Day one in London: The jetlag alarm clock woke me up just after five. Dark still. Crawled out from under white sheets to press “play” on Damien Rice.

I got out of bed, finally, because sleep clearly wasn’t coming, then went upstairs to where eight deep pink roses were waking up, too.

The story with the roses is that Thushala showed up for our dinner date yesterday with not only a welcome bunch of flowers, but also two bags of surprise groceries for my empty fridge. Hello, yoghurt; hello, milk; hello, mature Cheddar. Hello, even, orange-lychee juice. She is nice and she knows things, this girl, and one of the things she knows is that a full fridge and a pint glass of flowers make all the difference in a new life.

The story about Thushala is that sometimes there is nothing like old friends, especially when she humours my delusions and indulges in night-long conversations about rakish young men. I present to you Exhibit A:

“Wait, is Jude Law still single for me?”

“But he shags anything that moves!”

“I move.”

Ahem.

Day one went on to include SIX THOUSAND HOURS in various phone booths around town making calls to gas and telephone and credit card companies, and then enough was just bloody enough, so then day one turned into ham-and-piccalilli sandwiches and sweet apricots in Hyde Park; an upstairs seat on an Oxford Street bus; rookie cabdrivers on motorcycles, drawing the city in their heads; and, much later, out of the nowhere night, a disco skating parade coming round the corner. Round one corner and down the street, and then they were gone, and then just me and the wind blowing down the lane.

Day two so far has included a new kitchen, and presents, already, in the mail. Three minutes away, my corner window spot was waiting for me at the Internet café.