In truth, it was far less than a week. It was somewhere between two and four days (no one involved can be trusted to answer straight. Think of the key players—Clementine, unreliable, readers will be aware; Otis, warped sense of linear time; Caio, author; Caio’s-roommate-named-Griffin, unkempt, often returns from so-called “walking binges” with bleeding feet, etc.) that Clementine and, briefly, Otis, descended upon San Francisco in a whirlwind of intentions and soon-to-be-unmet goals. The moon was low and halfway to full and orange and I told them about all the little monsters and ghosts I’d met recently. Have you seen them? It’s the Worm Moon. They like laundromats, mostly.

Clementine’s visits often begin with a flurry of do-you-remember-whens. Otis was handy to have there, because though my memory is hopeless, rendering me capable only of sitting there doubtfully, he immediately corrected most of Clem’s weaponized memory. Mostly this Thursday the do-you-remembers surrounded her former inability to “hang” in the drinking/late night/partying realm—now, she says, you’ll see, just you wait, she says, a bottle of whiskey would hate to see me coming, I’ll say, she says—and were neatly folded into lofty hopes and dreams of Big Nights Out in San Francisco. On this, Otis was no help. He is nothing if not a dreamer.

We began the night shortly after I got home from work at 4:15, or if you were to look at Clem’s phone, 16:15. We went first to Horsies. Griffin came along. There are lots of things stapled and glued to the walls there and people with mostly loose clothing. Then we went to 20 Spot, which was Otis’ favorite. I’ve been trying to become a local there for a long time (after a failed attempt to hand them my laminated resume back in, oh, August), though I can’t afford to go more than once every two months. René, who I grimace at every day when I walk by, seemed to realize the gravity of the situation, and greeted me by name, then brought out four free lambruscos for us. Griffin was very angry about this development because of how much cred it now looked like I had. I sat smugly for an hour under the guise of active listening.

Then dinner with my dad at Penny Roma, also outside my normal price range. How quick I am to take advantage of everyone in my life. My dad was frustrating and generous. He generously asked the waiter the history of the restaurant and each of its offshoots, before generously explaining his own history of attending the restaurant and each of its offshoots. Otis and Clem were impressively kind, as usual.

It was a late dinner, but quickly my hopes of a nice mopey night were dashed by a furious Otis and Clem. And so we proceeded, having drunk five or six glasses of stuff by then. Griffin had R-U-N-N-O-F-T to his girlfriend’s. Throughout the evening, there was abiding disagreement about how clean the streets of San Francisco are, and disagreement about other things, such as memories from childhood. We attended Latin American Club where Otis did not get a margarita, for some reason, and lastly (unbeknownst to my unsuspecting guests, to whom I’d promised dancing) Lone Palm, where he did. I began telling them about the history of the bar, then attributed the story to my old boss after realizing I was making it all up. They clamored and clamored for the next so we left but once outside I revealed that our destination was actually home. I will not repeat the names I was called as they are not fit for print. Despite the hemming and hawing though, pajamas were laid out, teeth brushed, and beds crawled into—all besides Clem, who chose to lay herself prone on the couch, the corners of four pillows stuffed into her open mouth.

I guess I just had space for a day, in the end. An evening. And now back to my envious life, with the monsters and ghosts, arguing with Griffin about whether or not it’s masculine to have a pen handy. For Clem’s next trip, all readers of the Substack are welcome. The water’s cold in San Francisco, but the streets are clean, according to Otis. And I’m pretty sure Substack is headquartered here.

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Caio Driver’s round-up of the best of the week:

Book: Last Acts by Alexander Sammartino

Things to look up on the internet: Museo Anahuacalli; Denis Johnson quotes; Denis Johnson best poems; Denis Johnson dead?

Article: Iran’s Three Body Problem, from N+1 https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/irans-three-body-problem/

Recipe I cooked: Salmon and cherry tomato curry

Song: ‘Walking u Home’ - Loukeman

Mistake: In reading back through some of these posts to get a sense of the style I re-read the past one which began with Clem’s twenty-fifth birthday celebration and that was all it took to convince me Clem turned twenty-five three weeks ago.

Snippet I heard on the radio: I work for the radio now. I wish I could disclose the number of strange calls and comments we get. I suspect this is how the poor workers at BBC feel about Clem’s deluge of requests.

Smell: Tartine bread on the way to work

Things to do in SF: slowly walk, debating the relative cleanliness of sidewalks, getting to the core of the argument: how much poop is proper?

Until I was about seventeen, I dressed like a lunatic. I think maybe I wanted to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl but I definitely did not achieve either the Pixie or Dream part. One of my prized possessions was a pair of knee socks printed with cartoon owls. I had SEVERAL capes, which I wore everywhere. In my tenth grade school photo, I look like a TV presenter from the 80s (partly because the airbrushing left me deeply tanned and my polo shirt very shiny but also because I had not bothered to brush my pixie cut which gave me a bit of a quiff). The next year I did put a barrette in my even shorter hair but I refused to smile. For the rest of high school my unsmiling junior year photograph was pasted on a whiteboard with the caption LET’S TALK ABOUT PARADISE LOST. (I have a personal vendetta against Paradise Lost, which I have carried with me for the past ten years.) While looking for the picture of the whiteboard, I found what I can only assume is an exam where I wrote a conversation between J. Alfred Prufrock and Yeats with myself as their therapist. I wrote a column for the school newspaper titled It’s ClemenTime. I guess all of this to say: okay, fine, I was maybe a little bit weird. Important to note, however: I did not think I was particularly odd. I thought I was more-or-less like everyone else.

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When I was in first grade I had this conversation with my father:

Me: everyone at school but me saw Flushed Away and they’re all talking about it and I feel left out.

My father: do you want to go see Flushed Away?

Me: No.

It just didn’t seem to register that if I wanted to join the conversation, I would have to make some effort. Therefore, college was a bit of a shock. Huh, I thought. Maybe I should buy some jeans. (Jeans did turn out to be great.)

I thought it would be nice if I went places and people complimented my clothes but not in a you’re-so-brave-to-wear-that-way. If people liked what I hung on my walls. But how to do it?! First: look around at people whose style I admire. But this only took me so far. Because a lot of the best things are things that I couldn’t have because they were one-offs or someone found them on the side of the road or someone MADE them. And because even the people who I admired the most, even they made decisions I disagreed with. But that thought didn’t cohere fully until that night in the Leopard. I didn’t like all the choices other people made and other people wouldn’t like all the decisions I made. I was free.

But not really. Because OF COURSE I wanted to be the one person who gets everything right. What does getting everything right look like? Does my framed William Blake postcard have the capacity to be universally admired? Will everyone like the plastic cup I drank hot cider out of at the Tuileries Christmas market? What about my tiny little hippo, a replica of William, the famous Ancient Egyptian faience hippo who is now in the Met? And worse: does listing these things mean I do think they are unequivocally cool and think anyone who reads this will agree? Do you agree?

I am looking around at my favorite things and wondering what they say about me. But also: what do I want them to say about me? That I’m chic? Smart? Effortless? That I have never worn a cape? It’s too many questions. Really, I just want to like what I like.

I have been able to embrace this devil-may-care attitude the most when it comes to books. I will read literally anything. As cringey as it was, I read A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Sex and Fairies says Caio) on the tube. I didn’t like it that much but whatever: I read the whole series because I wanted to know what happened. But, even then, I gave away the book and read the other four (I know) on my Kindle. Not on my shelves, no thanks!

