Dartford

At Dartford station a huge metal building is artfully disguised with rainbow-coloured spraypaint. Red and white tape is twined around a section of churned up tarmac. They've knocked down the old railway pub.

This is my home. I grew up here on the edge of town, went to school here up on the hill, and even worked here for a small time in the local pub. My parents both work in town. I meet dad in the Costa Coffee for a chai.

"When did everyone in town get so fat?"

"Ugh I know. You should be down here on market day. It's like, 'Loserville'"

I know what he means. Jogging bottom clad "Yoofs" slouching along the high street. Overweight mothers screeching cursewords at their kids. A beige coated, withered pensioner pushing a shopping trolly, wild-eyed, like she might be robbed at any moment . The high street itself is a collection of horrible chain shops: KFC, Cashconvertors, Savers, an arcade of fruit machines with a tanning salon upstairs, the Pawn shop, Greggs. There's nothing here based on enjoyment and everything to do with necessity and habit. More specifically bad ones.

I have a look at the beautiful crumbling building that used to be 'Upstairs Downstairs Discounts' with its rusting Victorian lead lantern outside. This grand building has been unoccupied for decades. The council are letting it slowly rot so that they can bulldoze it to make way for a more profitable edifice.

I start the slow walk up the hill to my more suburban family home with an empty feeling of loss. How long before the old church is bulldozed for a new Tesco and central park is concreted over for its sprawling new parking complex?

As I slouch up the hill my eye catches a huge bramble bush in the entrance way to some garages. It's covered in fat blackberries, some ripe, some still red, glinting in the sun. I pull on one and it comes away easily in my hand, perfectly ripe. It smells sugary-sweet. I decide to pick a few; they're wild so fair game. Sometimes it's easy to forget you live in Kent, the garden of England, and that fruits will grow as readily here as anywhere. Even through concreted driveways.

I take as much as I can carry in my palms and take them home. Sticky juices run down the edges of my fingers. Mum and I eat them on top of our porridge.

The Best Pie in the World

Fed up by having intimate moments ruined by Pete's insistence at looking at eBay 'bike porn' - I finally reached boiling point and blurted "Why don't you just buy one and get it over with!"

He responded with an absolute bargain Giant with 19 inch wheels and ridiculous suspension - in Halifax, a good 200 miles away.

Given that my brother has stolen my occasional use car in lieu of blowing his up, we hire a modest motor, book a B&B and speed off towards the Peak District en route. We stop at various service stations and look at multicoloured camping chairs and animal shaped travel pillows in the overpriced WH Smiths'. Buy giant Costa coffees. I look depressedly at the snacks in the teeny Waitrose; all opportunistically expensive.

We stop off at the beautiful yellow-bricked Chatsworth house for a cup of tea, but dodge the extortionate entry fees in light of the fact that "the grounds are lovely" and "I bet the outside is the bit that's worth seeing really..." then zoom onward through lush heather-clad green and purple hills and Bakewell, home of the tart.

Or not, as it happens, the famous thing is apparently Bakewell pudding. After doing a lap of the teeny cobbled town and turning my nose up at annoying chain pubs with expensive touristy menus, we squeeze into the 18th century Parlour Rooms at the promise of homemade pies and cakes.

I've got a hearty slab of cheese and onion quiche with a summery strawberry salad, and Pete is moaning at his pie as though he wants to have full sex with it.

It's  a sizable flaky pastry beast stuffed to the brim with a slovenly gravy meat medley. It belches puffs of steam as he cuts into the crust with his knife. Sided by about six potatoes' worth of fat cut chips and the obligatory peas the plate is completed by a generous jug of gravy.

Being a semi-vegetarian, this dish is mostly wasted on me, though I can't deny it is trying to lure me into its meaty depths. I however, am holding out for the infamous Bakewell pudding.

It looks depressingly squashed and underdone when it arrives, like a rather depressing mince pie. When we cut it open it's full of squidgy jam and an almondy fudgy filling. It's like a deliciously underdone cake (I'm with Eddie Izzard on this one - the cake always tastes better before it's baked) and I proceed to drown it with cream and wolf it down. The top could do with a bit of a crisp up, but actually I like the soggy, homely, artery-clogging taste of the North.

Rolling back to the car, we speed off towards Glossop for a fun packed evening of drinking and inactivity induced indigestion.

A Little Slice of Turkey

There's something about wood green that puts me on edge.

