“I got the new Vogue!!” I texted Hens just minutes after we parted down by Seven Dials. “Strike a pose,” she messaged back.
This pose I am striking?, it is me on the sofa with the guestroom duvet, having collapsed from having just completed my first week at work. I’d been waning by Wednesday, and was essentially running on empty come dinnertime Thursday—“I hope you haven’t noticed,” I’d said to Elaine over a hot okonomiyaki, “that I have been slouched over all night with my head balanced on my hand.” “I had,” she said, “noticed.”
Oh, how out of habit I am with this Monday-to-Friday thing, this nine-to-six thing, this commuting-an-hour-each-way thing. I’m not complaining about it, I’m just saying. The thing is, essentially, the work seems good, the people seem nice, there’s a girl who rides a Vespa and helps refugee ferrets on the weekend, there’s a boy who is very quiet but out of whom I managed to wrangle a smile, there’s biscuits at the ready, and full-cream milk in the fridge. And I got my first cheque today—for less money than I’ve ever made in my life, but I showed it off at dinner anyway, partly because I am a little bit of a show-off, but mostly because, come on, it’s pretty cool nonetheless. And if I was running on empty last night, tonight I was running on pure adrenalin, on the rush of a Friday night, on the sweet anticipation of no-work-tomorrow.
...is as far as I got blogging last night before I fell asleep on said sofa, under said duvet, with my iBook on my lap. So this is what it’s like to be a working girl.
I feel like I haven’t been here in a while, the “here” of working life, sure, but also the “here” of the city, because two weekends in a row in Paris are bliss on the one hand and minor discombobulation on the other, and it felt for a bit like alls I do around here is go to the office. This weekend I am reclaiming my London a little bit; after dinner last night I crossed Monmouth on the way to Shorts Gardens and remembered those carefree days of un- or semi-employment, when all of Covent Garden was mine at all hours of the day. Right now I think I need, me and my Vogue, to revisit the boys at Bar Italia. See that girl striking a pose by the steam-engine Gaggia up front on the zinc counter? Ya.
This pose I am striking?, it is me on the sofa with the guestroom duvet, having collapsed from having just completed my first week at work. I’d been waning by Wednesday, and was essentially running on empty come dinnertime Thursday—“I hope you haven’t noticed,” I’d said to Elaine over a hot okonomiyaki, “that I have been slouched over all night with my head balanced on my hand.” “I had,” she said, “noticed.”
Oh, how out of habit I am with this Monday-to-Friday thing, this nine-to-six thing, this commuting-an-hour-each-way thing. I’m not complaining about it, I’m just saying. The thing is, essentially, the work seems good, the people seem nice, there’s a girl who rides a Vespa and helps refugee ferrets on the weekend, there’s a boy who is very quiet but out of whom I managed to wrangle a smile, there’s biscuits at the ready, and full-cream milk in the fridge. And I got my first cheque today—for less money than I’ve ever made in my life, but I showed it off at dinner anyway, partly because I am a little bit of a show-off, but mostly because, come on, it’s pretty cool nonetheless. And if I was running on empty last night, tonight I was running on pure adrenalin, on the rush of a Friday night, on the sweet anticipation of no-work-tomorrow.
...is as far as I got blogging last night before I fell asleep on said sofa, under said duvet, with my iBook on my lap. So this is what it’s like to be a working girl.
I feel like I haven’t been here in a while, the “here” of working life, sure, but also the “here” of the city, because two weekends in a row in Paris are bliss on the one hand and minor discombobulation on the other, and it felt for a bit like alls I do around here is go to the office. This weekend I am reclaiming my London a little bit; after dinner last night I crossed Monmouth on the way to Shorts Gardens and remembered those carefree days of un- or semi-employment, when all of Covent Garden was mine at all hours of the day. Right now I think I need, me and my Vogue, to revisit the boys at Bar Italia. See that girl striking a pose by the steam-engine Gaggia up front on the zinc counter? Ya.
posted by stellou at 6:08 PM
4 Comments:
"you're a femur! you're a femur! oh, wait."
THAT's the one!
ch.
Refugee ferrets!
YA! Weekends she works at the Wildlife Rescue Centre in Enfield. When she told me where she lived, I said "Oh hee hee hee, I have wondered about it"—because it's the end of one of the Tube lines, so I'd seen the name. I tell you la, the name is COCKFOSTERS.
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