I want to HAVE FUN when I read and I want to HAVE FUN when I look around our flat and get dressed in the morning and I can sort of see now that that should be my priority.

But I still stare at the walls when I brush my teeth every night and ask myself: what is good taste? Do I have it? Will I ever know?

Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: My Judy Garland Life by Susie Boyt

Things to look up on the internet: Nan Goldin Gagosian; hinx minx; Belle and Sebastian Royal Albert Hall

Recipe Sam cooked: mashed potatoes (self-explanatory)

Song: ‘Single Girl, Married Girl’ - The Carter Family (The Carter Family is having a real moment in our house; my new goal is to get them on Radio 3)

Mistake: I baked cookies and when I went to check on them I was worried because they were so pale and anemic so I called Sam to look at them and it turned out I had accidentally turned the oven off

Moment: talking about trends that we were early adopters of, I said liking Lana Del Rey and Sam said hating Elon Musk

Snippet I heard on the radio: on a Radio 4 program about women screaming in horror films and punk bands, some parents said they encouraged their children to scream when they felt like it – to not bury their emotions – and now these children are screaming non-stop

Smell: Glossier coconut balm dotcom

Thing to do in London: browse Walden Books in Camden

Each time I turned the key I could hear the lock starting to click and then stopping, a sound which began to drive me insane. Maybe there was something wrong with my key? But no, how could there be something wrong with a key? Hadn’t I used it already? I tried to unlock the door for thirty minutes and then I called Sam and he tried to help me unlock the door – over the phone – for another thirty minutes.

Obviously I was doing something wrong, probably because I am Bad With Keys. I always have been. I am 98% sure this is because I am dyspraxic though this is yet-to-be-diagnosed. I have, however, consulted friends who are dyspraxic and taken a lot of online quizzes that say things like: based on your responses, yes, you are dyspraxic, before asking for my personal information. I had never heard of dyspraxia until I moved to England but it seemed like it explained a lot of things about me: how bad I am at parking a car; can’t seem to brush my hair effectively; terrible knife skills etc.

Because I am so Bad With Keys / dyspraxic and have been locked out of places before, I stood in the hallway for a full ninety minutes, convinced that it was an it’s-not-you-it’s me situation. At one point I thought I had sprained my wrist from trying so hard to open the door.

After ninety agitated minutes, I went to get a new key cut. That key didn’t work either and I was down £10 and my phone was about to die. I decided I had to ask for help but who to ask? You can’t just approach strangers in the street and ask them to unlock your front door. But then I saw two tiny community police, who were bantering with one of the drunks who hangs out by the local Greggs. Maybe these two miniature people who just stroll around all day could help! I followed them at a safe distance. They turned onto my street! I watched them squatting down to look at a bag of trash that had split in the road.

‘Excuse me? Can you help me open my front door?’ I did not know if this went against any type of laws but they said yes, they could, maybe relieved that they had something to do and someone to help. They couldn’t get the door open either. We agreed that the lock was probably broken and I was overcome with relief. It maybe wasn’t my fault!

I went back to the key cutters and asked for a locksmith recommendation and the policeman gave me a wave and a thumbs-up through the window. I waited for the locksmith in a coffee shop, drinking a matcha and charging my phone with their charger.

The locksmith told me that the lock was broken and UNSAFE, suggesting that I could get locked inside the flat, which immediately terrified me. When Sam got home, we decided to test the lock with his key and guess what? The lock wasn’t broken; my key didn’t work.

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And now for the second time I was right:

I worked VERY BRIEFLY at a coffee shop in Norwich. It was run by a Tory and we hated each other pretty much on sight. He called me ‘my love’ and I refused to answer. He put up bunting and the Union Jack for the coronation and I later saw him pretending to joust in the street with the flagpole.

I was a terrible barista (again, probably dyspraxia) though it was not really a good atmosphere for learning. I was bad at foaming milk and every bagel I sliced was uneven – one side very thick and the other very thin – but him yelling at me did not make me any better. Once, someone ordered a second cappuccino from me and I nearly fainted with surprise.

Everyone in my life assumed I just didn’t like having a job. But I maintained that there was something wrong with HIM. I quit after a month. He paid me late and also did not pay me enough. When my friend Amelia and I went to confront him, he wouldn’t let me see the books where I logged my hours.

I alternated between avoiding eye contact with him and glaring at him every time I passed his coffee shop for the next three years. I also started hearing from other local businesses that they thought he was a dick. Maybe it wasn’t just me being too delicate for the workplace?

Well, I just learned that his coffee shop has been closed because he owes too many people too much money. A sign has been taped in the window of his former shop (taped from the inside so he must have pissed off the landlord too) telling people where they can find him. As the sign says, ‘Please share this information so that others do not get caught by this person’s behaviour.’ It seems important to note that I saw this sign on r/Norwich under the headline good to see…

And so: I am often wrong but in these two instances I was right. The key was the problem and [REDACTED] was simply a piece of shit.

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Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Things to look up on the internet: how to become a Wikipedia editor; when was Cosmic Dealer founded; Yard Sale Pizza

Recipe Sam cooked: egg and cheese sandwiches (no recipe needed)

Song: ‘There’s No Other Like My Baby’ - The Crystals

Mistake: I forgot to wear a shirt to mat Pilates

Moment: in Paris I went to see a short film in French but when it started the sound didn’t work so my lack of French, which had been making me profoundly nervous, didn’t matter at all and we were all on even footing

Snippet I heard on the radio: I didn’t listen to that much radio this week! I’m sorry!

Smell: Persil laundry detergent

Thing to do in London: look at the Thames up-close in Westminster

Because we have more kitchen space, we are no longer restricted to Moomin-themed kitchenware, which is a shame, but also means I am on my way to being taken seriously.

Moving revealed just how many clothes I have. They range from the mundane (blue jeans; turtlenecks) to the probably-should-bin (once-white-now-gray M&S t-shirts; a hand-me-down sweater from Lela’s brother that has a big hole in the armpit) to the eccentric (enormous peach-colored wool overcoat with a sharply pointed collar that I wore on our first date; dress that looks like a frosted wedding cake and is covered in flowers). But I like my clothes. I like looking at them and thinking about Ewan McGregor’s line in Birds of Prey: ‘these are my things. This diamond is my things.’

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However. I don’t like my clothes nearly as much as I like my books. I am obsessed with my books. Sam is obsessed with his books. At our new grownup house we MERGED books.

Sam wasn’t a reader when we met. I read every night while he drew. One night I read him an M.R. James ghost story but it was very clearly not going to be our thing. I told him, about a year into dating, that I wasn’t going to end up with a non-reader. He asked me where to start. I gave him Slaughterhouse-Five and Dracula. He liked Dracula but he loved Vonnegut. I have considered myself a Real Vonnegut Fan since I was fifteen but Sam has gone way beyond me.

Anyway: we are both enormously proud of our books but at all previous houses they were kept on separate shelves. Sam said he wanted to look at HIS shelf with HIS books so he could remember what HE read. This drove me insane. It was illogical, I argued. He had five Chester Himes books and I had one and shouldn’t my one be with his five? The Vonneguts were everywhere, literally scattered around the room. It got complicated. I had given him The Talented Mr Ripley for his birthday and then I loaned him my copy of Ripley Under Ground, which I had brought from Los Angeles, but it had been an ambiguous loan: I wasn’t sure if I gave it to him. Ripley’s Game was mine but shouldn’t it be with the first two books? And shouldn’t they all be with Patricia Highsmith’s diaries and Strangers on a Train? (Coincidentally, I just heard on the radio that today, January 19, is her birthday.)

