Covent Garden at seven in the morning was dark still. Back to the flat in bare legs, then a nap as the sun started to say his hello.

In two hours I board a train into the new year.

Two sisters married two brothers; then there was the war. B-29s flying overhead, and the Japanese soldiers took a man away for laughing too loudly. There was a house on a hill; a firecracker tied to a chicken; and nine diamonds and a jade droplet sold to bribe a friend out of jail.

My grandmother was telling stories today. We were eating sweet, crunchy persimmons after lunch. It was hot, and the birds were calling to each other in the garden.

Tonight I leave again.

There was, many, many moons ago, Terz, and then there was Stellou, and then a couple of weeks ago I finally said I was going to do this; I believe I even said I would do it that weekend, “c’est promis.” Clearly I should have said I would do it before the end of the year, c’est promis. Here’s a good resolution for the new year: set achievable goals. My friend Jazon made a good one this past year: it was that if he was on the phone with someone and they got cut off, he’d not try to call them back, and would instead just wait for them to ring again. ’Cause you know how if both people are trying to call each other everybody just gets a busy signal in their ear for the next so many minutes? Exactly. Well, then. I think we understand each other.

Seven things you want to do before you die
1. be published
2. design a dress and have it made
3. live in Paris
4. learn to take photos in manual mode on an SLR
5. take a dance class and get good at it
6. read A la recherche du temps perdu
7. play drums in a band

Seven things you do well
1. a chocolate tart
2. laugh
3. float in water
4. sit around thinking
5. whistle
6. wear green shoes with anything
7. quote from “Zoolander”

Seven things you can’t/don’t know how to do
1. fish
2. be normal around a boy I like
3. stand up in front of a crowd of strangers and wing it
4. get psyched about flossing
5. sew
6. be a size zero
7. read the weekend paper in a weekend

Seven things that attract you to someone of the opposite sex
1. his Vespa
2. a sense of humour
3. smarts
4. his doing things on a whim-ness
5. his total and utter sexxiness
6. an ability to cook and/or care deeply about macarons
7. a general lack of dickhead jerkiness

Seven things you say often
(If you know something about me, it is that I say things. Sometimes my mouth says things without the rest of me knowing about it. My sister has been known to say, in the middle of my saying things, “Why are you still talking?” Anyway, my point is, I say so many things that I had to colour this bilingual. I would have tried for French, too, except that most of the spaces would have been filled by “putain” or “merde” or “euh”.)

In English
1. “Yah but no.”
2. “That's NICE.”
3. “Totally!”
4. “FINE.”
5. “Well...this is fun and all...”
6. “Shit.”
7. “This game sucks.”

In Singlish
1. “Eh I tell you I tell you...”
2. “Eeeyur!”
3. “Fail!”
4. “No lah nooo!!”
5. “Money come out I slap your face.”
6. “Ren ah Ren...”
7. “Chits me my money!”

Seven celebrity crushes
1. David Bowie
2. Seu Jorge
3. David Sedaris
4. Hugh Laurie
5. Jude Law
5. Christopher Walken
6. Paul Auster
7. Rik Mayall

Seven people whom you’d like to have respond to this questionnaire
Please, I need to put all seven of my feet down here and just not pass this on. I can’t, I can’t, it’s like the plague. Or conjunctivitis, actually, which I woke up this morning to find that I have. Gross. May I instead try to distract you with my horoscope from today’s paper? It is this: Put your seat in the upright position and lock your tray table: You are due for some quite surprising news—and not a moment too soon. This is the news you have been waiting for. Smile.

I have been meeting all sorts of interesting people this visit, partly because of party season upon us like the monsoonal snow falling outside Tanglin Mall. Beyond the photographer all in white and the silent partner in an English antiquarian bookshop, there was Wendy, a printmaker who wore a wig, and who will start an art gallery by the time she’s forty; and not one, not two, but THREE people with whom to gossip about the Straits Times. PLEASE, you cannot expect that I am going to pass on this gossip on my blog. First of all, I only spread gossip about me. And (b), I may sneer at the local paper from time to time, but I may also need a job with the hometown media some day. Heh. Bow, scrape.

