In Paris, I stretched and blinked into the softness of Saturday afternoon. The rain’d stopped by then, and Julia Sarr was singing, low, in the still air. It was that kind of stillness, you know?, that floating bliss?, and for a second I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming.

There were pizzas and Prosecco later, a train and a train away, and then the winged boy in the Bastille, golden in the night.

Sunday morning, I was reading comics in bed while the boy in the kitchen called out to ask if I wanted a Nutella tartine or a raspberry one. “Tous les deux,” I said, and then he brought out a pot of tea as well.

Seems like spring has sprung, finally, so it is warm enough for a girl to walk about bare-legged in metallic purple pumps. Sunday, the 21 bus took us to the Jardin de Luxembourg, where little boys and little girls floated littler sailboats in the fountain. À pied means we followed our feet to Gérard Mulot, where the boy pointed towards the macarons and said: “Et prends un passion-basilic, ou ptetre deux.” He turned his back, then—so innocent, he is! So trusting!—and suddenly we were walking out of the shop with two passion-basilic, an orange-gingembre, a rose-groseille, an electric citron, and a dreamy purple mûre in a little pink box. The other pink box—because you know there was another pink box—held an amaryllis, because of the name, and because the amaryllis is fresh raspberries on a macaroon floor propping up a macaroon ceiling.

Right before we left, the boy gestured at a white-haired gent and said, in my ear: “C’est lui.” “Monsieur Mulot?” I said. “Oh my god,” I said, because sometimes you get so excited you can’t speak French, “this is so huge! Mais qu’est-ce qu’on doit faire avec ces renseignements??” “We should take a photo!” I said, and the boy laughed, and then gently but firmly steered me outside.

This reminds me that a couple of weeks ago in London, the boy leaned across the table at Carluccio’s and very quietly said, “There is a pop star sitting right behind you.” So calm, he is. It turned out it was M.I.A. “Oh my god!” I said. “This is so huge! What should I do with this information?” He said I could turn around and look, but I knew if I did, she would immediately look up and make eye contact right then, I have that sort of luck. And then I would only have had the wits about me to say: “Galang galang galang.”

Sunday in Paris, with M.I.A. nowhere in sight and M. Mulot hard at work in his atelier, there was time for a late-afternoon picnic by the sea. We sat on the mossy stone by the Square du Vert-Galant on the Ile de la Cité, opposite the sapeurs-pompiers barge, while the wind blew on the water and the tourist boats sailed by. I had my shoes off, because I had nowheres else to be.

Spring, my ass.

And that reminds me that the other day at work Ahsan the quiet Muslim boy came over to my desk, where, for some reason or other, two chairs had collected, and said: “Why do you need two chairs?” “Because my ass is so huge,” I said. He must think I am an infidel.

This reminds me, also, that I was on the phone with Mowmy a couple of days ago and she said: “How’s work? Are you still bullying that nice Muslim boy?”

Anyway.

Spring, my ass. Julia the Art Department girl with the black Vespa and the pet rats said to me two days ago: “Happy Equinox!” and then we looked outside to where the sky was a dirty white, and where no tulips and lilies of the valley were blooming, where the grey wind was whipping through the skeleton trees, and then our backs hunched and we went back to work.

Work is where I have been, a lot, and it occurs to me that once upon a time I had the afternoons wide open to me like the vast golden prairies of the American West.

This past Sunday, though—and one good thing about work, besides the big laughs we have and the tin of chocolate Bourbon biscuits on the kitchenette counter, one good thing about work is that come Friday afternoon and the heralding of the weekend, there is a bliss that fills body and soul—

this past Sunday, when it did actually feel like spring, my feet took me to Saint James’s Park, where bright daffodils played soldier and little dogs ran through the grass. I stretched out on a wooden bench and read while the sun beamed down, warm and sweet. I felt good and quiet, and, for the first time in a long time, it felt like I didn’t have to be anywhere anytime soon.

I’m excited about spring because it seems like there’d be blue skies and because there is a boy I want to kiss in the spring.

Schmio is very suggestively suggesting that I go to Bologna with her for the children’s book fair at the end of the month. I haven’t said yes, but I sure haven’t said no.

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.