the real thing?" she said, and went off to rustle up the cocktails.

We tried bottles of Pacifico beer. It's from Mazatlan, and actually very good. A bit like Carta Blanca, but sweeter. They also have Corona and Negro Modelo, which I know is good but I wanted a nice mild lager.

All the lunchtime beer and cocktails were making me drowsy. Editor and Agent Cox both had meetings later that afternoon, which amazed me. I knew I'd pretty soon be good for nothing.

Ah, the idle life of a writer. It's not all bad.

Mind you next week won't be so relaxed. Many heavy, serious meetings at the school where I'm a governor...

In summary - Mestizo is just the place to get your fix of real Mexican food in London. Marysol told us that they even do a proper Mexican buffet-brunch on Sundays and showed us the menu - a selection of dishes that would do the Camino Real Hotel proud. I hope they add hot cakes with cajeta and chilaquiles with green tomato sauce. Mmmmmm.

Luckily I can just about eat eggs - although only a few bites, and the odd bit of chicken.

(Agent Cox will be cross with me if he ever reads this. Okay Peter! Don't eat meat - it's cruel to animals. Eggs and dairy are horrible for your cholesterol levels - and animals don't have the best time providing them either! Being vegan is healthier!)