There was also the young man at Ren’s party, about whom Ren said: “You have to get to know Charles, because he works at Louis Vuitton.” “But Ren,” I said, “I have moved on from Louis Vuitton. These days we like Channel.” And here I made my thumbs and index fingers form the luxxe logo of the double C’s.

But, so, with the meeting of people. Just the other day in London, I was telling Andrea and Danny about the time I saw a yellow cab down Monmouth Street. I know this seems like I’ve taken a left down Tangent Lane, but stay with me. I’d seen it out of the corner of my eye, and hadn’t thought it peculiar in the least—and then a couple of seconds later realised I was in the wrong city for a yellow cab. I moseyed down the street to gawk, and it turned out—“Quiet on the set!” and all—they were shooting a New York movie. “I wanted to ask what they were filming,” I said, “but I was shy.” “NO,” Danny said, and he is English, so he didn’t have to try very hard to sound wry, or sarcastic, or a little bit of both. “But I am!” I said, because I am. No, I am!

Still, I think I generally know how to talk to people, even though it takes me a little bit to get into it. But then there was the guy I met last week who works for Société Générale. “Oh,” I said, when he told me this. Then: “Um.” Then: “Is that...something...with...finance...something?” You cannot say I have not been to conversation camp. Actually, yes, yes, you can, and quite loudly too. They are showing the trailers for “Memoirs of a Geisha” in the cinemas these days, and there’s this one bit where they tell Zhang Ziyi that geisha training involves learning about the fine art of conversation. Best sign me up, Scotty-san!

Went to the temple with my grandmother the other day. I like the incense smell of temples, and the joss sticks dissolving upwards into smoky swirls. The priest—round face and saffron robe—sprinkled holy water on us with a stalk of plump chrysanthemums, then we burned lotus-flower candles and laid them at the feet of the giant golden Buddha statue. Enlightenment radiated from his head in animated neon lines.

I don’t know her very well, my grandmother, but I like it when she talks about her ah ba and ah ma. She was telling, that morning, about how her mother used to scent the homemade fermented-rice face wash with flowers.

This morning in the local NTUC, I realised they had wasted no time replacing the Christmas soundtrack with the Chinese New Year one. Following which, my mum bought ten pineapples from the fruit uncle at the wet market—ten fat, fragrant pineapples; golden, and golden, and with tips that end in pink—which means the countdown really has begun.

There was that first day of arrival, where, head swimming with international travel and lack of sleep, I lay in bed and, full of confidence, (delusion? Confidence? Sometimes I get mixed up), made a tea date for later in the afternoon. “It’s ten now, right?” I’d said, and I wasn’t even slurring my words yet. “So if we meet at three that’ll give me plenty of time to take a little nap.”

Who knows if the alarm hadn’t gone off, or it had and I’d just folded it into my dreams—but all of a sudden I was rolling over and, reaching for my mobile still showing the English hour, trying to calculate local time. “Seven-twenty-one, so that’s eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, one, two, 3:21.” I said, aloud, and using fingers. Then: “No, wait, wrong, surely. Seven-twenty-two, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, one, two, 3:20—shit.” And then it was time to get on the phone with Tym and apologise furiously—well, as furiously as groggy would let me.

We met, finally, an hour later than planned, and proceeded to eat as much cake as was necessary to reach satisfaction. That number is not so high as it could have been, really, for try number one was the key lime pie (not technically a cake), and try number two, which was all it took, was the chocolate rum raisin. This second one was surprising because there were bits that were chocolatey and bits that were rum-raisiny, but not really bits that were both.

I’d been wanting to take the girl out anyway to celebrate her quitting of job, but then my extreme lateness overruled, and I had to reach for the check, mumbling, “This is the Treat of Shame.”

