Yesterday I was black on black, and a black skirt, and black tights, for blending, for neutrality, for negation. Today I want to go into hiding in the overcast sky. Today I want to be in grey, in white, in transparent, I want to disappear into the clouds.

Northeast of London, there is a village on the Norfolk coast called Salthouse, and in this village called Salthouse, there is a restaurant the way one finds restaurants in salty sea villages. Cookie’s Crab Shop, weathered wooden tables, outdoor eating under a canvas tent leaning on uneven ground, a fishing boat parked by the small gate. If you are an ambulance driver, you may tell the nurse you work with that Salthouse is an hour away from Colchester. However, if you are the nurse the ambulance driver works with, you and your husband pick up your visiting friend at the Colchester train station late Wednesday morning, and find, one hour later, that you are a good many miles still from the Norfolk Coast.

“Suzzan,” I said, and the sky was blue, and the trees whizzed by turning autumn, “you and Christopher are the coolest people I know right now in the U.K., because you will drive two and a half hours for lunch.”

“But this was under false pretences,” she said, as we drove through Norwich, through Cromer, past the hotel The Melbourne hawking donuts and candy floss.

Still.

And, anyway, the truth is, like I told Suzzan, it didn’t seem like three hours’ driving, what with all the English Countryside Views: cows; and beautiful, sturdy Shire horses; and sheep, so many sheep. And windmills, and neat bales of hay, and giant strawberries announcing strawberry farms.

The story with the Shire horses is that in the middle of Christopher saying something about something, I said: “Whoa. Look at that horse”—if you know something about me, it is that I get distracted by horses—and the horse in the field by the motorway was massive, and spotted black-on-white like he was wearing cow pyjamas.

(And I remember now that my friend Maud once said about black-and-white cows, and it is possible that here she sniffed, I don’t quite recall, but in any case, oh, there was so much disdain, she said something very much like: “They are like fucking giant Dalmatians.”)

But with the Shire horse—

“Look at that horse,” I said, and Christopher said, “Yes, that is a Shire horse,” and proceeded to tell about Shire horses, back in the day, pulling barges on the canal.

“Shut. Up,” I said, because sometimes I cannot help being American, and because, well, it seems that the very nature of a boat would be to boat—to move on water, I dunno, to do its boaty thing. And if a boat needs a horse to pull it, does it become less of a boat? Does it become a raft? A woody shape piled high with things?

In any case, there it is, folks, straight from the horse’s mouth, HA HA HA, sorry, couldn’t help it, I meant: there it is, if someone knew about Shire horses, that someone would be an Englishman, and so there we have it, straight from the mouth of a really truly Englishman: once upon a time you could see Shire horses pulling barges along the canal. And today, you can see them hanging out at show-and-tell at the Norfolk Shire Horse Centre in West Runton—but only if you pay the £5.80 entrance fee. If you stand around and kick the dirt outside, that’s free, and if you wait long enough outside the stables, a nice white horse will come by for you to pet it, and that’s free, too.



In Salthouse, finally, the cars were parked any which way on the balding gravel mound, so we did, too.

Inside the Cookie’s shack, injunctions far as the eye could see: Please do not bring your own food or soft drinks, as we serve these here. Please bring your own wine glasses, there have been many breakages. We are not a tea room, we do not serve teas or coffee.

The menu was all salads—Crab Salad, Crayfish Salad, Salmon Salad, Crab and Crayfish Salad, Crab and Salmon Salad, LOBSTER ROYAL SALAD—which is to say, great big meaty servings of fish and shellfish surrounded by slices of tomato and cucumber and beets, and spoonfuls of coleslaw; and all the dishes came with faces on them. The pâté welcomed us with a tomato smile. The salmon looked about with olive eyes lined in pink shrimp. There were sticky toffee puddings on the menu, too, but no chance to find out if those had faces, because our tummies ran out of space.

We tried to work off our feast with a spot of post-lunch bowls, but the Cromer Bowls Club, its green pristine, was silent and closed. And the sea was silent, too, and the wind was picking up.

Later, after Suzzan’s homemade meatballs in a hot noodle soup, after the chocolate pudding, after the screening of “Sin City” (we couldn’t look at it, we couldn’t look away, and whoa!, they made Benicio del Toro look ugly!, and I kept grabbing at Suzzan’s arm)—later, the train back west was quiet like a late-night train journey, save for the violent, surprising wind thumps when passing trains went by in the opposite direction.

Half-past ten in London, the rain was pissing down cold and dark. I ran home from the tube station, my too-long jeans scuffing against the wet ground, the air wicked icicles piercing my lungs.

I stayed up reading till the rainsound on the skylight quieted, quieted, stopped.