But finally he agreed and I got to unbox our books. I normally organize my books with dream logic but this time I tried to be slightly better. We have a whole shelf of Westerns: classics; new Westerns; interrogations of the genre and of the West as a concept. There is a crime section, moving from noir to Walter Mosley to Tana French. Authors who are married, like Danzy Senna and Percival Everett, are next to each other. Friends are with friends. (See: Mitford shelf, bleeding into Waugh shelf. Admittedly those books are all mine because Sam has shown ZERO interest in Love in a Cold Climate and even less interest in the compilation of Decca’s letters that is so heavy I used to prop it against my bedroom door when I was home alone thinking that it would act as sort of an alarm system if someone were to open the door.)

Now Sam and I can sit on the sofa (itself a huge accomplishment) and look at our shelves and shelves of books, together at last.

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Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian

Things to look up on the internet: bellringers Hackney; Lufthansa plane food; pain in head when I stand up

Recipe Sam cooked: bean and kale stew (his recipe)

Song: ‘Tu Seras Mi Baby’ - Les Surfs

Mistake: accidentally pulled the SOS wire in the loo at a pub, mistaking it for the toilet’s handle, and then it started flashing red and making a siren noise

Moment: well, guys, another one of my recommendations was played on Radio 3; the theme was snow and everyone sent in Debussy’s ‘The Snow is Dancing.’ I took it one step forward, asking for Isao Tomita’s version of ‘The Snow is Dancing’ and it was just wacky enough to get attention

Snippet I heard on the radio: Tomita’s ‘The Snow is Dancing’ or Ian Skelly lightly mispronouncing my name (Clemen-TEEN)

Smell: Forest pine Muji candle

Thing to do in London: make eye contact with the guys who sell falafel on Mare Street so they can wave you over and give you a free one

I made us get there at 10.15pm for the musical vigil that started at 11 because I assumed the place would be packed. I imagined Catholics spilling out into the freezing street. (It was 29 F but FELT LIKE 16.) I had several pairs of trousers on as we hustled through the quiet streets. ‘Faster,’ I said, ‘walk faster.’ Well, there was no need to walk quickly because it was basically empty. Just some crumpled people sitting around.

We had gone almost immediately to Saint Sulpice when we arrived in Paris three days earlier and it had been far more crowded that day. There had been a long queue of people waiting to confess but the weird thing was their confessions were just done in the open. The priest sat in front of several rows of chairs and called people forward and they just sat next to him (or kneeled) while everyone impassively looked on. It reminded me of the DMV.

Those confessors were not out in force for the musical vigil. 11pm came and the church was still pretty empty. They turned the lights off. A baby arrived in a snowsuit. The choir sang ‘Silent Night’ (‘Douce Nuit’) and then nobody sang anything else fun for the next 90 minutes. There was a lot of standing and sitting.

It started to fill up at 11.55 (though it never once got even remotely close to being full). At 11.58 the lights came on and the organist began to improvise. (It said improvisation in the program. Their organist is actually quite celebrated.) The music was exuberant and then it ended and absolutely nothing happened. I had expected there would be hugs or, at the very least, merry shouts of Joyeux Noël. Nobody said joyeux anything. The atmosphere remained severe and oppressive and someone got up and started preaching again. I had thought the whole thing would be much campier.

We were going to leave as it was nearing two hours of us sitting there listening to sermons in a language we do not speak but then Sam pointed out that the thing I had been waiting for was happening: the procession. A teenage boy in a white dress walked first, swinging an orb that was filled with some sort of smoke. Incense? I couldn’t smell it. It reminded me of the orb Elizabeth I is painted with though she was pointedly not Catholic. Then came the crosses, shouldered by other boys. And lastly, a priest carried a statue of Baby Jesus on a pillow. Jesus appeared to be doing lotus pose. No one was smiling.

We hung around a little bit longer because I saw Vivaldi’s name on the program and was hoping they were going to sing absolute banger ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ but whatever they started to sing was not that. So we left and outside we saw seven flakes of snow fall to the ground.

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It was our first married Christmas and our first solo Christmas Day and we celebrated in true style: a walk in Montparnasse Cemetery, our noses running liberally in the cold; beef stew cooked to perfection by Sam; The Wizard of Oz and its DVD extras; three games of Ticket to Ride; The Night of the Hunter on Blu-ray.

During our holiday we also watched The Red Shoes, which was probably the best movie I have ever seen because it combines two of the things that I think about the most: being an art monster and red shoes (owning them; wearing them; being driven mad by them). I also like ballet; my last post was written on the eve of my £14 trip to see the Nutcracker. Would there be a pillar blocking my view? I didn’t know but – There was no pillar! I could see almost three-quarters of the stage and right into the orchestra pit. The woman who was supposed to play the Sugar Plum Fairy was unwell (very Red Shoes but not nearly as bad) but her replacement was excellent and the theatre became feverish with excitement when ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ started. Someone had done a massive shit in the bathroom and not flushed. I sat between two old women and read Dark Passage during intermission. I got caught in a rainstorm on the way there and my loafers were soaked through so I had to sit on top of my feet. It was exactly what I would have imagined my trip to the ballet would be like.

We are back in London and moving to a new flat next week. This new flat has more than one room, which I think will do wonderful things for our relationship. And, at long last, we will have a table. To play Ticket to Ride on and to eat dinner on. We will no longer have to share the desk based on whose work is more pressing.

Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: Postcards from the Edge (audio book) by Carrie Fisher (and read by Carrie Fisher, of course)

Things to look up on the internet: Soul Jazz records; is there a pub called The Sleeping Queen; Maurice Sendak

Recipe Sam cooked: duck pho (Sam didn’t make this but I had it while staying at someone’s house and I am hoping Sam will make it one day)

Song: ‘Miserere mei, deus’ – Gregorio Allegri, Edward Higginbottom, Tim Oldham

Mistake: at the Pret in Saint Pancras I needed a napkin so I walked up to the counter and confidently picked up the first napkin I saw, which I then realized (while picking it up) was balanced on top of a woman’s sandwich because it was her napkin. I apologized profusely and the barista gave her a new napkin and then we all started laughing but I felt incredibly nervous the whole time I was laughing. Five minutes later I ran into her and she said I made her day

Moment: got the keys to our new flat

Snippet I heard on the radio: birdsong at 6.30am on Radio 3

Smell: Christmas trees

Thing to do in London: walk with your knees bent to avoid slipping on the ice

Sunday morning my taxi didn’t come like it was supposed to because in Norwich taxis don’t really come on Sundays. But I had a TRAIN to Stansted Airport and then a PLANE to Amsterdam so I wasn’t going to risk calling a second taxi. I took my mini-weekender and called my mother and ran to the train station, roughly one mile away. I was unhappy as I was running. My bag was very heavy because you are only allowed one bag under your seat if you are flying Easy Jet and not paying even a cent more than you have to.

To get to the train station from my house I had to run down Prince of Wales Road and the ground was icy and also covered with vomit from the night before. I made my train but I was very hot and had to take off all the coats and sweaters I was wearing because I had no room to pack them in my tiny underseat bag.

