Spiral Notebook: When the world brings me my breakfast

I had a Waitrose moment the other day, which somewhat elevates the Tesco products that were its genesis.

I was de-stalking strawberries to put in my porridge when I was struck by the incongruity of summer fruits in a winter breakfast.

Film review: Hello Carter (15)

Hello Carter
(15) 81mins
★★✩✩✩

According to the support notes to this film, Londoner Anthony Wilcox sold his house  and spent a year writing the script for Hello Carter, his full directorial debut.

Working Mum: The arty battleground has shifted to breakfast

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

First it was impossibly creative lunches. Mums with way too much time on their hands creating elaborate lunchbox artworks.

Sandwiches shaped like cartoon characters, animals, iconic buildings; salad and vegetables carved to resemble fauna and flora; food patched and pieced together to resemble colourful miniature works of art.

Spiral Notebook: What is the point of a council, if not this?

Recently Mayor Lutfur Rahman blew tens of thousands of pounds on a longshot attempt to save himself from humiliation.

Despite a High Court judge telling him that his claim against communities secretary Eric Pickles was "hopeless" he still opted for a second hearing.

Film review: Paddington (PG)

Paddington
(PG) 95mins
★★★★★

Clear the decks, grab the children, make a note - there's a new tradition elbowing its way into Christmas schedules.

Working Mum: Taking a Punch from little madam Judy

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

I was called in to see Master A's teacher at pick-up on Friday. Although small in stature, she has an almighty presence and is thoroughly intimidating.

She just has to look at me, with her withering stare, to reduce me to a quivering wreck. Heaven knows how my little boy survives in class.

Book review: How We Got To Now, by Steven Johnson

BOOK
How We Got To Now
Steven Johnson (Penguin)
★★★✩✩

The world is rich with academics with a good turn of phrase exploring the history of ideas and innovations, making the mundane endlessly fascinating.

Working Mum: My boy is a magnet for nasty critters

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

When I think we are safely over one thing where Master A's ailments are concerned along comes another.

I have spent hours researching Molluscum Contagiosum. It may sound like a spell cast by Harry Potter but this horrible little critter is not the stuff of fairytales.

20 fascinating facts about east London

Recognise this? (See 17)

Film review: Third Person (15)

Third Person
(15) 137mins
★★★✩✩

There's something wrong here. You ask yourself, how come something that reeks of quality, with a quality cast and a quality writer-director reprising - structurally at least - his finest hour, feels so limp and insipid?

Book review: The Story Of The Human Body, by Daniel Lieberman

The Story Of The Human Body
Daniel Lieberman
(Penguin)
★★★★★

This book was published in October. It  has taken me several weeks to complete. This could be for two reasons.

Stage review: The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Gielgud Theatre

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time
Gielgud Theatre
★★★★✩

The torment of living in a world that is threatening, jagged and strange is given full expression in this inventive and intelligent adaptation of Mark Haddon's award-winning book.

Working Mum: All dressed up with one particular place to go

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

It was a last-minute arrangement, and one that I had mixed feelings about, but MCM London Comic Con turned out to be an absolute blast.

I managed to get some tickets to the Sunday of the three-day event as I knew it would be Master A's Nirvana.

Spiral Notebook: Bridging the gap between now and the climate apocalypse

"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors," said Jonas Salk, the polio vaccine pioneer.

Stage review: Shakespeare In Love, Noel Coward Theatre

Shakespeare In Love
Noel Coward Theatre
★★★★★

The genius conceit of Shakespeare In Love - plunging the young Bard into the sort of fictional, farcical world that he might have concocted - is endlessly delicious.

Sherlock Holmes and the case of the icon decrypted

Author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle provided the key element of the Sherlock Holmes myth - the character himself - with his scientific approach to crime, his bohemian lifestyle and his restless curiosity.

Green: How east London keeps west London cool

What Shoreditch hipsters will tell you is confirmed by the environmentalists. It's east London that makes west London cool.

And that perennial role - as temperature regulator rather than fashion barometer - will become increasingly important as the capital comes to terms with the impact of climate change.

Stage review: Neville's Island, Duke Of York's Theatre

Neville's Island
Duke Of York's Theatre
★★★✩✩

Rain pours down on a verdant inlet and the perfume of pines fills the auditorium. Stormy camps, reluctant kindling and a fragile grasp on fortitude.