Cowboy boots and a blue dress, diamond-print tights and gold shoes, a bottle of Rioja and pointy purple flats, and there’s been out and out and out again. A pre-dinner French #75 at the Keston Lodge on Upper Street, and time still for a gin and tonic down the block.

Saturday we settled into second breakfast at the S&M Café by the Old Spitalfields Market.

“I don’t know which I like more,” I said. “First breakfast or second.”

“Probably second,” Thush said, “because you’ve pottered about a bit, you’ve worked up an appetite, y’know, you’ve really worked for it.”

“That’s right,” I said. “This one I deserve.” But then I couldn’t concentrate anymore, because hungry, so hungry, and then, like perfect timing, the waitress brought a sausage splitting down the side, a runny egg, a lake of baked beans, (a bake of laked beans).

After, the bounty at Borough Market: fat figs five for a pound; shiny silvery fish; truffles in honey ginger! orange cardamom! apple cinnamon!; rabbits hanging by their hind legs over at the butcher’s. The sign on the display of brown kumato read: Sensational Tomato turns Mauve as it ripens. Discovered on the Galapagos Islands where it revved up the Giant Tortoises Sex Lives.

We collapsed into a deep booth at the Garrison Public House. And the late lunch, and the lingering, and the light outside mellowing through the frosted-glass windows.

Nightfall lit up round lightbulbs suspended on smiling strings along the river.

I called Thush the other day to ask if she wanted to go see “A Bout de souffle” at the Curzon.

“I don’t want to see it if it’s going to make me depressed,” she said.

“I don’t think it’ll make you depressed.”

“Who’s Godard?”

“This French director, nouvelle vague-y, his films are love stories to Paris—”

“And why was Ben Kingsley waiting for him?”

“What?”

“Why was Ben Kingsley waiting for him?”

“I don’t—”

“A few years ago I went to see Ben Kingsley in ‘Waiting for Godard’ at the Old Vic, and—this was at the end of a long day of running around and everything—and I fell asleep in the front row, I was so tired.”

And on the seventeenth day, she vaccuumed.

The schedule of days past has included morning check-ins at the local Internet café, fingers crossed for someone getting in touch to offer a job, and then, eventually, my laptop battery running out, and then me running out, too—except my running out involves running out under blue skies, the sun on my neck, and new discoveries every day.



’Round by the University of London, surprises behind open windows.

At Harvey Nichols, a Cacharel jacket to make a single girl speak aloud in public: “I. need. this. now.” A hood, toggles, polka-dots outside, flowers inside. Three-hundred-and-seventy-five pounds of pure longing.

On Brick Lane, curries and barbers, and the street names in Bangla. The entryway of the Taj store smelled of ripe mangoes. Inside, fat garlics and fruity tobaccos; aluminium pots and pans; and spices and chutneys and dhal in orange, green, warm yellow.

In dero-trendy Shoreditch, skinny jeans and Joan Jett hair on boys and girls, dark eyebrows and unplaceable Euro accents, and smoke rising off burgers on an open grill down a cobbled alley.



My mind is going crazy playing that Cayce Pollard game: It’s like the Lower East Side, except not. It’s like DUMBO, it’s like Chelsea, it’s like Williamsburg—except not.

It’s not home, is it?—but I suppose it’s early days yet, and I guess I don’t remember those first weird, unbalanced moments in New York either. Here’s what I do know, though: every night he plays the guitar ’round the other side of Covent Garden market, and people dance, and people walk by, and mostly we sit and listen.

In any case.

Today I am home until the UPS guy comes to deliver...well, jeez, I don’t know anymore. These are boxes I packed back in May, boxes that sat in Brooklyn till two days ago. But soon they will be here, and I—I know this much—I will have CDs! Books! Las Vegas cowboy boots!!!

And then, people, then we’ll be cookin with gasoline.

We traipsed, is what we did, when we weren’t lounging about over breakfasts first and second. Down Portobello, up Kensington, ’round Carnaby. On Old Bond Street the smart-suited doormen of Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent lined the way, right and left, and the women were blond and wore gold jewellery, and I said, “What is this?”, and I said, “And why have you brought me here?”, and Ren said, “Not to be rude,”—you know it is trouble when someone prefaces a statement with “Not to be rude”—but because she is not shy, she said: “Not to be rude, but it is more fun to do this with Joo, because he likes to go into the shops and try on the fancy clothes.”

“Why don’t I just squat here on the street and eat noodles out of a bowl,” I said. “I can do it, and I will.”

She grabbed me by the arm and we marched off to Regent presto, giggle giggle giggle.