So. There was that day—and that night, where I fell asleep in my chair then fell asleep on top of the covers before giving up entirely and getting into bed proper—

there was that day, and it seems so long ago now; but ask me what I’ve been up to and Lord help us all if I can tell you. There’ve been martinis and steak sandwiches at Morton’s, that much I remember—something like eleven lychee martinis at the table, and a mint julep for me. There was a late-night dinner at Makansutra, all of us picking the oysters out of the oyster omelette. “I hope no one notices,” I’d said, as my chopsticks did their trick, “that I’m picking the oysters out of this oh lua.” “Sorry,” I’d said, but I wasn’t, not really. And then the confessions came chiming in, and we sat around wondering who it is who does eat the oysters. There was a traipse ’round Little India after yellow rice and banana-leaf curries, a tour of the glory of Mustafa’s food department (ten-cent chocolate wafers! bags of murukku! fake Kinder eggs! Durian brand tea dust!), and then sweet iced Milos outdoors under the whirring fans while the monsoon rain made it all new again.

Yesterday morning, quite early, there was my own private radio show; then last night, very late, there was the Haig Road apartment and its tiled floor in a modular sixties pattern, blue, blue, white; and a bag of Ruffles passed around, with “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin” projected on the roll-up, roll-down photo-shoot backdrop. There was the cab ride home closing in on three in the morning, and creeping into the house like I have mice for feet.

I don’t know what clock I’m operating on these days—take your pick from Singapore, London or Paris—but I was in my pyjamas till five this afternoon, and, I tell you, it felt good the WHOLE time.

Seven a.m. and outside the colours are waking up too, soft still, melting into each other still, like one of those faded old photographs with the rounded corners.

There were the red roofs of Hounslow, first, then everything diagonal, then clouds and clouds and clouds. Half a day later, a day later, something, I don’t know, we landed in Singapore, and immediately the windows misted up in the humidity.

At the airport, my father said: “Hello, daughter. You’ve put on weight.” Then: “Do you have a job yet?”

“Thank you,” I said, “this is a nice welcome.”

“Why aren’t you staying for New Year’s?” my grandmother said.

If the Chinese family doesn’t make you laugh, it will kill you.

I feel like I haven’t spoken to an American in so long that tonight when I was talking to Dan at the Mayday show, my mouth was going crazy turning in on itself to mirror his accent. Very Eliza Doolittle with the marbles in her mouth, and I was afraid he was going to ask if I was already drunk before the gig started.

There’s nothing like a little indie rock flavour, and there’s really nothing like a little indie rock flavour from Omaha, Nebraska—in London. The bands were in the basement, of course, at Borderline, where the torn, silver remains of party crackers were strewn on the floor, and a line of fairy lights twisted itself across the stage, over and around the sparkle-red drum kit. There was a girl with a trumpet, and a drummer who sang along to everything. They ran out of songs before their set was over, so they played the Flaming Lips, warm and cool at the same time so my skin prickled all over as I leaned on the wall in the back.

It was raining an invisible rain when I left, so light you could only feel the hundred fairy kisses on your face.

Tomorrow I have to be up very early to catch a plane heading east, but right now I just want to stay up and listen to the rain on the skylight.

I was at Liberty looking for a birthday present for Ren, being very restrained and not even considering buying anything for myself, when I realised that my dear old friend would want nothing more than for me to be happy—so of course I wandered over to the Stila counter to play with their lip glosses. But really I was just looking, I swear, so how come all of a sudden a slim young man with dirty hair and the eyes of an angel was saying to me, “Just pop up on here, my sweet,” and patting the seat of a leather stool by the make-up bar? I popped up on there, and he brushed the colour on my lips and said, “Cranberry is my favourite.” Then another boy, this one with a square head and limp wrists, came round the corner and said, “Oh I love it. But let me just try this—” and here he magicked a fat brush out of nowhere and plumped blush on my cheeks. “Peony,” he said, and before I could explain to them that my make-up routine is highly irregular and ultimately dictated by the day’s level of laziness, (itself generally high), he said: “You have to do lips and cheeks. You can do eyes alone, or lips alone, but you cannot do eyes and lips. It has to be lips and cheeks.” At least I think that was what he said; I got lost in the permutations and combinations of my face. Also, I was wondering how I had come to be taking make-up advice from an indie rocker in a leather jacket and skinny jeans, and an import from the Castro.