So I was sitting, sweating, on an early Sunday morning train and then one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me happened to me. Out the window, I thought I saw a pack of wolves. I was dipping in and out of sleep and the world around me was foggy but they were white and there were a lot of them. Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Dracula-type wolves.

I texted Sam: I honestly think I just saw a pen full of white wolves. Is that possible

Sam: probably huskies or something. Or sheep

They couldn’t be sheep, I thought. I knew sheep. And what would ten huskies be doing together? Where were their owners? I googled wolves Ipswich and read about Jimmy’s Farm, a rare breeds farm where animals from foreclosed zoos get to live out the rest of their lives in the green pastures outside Ipswich. (Sam obviously apologized profusely for ever doubting me when I said I had seen a pack of wolves through the mist at 9am on a Sunday morning.)

But I didn’t know the best was yet to come. Because Jimmy also rescued polar bears. And the next time I took a train out of Norwich I saw three polar bears hanging out in the pen next to the wolves and one of them was standing up.

I was on the train this weekend, sitting next to an old man who was doing the crossword; I was reading The Guardian and all the special weekend supplements kept falling on the floor. As we passed Ipswich he respectfully put his newspaper away and I put mine away and we looked out the window to see the now-famous polar bears who, for whatever reason, weren’t out. The old man asked if I knew about them and I said, ‘yes, of course,’ and we talked about how sad it was that one of them died during emergency dental surgery, weirdly on the same day I got my spousal visa.

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This weekend – between the bear sightings – I went to a party in Norwich that was so well organized and so fun I keep thinking about it and reminiscing about the good old days (even though it was only five days ago). It was in a church and it was a sit-down dinner, made entirely by some of my wonderful friends, and sitting around the table, drinking wine and wearing paper crowns from Christmas crackers, were more of my wonderful friends. There was smoked salmon and lamb and apple crumble and a quiz and a game where you tried to blow out ten tealights by yelling, ‘TWAT.’ I shouted across the table about how Radio 3 played ‘Hook Rug Dance’ at my request and I’m not sure anyone really could understand what I was saying but they all pretended like they did.

It seemed amazing to me, in that moment and still, in this moment, that when I rocked up to Norwich just over four years ago I knew no one, had no understanding of what my life in England was going to be. If someone said: on 13 December 2025, you will talk to an old man on a Greater Anglia train about the polar bears; you will have a taco in the market and run errands with your friend and those errands will include buying white tights for a party; you will watch Ipswich Town lose in the living room of your old house while your husband and your old housemate and one of your best friends share one scratch card between them and win £1; you will have a three-course meal in a church, sitting between people who are wearing stars made out of aluminum foil; you will go dancing in your red shoes at Gonzos and at 2am you will squat down to pee in a park, alongside everyone you know.

It is very Christmassy here in London and today I worked at the London Library with my friend Mary and then we went to Côte and had unlimited sauces with our unlimited chips and a free glass of champagne and had someone told me about that I would have been excited, too.

Tomorrow: my Restricted View trip to the ballet. I have been getting emails about Nutcracker cast changes for weeks now and I don’t know if I will even be able to see the stage, let alone know who the Sugar Plum Fairy is. I am going by myself and will wear my reddest jacket (extremely red, with gold buttons like I am on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s) and I will sit and look at either the tiny dancers below me or the pillar in front of me but I only paid £14 so I won’t get too upset either way.

Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: Nightfall by David Goodis

Things to look up on the internet: Penguin Modern Classics; Gogglebox cast; Smeg electric kettle reviews

Recipe Sam cooked: actually Gracie made this one: pickle latkes (NYT)

Song: ‘One Little Christmas Tree’ - Stevie Wonder

Mistake: Sam and I went to make little pots out of clay and I was dissatisfied with how my pot was looking so I smushed it and started over and then the woman running the workshop chastised me for letting air bubbles in and made a production of getting me a new piece of clay

Moment: believing, briefly, that I was the only one capable of blowing out all of the candles while saying, ‘twat,’ and having everyone say, ‘you said you were ASTHMATIC;’ or the moment when I paused University Challenge and asked Sam if one of the contestants had been our waiter at Sam’s birthday dinner and it turned out he had been

Snippet I heard on the radio: Debussy’s ‘Rêverie,’ first thing in the morning

Smell: mulled wine from the Ribs of Beef in Norwich

Thing to do in London: see the Christmas lights on Piccadilly

Here are some of the books that paired perfectly with specific moments. Together we can think of a book for any situation. (Please ask me for a recommendation; please.)

• Best book for being stuck on the tarmac at Heathrow for six hours, meaning that when you land in Boston you will have been on the plane for thirteen hours: I was so grateful in that moment to have Riders by Jilly Cooper – I have no idea how anyone else survived. It was diverting and very very long: perfect for any situation where you are trapped

• Your train from Paris to the south of France was delayed (everything in my life is always late) but you have a really good sandwich with you: to complement those views and that ham sandwich? Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited is the only thing for it

• It is January in London and it is very cold and you are alone an overwhelming amount of the time but it’s not bad being alone, more like reading-until-two-am alone – for this I recommend two: Kindred by Octavia Butler and When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson (I do not then suggest that you finish Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series also in the month of January or you will go to bed for much of the winter feeling as though the world is going to end in ten to twelve minutes)

• It’s late August and there’s that end-of-summer-feeling and the world is starting to feel a little washed out and you are starting to feel a little washed out: O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker

• You are sick in bed and you want to gasp out loud while reading but also have some frenetic thoughts: White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link or anything by Link if you want to feel like you have a fever (Special points if you order from her Easthampton, MA bookstore, Book Moon, and ask her to sign the book for you)

• You are at Glastonbury, sleeping in a tent, and everyone said you wouldn’t read while you were there but you are reading and it’s by the light of a flashlight that you have to balance against your chin and you can hear Fatboy Slim in the distance: Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido

• You are having trouble sleeping and want to read non-fiction: Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo

• It’s the beginning of spring in England: this can only be Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, really, but I will honorably mention Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

• You’re babysitting in the countryside and you want to read an entire book before the parents get home but you also want to think deeply about your own identity: Passing by Nella Larsen

• You’re at the public library and you’ve just finished working out and it’s Friday afternoon and bleak as fuck outside and you want to laugh: Erasure by Percival Everett

• You are jet-lagged and by yourself and won’t speak to another person for at least three days: My Search for Warren Harding by Robert Plunkett

• You are going to be inside for a very long time (this could be pandemic-related or autoimmune-related or just you don’t fancy going out but the point is you have a lot of time to yourself): William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair

• You have just moved to East Anglia and are trying to make sense of it all slowly and methodically: Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald but this could also be Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel

• It’s the beginning of a long dry English summer and you can’t stop sneezing: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

• You’re lying in front of the fire on your stomach and it is New Year’s Eve: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (and then it is the New Year and you want to keep reading Westerns, in fact you must keeping reading Westerns: treat yourself to Charles Portis’s True Grit and C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills is Gold and maybe even Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian)

• Dept. of Speculation is one of your favorite books ever and you are interested in seeing how writers develop their voices: Last Things by Jenny Offill

• The sun sets at 4pm so you spend a lot of your time in total darkness: Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut or This is how you lose her by Junot Díaz

• You have a cough, not a fever, but either way you’re not going out for awhile: The Likeness by Tana French

• You are seventeen and want to move to England more than anything in the world: A London Girl of the 1880s by Molly Hughes

