At the end of the work week—well, okay, half a work week—I remember now about mindless office work, about how you drain away, disappear in the mouse clicks, bleed between the papers filed—first alphabetically, then by month. One afternoon in the filing room, I threw my head back and groaned. The air vent in the ceiling was breathing, steadily, and a sheaf of papers on the cabinet top fanned, steadily.

At the end of, FINE, half a work week, I have a paper cut on my knuckle, and it stings.

It is good to be earning money again, though, and if I put together the money I earned this week with the money my grandmother sent for my birthday, it makes a sum EXACTLY EQUAL to the price of the Tabasco-coloured Marc Jacobs coat I’ve been having an affair with at Liberty the last couple of weeks, ha-ha!

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Kilburn Friday night, Kilburn way the hell out, northwestish, in Zone Two, for Sichuan food. I’m not sure whose idea it was, Lulu’s or Mimi’s, because when Elaine said that her friends Lulu and Mimi were meeting us there, I was consumed by two more pressing questions: Are these their real names? and Are they poodles?

“I thought they were barmaids,” Shzr Ee said, so of course then I said: “Are they poodles dressed up as barmaids?” No, and no again, for one is a Harbin beautician and the other a Taiwanese filmmaker-slash–erhu student.

I think I need not tell you that five girls of varied Chineseness inside the neon-lit storefront of the improbably named Angele make for a rowdy table. The spaces left unfilled by Tsingtao bottles or the deep dishes of spicy whatnots were filled with smatterings and chatterings in Chinese and English and Hokkien, even, and ha ha ha all around. The English Mimi’s learned on the street comes out in the way she punctuates her sentences: “Ni kàn nà wèi rén, yeah?,....” And here I think it is appropriate to give special mention to Lulu’s goading Mimi on to say something: “Ní you shen me huà quài dian shuo, you shen mè pì quài dian fàng!” Now that’s Chinese poetry right there.

(And, P.S., if anyone knows the key commands for the first-sound and third-sound accents, don’t be shy to say.)

The Chinese-speaking. One of these days I’ll stop feeling guilty about how lamely I handle myself in the language. Lulu asked me what my mother tongue is, and I said “English”, but I don’t actually know what the answer is. What’s “mother tongue” supposed to mean these days? Ethnically, I’m Chinese. Ethnically, my mother’s Chinese. But if we’re talking Mother China—well, Mother China is a mother I’ve never known. It’s probably closer to the truth if I say my mother tongue is Singlish....

We were trying to figure out how to translate “superbitch” into Mandarin when the waiter boy (we were calling him da ge—big brother—by then) came by to refill our teapot. He adopted, teasingly, an expression of shocked sensitivities, so Lulu said not to listen to us, to which he said: “Wo bú yào ting ye bù ké yi”, he is sharp, that one.

Later, the wind blew us down grotty Kilburn High Road, past the faded Seventies coin-op laundries to a corner shop called Cookies and Cream. So apt a name to attract girls in search of dessert!, and with so many cakes on show!, even one, in the revolving showcase by the door, with a whole apple perched on top, and the entire thing drizzled with chocolate. Inside, there were pyramid cakes against orange sherbet walls, and tables of dark men nursing darker coffees. A grey layer of cigarette smoke divided the room up-down.

It wasn’t till quite some minutes in, after we’d sat down around a rubbery slice of apple custard tart, a rainbow-sprinkled cream cake at least a couple of days old, and a claggy pink confection, that someone raised the possibility that maybe, sshhh, MAYBE the cream cakes were FOR SHOW, and maybe it was OTHER CAKES for sale here, wink wink nudge nudge—and here we are talking maybe LADYCAKES, or CAKES WITH HERBAL SUPPLEMENTS. “No, lah, nooo,” I said, but I was shouted down, because look!, that girl in the corner!, sitting alone!, and smoking!, clearly, but CLEARLY she was a LADY OF THE NIGHT. Elaine was nervous that one guy was watching us over his espresso, but the thing is, I’d be watching us, too, five giggly Chinese girls in an Eastern European cake shop.

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The weekend round-up, oh, there is so much to say and I haven’t been online in DAYS because of the job, the weekend round-up, quickly now, for I am popping off to see “Stranded” on the other side of the river in a bit, the weekend round-up has involved coffeehouse introductions to Jamaican guys; a teatime hello with Gigi, with plum tarts and two Emmanuels, and a fake rooster tied up in pink chiffon; a cheap ticket to Paris in a month—so cheap that apparently the train leaves at five-thirty in the morning, good going, Elaine; fish and chips and the largest, most luscious sticky toffee pudding around; late-night visits from a new friend and two newer friends, ending up, as one will, with loungeabouts on the big red carpet; and, oh, and maybe I’m going to be an extra in a student film.

This weekend there is a feeling of home. I think it was this afternoon in Bar Italia, with a mozzarella-tomato-basil panino and a cappuccino, and the guy behind the bar, the guy who looks like Michel Houellebecq, but Italian, he’d said “Next weekend, you and me, we go out, yeah?”; there was the panino, the cappuccino, the big Sunday paper, and the Sugababes on loud in the back, and the feeling was good, like a smile slowly spreading. Hold on to your hats, folks, there might be a Londoner in her yet.