It is very swank in Liberty, and every time I glanced at myself in a mirror, I said, (quite quietly), “Oh, you hot, hot thing.” I made my way home through the fashion crowd of Carnaby Street and Soho, and I was very glamorous and glossy-lipped. Then I got back to my flat, went to the bathroom, and in the natural light realised I looked like a whore.

O I am weary, let me tell you, and that “O” yawns with me—

I am weary enough that I fall asleep with the Saturday newsmagazine on my head. (I woke when I rolled over in my slumber and banged my knee into the wall. “OW!” I said, and this was closely followed by “FUCK!”, before I remembered I had guests in the next room—at which point I hugged my knee and said, moanily, “Ai-ai-ai-ai-ai.” Even when asleep, I am a danger to myself.) (But the yelling? Turned out, the next morning, the houseguests hadn’t gone to bed yet; they’d been up with raging stomachs—and I’d been so weary I hadn’t heard them being violently ill all night.)

The girl is beat from the daytime work and the nighttime party, which, I gotta say, is one of the best ways to be beat. There’s something quite satisfying about a complete exhaustion, an exhaustion so complete, really, that it also takes into account all the stuff I have yet to do over the next couple of days. I don’t know how it has happened, but mid-December is upon us, and I leave town on Monday (“Je singapourise”, as Olive would say), and of course I’m doing that thing I always do before I leave town, where I suddenly realise I have sixty-eight things I need to do before I go. Rest assured I will, the night before I leave town, do the thing I always do the night before I leave town, where I say, Fuck it, none of this REALLY needs to get done before I go.

For now, though, I seem to have taken it upon myself to tell the story of Rapunzel. You think this is easy? You go do it in French. It was such an innocent comment; I’d said, essentially, “Bla bla Rapunzel”, and he’d said, essentially, (and here I am translating the sentiment of the question, not the question in its entirety, which included a reference to a strudel): “What is this Rapunzel?” And I suppose it is quite possible—in fact, to borrow the alliterative distinction my ex-boyfriend was so fond of, it is probably both possible and probable—that the story of Rapunzel exists in French, just under a different name; which means I could, really, simply Google the long-haired lass en français and email a link. But I mean, COME ON, if there’s one thing I do, it’s tell a story. Tonight, we began, for there was no other way to go: “Il était une fois...”. Tomorrow, I think, we will go with: “La pleine lune a bâillé et a tiré autour d’elle ses couvertures de nuages.” If I were more on the ball, I might be able to say: “La pleine lune bâilla”, but I can tell you right now that trying to tell a story in the passé simple would ruin me.

Ah, the comic hijinks of an education-in-progress. Last summer, in the Marais, I think it was on the rue Vieille du Temple, I pointed at a street sign—under the “P” indicating a parking garage, it said BAUDOYER—and said: “Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire, ‘baudoyer’?” It’s the name of a place, I was told. “Oh,” I said, “je pensais que c’était un verbe.” “Je baudoie, tu baudoies, il baudoie,” we said. “Que tu baudoyasses,” we said. “Nous baudoyâmes.” Maud was there too, which means chances are good, in between the guffaws, that we also snorted.

I forget where I was going with this, and maybe, now that I think about it, that answer is “nowhere”. But now that I think about that, I think the answer is “to bed”.

Boozily, buzzily home; and it’s just as well my feet know the way, ’cause all my head can hear is the drum-rum-rum of a sweet mojito.

I was sitting at the bar at Moro the other day with a bowl of artichoke-chorizo soup and the whole host of accessories that came with. The bowls of ground pepper and coarse salt were little plumps of clay into which a thumb had been pressed just before they were popped into the oven for firing. They fit, perfectly, a pinch.