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Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

Things to look up on the internet: Tito’s Tacos; Goldilocks and the Three Bears; when do you plant potatoes

Recipe Sam cooked: curried coconut chicken and rice (Mob)

Song: ‘Ribs’ - Lorde

Mistake: when I visited the install of Wes Anderson: The Archives (more on this below) the site manager said, ‘please don’t touch anything’ and I said, ‘no need to! I’ve already touched everything,’ which she did not find as funny as I did

Moment: Essential Classics on Radio 3 (the classical station for you Yanks) is a morning show where viewers can text or email music requests relating to the day’s theme. Last Wednesday the theme was celestial-dream-like and, after many weeks of me texting and emailing, Radio 3 FINALLY played my suggestion. This is actually one of the most satisfying moments of my life, really. Listen Listen Listen:

Snippet I heard on the radio: obviously ‘Hook Rug Dance’ by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch, per my request

Smell: my Vitamin C serum

Thing to do in London: see Wes Anderson: The Archives at the Design Museum and see all of the props I personally wrapped, as the American Empirical archive assistant

So in 2021 I moved to Norwich, a place I had only ever seen on google earth.

It was the tail-end of covid and I was doubly vaccinated. I had lived in Los Angeles for my entire twenty-two years because I grew up there and then went to UCLA. I had been planning on studying abroad in Scotland (again, meadows) but that was cancelled because of the pandemic so I moved home instead of moving to Scotland. I had never heard of Norwich but my cousin who lives in London (who I now live with) said: if you’re interested in creative writing, you should apply to the University of East Anglia. Which I did. I had a Zoom interview at 7am, I got accepted and off I went.

I didn’t know a single person in Norwich but that is what graduate school is good for: you meet people and hopefully you like them. (I loved them.) Norwich was not exactly as I expected! It was weirder and smaller; sometimes I felt like I was existing in a parallel universe, one that is still ten to fifteen years behind the one I was used to. But it is also full of artists and good food and excellent charity shops. It’s forty-five minutes from the sea and is said to have a pub for every day of the year and a church for every Sunday. It is the self-proclaimed city of stories. Sometimes when you walk home at night you won’t see a single person.

That first winter I was colder than I had ever been, another thing that my reading had not fully prepared me for. Heating is expensive so having it on during the night? Absolutely not. You just see your breath in the bathroom at all times from November to March-ish. I had always loved my hot water bottle for stomach cramps but that winter I saw what they were really for: to make your bed just warm enough that you are able to put your body in it. England no longer felt like one long romp but it was sort of better. It was a real place and I lived there and never went outside without tights under my trousers.

After three years, I moved to London. There is a lot on the internet about where to go in London, written by people who know a lot more than I do. But NORWICH. (Nor-ITCH by the way, not Nor-WHICH.) I know Norwich so well. I feel like I have walked down maybe every single street. It helped that I lived in four different freezing houses, covering four different postcodes. I saw it all. Every season, every hour.

These are some of the places I came to know and LOVE in those three years. If this doesn’t account for all of your needs, by all means ask me and I will tell you where it is you need to go. Besides: when it’s so cold that the roads are iced-over and everyone is penguin-walking, it’s good to know where it will be warm.

You want a pub where the lighting is a little too bright but they have gluten free stout and there is a lot of outdoor space and you can reserve big tables for your birthday party?

The Artichoke

Now you want a darkly lit pub that serves craft beer and gluten free cherry beer and is full of dogs?

The Hop Rocket

A pub that gets very very loud and has a crypt where you can dance and people draw on coasters and stick them to the wall and where you can potentially have a Hinge date with a person you might someday marry?

The Rumsey Wells

What pub stay opens late and has candles and a fireplace?

The Pear Tree

Okay, but now you really want a steak and chips and a 99 flake?

Tallow

What about the best curry of your life?

Dhaba Fifteen – special mention for the North Indian lamb fry, beloved by all

You want to go to the weirdest shop you will ever set foot in where you can buy people’s discarded furniture, dusty sheet music, an enormous framed tribute to Richard Nixon and an animatronic bear?

Loose’s Emporium

But now you want to eat a curry outside?

Indian Feast in the Norwich market

Enough food: you want to see some art, specifically Egyptian grave goods and Modiglianis, and watch the famously unreliable English weather through a wall of glass?

The Sainsbury Centre

So you’re looking for books about witchcraft, paganism and cinema?

The Holloway

It’s much much colder than you expected: you want a secondhand coat but a really good one, preferably wool with shoulder pads?

Sue Ryder on Bridewell Alley

You want to buy new books, signed by local authors?

The Book Hive

But now you want to buy used books?

Oxfam on Magdalen Street

Oh, I understand: you’re looking for gelato that puts all other gelatos to shame?

Cafe Gelato (but not in January when the owners return to Italy)

Lastly, you’re looking for a street that screams medieval at the tops of its lungs?

Elm Hill. You will love it.

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Honorable mentions:

Cinema City: Picturehouse is a country-wide chain and every movie theatre has a cafe and restaurant. Cinema City holds a special place in my heart because they used to have unlimited free tea and filter coffee for members and £1 lattes, which was as insane and wonderful as it sounds. Everyone I knew was a member and we were all there, all of the time. I met my friend at Cinema City every single day for nearly a year: we drank unlimited hot drinks, wrote our dissertations, went outside to eat lunch I brought from home and then went back inside and ordered more hot drinks, sheepishly. The deal has ended – I wonder why?! – but it remains one of my favorite spots. Lots of windows and movies all day long.

The Rose: the Rose used to be the place for the best pub quiz, the best burger and also – weirdly – the only place you knew would be totally deserted on a Saturday night. Whenever I walk by these days it is closed so I cannot confirm whether or not it remains the best for quizzing, eating burgers and being alone

Cherry Leaf: the best gluten free cakes I ever had, sadly now under new management

Rheumatology department at the Norwich and Norfolk University Hospital: this one is admittedly not for everyone but Norwich has a lot of ankylosing spondylitis and boy do they know how to treat it!

That should set you up nicely for your first trip to Norwich. Don’t forget to stop by the Assembly House for Afternoon Tea and then take a nice slow walk up Unthank as you uncomfortably digest. There’s a full gluten free menu so you don’t have to miss out on a single tiny cake.

Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: Heart the Lover by Lily King

Things to look up on the internet: advent calendars; easy soup recipes; Wuthering Heights trailer

Recipe Sam cooked: mapo tofu (Mob Kitchen)

Song: ‘Muziqa heywete’ by Getatchew Mekurya

Mistake: I got off the train one stop early and the doors closed and wouldn’t reopen and I began to contemplate thirty minutes at the Paddock Wood train station in the rain but I looked down the platform and the conductor was waving at me so I ran the length of the train in a full-length white parka and Birkenstock Bostons and he held the doors for me

Moment: waiting for the last bus home (00:12) with Sam in the cold and the bus came tearing out of the dark at breakneck speed, screeched to a halt and then tore away into the night, just like Cat Bus

Snippet I heard on the radio: ‘Sailing By’ (Shipping Forecast theme)

Smell: old books

Thing to do in London: train across the Thames at 8.30 in the morning

1. Being Mindful. There are a lot of posts about how to go offline and be mindful even though obviously I don’t want to be totally offline – and neither do you? If you’re posting on substack? – and I don’t find the suggestions that helpful. The top tip is journaling, which doesn’t help me because I have kept an account of what I have done every single day since November 2015 and I am still online and not that mindful. I have faithfully recorded books I read; movies I watched; funny things people said; what I had for dinner. I journal like it’s the end of times and nobody will remember how life was in the 21st Century unless I write things like: Pelotoned for thirty minutes and went for roast dinner at the Weaver’s Arms. My journal is the most constant thing in my life but I don’t believe it makes me a better person, which is what these posts seem to be suggesting. Plus, I find writing in my diary incredibly boring. It’s wonderful to read back but it is a massive chore in the moment. At the end of every day I look at my Hobonichi Techo and think: fuck.