Working Mum: The kids are alright, but what about the guilty mums?

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

According to a new report, women can have it all.

Yes, it's official. Woman can go to work, do all the housework, raise a family, enjoy regular nights out with the girls, look like Amal Clooney (alright that may be pushing it) - all without damaging their offspring.

Film review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (12A)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
(12A) 101mins
★★✩✩✩

When mindless Megan Fox thinks about the loss of her father and her role in the whole Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle circus, her eyes tell a story.

Book review: More Fool Me, by Stephen Fry

More Fool Me
Stephen Fry (Penguin)
★★★★✩

Oh, Stephen. Oh, deliciously wicked Stephen. What troubles come your way and how quickly they pass on by. For yours is a life of ineffable privilege and Houdini sleight.

Working Mum: Down at the nail bar, I scratch an itch for gossip and glam

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

Pre Master A, I was a regular nail bar visitor. Every Thursday after work, I would take my spot alongside other clients and let Janine get to work on taming my talons.

It was a ritual that not only left me feeling more feminine but also more in touch with life.

Film review: Effie Gray (12A)

Effie Gray
(12A) 108mins
★★★★✩

If Effie Gray lacks the emotional release that the painstaking accumulation of frustrations appears to demand, it is perhaps testimony to the artistic courage of script writer Emma Thompson (who also stars).

Film review: Filmed In Supermarionation (PG)

Filmed In Supermarionation
(PG) 119mins
★★★★✩

Thunderbirds visionary Gerry Anderson railed against the limitations of puppetry.

Working Mum: Why I confronted man filming kids in the park

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

Over the weekend, Master A and I went along to a free family event in our local park with one of his classmates, Talia, and her mum.

The sun was shining and laughter filled the open space. Children of all ages were taking full advantage of the activities on offer from old school fairground games and cake decorating to model car racing and crafts.

Spiral Notebook: No sleep until splat time

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." So wrote Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1973, simplifying all there is to understand about the ambition of nature.

And yet... the mosquito.What need is there for a creature who's role is purely nuisance - big brothers have filled that evolutionary niche.

Book review: The Sense Of Style, by Steven Pinker

The Sense Of Style
Steven Pinker (Allen Lane)
★★★✩✩

Steven Pinker is an dazzling thinker, an excellent writer and a brilliant matchmaker of the two - marrying complex ideas to simple English.

This has not happened by chance. He has studied hard to make his writing appear easy and now wishes to share his learning.

Stage review: Great Britain, Haymarket

Great Britain
Theatre Royal Haymarket
★★★✩✩

All the ills, woes and scandals of Britain's tabloid press are distilled, mixed with bile and chucked at the audience of the Haymarket with infectious glee in Richard Bean's state-of-the-nation farce.

Working Mum: In the desert of my social diary, how can two key events collide?

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

For my birthday my friend announced that she had bought me tickets to see Kate Bush at Hammersmith.

At first I was speechless, unable to believe what I was hearing. This stunned silence was soon broken by one almighty squeal that lasted rather longer than was necessary.

Spiral Notebook: After a flight of fancy, down to earth with a bump

Unless you have wealth, webbing or feathers, there is little glamour left in air travel.

The humiliation of the consumer is one that no other service would demand save perhaps Apple with an iOS upgrade or the NHS and its proctology (with whom, tellingly, air travel has a weird kinship).

Spiral Notebook: David, Goliath and the sickening politics of scorn in Tower Hamlets

You may believe that Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman is right to challenge the Government's investigation into alleged financial malpractice at the Town Hall.

You may believe that the council's publicly funded bid for a judicial review is a necessary David-and-Goliath battle to protect a fragile branch of democracy from Eric Pickles' Communities Department.

Book reviews: Scarcity, The Gods Of Guilt, The Young And Prodigious TS Spivet

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir (Penguin)
★★★✩✩

The authors have a "big idea", another in the newly popular field of behavioural economics. The nudgers and freaks are joined by the lackies - those who live with scarcity.

Film review: A Most Wanted Man (15)

A Most Wanted Man
(15) 122mins
★★★✩✩

Director Anton Corbijn's sombre spy film is dressed in graffitied concrete, kebab shop neon and cold steel blue.

Spiral Notebook: The line of least resistance

Tower Hamlets charity Real has a strong chance of claiming the disabled services contract that was initially won by out-of-towners Pohwer.