Under a platter—a platterlet, really, a platelet—of olive oil, the steel bar counter had been branded in fine, tiny letters: “Verdigris. London”. Verglas-verdigris-square de Vert-Galant, Michel Leiris y retrouvé, et tout d’un coup je me situais dans l’hiver passé, où je travaillais sur mon mémoire et passais mes jours dans des pages fortement marquées au crayon.

It is not so long ago I left New York and everyone I used to be there. I remember the snow and how quiet it would get, right after. I remember nights out and nights in. At unexpected moments I might, in a flash, remember walking down Sixth Avenue, past Radio City Music Hall, heading for the F train home. I don’t miss it, which is a little surprising, I guess, but I feel okay about that too. I feel like I took a left out of 2005, and this year is several blocks behind already.

Still, when I read Joan Didion’s “Goodbye to All That”, (thank you, Leo), something stirs.

Busy.

The queue outside Café 1001 was spilling into Brick Lane, and the smoke rose, sizzly, fizzly, off the open barbecue grill. The air smelled of smokyhot and meatysalt, and my stomach remembered I’d been wanting a burger for some weeks now.

The guy in front of me was chatting with his girl when the burger lady clicked her tongs together to get his attention.

“No more potato wedges,” she said, in a staccato English, under the sign announcing potato wedges and salads with every order. “No more potato wedges,” she said, “price the same,” and in one hand she held open the yellow Styrofoam box of burger to brandish the empty space where the potato wedges might have gone.

“What?”

“No-more-potato-wedges-price-the-same.” Louder this time, and yet, also, flatter.

“Can I have some corn instead?” (And here he pointed, meekly, at a deep yellow ear of corn on the grill. The painted menu on the wall read: CORN ON COBE.)

“No.”

“No corn?”

“No. And price the same.”

“And no potato?”

“No-more-potato-wedges-price-the-same.”

“Is that a beef burger?”

“Beef.”

“I ordered chicken.”

I was in the shower thinking, —and I have to do this thing and then I have to do that thing, and then I want to e-mail him, and, oh, I need to e-mail her too, and I have to remember to call him before he leaves the country, and her also, and, wow, I wonder what it would be like if I had one arm to brush my teeth, and two to wash my hair, and another one to soap me up, really, I’d be the Indian goddess of the bathroom, and then I turned around and banged my knee, hard, on—whatever the hell it’s called—the shower volume control.

The purple is already beginning.

Lord love a duck, I’m as tired as—

something lah.

I appreciate the work and all, but having a job sure keeps me from doing other stuff during the day. (I can think of at least two of you who are rolling your eyes at me.) (And maybe one who has taken off his glasses and is rubbing his forehead.)

And then before you know it, it’s after six and I’m catching the rush-hour bus across the city—or rather, I’m sitting in a bus that’s going nowhere fast, because it is the rush-hour bus across the city. I was late enough to meet Nicole last night that seven o’clock found me sprinting—in heels—(pink heels)—down Grosvenor Place, by the Buckingham Palace Gardens. The queen may have tsk-tsked.



Yesterday’s lunch-time excursion brought the one empty seat at Café Kick. At Café Kick, the football scarves are pinned to the rafters. Aberdeen, Benfica, Marseille. “Notre coeur ne cessera jamais de battre.” The wood counter is smooth, at Café Kick, and polished by the years. The bartender has thick dreads and a big smile.

There are fairy lights strung any old how at Café Kick, weaving in flickering red through tin lanterns hung above the kitchen, twinkling in white against a 1982 Copa del mundo de futbol poster.

Office boys at lunch played foosball and cheered each other on, while office girls—well, this office girl—dipped hunks of crusty, chewy bread into a bowl of tomato soup. The soundtrack was chill, Brazilian, and you almost forgot it was winter outside.

There is no hour so swift-footed, no hour so fleeting, as the one allotted to lunch when you are at your temp job.

Yesterday at lunchtime, white flowers spelled PAT on the side of a hearse parked in front of the Holy Redeemer Church. There was a group of black-suited men by the car, and one among them had just said something to make them smile. The youngest of the six laughed with the rest, but his eyes were swollen, and red.

