It’s not every day you see a gaggle of nuns on the Tube, but yesterday rounding in on seven in the evening, I sure did, they fell into the carriage, in black and white habits they fell into the carriage somewhere along the Northern line, chortling—nuns! chortling!—and making enough of a ruckus that the homeward-bound office crowd looked up to smile in surprise. In response to something her Sister’d said, one nun said: “I’ll have none of that!” which set them off again, and which suggested, it was a very small suggestion, that really anybody could go out and buy a nun outfit, you didn’t even have to be a nun to do so, and probably if you were a group of six it wouldn’t be too hard to find six nun outfits provided you were at the right nun outfitter. At the Goodge Street stop I saw that one nun, a portly one, a laughing one, this nun was wearing a giant crucifix covered in aluminium foil.

So this is London. I seem to have disappeared from this blog, but I sure am here, in London, where, mornings on the way to the Tube, the girl in the bare legs and the pointy shoes signifies that I am running late for work, while the guy with the constipated look and the large sports bag signifies that I am running later.

London, a lot of the time these days, is work, which is okay, really, because at work I write and I design, and because the other day Kate came by my desk and said “Would you like some tea and a Portuguese tart?” I almost cried, I was so happy.



London, when I am not at work, is strolling by Trafalgar Square in the evening, when the fountains are lit up, and single girls sit and dream on the steps; London is Korean with Suz, or Italian with Laureen, or the HK Diner with Thush, our tabletop barely visible under the pancakes, the cucumber and chives, the crispy duck, the salt-and-pepper eggplant. London is fancy drinks and so many delicate edible somethings at a Friday night industry thing, one after the other, the cater waiters coming out from the back nonstop, tray after tray. I said to one of them, she was blond with a ponytail and a smile, I said: “You are my favourite person here!” and she laughed and offered me another caviar-gruyère whatsit. London, too, is a new mauve dress from Fashion Weekend at the National History Museum, and, man, if London were spring, that dress would be seeing so much more than the inside of my closet.



London, ho ho, is the Eurostar to Paris, where I said to the boy one evening, “Faut trouver un marchand de journaux,” but couldn’t tell him why. My secret shame was uncovered, however, on the rue Mouffetard, when I stopped into a newsagent closing for the night, and I muttered: “Avez-vous Closer?” “Il m’en reste un,” the newsagent woman said. “Il vous attendait.” There was so much mockery, I tell you, but you know and I know we all want to know what is going on with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.

So London is London, but COME ON, Paris is Paris, where Saturday morning Laureen and I popped into the Monoprix to get a block of demi-sel, and I came out with a jar of rhubarb jam, a Lindt chocolate rabbit, and a round of fake Vache Qui Rit with a smiling farmboy in place of a laughing cow. “Ça va probablement être dégueulasse,” I said to Olive later, “mais tu vois la boîte !” And then, just to make sure we understood each other, I said, louder: “La boîte !!!”



Late morning at Maud’s, in Paris, brought a basket of croissants, and so many little pots of jams, and cheeses far as the eye could see; late evening brought the wood fire going strong, and a tarte tatin warm on the stove. I say “stove”, but really I don’t know the word for this genius of an invention, a living-room furnace with a fire in the bottom and a tart compartment (a comtartment) (help me) in the top.

Back towards London from Paris, there was Champagne in the train, Champagne spilled on my skirt, and then Champagne presented as an apology.

This week in London, I have been trying to be home a lot. It is warm under the covers, at home, and it is quiet—and sometimes a girl needs warm and quiet. Warm and quiet is good for pottering about in fuzzy slippers, and warm and quiet is good for sitting still and reading. London, hence, right this second, is Arvo Pärt and a blue teapot of fleur d’oranger oolong; a sweet, pink Gala apple and bowl of globe grapes from the grubby Berwick Street market; and a very large, very distinguished box of Lenôtre chocolates Schmio brought over from Paris this afternoon. There must be a hundred chocolates in there—the thing rivals the weight of my Petit Robert—and the whole adventure comes accompanied by a forty-page guidebook—a guidebooklet, really, but forty pages is forty pages—detailing the Délice d’une coulée de caramel, the Extrême fruité d’une ganache et de son coulis, pur cassis, the Connivence du praliné noisette et du croquant des noisettes caramélisées. I like this last one because of the conniving, but I can’t find it in the box. The challenge—and this is pronounced sha-lonzh because, you know it, it is Frainch—the challenge, my friends, is on.