Day Out
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Your support makes all the difference.I would almost never go out in the morning, it's quality time for writing. The very idea of going out before lunch is anathema to me. I make up for this every six weeks or so by organising a grand lunch for a group of writers who all live in or around Birmingham, people like David Edgar, Andrew Davies and Roy Fisher. We meet at the Chung Ying (021-622 5669) and it's usually a convivial and bibulous occasion. We mainly gossip but there is sometimes quite a fierce argument about some issue to do with writing. It is very informal, we sit at a round table in the corner and have dim sum and house white.
In the afternoon I would go to my tennis club, The Priory in Edgbaston where I live, and either play tennis or, if the weather was unpropitious, have a swim and a sauna. I have become quite addicted to saunas.
In the evening, I might go to the Birmingham Rep or some other theatre but I tend to do most of my theatre-going in London where I have a pied-a-terre. I might go to one of the multiplex cinemas in Birmingham. I should really go more often to the new Symphony Hall which is quite superb, but I normally prefer to listen to music in the car.
Birmingham has some of the best ethnic cooking in the country. I frequent Henry Wong's (021-427 9799) a good Chinese restarant in Harborne and the Maharaja Indian (021-622 2641). There's a French cuisine restaurant called Sloans (021-455 6697) which I'll go to if it's on someone else's expense account. I'm not a pub person, but I go to The Green Man in Harborne when my father comes up from London. He prefers the beer and finds our pubs more salubrious. Birmingham is a lively city really, and a much more humane place to live than London.
David Lodge narrates 'The Way of St James' for 'Everyman', 10.25pm Sunday 12 Dec BBC1
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