Tuesday 30 June 2009

• Recounting a ridiculous and wierd conversation in real time, via gmail chat.
• Cat out of the bag - and a stamp of approval.
• A lovely Soho evening - drinking in the street; eating falafel in the square, serenaded by a gaggle on a piano; an ArtAngel opening in a beautifully shabby building featuring white wine and nudity; a French Resistance pub and then a hidden late night den of iniquity. Topped off by hula hoops on the bus home. Perfect.
• Hedgery, tamed. I no longer have to commando crawl up the garden path to get home.
• A look of appreciation as I slid, half awake, from between the sheets.

Monday 29 June 2009

• Meandering at lunchtime with a couple of amigos, ice lollies in hand.
• A dried allium head on the road - skeletal and seventies-hued.
• The third in a series of bookish connections. A surprising connoisseur of Albert and The Lion revealed himself. Previous episodes involved the Reader's Digest Book of Strange Stories and Amazing Facts (1975 edition, with end papers by Jan Pienkowski), and Brewers Phrase and Fable.
• A long, late dinner in the garden with Holly and AB, lit by tealights. Relatedly - I made my first ever paella. A triumph.
• Washing the day away before bed.

Sunday 28 June 2009

• Sitting at my desk - novel in itself - next to the wide open window, looking out at a sky and skyline that could be an illustration in a children's picture book.
• Paper tulips.
• A candle that smells so familiar, yet I can't quite put my finger on it. It's a scent from being 14 at an all girls school - a make up, or perfume, or an Impulse bodyspray or something.
• A clear waterproof plaster. I feel almost as grown up as when I have stamps in my wallet when I have plasters to hand.
• Stacking my version of tschotkes on top of picture frames - artists badges, tailor's chalk, perfect pebbles, a candle and a magnetic marble.

Saturday 27 June 2009

• Do Re Me... made me grin from ear to ear.
• That same old 10pm impetus to work. Every time.
• Thunder and lightening and hail and rain. I popped out, just to be in the rain, and the water was running up to my ankles, with each raindrop or hail stone making the water splash to knee height.
• A quiet flat with every single window wide open.
• Waitrose peanut butter - better than Sunpat. Who'd have known?

Friday 26 June 2009

• Albert and the Lion - recited in broad accents inside my head.
• A useful MA meeting.
• Walking through town with different companions at different times.
• A slow start to the morning, tangled limbs in half-wakefulness, punctuated by the incessant beeping of alarms.
• Catching an eye as gossip was bandied about. Also, a well-timed pinch to the initiator of the conversation. Muppet.

Thursday 25 June 2009

• We love you so
• Quiet, so quiet - walking through Northampton Square and up towards Angel.
• The view up Holloway Road, all the way to Hampstead Heath (I think), from the top of a bus. Never fails, no matter what time of year, to make me grin.
• Summer drinks with Ross Head.
• A few minutes sitting on a flight of stairs before beginning my day, with a coffee at the perfect temperature and yesterday's paper.

Wednesday 24 June 2009

• A bus journey at dusk through East London. The buildings were glowing.
• Not only starting my day in an educational way (ha! got to love a double meaning), but being able to articulately recount the salient details. Brownie points.
• Googling images of sheep. Laughing slightly helplessly at my inappropriate, puerile and repeated use of 'sheeps'.
• Freesias on a whim.
• Taking the time to provide an ear to listen.

Tuesday 23 June 2009

• A lone balloon, floating eerily at shoulder height in the middle of the road, in the dark, soundtracked by Leonard Cohen's lugubrious tones.
• A wave from a fireman - spied through a small window - dressed in day-glo, running on a treadmill to blaring techno, in the middle of Chinatown. Hysteria set in after we realise he wasn't running in a restaurant kitchen but the back of a fire station.
• Sharing two of my favourite things: paperwrapped prawns and Le Beaujolais.
• I asked Hank Williams how lonely does it get? Hank Williams hasn't answered yet.
• Sunshine on a street corner.

Monday 22 June 2009

• A hotwater bottle, despite the climate.
• A couple of drinks with colleagues after a twelve hour day in the office.
• A professional victory - my argument and associated paper won the battle.
• An old dress repaired and reworn - it's nice to have it back in circulation.
• Scraping myself off the sofa and avoiding the traditional route of passing out in an exhausted hayfevery mess. It's the little victories that keep me going.

Sunday 21 June 2009

• A pair of pigeons grooming (preening?) each other on the ledge outside my kitchen window. Each submitted to the others ministrations in turn with what appeared to be patient affection.
• Word games on the front doorstep, dictionary and wine in hand. My favourite moments include knowing the meaning of comodegenic, the first word I was given, before all the syllables had been fully formed, and working out the meaning of grubstake - much to my competitor's shock.
• Being recognised by the man I buy vegetables in a bowl from with a hail of 'two lettuces!'. He was right.
• Chickpeas and aubergine and spinach in excess.
• An unexpectedly wistful farewell.

Saturday 20 June 2009

• Fixing my computer - thank god. The moment that little orange light flickered on was one of overwhelming joy, and may have elicited an overly loud 'amazing!'.
• A recipient for my hungover and affectionate state. Only gentle mocking was applied in dues.
• Russell Brand made me giggle. In fact, I'm kind of ashamed to admit this but saturday night tv made me giggle - a man dressed as a hamster, tumbling over again and again was shamefully but irresistably funny. I hate myself sometimes.
• Pasta and pesto - restorative and tasty.
• A small boy laughing and laughing and laughing at his teenaged companions' cat-calls and attempts to lure me to come and play.

