Number 19 seemed a most unlikely museum with no plaque outside and apparently derelict I rang the

Number 19 seemed a most unlikely museum, with no plaque outside, and apparently derelict I rang the bell anyway, but there was no response. I took a left up Brick Lane and found the turn-off for Princelet Street. After travelling for about an hour I arrived at Aldgate East station. The address, 19 Princelet Street, sounded vaguely familiar, but at the time I could not place it. While there I befriended an elderly volunteer who suggested I visit the Heritage Centre in East London, a former synagogue that was, he told me, now a museum of immigration I caught the tube to Whitechapel. I travelled to London to conduct the necessary research, spending a week at the Museum of the Jewish East End, situated in Finchley. In the final year of my Fine Art degree at Sheffield University, I decided to write my thesis about Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe to the East End of London.

A lot of the brewing process is now controlled by computers but fortunately you still need a brewmaster to write the recipes." Interview by Aoife O'RiordainPhotograph by Dominick Tyler. We gauge the sugar content with the use of a hydrolater (7) which you float in the liquid to check its weight I check the ph value of the water with a ph meter (8). I need to take samples (6) throughout the process to check sugar levels. I use pressed hops (4) from east Kent and six different types of malt (5) from Nottingham. There are glass pipes (3) on the side of the tank that indicate the pressure under the floor, which is crucial. The other tank (2), which has a giant filter in its floor, is used for separating the malt from the liquid.

Every brewmaster has his own technique of cooking the liquid. The cooking process is extremely important as enzymes only work at certain temperatures. One vat (1) is used twice in the brewing process, for mixing the malt with the water and later on for cooking the hops. Apart from using the fermentation tanks downstairs I can make any kind of beer or ale with just these two vats At the moment I only make ales here.

Albert von Wallmoden is the German-born brewmaster at The Freedom Brewery in Covent Garden, London, and has set up other micro-breweries in Croatia and China "This machinery is very up to date. Not that I've seen so much as the price of a Kit-Kat yet - all the clothes I've had to buy to replace the ones I threw away have had to come off my overdraft But my hair is growing back nicely. "I don't generally tend to talk about them."After You'd Gone has so far been sold in Sweden, Italy, Germany and Holland, and the sum I'll be getting for it has just tipped over six figures. Jockies? Shorts? Pants? I canvass opinion: "Um, I'm not sure," one chosen male replies. I agonise for ages over whether a character would wear boxer shorts or jockey shorts, and how a man would concisely refer to the latter. Going over the manuscript in the knowledge that people will soon be reading it, I hit the delete button more than ever before: some dodgy lines go, as do song lyrics, and some "datable" references.

Somehow more galling is that in the past two weeks I've had three invitations to dinner from people I've barely spoken to - suddenly they've decided they like me.The effect that imminent publication has on your writing is one of severe self-criticism. A woman I've always counted among my closest friends sits silently through an entire conversation with two other people about it, then snaps, "How much money d'you get then?" It's hard to feel the same about someone after that. The real friends ask close questions about the whole process and what happens now and when's it going to be out and what's going to be on the cover? The galling reactions are not so much negative as lacklustre: "You've been very lucky," someone says sourly. I promise to put in a disclaiming dedication.It has also sorted the friends from the goats. I have to assure my mother, over and over, that the rather feckless mother in the book isn't based on her "But everyone will think she is!" she wails. My family are bemused and pleased - and more than a little paranoid.