I know I need to blog about the trip home, but the further I get from it, the harder it is to catch up, to just sit down and do it. If I don’t blog something, did it really happen? And why am I writing in questions as if I flounce about Manhattan in crazy clothes and answer when you call, “Hello, Sarah Jessica Parker”?

In the week since New York, I swooned around sleepily, got over jet lag, entertained out-of-town friends, very unexpectedly got strong-armed into a cheap ticket and went to see Spamalot at the Palace Theatre – “Lancealot, he likes to dance a lot,” they sang, at the knight’s coming-out – baked a banana-chocolate fondant cake, and attended a birthday party with a funny, lisping Frenchman in attendance. “I don’t remember his name,” I said to Olive the next day, “but he sure was funny.” “Something like Gareth?” he said. “Garth?” “Those are not French names,” I said, although Mr French Boyfriend With Four French Names should have known it. “Maybe Barthes,” I said, “in honour of Roland?” “No,” Olive said, and he was firm. “No one would name their child Barthes in honour of Roland.” “They would,” he said, and you cannot argue he is without logic, “name him Roland.”

This morning I completed a reader’s report for a scouting agency. No, you in the back with your hand raised, not reef knots and bonfires. Literary scouting. As in, “Ahoy there, look what I’ve found. Here, read this and tell us if it’s any good for our Dutch publisher clients.” I was waiting for another freelance gig to come in, so I took the job. It was the first time I’d done something like it. I read the book and sent in my report in under forty-eight hours. The agency loved it and paid me the grand amount of £30. Then I found out, too late, that other places pay £60. I know, I should have done my research into the industry pay scale before accepting the job. But if everyone would just do the decent thing, workers like me wouldn’t have to scrounge around and guess what to charge. I know the point of companies is to make a profit. But that shouldn’t mean taking advantage of people. It’s rotten to not pay your workers an honest wage – no one needs to be told that. I know it’s a small company I was working for, and I sympathise with small companies. But I’m a small company, and I’m in no position to afford working at £4 per hour. Ouf. Little paychecks make me rant. In any case, I was glad for the experience and the woman who hired me was nice and immediately wanted to give me more work. I said, politely, Please pay me £60. She said, politely, No. So I said, I will have to get back to you on that. I don't want to be a snob about accepting work, but I hope that I will never be in a position to desperately need £30.

Meanwhile, Olive dug up a bunch of work opportunities on Gumtree, an online bulletin board. Not all of these involve nudity. He sent me a link for a company needing a proofreader and copy writer, which of course necessitated me then sitting in front of the computer for too long, following all manner of links on the website. I have now submitted my photograph to take part in a promotional photo shoot for a company that organises chocolate-making workshops. If I am selected for the shoot, I will be able to (a) add “model” on my CV, and (b) take home chocolate from the workshop. I don’t think any money is involved in this exercise, but I’d like to think it is not always about the money. Hm. Maybe I should call that literary scout and sign up for another manuscript to fund my extracurricular chocolate-making activities.

“I can’t wait to hear where this goes,” Laureen e-mailed, when I told her about it. “It sounds like something David Sedaris would do!” “Really,” she e-mailed later, after she’d had some time to take in the enormity of the situation, “it sounds more like something Amy Sedaris would do.” I couldn’t tell which made me more pleased. If ever there were a reason to do something, the Sedarises would be it.

The stories, oh, the stories. They just keep piling up on my head, falling in layers higgledy-piggledy, like a layer cake sloppy with lemon buttercream icing, and me with not a second to grab a fork. Just over the jet lag of the Far East, I worked through three solid weeks of late nights and freelance edits, then fell asleep in a plane on an errand-running trip to New York City.

What is not such a fun e-mail to receive is the one from the cousin with whom I’d engaged in a trans-Atlantic flat swap. “There is one thing I must talk to you about,” she wrote. There is always the one thing! Sometimes the one thing is the last cupcake in the box, and sometimes the one thing is a cousin falling in with an Englishman and moving back to London. The glory days in Covent Garden, we knew they were not to last. It’s FINE, though, because I think a new neighbourhood will be a good change of scene, even if it means I will once again be joining the ranks of the honest, rent-paying folk.

Interestingly, a soon-to-be-empty flat in Brooklyn means I am also poised to be an absentee landlord. This cannot help but be an interesting story. “I have these friends who are slumlords, no, but, really, they are slumlords,” Jazon said over eggs and coffee at Belleville, and I wondered where that story was going. My story, though, after the last-minute flight to a past life and a long weekend of packing – I thought I’d gotten rid of all this stuff when I moved the last time, but twelve salvaged Fresh Direct boxes of books and a couple of hefty crates of school papers were happy to prove me wrong – its wheels are in motion. Amazing what a girl can do when she puts her mind to it – and when she’s got an outbound flight booked for seven days’ time. The supers were revisited, the realtor was met, the workmen were interviewed. One painter, he has a wonderful name, was called Johnny Mac.

There wasn’t quite time for kicking around the old haunts, but Park Slope at one in the morning, as I came off the train from JFK, smelt, cleanly, like home. In the morning, the bakery on the next block is still selling triberry scones. The guy who looks like he’s a stand-up comic on his nights off still works at Dizzy’s, and the diner is still a good place to sit in the sun to finish a book. One afternoon, my legs took me places before my brain caught up, and I sat down to grilled squid and chillied mango slivers in a cool corner opposite the carved rosewood bar at Mekong.

Two years after my last plane out of Queens, New York is still great. “Shit,” CC and I e-mailed, “New York is great.” The thing is, it is, and it is in a way London really isn’t. Where a life seemed to shimmer with possibility in New York, here it wavers hesitantly. Much of my ambivalence towards this city, I know, comes from the wearisome fact of finances and the hunt for a job. “We’re all running like mad to stay still,” Dan said to me once. I wanted to cry, it was so true and I was so tired.

Wednesday afternoon on Eastern Parkway, the car service taking me to the airport passed the kids just out of school. The plane took off as the sun set. Every time I come back to London I’m geared up to make another go of it.