We were talking about hay fever, as one will, come hay fever season, and I said, “Yah, and Olive was trying to make me believe that there is a giant pollen cloud over Europe. He said,” I said, “ ‘There is a giant pollen cloud over Europe’!”

“It’s true,” Nai said, “there is a huge yellow mass over Europe.”

“That’s just Chinese people lah,” I said, and we shimmyed to “Tainted Love”.

Still, I don’t think it’s hay fever that’s struck me down today; I’m going to blame it on the long hours at the office and the egregious lack of sleep. The tickle in the throat started around lunchtime, which was a sign to pop out and get a strawberry Cornetto from the grocery shop. I’d figured the cold, creamy goodness would soothe an angry throat. Um. Yes, let’s say that was it. By four o’clock I was ripping open the foil on a packet of blackcurrant Strepsils, OH, how FOUL they are, like a punishment for being ill.

Tonight, it’s chicken soup and citron chauds—and an application letter for a new job, dang it.

After work, late, on Moss Hall Grove, the air smelt of pink flowers and rain. It’d been raining all day, and it was raining still, and by the time I got to the West Finchley Tube it’d gathered up somethin’ fierce. I crossed the bridge over the tracks to the southbound platform while the raindrops went splatter-splatter-platter. And maybe it’s because I’m in the middle of a Murakami and because I’ve been working on a manga exhibition, or maybe it’s because it was just what it was, all of a sudden tonight I was living in a Miyazaki world, golden halos around the streetlights, and me waiting for the cat bus.

We were elbows to the crowd tonight, me and Nai, with the girls in the striped tops and bra straps, with the boys in the Blade Runner jackets, we were there, six feet from the stage, and whooping it up, first for Spoon, then for the New Pornographers, and it was happy and good and alive like a girl in gold earrings and her favourite green cardigan.

It’s been one of those weeks, you know?, and it’s only Tuesday!, one of those weeks with the non-stop work, the lunch at the desk, the recycled office air all day, the sense of no respite. And Sunday seems so long ago now, Sunday, when I was on a rooftop terrace in the Fifth, and the boy’d brought me out two copies of French Elle to go with the fruit tarts. Sunday was warm on my neck, and the breeze flirting with a rose-print skirt. There were real roses, too, pink ones, roses to bury your nose in while the sun is warm on your neck, while the breeze tickles your skirt.



Friday there’d been a birthday party in Belleville, with a cake in the shape of a sports car. The marzipan licence plate read: COOL 1. Saturday there’d been the birthday apéritifs in the Bastille, with the rainbow garlands, and balloons in the shapes of elephants. Nighttime crept in on tiptoe, and it was almost eleven before we strolled down the street to Les Petits Joueurs for salads and cucumber mille-feuilles. I was slathering butter on a slice of bread when the chef called out from behind the bar: “Si plus tard tu termines pas ton dîner, j’appellerai ma grand-mère.” His hands became claws, and he said, “J’t’arracherai les yeux.”



Sunday night I checked in at the Eurostar terminal, and they said the trains were delayed because there were FLAMES ON THE TRACKS. I should have turned back then, but I kept going. And then there was London, and then there was work Monday morning, and all of a sudden the weekend seemed like a very long time ago.

Just as well, then, that just after seven this evening, there was Nai outside Koko on Camden High Street. I rang him from under the flashing bulbs of Sun Orbit Amusements and said: “I can see you!” “Turn to your nine o’clock,” I said. “I am green.”

Koko is red inside, deep down, deep red, with a giant disco ball hanging from the ceiling three balconies up. Under it, we are all points of light, you and me and the kids way up top. Under it, you bite your lip in a lopsided grin while your hand clap-claps against your hip.

Early, there was a kiss for love and a kiss for the day, and then some of us had to creep upstairs to work while others got to sleep in.

The rain started on the skylight first.

First, you wonder if it is floorboards creaking. You wonder if it is a box of beads overturned. Then the quick streaks on the windowpane, and the fat, wet drops.

Early, it’s nice inside.

Save for the rain falling on the skylight early this morning, it was very quiet all about. The family was deposited at Heathrow last night after the last, flurried run around the house trying to pack books and bunnies and bears and shoes, trying to make the baby quit stumbling up and down the stairs.