And I don’t know how the week flew by, but it did, with dinners in and dinners out, and plenty of sit-downs for tea, and adventures like girls like to have: running up and down the stairs in a double-decker bus while the driver yelled for someone to help him reverse down the wrong street; fifteen-pound standing-room-only tickets to “Guys and Dolls”, bulbs flashing, hands jazzing, and Ewan McGregor hot as all hell; an ugly-gorgeous seventies flower-print silk dress stepping out of the changeroom at Selfridges, and Ren reduced to silence and eyes darting about; a Christie’s auction of vintage travel posters in all their dated beachy glory, where the auctioneer was a walrus, “Twelve-hundred-pounds-thank-you-sir, twelve-hundred-fifty-on-the-phone-thank-you- Annette, thirteen-hundred-to-Lady-Haddock,” and here I craned my neck and looked around for a fish in pearls and a monocle, but then I realised he’d said “the lady has it.”



Monday there was a man wanting to read my fortune on the corner of New Oxford and Charing Cross. He came up to us on the sidewalk and said: “I read your fortune. You are very lucky woman.” And I said, “Yes, I know, but I don’t want to know my future, and thank you all the same,” and he said “Alright” and seemed to understand.

Friday there was rowdy Carluccio’s dinner at Market Place with old friends from school, Henny and Suzzan and Thush, and hands waving and hugs all around like the priest’d just said to give each other the sign of peace. Twelve years on, we are Catholic schoolgirls after all, what can you do.



This week the social visits are over, and I am going to be VERY SERIOUS and VERY PROFESSIONAL. I have BUSINESS TO ATTEND TO, people. A phone line would be nice. An Internet connection would be nice. A job that pays some kind of money would be very, very nice. Yesterday after a good, long while at the Orange store, I finally settled on a mobile phone plan—and then the kind young man very kindly let me know that I didn’t have sufficient identification to open an account. I was like a goddamn magician in there, doves of paperwork flying out of my bag, and apparently none of it is enough to prove I am who I am and I live where I live.

Days like that you give up and go outside to walk about under a blue sky. And if you end up popping into a shoe shop and trading in your stretched-too-big flats that make you trip for new dirty-gold wedge heels, so be it. And may I say that not fifteen minutes later at Harvey Nichols, the Diane von Furstenberg salesgirl came over to admire them. That’s right, who needs a working phone line when fashion is on your side.

In other news, I am still trying to find a good radio station. I don’t know which one I’ve landed on this morning—it’s somewhere between 104 and 108 on the FM dial—but they are playing Kylie’s “Love at First Sight” and shimmy shimmy everything is good right now.

There was time enough this morning to pop out and get a bunch of sunflowers, a bag of warm croissants, and the big Saturday paper before Ren got in from Singapore. FYI, for the first time in my life, croissants are cheaper than char siew baos.

We were dropping all sorts of things at lunch, Suzzan and me, first a fork, and then almost a fork again, and then a dollop of tiramisù soft like a pillow made of clouds. Suzzan says she drops stuff, but I think I win, because the stuff I drop, when it is not the sharp edge of a knife on my finger, is myself. Me, I have been known to trip on flat ground, to fall from a standing-still position.

In any case.

We were dropping all sorts of things at lunch today, not names, alas, no “Jude is coming by tonight”, no no.

Hum. I don’t know how I get distracted, I just do.

But.

We were lunching at Bar Italia, a gorgonzola-artichoke-rocket panino to split, and then a dessert free-for-all. Suzzan and I go way back, at least way back enough to remember that time in ’91 or ’92, when we sat at a table at the Pinetree Club and there were more desserts than people. However, today we are PROPER LADIES with RESTRAINT and CONTROL, so there were exactly the same number of desserts as people, which is to say two, and I think it is appropriate to add here that one of those desserts starts with “pistachio” and ends in “cannoli”.

Bar Italia, a hideyhole of a café, with strings of garlic and legs of smoked meat hanging from the ceiling, and the firetruck of a Gaggia espresso machine sitting up front. Behind the zinc counter, Rocky Marciano, 1952–1956 undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, watches over us all—me, and Suzzan, and the line out the door, and the Italian waitstaff in the variety of racecar driver, architect, and hot Math student, grinning and calling us “bella” and shouting “Ciao” when we left.

If there is one thing that will probably never be said about me at the end of my life, it is that I was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Also, probably, that I played bass trombone for the Parachute Regiment.

This sounds like a tangent, but, for once, it is not. It is an introduction to a story. And the story is this: I hadn’t seen Suzzan in years, so today we played catch-up. It is a wonderful thing to see an old friend after quite so long, and I’m not just saying this because the girl handed over a bag of gifts upon my arrival in Leicester Square. “They’re purple,” she said, and truly they were, a purple box of fudge and a surprise purple cauliflower from Borough Market. Will there be cauliflower soup this weekend? Purple cauliflower soup with caponata bruschetta to round up the purple troops? Hell, I don’t know. There might just be only fudge.