Down Exmouth Market, there is a storefront in peeling forest green. On the top, gold paint reads: “Clark’s”. On one side of this it says: PIE & MASH. On the other side it says: EELS. Inside, small globe lamps, cracked enamel tiles, two pie ladies, and hello hello hello what have we here, a booth of constables at lunch. The pie lady drying the dishes pointed out the bottle of hot vinegar. “Sometimes people like a bit of a kick,” she said.

Getting there for a small pie and mash before the queue started out the door means there was time enough afterwards to pop into the café a few doors down for a cappuccino and a cannelé bordelais. The handwritten sign on the cannelé read: Baked in copper moulds. Crispy on the outside. Soft in the middle. Delighted in at a high wooden table, with a book, and the winter light over the footed bowl of meringues, this made for a very civilised lunch hour.

It has taken me just three months to learn this, but now I have learnt it good. If you make a date, any kind of date, a lunch date for okonomiyaki on Museum Street, say, or a tooling-around date in Kentish Town—

may I just say, I met this girl Nora the other day who lives in Kentish Town, and I said: “Oh! I LOVE Kentish Town. Not ever having been there. Just because of the name.” “Yes,” she said, “it is Kent-ish,” and that is when I knew I liked her. “Exactly,” I said, “it’s not quite Kent, it’s, oh, Kent-like.”—

and now I feel I must add that the two other places I need to go to, just because you see these names on the tube map and immediately you realise there must be circuses at these stops, great starry circuses with golden horns and dogs jumping through hoops, these two places I must go to are: Tooting and Barking—

if you make a date for any sort of Fun Times at all, all of a sudden your temp agency will call and offer you work. I see your tricks, fiendish temp goblins!

I’m not complaining about work, really I’m not, because I need it, but mostly because, all in all, I like poking around in various offices in various neighbourhoods all about town. How else would I know about the kitschy-trashy Sun Orbit Amusements on Camden High Street but for having temped ’round the corner last month? And how else would I have found out about the Old Curiosity Shop with its elfish leather boots in the window, or about the secret spot of quiet park at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, had I not strolled into those parts for a temp gig some weeks ago?



This morning the 38 took me up Rosebery to Farringdon, where the storekeeps up and down Exmouth Market were still setting up for the day. The guy at Moro was laying out forks and knives on crisp white napkins, while the fellow at Sofra rolled out big steel tabletops. The greenthumb at Pod was coaxing the blooms in a flowerbox.

I am temping at Amnesty this week and part of next, which is great because I SWEAR I had just been thinking I needed to go volunteer at Amnesty, what with all this free time on my hands. And where the utter repetitiveness of my other temp jobs have SUCKED THE LIFE out of EVERYTHING THAT IS GOOD IN THE WORLD, Amnesty is redeeming temp work. Where the other jobs involved filing and copying and stapling and unstapling, my work at Amnesty involves READING and EDITING.

“I’m sorry,” my supervisor said when we began today, my supervisor with the kind name and the kind eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I should tell you, there will be a lot about torture.” Today I know a lot about Uzbekistan, and a bit about Kyrgyzstan. Tomorrow I will know about Kazakhstan and Armenia.

“It’s my birthday,” he whispered, and pointed at the cake put aside for him in a corner of the display case. “Happy Birthday Johann”, it read in curving chocolate swirls.

“Happy birthday!” we said, and then I said: “Does that say ‘You are still a country bum’?” But then I leaned in closer and saw, behind the cream slice, that the icing read: “You are still a country boy to me”.

“She says this because she thinks I am still young,” he said, and he smiled, and the wrinkles around his eyes deepened.

We were in Maison Bertaux, Suzzan and me, for a little teatime treat, and you cannot help but like Maison Bertaux because of the blue-and-white teacloth tablecloths on the small wooden tables outside. The teacloth tablecloths are held down on each table by a small glass of red flower, and their corners lift in the passing breeze. The storefront display case is a miracle spread of cream pastries and fruit tarts. You cannot help but like Maison Bertaux, also, because inside, there are swathes of pink gauze for decoration, and mince pies on the cake stand on the wooden counter, and a mirror painted with flowers and ice cream sundaes to celebrate the birth of a child. Inside, too, there is Johann, with a greying ponytail and a limp, Johann from Austria, who once said: “A man came in and asked for a cup of decaffeinated coffee, and I said, ‘We don’t have any, but our regular coffee is so weak it won’t make a difference’.”

