You heard it here first: London is a win. Henny and John’s cozy Schomberg House flat in Westminster was the perfect place to house a girl for just shy of five days, what with the view of red brick and chimneys through the window before falling asleep, and the Regency Café on the corner for breakfasts.

It’s funny how you can go away for just a few days and then you come back and it’s like you’ve just had some grand two-week vacation. London was grey and rainy and rainy and grey, although now and again the sky taunted us with blue; still, with the unhurried days of walking around taking in the city with my trusty £1.95 London tourist map, sometimes stopping to talk to the geese in Saint James Park, it was good.

In London: Henny of the smiling eyes, who will always be remembered for having led the Yellow team to victory in 1992, who whipped up a beef bourgignon for us while I sat about eating German chocolates, who is a swimming fiend, who saw a girl at the Portobello market with a giant chocolate donut and immediately understood that we needed to find ourselves our own giant chocolate donuts. Between the two of us (Henny and me, not, like, me and the donut), all sorts of new phrases were created this vacation—“Can’t spend all day at the Royal Mews!”; “If you find someone who doesn’t make you feel crazy, then go for it.”; “Simslike democracy.”; “Eh, house clothes! we can put on house clothes!” John, who puts up with our constant chortling and giggling, even when his bemused “It’s really not that funny” makes us laugh even harder. He has made an amazing book with drawings so beautiful and gorgeously clever they make your head hurt: birds and houses and flowers and gnomes and pumpkins. Swirls and whirls and vines and leaves. He makes architect jokes, which he admits “aren’t laugh-out-loud funny,” but they make us laugh out loud anyway. Thushala, still mad as ever, with stories of unco-operative kids in her dentist’s chair, camisoles in five-degree weather, big eyes, wide smile, laugh free. Gen, newly moved to Paris, enjoying a London weekend with her affable husband, Eric. We admired Eric’s natty striped and checked button-downs—the Paris influence? No, he’d gone shopping in Brunei. Christián, from Barcelona, the gayest straight man around, whose birthday we celebrated at an unfortunately Jude Law-less pub in Primrose Hill. Christián got more and more Rik Mayall-esque throughout the night as he drank, perfecting the amused lip-curl just before he’d throw his head back in laughter. Regina, from Bavaria, whose spiky hair I admired from across the room. Next time I’m in London we’re going to go see the greyhound races together. Eight dogs and a metal rabbit! Josh, from Minnesota via Paris. He was funny, that one, what with the American-in-France affect. He had good shoes, maybe Campers, brown, with a very rounded toe. He was a storyteller: “So they were in Belize, a small country in Central America. . .,” “Well, I saw this girl, who was way too good a dancer to be French. . .,” “Oh, he was awful, he was so greedy, I can’t tell you how many times he stole from me. . . .” Hao, who looked like a Hong Kong pop star, who’d just proposed to his girlfriend, on bended knee, in Paris, at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Also in London: Hakkasan, where the waitresses are snooty like crimped poodles, where they serve a tasty mango-mint cocktail, and where they’ll bring a large wooden bowl of prawn crackers if you ask—the largeness of which we marveled at, before we three girls tucked it all away. Gig’s Fish Shop and Kebab House, where I was accosted, upon entry, by (a) the salty, meaty, salivatory kebab smell, and (b) the take-away line winding round the room. Happily, there was one free table for me in the back to sit and read The Face while noshing on rock salmon and chips, and a Ribena. Belgo Centraal, where, because it was Friday night, we had to wait forty-five minutes, and then ten minutes, and then five minutes, for a table; where, when we finally got a seat, I was told they were out of rocket—but who runs out of rocket? even if it’s 9:45 on Friday night? really, especially because it’s 9:45 on a Friday night? Caffe Carluccio’s in Saint Christopher’s Place off Oxford Street, where we ordered Bicerins, which are espresso in the bottom of a coffee cup, a small thing of thick melted chocolate, and a small thing of full-cream milk, all presented on a silver tray, for you to mix as you will.

Used to be in London, now in Brooklyn: very luxe Prestat chocolates, discovered in the very luxe Carnaby Street store, Liberty; jar of Christmas champagne and strawberry conserves from Marks and Spencer, the price reduced twice to 49p; massive tube of Smarties; 1870s porcelain pot that used to contain Atkinson’s Rose Cold Cream, the happy gain of a Saturday morning at the Portobello markets; Alain de Botton’s new book, with pretty printed endpapers; skirt with a red-and-pink-flower print from Selfridges (if only it weren’t bloody snowing right now).

The desire, simmering over the last couple of years, to move to London heats up by the day. Plus, I got home midnight on Monday to a mailbox of magazine subscriptions, including one ElleGirl April 2004, in which my horoscope says I am considering a big move. Holy bloody moley.