2. Being Chic and Elevating Your Wardrobe. Which is great but almost all of these women who are chic and elevated are tall and thin and white. I am short and mixed-race and whatever the opposite of willowy is. Your suggestions are not going to work for me. (And I am never going to elevate my airplane style because in what world would I wear jeans on a transatlantic flight? Sitting in coach for eleven hours in jeans? Are you insane? I will never again travel in anything but a full sweatsuit. I have traveled in a dress but it was only a short flight to Italy where I then had to sit on the lawn outside of the Pisa Airport in catastrophic heat for several hours while waiting for my bus and I worried that trousers might lead to heat stroke. Also: it was before I discovered the Skims sweatsuit.) Aside from the whole travel clothes thing, all of these immaculate women seem to have straight hair which goes a long way in helping you look immaculate. I have intensely frizzy hair so – even at my very best – I always look slightly frazzled, which is okay because I am always slightly frazzled.

So here are my suggestions on how to be authentically mindful and attainably chic. You don’t have to commit to a journal habit that will hang heavily around your neck for the rest of your life and you don’t have to have any specific kind of body type: all that’s required is a body and a capacity for being a little bit bored

MINDFUL: sitting on the ground trying to figure out where the roll of tape starts

CHIC: when your parcel arrives in the beginning of the delivery window, after you’ve already committed to staying in, and it’s almost as if you stole back time

MINDFUL: browsing the Moomin website but not buying anything

CHIC: relentlessly texting Radio 3 with music suggestions (they have yet to accept any of them but I won’t stop until they do and then when they do I will continue)

MINDFUL: putting your mouthguard in that fizzy solution that old people use to clean their dentures

CHIC: skipping parts in books that you don’t connect with and making up for it by rereading your favorite parts (I employed this technique with aplomb while reading Possession and also Rivals; when I (re)read Outlander, I skipped any page that did not have Jamie’s name on it and I had such a good time)

MINDFUL: writing things on your to-do list that you know you are going to do in five minutes and then crossing them off

CHIC: being well-versed in American folk music

MINDFUL: washing your hands

CHIC: keeping your books stacked under your desk because there is no more room on the bookshelf

MINDFUL: dropping your phone so many times you just leave it on the floor

CHIC: not letting the bottom of the pot burn

Somehow both MINDFUL and CHIC: this sign I saw from the train

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Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Things to look up on the internet: twelve and a tanner; can I use UK railcard on Eurostar (you can’t); the Princess Louise pub

Recipe Sam cooked: potato and leek soup (BBC)

Song: ‘Une petite île’ – Georges Delerue

Mistake: I told my Pilates instructor about my arthritis and then we had this exchange halfway through class ––

Instructor (concerned): I see you’re doing a different move from everyone else. Did it hurt your back?

I look around. I am doing a row. Everyone else is doing a bicep curl.

Instructor (kind): are you okay?

Me (chastened): I’m fine. I just wasn’t listening. Sorry.

Moment: I didn’t recommend ‘For All the Saints’ to Radio 3 on Halloween but someone else did and they played it. (‘For All the Saints’ is a hymn that Vaughan Williams set to music in case you, like my parents, didn’t know)

Snippet I heard on the radio: a forensic pathologist said she doesn’t believe in ghosts but she also believes that her childhood home was haunted, citing footsteps in the night and the house violently shaking – the skeptic on the show said that the shaking was only the Yorkshire mines settling

Smell: lapsang souchong

Thing to do in London: go see your friend’s ghost story, performed by candlelight

I also went to see Alison Roman speak at the Leicester Square Theatre. I love Alison Roman because she wrote two of the only recipes I know how to make (chickpea kale stew and those chocolate chip shortbread cookies that made people lose their minds during covid) and also because she is, to me, the perfect typification of being millennial. She is a specific kind of internet celebrity who hates the internet and loves a ‘red lip’ and orange wine and wears high-waisted jeans.

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And, as if Alison Roman Live and Zippos wasn’t enough, I also went to see Ipswich Town Football Club play at their home stadium. (It took us about 75 minutes to get from London to Ipswich on a train that got increasingly rowdy as we got nearer to Portman Road.) They won but the best part (arguably) was watching the home fans and the away fans drive each other absolutely crazy. We sat below a bunch of teen Ipswich fans who spent the whole game trying to rile the West Brom fans. Instead of the classic meet me outside, I saw a whole new way of fighting: they were holding up their phones, with their numbers typed on the keypad. They were then pointing to their phones and yelling ADD MY NUMBER so the opposing fans could Whatsapp them and they could mutually decide on a convenient time – and place – to kick the shit out of each other. It was both totally feral and totally civilized, almost like a formal invitation. (Maybe the descendant of the duels in the Old South. I just watched Jezebel and Buck Cantrell and Ted Dillard also agreed upon a time for Ted to kill Buck.) A lot of the teens were wearing Burberry scarves and tracksuits and, naturally, everyone was yelling wanker at each other every two minutes.

This weekend I’m going to watch Bugonia and I am also going to visit Sylvia Plath’s Primrose Hill house because for the first time since I was fifteen I forgot her birthday (October 27th). Plath’s birthday has always been an event for me – I once had my grandfather bake a cake so I could celebrate with my family; it was my favorite cake (yellow with chocolate frosting, the cake my grandfather used to bake me on my pre gluten free birthdays) and I read ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song’ and we sang happy birthday. I don’t think there were candles because even I think that would have been weird. Last year I had dinner with my housemates where we all ate steak and read ‘Lady Lazarus.’ So I am feeling quite guilty, especially as I have never been closer to her proximity-wise. Someone gave me blueberry-pie-filling so maybe we will bake a pie in her honor or maybe I will just read the Blue Plaque outside of her house and do some quiet thinking.

In ninth grade health class, the teacher said that she often knew when girls were troubled (I went to a girls school) because they were carrying The Bell Jar. To which I object. The Bell Jar has been my favorite book since I was thirteen because I have always been struck by how funny Esther’s voice is. To me, Plath finds humor in sadness and sadness in humor. She is the sharpest and the best and she doesn’t belong only to the sad girls. Plath for President.

Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: Assembly by Natasha Brown

Things to look up on the internet: Kaweco fountain pen; Mozart’s Requiem live; is it suspicious if websites don’t ask for your billing address

Recipe Sam cooked: this one I cooked: Alison Roman’s chickpea kale stew, in tribute

Song: ‘XO’ - Beyoncé

Mistake: stayed at breakfast too long and had to run through Charing Cross station to make my train on time

Moment: was sketching a portrait of my ballet flats and when I looked up from the lines I realized that it did, indeed, look like my shoes

Snippet I heard on the radio: the sound of smashing glass during Edith Piaf’s 1957 performance at Carnegie Hall

Smell: woodsmoke

Thing to do in London: stand on the grilles in the London Library

Even better, Burra’s art was interesting and arresting. His 1933 painting The Bullfight shows the end of a bullfight, the bull bleeding from his mouth. The matador’s outfit is brilliantly pink; the crowd is in constant movement – people drinking, talking, climbing over one another. The bull looks almost bored with his imminent death, as do the matadors in the middleground, as if they are all in agreement that this type of sport is no longer entertaining. The bull’s seeming lack of fear removes much of the spectacle. It is both weird and a little bit disturbing. So Burra had arthritis and he was a great artist. I’m sure lots of artists have arthritis but the Tate labels talked about it a lot. In an Art History class where we learned to fundamentally distrust museums, I read this line that will never leave me: the label’s agenda might not be your agenda. But in this case my agenda and the label’s agenda were perfectly synchronized.

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Later that day, we went to see Vertigo and had dinner at a pub and as we waited for the bus we kept looking at each other and saying, in our best back-of-the-throat drawls, ‘now about your hair, Judy.’ While his voice is deeper, my impersonation was better because I am an American. The pub we went to was very loud so we had a shout-y conversation about how much of a creep Jimmy Stewart’s character was and how amazing it is when you see Kim Novak in her Kansas-outfit with her Kansas-manners and her big hoop earrings. London is having a sort of Hitchcock-Fest so this weekend we’re going to see The Birds. We are members of seemingly all the cinemas in North and Central London.

This week I also thought a lot about why I never drink water. I have drunk water in my life and have at least one sip a morning while I take my anti-anxiety medication but then: nothing. I always put a full glass of water on my desk and the water level never seems to drop. My goal for the upcoming weeks is to hydrate. Sam is always drinking water. But he is a self-described ‘unproblematic king’ and I am a person who once fainted while watching a 90-minute play because the room was hot.

Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard (was thrilled to discover there are four more Cazalet Chronicles. Four!)

Things to look up on the internet: books that came out in 2023; Nutcracker December tickets under £20; chatfishing

Recipe Sam cooked: nachos

Song: ‘Being Special’ - Sophia Kennedy

Mistake: I wore my only pair of light-colored trousers which is always asking for disaster and got my period outside Westminster Abbey

Moment: a man was quoted in The Guardian as using ChatGPT to craft a post-date message; after a back-and-forth he and ChatGPT decided on the right message: ‘Hey Sarah, it was lovely to meet you’ – Sarah ghosted him anyway

Snippet I heard on the radio: classicists annoyed by use of ‘decimated’ to infer devastation as it really means reduced by 10%

Smell: Everyday Good Mood incense

Thing to do in London: have a burger at the Plimsoll if you’re not gluten free and have cabbage remoulade if you are

The day after my flu shot – feeling better than ever – Sam and I walked around central London for several hours, giving me lots of time to search for free samples. Sam’s stance on this free-sample-taking is well-documented as two years ago we asked the Guardian readership to weigh in. I’m Irene, he’s Mike:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/07/you-be-the-judge-should-my-girlfriend-stop-taking-free-samples-from-the-same-shop?CMP=share_btn_url.

The public ruled overwhelmingly in my favor; some people even determined that my free-sample-taking was a quiet takedown of capitalism. A lot of people in the comments did say that Sam should break up with me immediately but here we are, two years later, and where was our first stop when we got off the bus at Cambridge Circus? Whittard’s, to get a hot chocolate sample in a paper cup the size of a shot glass. Then I used the free hand cream from Aesop and then I went to the Diptyque store and sprayed the perfumes that I already know I like in the air, feigned delight and asked if they had any free samples. This is my one true hustle. Sam finds this one by far the most embarrassing but he came in with me and was taught how to correctly smell a candle as I grifted.

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Of all the things I am looking forward to most: Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me by Mimi Pond. I love the Mitford Sisters with the ferocity of a ninety-three-year-old British woman. I have read novels, memoirs, biographies, an 800-page book of letters. In my most recent short story, several people gave this note: maybe cut some of the Mitford references? I did cut them but it was hard because the main character was literally getting her doctorate in Diana Mitford’s letters. Needless to say, this graphic novel is the most exciting thing to happen to me since there was a graphic novel about Zelda Fitzgerald. I am waiting patiently for one about Octavia Butler.

I love writers writing about writing. I like that they often set – and achieve – goals that seem totally insane to other people (Louisa May Alcott wrote that she could finish the second half of Little Women in a month; Evelyn Waugh wrote Vile Bodies by writing 3,000 words a day and ‘not[ing] with surprise what happened’). I also like how angry the writers often are – at others and at themselves. I would really really like to write a graphic novel writer-biography but I can’t really draw. A couple of years ago I wanted to start a comic strip and asked Sam to draw the pictures for me but we could never agree on what the punchline was, his being actual punchlines and mine being quiet ruminations on the tedium of daily life. So I tried drawing a comic strip myself and saw no real future in it:

Now here is Sam’s cartoon of my family dog sitting down to a meal of the squirrel she brutally ripped to shreds in front of us the first time he came to my house in Los Angeles:

Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: Amphigorey by Edward Gorey

Things to look up on the internet: Vertigo Sea; Sister Jane dresses; Hildegard of Bingen

Recipe Sam cooked: Madhur Jaffrey’s lemony lamb

Song: ‘Má Vlast, JB1:112:2. Vltava’ – Bedřich Smetana, Czech Philharmonic, Jiří Bělohlávek

Mistake: in yin yoga I thought I would show-off my flexibility and not use a bolster for pigeon pose and was therefore uncomfortable while everyone else looked totally blissful

Moment: while I was watching University Challenge, I knew the answer to a question was Henry Purcell. The contestants got it wrong

Snippet I heard on the radio: early movies about artists depicted them as people with problems who paint; instead of people who paint who have problems

Smell: the Indian restaurant at the end of my street

Thing to do in London: get a chocolate chai with whipped cream from Nook

Mom: Paris looks so dirty.

Older son: it’s a big city.

Mom: there’s so much trash.

Younger son: it’s like London.

Mom: I don’t like looking at the graffiti.

Older son: then shut your eyes.

I wish I could have seen what the rest of their trip to Paris was like. Mine was wonderful.

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While I was gone Sam turned twenty-eight and drove to Brussels with his friends/lads. I felt incredibly guilty about missing his birthday but needed to be in Paris – for family reasons – and he did not seem to care even a little bit. I also missed his last birthday because I was in school in London and he was in school in Norwich. The birthday before that we went out to dinner and ordered skate and I became convinced I had swallowed a bone and was going to die so we ate the rest of our meal quickly so I could have the dignity of dying at home.

The other thing that happened this week is Sam started the second year of his Architecture MA. It was a big week for him and I was in Paris the whole time, walking slowly down the street and staring at dogs on the metro. I think the metro is infinitely better than the tube because there are often barriers between the platform and the tracks so you don’t need to worry as much about being pushed in front of a train. But there aren’t nearly enough seats.

My favorite thing to do in all of Paris is to go and look at Saint Sulpice. About twelve years ago I walked by it and thought I saw the figures in the stained glass window move and obviously they didn’t, as I am too much of an atheist to witness a Miracle, but that didn’t stop it from being exciting. When I went to see the church four years later, one of the towers appeared to be collapsing and that stayed with me too. It has always felt, to me, just a little bit strange. I also like how severe it is and how unimportant it makes you feel and how it is a little bit scary. So I obviously visited Saint Sulpice this trip and stood there and thought: wow.