I don’t know how we did it but we did; over the course of two weeks, we woke with the baby at six-thirty or seven every morning, and took England by storm.



On the Isle of Wight, with its jujube buses coming round the bend—and really, you never knew if you were going to see a sweet blue bus, or an electric orange one—we strolled down streets lined with thatched-roof cottages and headed for cream teas, one a day, with clotted cream and Brown Betty teapots. There was that day, too, it rained and rained, this interminable English drizzle, and it was cold, and the tips of my fingers were points of ice. We stood on the Yarmouth coast and watched the Solent, grey under the grey sky. Hoods up, we huddled back in the car, and very soon I was asleep again while we criss-crossed the island.



Friday in Shanklin, the rain cleared in time for us to head down the cliffs to the beach, where, like the best of beach vacations, there was a boardwalk, a giant swirly cone and a stripey pinwheel. I was red and pink and barefoot, and the sand was soft under my feet. There was a kid, and a dog, and the shoreline stretching out. Some weeks before high season, the changing room sheds stood empty still, in mustard and blue.



So many trips we made, my little family! Another day, we moseyed on down to Embankment Pier, just past the big Savoy clock, to hop the catamaran past Tower Bridge, past the handsome old warehouses, past the glinty metal of Canary Wharf. In Greenwich, there was a fair at the dock, grilled meat smell in the air, and jolly balloons, and the ice cream stand blasting holiday tunes. Pickles and lamb burgers all around, then, and a ham-and-mushroom galette hot off the grill for variety.



Another day still, we went to Oxford on a cheap day return at eight pounds fifty each, where the sun was out for a soft toffee ice by the Magdalen Bridge. “Ee meem,” the baby said, because she is a baby, and then she demolished my father’s vanilla cone.



Then there was London, my London: the salt beef baguettes and the chilli scallops, the hunks of Comté, the extra dark truffles and the tower of fudgy brownies at Borough Market; then the South Bank walk home, past the pillars holding up nothing by the Blackfriars Bridge, past the guy who blows a birdsong whistle next to the guy who flies the smallest kite in the world, past the busker who plays a jaunty guitar right around Gabriel’s Wharf, past the booksellers under Waterloo Bridge. There was HK Diner late one Wednesday night, where we ordered off the Chinese-language menu. Late Wednesday night is for sisters at dinner, and I had my shoes off and my feet curled under me in the booth. The lights were still on at Kowloon Bakery on our way home, and CC looked at the cream horn once, then once more, then once more for the road. There was Bar Italia for a pizza primavera at a sidewalk table on a day off from work. The boys at Bar Italia, they love the baby; they winked at her and gave her candy. And the boys at Bar Italia, when they were introduced to Mowmy, quit the winking very quickly. “Ah, your mother,” they said, and then they said, nodding their heads with solemn smiles: “Hello.” There was the one hot chocolate shared between four at the Maison du Chocolat on Piccadilly, then there were the ducks and the squirrels in Saint James’s Park. “Meep,” the baby says when she sees the squirrels, because she is a baby, and “wa wa,” she says when she sees the flowers, tulips in purple or red. “Wa wa,” she says, then she wrinkles up her nose to sniff, then she says: “Nice.” There was the London Philharmonic from very far away, and the London Symphony Orchestra from very close. At the Barbican on Tuesday night, Bernard Haitink’s Beethoven was to stand up and cheer. I wished I could see the thought bubbles floating above our heads while the orchestra played: who was thinking about work? Who was thinking about sailing under the summer sun? Who was thinking of elephants dressed in red and gold? Who was thinking about the ladybugs at the ladybugs’ picnic? Who was thinking about a girl? Who was thinking about a boy? Later, up on Old Street, there were seats on the upper deck of the 243 home.



So you see. It was very quiet this morning, save for the rain on the skylight, and the sheets in the wash. Funny, the sudden stillness. I was tiptoeing around, unsure, reacclimatising, then the sun came out in time for errands and a late lunch. Cowboy boots and a red T-shirt. At Bar Italia, Luca came out to offer kisses and biscotti. The English boys on my right wanted to talk about my pizza. The Italian boys on my left wanted to talk about my book. Spring is here, finally.