Run up the stairs at four-thirty in the morning, take a nap, roll out in the Saturday sunshine, and play it again, Sam.

’Round midnight Friday on Wells Street, the sign said CLOSED but the door was open to us, and we went down, down, and through the doorway into a Murakami novel: Japanese girls with sharp fringes and uneven ponytails; shiso mojitos sweet and rummy; a glowing sphere and empty Champagne bottles on a dark piano. A slim pack of Camels, and that moment—I love that moment, probably because of its exact momentariness—that round, full instant when a face glows with a match struck to light a waiting cigarette. Late became later, and then later became later still. There was Chris, a silent physicist, and Leaf, who talked enough for both of them. I am doing an Amy Tan and exoticising, because really Leaf is the translation of the girl’s Japanese name, Yo. We love Yo, the largest-eyed, biggest-smiled, jerkiest-nodded Japanime character come to life, and sitting across the table from us.

“It’s a SECRET,” she enunciated, slowly, loudly, above the crowd chatter and the clouds of cigarette smoke. She widened her wide eyes. “You see the BARTENDER. BEHIND ME, in the WHITE SHIRT—” and here she raised a slender finger and pointed, to be sure.

“Your secret’s safe,” Marc said, as she jabbed her finger over her shoulder in the direction of the bartender in question. She may also, here, have said, “THAT ONE, in the WHITE SHIRT.”

“Your secret’s safe,” Marc said. “No one suspects a thing.”

“I like you,” I told her. “You’re crazy.”

+

Saturday after the weekend paper at Bar Italia, there was a small paper sack of hot chestnuts and a strawberry daiquiri before the Guy Fawkes fireworks over the river. I heart fireworks: the little curly ones that dance a curly dance; the ones that explode, with deep thumps, into giant bush flowers; the ones like Pop Rocks fizzing; the ones that scream across the sky; the ones that shoot up in golden streaks before disintegrating into gnarled hands, dust to dust.

We were carried along the South Bank in the thickness, after, me and Thush, in the sulphur-scented air, before we crossed Waterloo to navigate the dark cobblestones of Covent Garden and Soho. Up a narrow stairway in Café España, crowdy and rowdy, a picture of David Beckham was taped to the wall, next to the fire emergency sign. The dumbwaiter was constantly in action, bringing up platters of sardines, red peppers, grilled squid, bacalao, saffron rice. Our table quickly disappeared under small plates of tapas and an earthenware jug of sangria.

And I was so close to home, then, and we were full and so cosy, but I’d said I’d go to the birthday thing of a friend of a friend, so we hopped the 390 across Oxford to Ruby Lounge. Downstairs with the thumping beats, the Indian girls were glamorous and exquisite like Bollywood come to town. There were shouty introductions to Bubli and Ricky and Pompom and Rav? Tav? Kav?, man, I don’t know; to Suvak who, in his distressed Mooks shirt and short, uneven tie, in his wavy, slept-in mop, could have been the sixth Stroke; to Anthony, whose birthday it was. Anthony didn’t dance, because Anthony doesn’t dance, but apparently Anthony will boozily make out in the corner with the girl in the layer-cake dress. A skinny guy in a faded T-shirt and jeans made me smile and remember New York because he clearly, and I mean this in the best and only way possible, he clearly didn’t give a shit.

We danced to Justin Timberlake and we danced to Dr Dre, and we cannot help but be part of our generation, which means that when Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” came on, the dance floor was crazy shimmy.

+

Sunday morning I had the cell phone on one side of me and the phone phone on the other, and both were ringing like a global conspiracy to get me out of bed. “Did I wake you?” “Yes.” “But what time is it?” “Um. Eleven-something.” “That’s what I thought.”

Still, I am SO efficient (small things move fast) that there was time for chestnut honey on walnut toast AND a load of laundry before lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant called Vietnamese Restaurant. Spring rolls, of course, and pho, of course, and a number fifteen from the lurid drinks menu. Number fifteen is listed, in Chinese, as Three Colours Water, which comes out red beans and corn and green jelly, crushed ice and coconut milk. You know—you would not accept anything less—it comes in a tall soda glass. It amazed the table when it arrived, and I think some of the boys with their beers were a little jealous.

I just want to take a little tangent here and mention that one of said boys at said table was this guy Taka, a Japanese dude from Argentina, whose father makes honey. Which is to say, his father keeps bees, who make honey. A Japanese dude from Argentina is already interesting, but when honey comes into the picture, well, I mean, SO MANY QUESTIONS. I imagined that when Taka was a seven-year-old beekeeper, he had the power to sic the bees on the mean kids at school, but he said it wasn’t like that. I tell you what I have learned today. Fact number one, it is mostly eucalyptus and sunflower honey you get from Argentina. Fact number two, guess what bees eat, gowan, guess, you’ll never guess, yup, HONEY. The world is an amazing place.

We quickstepped through the drizzle down Shaftesbury to the Curzon to watch “De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté”, which, even viewed with craned necks from the second row, is superb like a Bach fugue on a rainy day, like the beauty of torn edges and creased corners. And then of course there is the X-TREME HOTTNESS of Romain Duris.

“You cannot say,” I said to Henny as we filed out of the theatre, “that he is not terribly attractive.”

“Yeah, I dunno,” she said. “I was trying to decide.”

“I decide for you now,” I said. “He is, he is.”

“Yes, I suppose,” she said. “In a dirty Frenchman sort of way.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing,” I said.

+

Tonight there is a white lotus mooncake and a pot of genmaicha. I was playing Gal Costa earlier, but now it’s quiet.