Art: How Turner squared up to the oblong tendency

Late Turner: Painting Set Free
Tate Britain

For the longest time pictures were brick-shaped. Photographs in an album and portraits on the wall were often pre-figured to the Golden Ratio, that pleasing aspect that had mathematical as well as aesthetic qualities.

Art: Clare Woods on her commission for London's river services

Cranky and Idler may sound like sneaky nicknames for your deadwood colleagues but in the hands of artist Clare Woods, they are shimmering takes on the River Thames.

Film review: Lucy (15)

WHAT'S ON

Lucy
(15) 89mins
★★★★✩

Nothing in Lucy feels particularly new. It doesn't require a great deal of brain capacity to spot the references - 2001, Limitless, The Matrix, Inception.

Film review: The Rover (15)

WHAT'S ON

The Rover
(15) 108mins
★★★✩✩

Guy Pearce is mad, bored and has nothing to lose. Well, he has one thing to lose and that's his car (not the Rover of the title, sadly). When the dusty Aussie emerges from a roadside bar and sees criminals making off with his wheels, he finds a purpose that makes him less bored but more mad.

Spiral Notebook: This is not a cute cat meme

The hutia of the Caribbean; the Guadaloupe storm petrel; the Stephens Island wren - you can't see any of these creatures in the wild.

They are extinct, victims of an imported predator that has created unparalleled damage to indigenous populations - the cat.

Book reviews: Feral, by George Monbiot; The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith

BOOKS

Feral
George Monbiot
(Penguin)
★★★★✩

"Shifting baseline syndrome" is a curse of the re-wilding movement, one of a list of foes that also includes sheep, Scottish landowners and stupid EU diktats.

Film review: God's Pocket (15)

WHAT'S ON

God's Pocket
(15) 88mins
★★★✩✩

The work of Philip Seymour Hoffman has always been compelling and watchable.

Spiral Notebook: What happens when local councillors play at international geopolitics

COMMENT

Pro-Palestininan campaigners clog up Blackwall tunnel in support of the victims of the Gaza confict. Jewish organisations report an increase in anti-Semitic attacks.

And what does the mayor of Tower Hamlets do? Tweet a picture of a Palestinian flag outside the Town Hall.

What's On: Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest For Longitude at National Maritime Museum

WHAT'S ON

In many ways, a major new exploration of the quest for longitude at the National Maritime Museum is the story of Greenwich itself.

Film review: Begin Again (15)

WHAT'S ON

Begin Again
(15) 104mins
★★★★✩

Actors secretly harbour a dream to be a musician and musicians want to be an actor one day." So says Brit James Corden, who turns up in this love song to the power of music which is heaving with job swappers.

Exhibition: Bridge at Museum Of London Docklands

WHAT'S ON

Bridge is a free exhibition of artworks responding to the capital's crossings showing at the Museum Of London Docklands, West India Quay. We have selected four of the works from the exhibition with words of explanation or evocation.

Business books: Think Like A Freak, The Reckoning

BOOKS

Think Like A Freak
Levitt & Dubner (Penguin)
★★✩✩✩

In 2005, the double act of Steven D Levitt (economist) and Stephen J Dubner (writer) stumbled upon a new name for the old practice of thinking outside the box - Freakonomics.

Why London's bridges are more than just pieces of engineering

WHAT'S ON

The story of London is the story of river conquests.

From the first Roman pontoons, through the congested first London Bridge to the gothic splendour of Tower Bridge and onward to the prospect of a new Garden Bridge, these crossings are a reflection of a people and their times that carry more significance than mere engineering.

Book review: The Farm, by Tom Rob Smith

The Farm
Tom Rob Smith (Simon & Schuster)
★★★★✩

Tom Rob Smith's contribution to the Scandi noir canon is born of authenticity. His mother was Swedish although not, one presumes, the model for Tilde who turns up on his son's London doorstep one day with a story straight from the dark heart of that troll-ridden country.

London should plan for more heatwaves

London can expect more extreme weather events over the next few years with the number of "uncomfortable" days of heatwave likely to double.

The rise of intensely sunny days should prompt architects and planners to start including "cool culture" design features to make life more bearable for overheated residents and workers, say experts.

Book review: Flash Boys, by Michael Lewis

BOOKS

Flash Boys
Michael Lewis (Allen Lane)
★★★★✩

Everything changes in the blink of an eye, they say. That's about 300 milliseconds.