The other building that inspires similar feelings in me is Norwich Cathedral because there is medieval graffiti – yes, from 1019 – and an organ that gets ‘voiced,’ meaning they play chords really loudly over and over. It is basically empty most of the time and there is a tombstone with a skeleton on it and a poem that ends: as I am so that you will be. The reason I am so interested in churches and cathedrals is because I took a lot of Gothic art history classes in college and pitched my thesis as: how cathedrals were Disneyland for the peasants (an attempt to strip them of all their money while purporting to be the only place that could offer them salvation). This essay topic was not approved by my professor.

My second favorite place in Paris is Au Plat d’Étain, a shop that sells painted lead miniatures and is conveniently one minute from Saint Sulpice. Au Plat d’Étain opened in 1775 and sells tiny figurines from every war that France has ever fought in; they also have a truly impressive array of cyclists and circus figures.

Whenever I recommend Au Plat d’Étain to people, I always warn them that, while visiting, there’s a likely chance that you will see something culturally insensitive. But as someone pointed out: it’s French and has been around since 1775 – cultural insensitivity is the least you can expect. I bought myself a half-naked lady dancing with a snake. I bought Sam a circus-dog holding a roast chicken on a tray. Sam hasn’t been to Paris since he was twelve and I am hoping that we can go back for Christmas so he can see the culturally insensitive miniatures for himself.

Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: the first half – because that’s how much I’ve read – of The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard because it delves deeply into some of my favorite topics: being with your cousins; laughing with your cousins; avoiding your cousins

Things to look up on the internet: Scottish folk songs; Deyrolle alcoholism poster; Titanic conspiracy theories

Recipe Sam cooked: halloumi and cauliflower curry from Mob Kitchen

Song: ‘St. James Infirmary (Gambler’s Blues)’ – Louis Armstrong

Mistake: on a work Zoom someone said ‘I like your haircut’ and for some reason I touched my hair and said ‘thank you’ even though I hadn’t gotten a haircut and he was talking to someone who very clearly had

Moment: my nine-year-old cousin turned to me with total seriousness while we were having a snack at Pret and said, ‘can I ask you something I’ve been really wondering about?’ and I said yes, always, and prepared to answer a difficult question about life or death or sex and she said, ‘so…does rural mean the country or the city?’

Snippet I heard on the radio: chefs prefer ‘little tree’ broccoli over tenderstem broccoli, ending a long-standing debate between me and Sam (I am team Little Tree)

Smell: the vanilla creampuff from Copains, arguably the best gluten free bakery in the world

Thing to do in Paris: stand in a state of mild shock in front of Saint Sulpice or stand mutely in a doorway as an old lady shouts ‘IL FAUT COUPER L’EAU’ at you

Sam and I got married at Islington Town Hall and he wore a tan suit, channeling John Lennon on his wedding day, and I wore a short yellow dress – with borderline insane puffy sleeves, a high neckline, gold and blue brocade – and blue tights. I looked like Henry VIII.

Sam said I looked like a decadent squire and then we pledged to love each other forever. We both agree that being married is incredibly cringe and neither of us knows how to talk about it to other people. I was on the phone with him in August and someone asked who he was talking to and he said, ‘I’m on the phone with…I’m talking to…it’s my…I’m talking to…my wife.’ When talking about him I mostly just say ‘Sam’ and if the person doesn’t know me, I trust they can figure it out. I wear a ring but he didn’t give it to me; I think it was my grandma’s and Sam noticed a week after I put it on. ‘Are you wearing a ring because we got married? That’s so cute.’ Now we live together in a studio where you can see the other person at all times and Sam is sending away for his first credit card and I am trying to understand how to make a tax account.

The big news of this week – and month and year – is that I got my spousal visa, which means I am allowed to stay in the UK until 2028, which means the cringiness of being married is totally worth it. Sam did a really beautiful job compiling our visa paperwork because he said my computer skills gave him the ick. Now that I know I don’t have to go back to Los Angeles at the end of this month, I am letting myself make plans for the future and Sam and I are figuring out what comes next. The first item on the list is: a painting day. I have decided to paint a still life of my red, Camper ballet flats. Sam is an excellent artist and his latest watercolor is a perverse take on Rear Window, painted from Jimmy Stewart’s perspective, looking at the apartment complex. There is a man reaching for a pie in a windowsill, his buttcrack exposed, and a cat shitting in a windowbox. There are rats, beer bottles and acrid green cigarette smoke everywhere. The best part of the piece is the tiny painting within the painting of a penis, framed in the background of an old woman’s apartment. Sam says his depiction is closer to real life than the movie is.

The second item on my list is to join the London Library. Because I am under twenty-nine I get a membership for half the price and my friends have told me I will love it because I won’t have to take my laptop when I go to the loo.

Last week the tube workers were on strike for four days so I had to get the bus to work; it took ninety minutes, approximately forty-five minutes more than it should because of strike-induced traffic, but during this time I learned I love the bus. I stopped listening to the audiobook I was listening to (Deborah Mitford’s memoir) and instead just enjoyed being amongst all the commuters. I normally work from home so I felt like I was really part of something and I loved the plaid seats. Plus, the bus was warm and someone was always speaking sharply to someone else about how there wasn’t enough room for someone with a pram to get on. English people speaking sharply to each other is a wonderful thing. It is even better when they begin to yell at each other (as long as their anger is NOT directed at you). At a football game, Sam and I once sat in front of a ten-year-old boy who insistently yelled ‘pedo’ at a random man in the next stand the entire time. I told my mother that calling someone ‘pedo’ is the go-to-swear but Sam said, if he were to shout at someone in the street, he would start with ‘nobhead.’ Then, to escalate: wrong’un; bellend; bastard; wanker; nonce; then pedo; and, if you want to maybe be punched in the face at the pub, cunt. Nobody called anybody on the bus a pedo, which is just as well because it was 7.30am.

When I got to Charing Cross, I had to run for my train and then send apologetic emails about how I was going to be very late. I am working as a research/archival assistant and was on my way to the Metropolitan Police Museum where I learned how to murder someone in a free-standing bathtub, which is not as hard as you think if you have the guts. I also saw how the robbers in the Great Train Robbery were caught: fingerprints on ketchup bottles and Monopoly money. After another charming ninety minute bus ride home, I got back to my house and Sam and I went to our local pub – incidentally the site of a MURDER committed by the last woman in England to be hanged, a fact I shared readily with the Met Police curators. I thought pints on Monday were £3.50 – they were not but we ate chips and played Scrabble anyway. I won.

Here is my round-up of the best of the week:

Book: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend

Things to look up on the internet: Afghan war rugs; The Cholmondeley Ladies; Genesis verses about god being vengeful

Recipe Sam cooked: cheesy stovetop mac with sausage and kale from the New York Times

Song: ‘Pretty Saro’ – Bob Dylan

Mistake: injecting my immunosuppressant (which I inject weekly and always to ‘Greatest Day feat. Calum Scott’ by Take That) while I had a cold, which means I still have a cold and now I also have a cough

Moment: Patricia Lockwood kneeling as if to play air-guitar and yelling THANK YOU LONDON at a London Review of Books talk

Snippet I heard on the radio: many Brits live in fear of their children going to Australia, falling in love and never coming back – parents called in crying

Smell: Sam frying pancetta for a dinner omelette

Thing to do in London: get the 24 bus