Joshua Sur­tees

From my bal­cony the scent of flow­er­ing plants wafts up from the court­yard be­low. I'm amazed my sense of smell has re­turned af­ter days of Parisian flu. I stick my head out to soak up the late Sep­tem­ber sun­shine and our new neigh­bours open a win­dow op­po­site me and smile and wave.

Out­side in the street oth­er Parisians are sick. A French­man on a scoot­er cruis­es by on the cob­bled streets and sneezes loud­ly.

"Heh-chieu!" it sounds like, in­stead of the com­mon "At-choo" that we Brits favour.

"Wait," says T. "They even sneeze in an ac­cent?"

And we fall about laugh­ing. I'd nev­er be­fore con­sid­ered whether the nasal ex­pul­sion sounds we make are in­nate or learned.

Along the street a fat mar­malade cat sprawls on a car bon­net. We've named him Garfield though his re­al name is Mi­nou. At the end of our street, the bo­hemi­an bar has two of its win­dows shat­tered.

The cracked glass re­minds me of the week­end's oc­cur­rences in Mont­martre's would-be twin town of Shored­itch in East Lon­don where the con­tro­ver­sial Ce­re­al Killer Cafe (lit­er­al­ly a cafe sell­ing bowls of ce­re­al for �5) was at­tacked by a group of an­ti-gen­tri­fi­ca­tion ac­tivists called Class War.

Shored­itch is one of sev­er­al for­mer­ly run­down, work­ing class ar­eas of Lon­don which have be­come pop­u­lat­ed by cool peo­ple with beards, mous­tach­es and drain­pipe jeans. Al­though these folk came with good in­ten­tions (first ap­pear­ing in the 90s set­ting up art stu­dios in cheap ware­hous­es) they en­cour­aged the spread of fan­cy pubs and restau­rants which Lon­don's es­tate agents use as mar­ket­ing tools to triple rent; squeez­ing out lo­cals from their com­mu­ni­ties.

When the ce­re­al cafe opened ear­li­er this year, five years in­to David Cameron and Chan­cel­lor George Os­borne's aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures, it was a tip­ping point. Ac­tivists were out­raged that many chil­dren in the lo­cal bor­ough live be­low the pover­ty line re­ly­ing on food banks while ce­re­al is be­ing sold as a posh snack for ex­or­bi­tant prices.

On Sat­ur­day night, its win­dows were bro­ken and daubed in paint by pro­test­ers who oc­cu­pied the area with sound sys­tems and an­ti-cap­i­tal­ist slo­gans.

I'm torn on this one. Gen­tri­fi­ca­tion has im­proved poor­er parts of Lon­don, which is good. But on the oth­er hand it hasn't re­gen­er­at­ed those ar­eas, it has pro­vid­ed a lick of paint and made every­thing un­af­ford­ably ex­pen­sive, which is bad.

But should ce­re­al cafes be at­tacked rather than, say, ce­re­al cor­po­ra­tions like the evil gi­ant, Nestl�?

The crimes of Nestl� are well-doc­u­ment­ed and yet still rel­a­tive­ly un­pun­ished. It re­mains the world's largest food com­pa­ny hav­ing ac­quired dozens of huge brand names.

I was dis­ap­point­ed to find that even in Trinidad, prod­ucts rang­ing from ce­re­al to juice to choco­late to milk are dom­i­nat­ed by Nestl� and that the Swiss com­pa­ny even has a fac­to­ry in Val­sayn.

It's one of on­ly a few cor­po­ra­tions I ac­tive­ly boy­cott. I haven't eat­en KitKats for 15 years–oth­er than that the boy­cott is pain­less. But it's not as easy as you think to avoid them. They own 60 bot­tled wa­ter com­pa­nies, 40 ice cream brands, hun­dreds of choco­lates, sweets, cof­fees, con­tact lens­es, pet food, sea­son­ing and 30 per cent of L'Ore­al which in­cludes Gar­nier, May­belline, Lan­come and The Body Shop.

Among many un­eth­i­cal prac­tices, Nestl�'s worst is ba­by milk. In 1866 Nestl� in­vent­ed for­mu­la milk, a prod­uct mar­ket­ed as a healthy nu­tri­tion­al al­ter­na­tive to breast milk which po­si­tioned breast­feed­ing as in­con­ve­nient and avoid­able. Nestl� ag­gres­sive­ly mar­kets for­mu­la milk in the de­vel­op­ing world where wa­ter need­ed to make the "milk" is of­ten pol­lut­ed. This, and the re­duced abil­i­ty to ster­ilise bot­tles, leads ba­bies to die of di­ar­rhoea and pneu­mo­nia at 25 times the rate of breast­fed ba­bies.

For­mu­la milk is not re­al food, it's chem­i­cal food just like Mc­Don­ald's or Sub­way or Pep­si. Would you give a tiny ba­by Pep­si to drink? So why give it ar­ti­fi­cial pow­dered milk when hu­man breast milk con­tains so much good?

And, while we're on the point, why did Kam­la in elec­tion year give out vouch­ers en­cour­ag­ing new moth­ers to buy for­mu­la milk?

Any­body who wants to know how im­por­tant breast­feed­ing is should read the columns of Dr David Bratt, med­ical ad­vis­er to the Breast­feed­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T.

Al­so try read­ing the book Breasts: A Nat­ur­al And Un­nat­ur­al His­to­ry by Flo­rence Williams, which tells us that women's breast milk con­tains, "four per cent fat, vi­t­a­mins A, C, E and K, nat­ur­al sug­ars, es­sen­tial min­er­als, pro­teins, en­zymes and an­ti­bod­ies, 100 per cent of the rec­om­mend­ed dai­ly al­lowance of vir­tu­al­ly every­thing a ba­by needs to grow, plus (hun­dreds of live bac­te­ria) to help ward off a life­time of dis­eases, from di­a­betes to can­cer. Every time we nurse our ba­bies, the "love hor­mone" oxy­tocin cours­es out of us like a warm bath."

One of the many great achieve­ments my moth­er will leave be­hind is achiev­ing Unicef's ba­by-friend­ly sta­tus for the Whit­ting­ton Hos­pi­tal in North Lon­don where she worked as a mid­wife and breast­feed­ing con­sul­tant. Unicef says ba­bies should have breast milk ex­clu­sive­ly for a min­i­mum of six months and rec­om­mends mums con­tin­ue breast­feed­ing for as long as pos­si­ble af­ter that. Un­der NHS guide­lines, UK hos­pi­tals must help mums achieve this.

Trinidad's trendy neigh­bour­hoods are a long way off giv­ing you ce­re­al cafes to protest about, but in the mean time start do­ing some­thing pos­i­tive for your com­mu­ni­ty to­day.