But the thing is, it is a wonderful thing to see an old friend after quite so long, because then all sorts of stories emerge, for example, like that a visit to Prague will likely result in the purchase and tasting of exquisite vanilla wafers, and like that Suzzan’s husband is a bass trombonist with the Parachute Regiment. I asked—and may have clapped with glee at this point—if he (a) wears a red suit with a red pillbox hat and gold rope detail and (b) plays said bass trombone while parachuting through the air, but the answers were no and no. Still. I will put money down on Bass Trombonist with the Parachute Regiment ranking in the top ten list of cool jobs.

This reminds me that I need a job. I am qualified neither to play bass trombone nor to parachute, but I would probably be a pretty fly children’s book editor, so everybody cross your fingers for things going according to plan.

I need a hanger. Just a hanger, with clips, for skirts. I’m ON MY KNEES, people, asking for A GODDAMN HANGER. What IS this?! Have been going all about town looking for some hangers, and people are, I swear this is true, people are FLUMMOXED when I say I’m looking to buy a hanger. Do all Londoners just chuck all their clothes on the floor?? I was finally directed to a department store called John Lewis yesterday, where the hangers cost SIX POUNDS FOR THREE.

YEAH BUT NO.

Just home from I Lin’s birthday thing at a pub up in Farringdon. Thush, because she is Thush, sent an SMS in the middle of it all to ask if there were cute boys about. “I guess,” I wrote back, “but I am having trouble making out these damn accents.”

“Just smile beautifically and nod sagely as though the boy has just uttered a MAJOR PEARL of wisdom, and enjoy the eye candy,” she texted.

“In fact I am doing exactly that,” I texted, “smiling and nodding like a Chinese wobble-head doll.”

The eye candy winked good-bye when I left. Winked!!! Damn. I’m such a sucker.

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.

McCloud was a small man in a white shirt and a burst of colourful tie come to meet me at the airport, holding my name up on a sheet of paper. Nothing to do with my superstardom, of course—more like thanks to cold hard cash handed over and an Internet prebooking with the car company, whatever would we do without the Internet.

McCloud was all Jamaican accent, which made me think of Lars, because Lars, red-headed Lars, Irish-Swedish Lars, New York–born Lars, Lars wears a Jamaican accent like no other New York–born Irish-Swedish redhead I know. This is Lars who, if you ask him a question that may be answered in the positive, will say, in lieu of “Yes”: “Does a bear shit in the woods?” Oh, Lars.

So, but.

If you are Tom or Maud or Hector, you know that cab drivers like me. They really, really like me. McCloud is a cab driver. Hence the chit-chat was nonstop all the way from Heathrow to Central London. It started easily enough, I guess. He wanted to know what I’m doing here, blah blah blah.

“I thought it was time for something new,” I said, “but I don’t have a job yet, so I’ll be eating beans for the next six months.”

“Nuttin wrong wit baked beans,” he said.

“It’s true,” I said, “and it’s a good thing I like baked beans.”

“’Cept they make you fart.”

“Um?”

“You sit there all fartin and nobody want to come around.”

People, let me tell you. When a man engages you in a conversation about farting within the first ten minutes of your acquaintance, you are in for some kind of ride. Some kind of insania Jamaican airport car ride.

He asked if I was married, so I asked if he was married. “I was,” he said, “but my condition has become subject to change.”

“What I want a woman for?” he said. “I got a woman, we don’t have sex anymore, but she cook for me, so what I want a woman for? All I need a woman for is the sex thing ya know.”

But he was joshing, McCloud was, because really, at fifty-three, he is tenderly looking for a nice, respectable woman to be quiet with. But she’s got to have a British passport so they can go to Key West in a heartbeat.

“You’ve got a pretty specific list of requirements,” I said.

“You gotta have a list,” he said. “What you lookin for in a man, madam. You gotta have a list. Otherwise they all come along takin the bloody biscuit outta you.”

“The bloody biscuit?” I said. “The wha-wha?”

“Takin the bloody biscuit,” he said. “That’s ‘takin the piss’. It’s a little rude ya know. I don’ wanna come out and say it cause it rude and you might be a lady.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I MIGHT be a lady.”

Soon he was calling me “babes” and giving me dating advice. “You gotta just go up to a fella. Say you like him. I’m not sayin ya fancy him ya know. But cha know ya like him, independent. And you say, ‘You seein anyone?’ And if he say no, you say, ‘Then how about we go out sometime.’ And he got to treat you wit respect, madam. You gotta let him know, ‘I’m gonna pour my sweetness over you—I’m not gonna do it tonight, but eventually I’m gonna pour my sweetness over you—but ya gotta be worth it.’”

So this is London. Watch out, boys.