Life and times

Telegraph food columnist Eleanor Steafel

THERE IS NOTHING quite like a lido changing room, bustling with women of all ages and stages, shapes and sizes, to make you pick up the bundle of insecurities you lug around with you and throw them in the bin.

At 7.45am on a weekday morning, the ladies’ changing room at my local pool is a joyous place to be. There are the gaggles of friends setting the world to rights before the working day begins. There are the housemates discussing last night’s second date with Possibly Boring Joe – the conclusion being that he is, as previously expected, unutterably dull. Then there are the old-timers, who have been coming to the lido twice a week for 25 years and can teach you the knack of the ancient swimsuit dryer.

Just listening in to all the chatter is strangely life-affirming. An invigorating dip in the cold water is a bonus. I arrive bleary-eyed and irritable, I leave feeling exhilarated, powerful and a tiny bit smug to have fitted in a few lengths before traipsing into the office.

I PRIDE MYSELF on being a master of the lie-in, but early starts are becoming an increasingly regular feature in my life. I write a recipe column in the Telegraph called Tonight’s Dinner, and since last year I have hosted a womenonly supper club with two friends, so mornings are now the slot in which to fit in venue viewings, plan menus or test recipes. My housemates are used to walking into the kitchen at 7am to find me frying croquetas or whipping up a batch of pickles. The scent of boiling vinegar doesn’t necessarily meld all that well with a bowl of morning porridge, but they don’t seem to mind when, later, they eat the leftovers for dinner.

Occasionally, when my friends Hannah, Amy and I find ourselves cradling coffees, waiting to be let into an event space at 7.30am, this supper-club lark seems like the worst idea we’ve ever had. But then we go in, look around and begin to imagine 40 women laughing, eating and drinking, sharing stories and listening to speakers, and the excitement begins to build.

The best bit of the night is always when the last dessert plate leaves the kitchen and I chat to the guests and speakers. When we started Hood (which stands for sisterhood, neighbourhood, womanhood), our plan was to bring strangers together over good food and conversation. We wanted to recreate the best nights of our lives – the ones that happen when your favourite women are assembled around a dinner table, chuntering away about everything and nothing.

I WAS LUCKY enough to get to chat to two top chunterers the other day – BBC Radio 4 presenters Fi Glover and Jane Garvey, whose podcast, Fortunately, I am obsessed with. In it, the pair sit in the piazza in front of Broadcasting House for half an hour talking about everything from Brexit to the receptacle into which your children are sick in the middle of the night. Glover told me, ‘I regard it as a self-help group of two.’

Over the course of an hour-long interview, we covered subjects as diverse as the BBC’S gender pay discrepancies and how to get rid of the dust that accumulates in a cutlery drawer (they named it ‘cutlery chuff ’). They say don’t meet your heroes, but these broadcasting grand dames were just as magnificent as they sound on the radio. Oh, and a damp piece of kitchen roll was the general consensus on removing cutlery chuff.

The next Hood Dinner takes place on 30 August, in partnership with Appear Here, at the Barrington Factory in Brixton, London; hooddinners.co.uk

At 7am you’ll find me whipping up pickles – the scent of vinegar doesn’t meld well with porridge