It has a rep in North London of being a bit rough; at least around the yummy mummy areas of Muswell Hill and Crouch End which both host small communities of posh people banished from the more affluent areas of London. No boutique bakeries and vintage clothes shops here: No, here it's a much more rough and ready collection of charity shops, phone shops and cheap diamonté studded clothing.

As I hop off of the W3, I'm smacked in the face with how busy it is, and how instantly the demographic of people has changed from a mile down the road. Kaftan klad muslim men buy unusual vegetables from Asian grocers, voluptuous black ladies with skinny teenage daughters heave shopping bags of clothes. Turkish ladies get their nails done by Chinese nail technicians. The flavour is distinctly multicultural and refreshingly loud.

There's an old man shouting bible passages at people as they pass the market hall, and a tramp sits outside the rammed Charcoal Grill asking people for change. I can smell waffles from a small hole-in-the-wall café near the shopping mall, hear police sirens further down the road.

I've come here to run errands; buy some big stuff from the big supermarket that I get ripped off on in the Tesco Express. Look at some phones. Wander around the sprawling mall that bridges over to the other side of the road.

My mood today is unemployment low. My head is full of cloudy nothings. No money no prospects and nothing to look forward to. I wander without purpose or energy.

I head to a small greasy spoon style café in the market hall. Me and Pete have been here for a mug of tea before and I liked the easy feel of the place. It's got some old-fashioned moth-eaten carpet against a cheap laminate floor, some basic tables and chairs and sugar in huge pouring pots. Despite the offers of all day breakfast and sandwiches, the flavour of this place is distinctly Turkish; I can see a huge spinach pie and some dolma behind the glass counter.

I search the counter hungrily and my eyes land on a generous brick of a cream slice. I know that it will be filled with that cheap cream-style filling and squeezy sauce style jam, but at the moment that's what I need. I compliment the sugar high with an equally indulgant hot chocolate. It tastes beautiful and is charmingly topped with squirty cream and chocolate sauce. This mood-lifting fat-hit is satisfyingly cheap and I relish my little relaxing carpet covered bench, watching the rain fall in sheets outside and reading my latest charity shop read.

This café is a place of comfort eats for my beat up soul. A nice place to escape the pretentiousness of 'artisan' bakers and highbrow coffee shops.  I feel back in touch with my working-class roots. I feel clear-headed and comfortable.

A group of PCSOs come and sit down on the table opposite for a quick tea break and I take it as my que to leave. I'll be back; this place to me is a haven of simple pleasures.

Coffee Cake

Outside it's nothing but a mock French facade and a bland title, but inside the artisan bolanger it's pyramids of precariously balanced meringues dusted with multicolours and mis-matched wooden easels displaying delicate strawberry spotted tarts and slabs of almond stuffed pistachio cakes.

The upholstery is mis-matched, the exposed brickwork deliberately high-brow snooty - the luscious olive and cheese ornamented salads are displayed using the temptingly piled 'Ottolenghi technique'. Whole butternut squashes are piled on the counter.

The cakes are arranged like little pieces of art on their own carefully picked raised wooden boards. Little paper tickets give the names and prices; French apple flan, Pear crumble, Courgette and lime cake, Ricotta cheesecake with lemon and meringue. I pick the wheat-free pistachio and almond cake. I'm served a substantial triangular slab, lightly iced and generously sprinkled with crushed green nuts.

It's dense and moist with a delicate marzipan taste and just the right level of sweetness. The icing compliments it beautifully. This with a chunky blue teapot of good strong tea (artfully mis-matched with its cup) and I know I'll wind up back here again.

Coffee Cake, 28 Broadway Parade, Crouch End, London

Another day at the office

The walls dance in snakey lines as I wake in a delerious fog. A dull bang as the coffee grounds are expelled from the steel head of an espresso machine. Distant drilling and a breeze stroking my fringe from the high window.

Cold cup of tea on the bedside table; tastes of milk without the refreshing blast of bitter that boiling teases out. My limbs shed the duvet; it feels heavier than it should. I rise like nosferatu: the undead!

Opening the door to the living room is like Close Encounters - Crouch End blinds me with aggressive UV from the window. I skulk to the kitchen in search of a beverage.

I push back the stiff lid from my laptop and place a solid digit on the power button. It glows technology-blue.

My eyeballs are assaulted by backlit text as the kettle clicks a salute.