So there we were, picking out sweet treats from the display case, and I pointed at a thing of chocolate, and said: “What’s that?” and Johann said: “It is a chocolate truffle cake, but you shouldn’t have it, because it will be too much for you.”

“Oh,” I said, “yes, truly, I am not looking for anything too heavy.”

“No,” he said, “I don’t want you to grow and grow and become big.”

“Uh,” I said, and started to maybe like Maison Bertaux a little less. “Are you suggesting that we are in danger?”

“Oh, no, no,” he said, “but if you come in every day and eat one of these, then yes.”

“There was this woman once,” he said, and his accent was very Austrian. “She would come in every day and buy a couple of pastries, and she always told me, ‘I am buying one for my boyfriend who is at home.’ She would come in and say: ‘I am buying one for my boyfriend who is at home.’ And four months later, she had put on so much weight, and I said: ‘Tell me the truth.’ ‘Tell me the truth,’ I said. ‘Are you buying these for yourself?’ And finally she said: ‘Yes’.”

“Did she cry?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “And then she collapsed into my arms and I had to be nice to her.”

We picked out an almondine tart and a cream slice topped with fruit (for part of our five-a-day), and went upstairs, where an indie-rock waiter in Buddy Holly glasses brought us a pot of English Breakfast tea.

“He’s nice!” “Yah! He’s nice!” “And Maison Bertaux’s nice!” “Yah!” “My cream slice is frozen.” “What?”

And frozen it was, the pastry hard, the cream tasteless with cold.

“But— how— but— wait— that can’t be right.”

After much nervous discussion, we tiptoed downstairs and nipped into the kitchen, where Suzzan brandished the plate of frozen. “Is this supposed to be cold and frozen like this?” she said, and the indie-boy waiter looked at it, and then he looked at us, and then he said: “Yes. Frozen. A little.”

And now that I am writing this I remember when I was a child and my mother used to say, “Look my in the eyes and tell me the truth”, and I would LOOK HER IN THE EYES AND LIE.

“Yes,” he said, unblinking behind his glasses. “Frozen.” So we said, because what were we to say?, we said: “Oh. Okay.” and went back up the narrow stairway.

I’ll say the little almondine was exactly what I was looking for, but Suzzan spent the next so many minutes stabbing at her frozen confectionary. “Don’t eat it if it makes you unhappy,” I said. “And also then you can throw it at him on the way out. ‘I hope your birthday sucks!’”

When we left, Johann was showing off his birthday cake to another couple of girls. Johann, are you what one might call HUM SUP? “Good-bye!” we said. “Good-bye!” he said. “Come back soon!” he said. “Okay!” we said, and we walked through the small doorway into the stilling drizzle. We may still have been smiling through the window when Suzzan shut the door behind her and said: “I’m never going back there again.”

Suzzan came to town the day there was a flame-orange pot of chilli-lemon chicken stew on the stove. Five days later, we are still eating like kings, like KINGS, I tell you, with lamb moussaka one day, mushroom soup and a pear-rocket salad another, and a zucchini-mushroom tart the next. The girl has even recreated Chinatown’s best milky bubble tea in my kitchen, which means we really never have to leave the house again.

This morning when I woke up, she said: “I found a cherry-chocolate brownie recipe online for you.” I don’t know if she is trying to say something, or nothing.

Sleep?, what is this thing called sleep?

