It’s six-o-five, still dark, and I am sitting by an open window at the dining table of our New York apartment. The city is waking, cars, which never quite stop moving, are gathering force, a man walks by with a small backpack on. Across the street is a school advertising ‘college access for all’ in […]
Category Archives: Life in General
One More Sleep
I should be packing – which means finishing the ironing I began yesterday.I should be cleaning the house so our return won’t be too gruesome.I should be going to the Post Office to bank the cheque that arrived this morning, so I have money when I get back.I should be at least thinking about what […]
Rational Velvet
I began this post yesterday, and spent all day trying to format it using a flashy editor called Elementor. I use it for constructing pages, but blimey it was a struggle for a blog post, and I inadvertently published before adding all the text and images. I’ve sorted that now, and will have to keep […]
Confessions of a Weekend Reader
Once upon a time weekends were for partying, with a constant supply of new frocks, impossible shoes, make-up, booze, and friends. This lasted, as an impression if not a way of life, for about twenty years. Though marriage, motherhood and all that those entail meant things became less extravagant from my mid twenties, I still […]
Reasons to be Cheerful
I am grateful* for many things – beef dripping; Edward Enninful’s steerage of British Vogue; the word ‘plank’… – but today I am particularly grateful for sandwiches. On Tuesday afternoon I got an iMessage from a much loved friend asking if D and I would like to go to her house on Wednesday, at five, […]
Spatial Awareness
Saturday morning: running with snot, headachy, feeble, in no fit state to do do anything but return to bed, I found myself dragging large pieces of furniture across a carpeted room. As I think I mentioned in my last London Notes post, returning to Moffat hasn’t been as depressing as I expected. In fact, it […]
London Notes #12
A fair – The Shows?* – is being erected on the other side of the heath for the bank holiday weekend, so we used it as a reason to take a walk after a sluggish morning. And I remembered to take my camera, so here’s what I saw** (and found interesting enough to snap): Looking […]
London Notes #10
Saturday: I forgot to take any photos of the artist at P21 Gallery in King’s Cross making a huge, interactive, calligraphy on a red garage door. Or of bustling Kilburn High Road, where we went next, but zillions of the interior of Folkies, a music shop on that road: But my camera brain jammed […]
London Notes #9
The day (Friday) turned foodie, quite unintentionally. We actually meant to have a healthy outdoorsy day in the woods, and we did start that way. Oxleas Wood is one of the few remaining areas of ancient deciduous forest in Eltham in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, in southeast London. Some parts date back over 8,000 […]
London Notes #7
My breakfast – one banana (not too big); 20g of granola; 70g Greek yogurt; a handful of berries, and a huge mug of strong milky coffee – never varies. But I ate the last banana yesterday and failed to go out for more. No problem, I thought, I’ll get some apples from the tree, make […]