Thursday night there was Champagne and sushi at Canary Wharf, a Bellini by Borough Market, and the RV1 home as the midnight rain started to fall. Friday night the industry gathering with a bunch of bright young things, drunker and louder as the night wore on. Toby is tall, Louise has big eyes, Doug is good-looking (but I think he knows it). Victoria lived in Singapore, Gurdeep stumbles home at seven, Nora broke a rib once. Tonia wore Versace, Mia had on blue eye shadow and too many earrings to count. We went from closing hour to closing hour, and the kids were still going strong when I said my good-byes. I thought, last night, I was going to get some sleep, but suddenly it was four in the morning and I was considering waiting for the sun. Tonight, though, tonight, I believe I will savour it, this thing called sleep. Under white sheets, it will be sweet, this thing called sleep.

“It is snowing!” he’d texted, an hour before I got on the train. “Du chocolat chaud alors pour le dîner,” I’d texted back. Some three hours later, we were grinning at each other through the crush at Gare du Nord, then the scooter ride, stockinged knees exposed to the winter night, and home to a bowl of Nesquik, saveur choco noisettes.



Maybe there are no words to talk about Paris. I could tell you about the Saturday snow, and I could tell you about the roast chickens and the cheese displays at the market. I could tell you about Adrien coming over to play backgammon. About Hector and the Petit Robert. About Marc, and kirs cassis, and the utter charm of the Librarie Forgeot.



I could tell about the Portuguese brandy, and black coffees out of yoghurt pots. About the fig éclair at Fauchon, about fancy sandwiches and a religieuse à la rose at Ladurée. About the crêpes, maybe—une salée et une sucrée; or about the chocolate tasting at Pierre Marcolini. I will tell about this last one, actually—only that I thought we were going to get one of each, but Gab said, because he is wise, to get four of each.



Oh, I could tell about Gab and Olive and Yaya and Gigi and Fab. About Benjamine and Nadja. About Elaine and Bob and Sascha. About Boris and Christel and Fabienne, and the fury in the night. I will tell about this last one, actually—only that I was offered cocaine, and that this had never happened to me before. It was at the moment that the music stopped, of course, also the moment that everyone happened to stop talking. “Uh. Did you just ask me if I wanted some cocaine?” I said, into the sudden silence. “Yes.” “Um. No? Thank you?” “Okay.”



I could tell, I guess, about the fashion photographer who wanted to take my picture, or about the baker down the street who invited me to Tunisia to ride a camel, and to meet his mother. “La prochaine année vous venez,” he said, and handed over a sweet chouquette.



I could tell about hours spent reading in the hammock; about Milo curling up against my back, at five in the morning, like comfort and safety. Ronronner, to purr. I could tell about the party, late night in the Nineteenth. And actually, I will tell about this last one. Paul knew someone who knew someone, and somewhere behind the big iron doors there were running steps and screaming, and no one could hear us banging to gain entry. Inside, finally, there was a ping-pong table in the shape of a country, and three girls dancing to “Hey Ya”. There was paint spilled on the concrete floors, and a large, filthy tarpaulin hanging from the ceiling. The deejay kept crashing his iBook. La traquenard, a trap.



There are all these things I could tell about, but I don’t know that any of them could really tell the story of Paris. Because how to talk about the spicy, burnt smokesmell that infuses everything; or about the sharp, waking wind as we scooter through the streets; or about all the words that remain unsaid between us?

I was quite miserable, in quite an unexpected way, coming back to London Wednesday night, even with everything I know is good here. The rain was starting on the skylight sometime ’round midnight, and I was on the phone with CC, and she said: “Maybe you could go to Paris once a month.” And the rain was still coming down ’round one in the morning, and the room was spinning, I was so fatigued, and still I was on the phone with Maud, and she said: “There is a Eurostar ticket on the SNCF Web site for seventy-five euros.”

Here. I will tell you this. The only way to come back from Paris is to get a return ticket illico presto. December thirty-first, party of the year, and we’re gonna be dancing, in Paris.

I am back in London, it is grey and rainy, I am still unemployed. And already real life has re-begun: there have been phone calls, there have been e-mails, there is a party tonight and a party tonight and a dinner tomorrow and out all day Saturday. I might have a lot to say about Paris in a bit, but I need it for me right now.