Friday 19 June 2009

• Ellie giving the game away by asking me a question during a phone call to a third party, when quite clearly she was supposed to be travelling, on a bus and alone. I wept with laughter for the next twenty minutes at the spectacle of her face - aghast with realisation halfway through the query.
• A stolen afternoon in Covent Garden, pottering.
• A dutiful phone call.
• An endearingly chatty bedfellow this morning - unusually perky due to excitement about that evening's plans.
• A funny story, with physical recreations of shock and awe about a 45p book in Oxfam. Sadly, the tale did not end well.

Thursday 18 June 2009

• A middle aged man in a suit, caught in an embrace by a tall and elegant hooker - without realising what he'd got himself into. On having the photographer across the road pointed out to him by the aforementioned lady of the night he whirled around, still clasped in her arms, spotted the insalubrious doorway behind him and broke free - dashing down the street with a cry of 'I am NOT doing THAT' trailing behind him. Such merriment.
• Darth Vader, in a floral frock, on a Dutch bike.
• Meeting a variety of interesting people - culminating in Gavin the Irish poet with mad eyes and a handlebar moustache, reciting at me while I was sitting on the bonnet of somebody's car drinking a bottle of beer.
• Brandy and coffee on the front step, dissecting the night that had gone by, wrapped around a warm body and full mug to keep the chill air out.
• Belly laughs at work.

Wednesday 17 June 2009

• Photos back - sadly, not many beautiful shots.
• Learning at lunchtime.
• A satisfying start to the day.
• A doughnut, hula hoops and lucozade. Followed later by sushi. Hangover, anyone?
• A shower before bed. Clean skin, clean sheets.

Tuesday 16 June 2009

• A smile across the top of a row of desks.
• A man utterly, utterly fixated by my cleavage at dinner. The amusement provided to my companion was worth enduring his shameless stare.
• Drunken hipsters at the French House.
• Well-matched and game. A good combination.
• Impromptu drinks with unusual suspects.

Monday 15 June 2009

• A nifty duvet storage solution - on top of the mattress, under the sheets. Not dissimilar to sleeping on a slightly chunky cloud.
• An elegant dress with many bangles.
• Painting my toenails by candlelight at 2am, on the front doorstep listening to the rain pour down and the buses fly by.
• Telling stories about the aforementioned dress, namely knicker-flashing at funerals. The shame is slightly tempered by the genuine laughter the ridiculous tale provokes.
• Two lovely cards in the post.

Sunday 14 June 2009

• Bob and Roberta Smith admired my brooch. Vindication. (Sadly, or possibly for the best, I didn't tell him that the brooch is called Bob.)
• A wry grin and entertained twinkle, intended to be over my head, about my existence.
• A new bracelet - called Terence.
• Beer after beer after beer in the sunshine at the Vauxhall art carboot sale and the wider sphere of East London.
• Bumping into a whole heap of people from different moments in my past and present.

Saturday 13 June 2009

• Two bird foraging in the garden, and above my head - singing at each other, chips in mouth. A proper Holloway romance.
• Five cats in a row.
• An informative techy phonecall.
• A perfect risotto. In fact, a pretty darn good meal - salmon, asparagus, cheese, wine, port.
• An Affair to Remember for the second time in about 12 hours.

Friday 12 June 2009

• Being woken by the sound of ducks on the river right outside my window.
• A couple of hours of really good work on the train, despite a lack of air con.
• A penguin classic picked up in a Kendal charity shop - an illustrated Stern.
• A Moureze reunion - food, wine, Girls Aloud, hours at the dinner table.
• Data received!

Thursday 11 June 2009

• One Art by Elizabeth Bishop. The art of losing isn't hard to master.
• A mini bottle of wine and a very large bottle of water on the train.
• Bird foot prints in concrete.
• A mirror on the pavement, reflecting the sky like a James Turrell or a Anish Kapoor.
• Holding the hysteria together as I walked through a deathly quiet (but very pretty) Kendal alone after dark. Giggle, giggle.

Wednesday 10 June 2009

• Walking to work as usual, past all the irate commuters.
• A useful dissertation meeting.
• Another in a series of regular sushi dates with Kate.
• The pretty barman is back at Benugo.
• Walking to the Southbank from Farringdon, chattering to an old friend with some good news.

Tuesday 9 June 2009

• Dinner at the Lord Stanley. Hoorah!
• A coffee before my commute. A ritual I should rehearse more often.
• Giving the gift of fibre-tipped pens, wrapped in a ribbon.
• Mailing a surprise box of books.
• A sleepy encounter.

Monday 8 June 2009

• Reading John Grisham at 5am.
• A hoopoe on the way to the airport.
• Mini cheddars and the Leitch Review on the plane.
• A dash into town to buy a new phone, and then being back in communication with the world.
• Company later on.

Sunday 7 June 2009

• Squeezing in one last meal on the lawn, because the clouds had lifted, and the sun appeared.
• An incredible moon above the fields.
• Calf-corralling.
• A feast fit for a king.
• Walking the loop.

Saturday 6 June 2009

• A stolen couple of hours in San Cere, just being in France.
• State of Play. All of it. Fab.
• The fire blazing when we got home.
• A swallow on the telephone line, spotted as the first and last thing I saw in daylight.
• Pretty patisserie.

Friday 5 June 2009

• Citron presse and frites mayo on a terrace over looking a huge drop at Rocamadour.
• A big eagle soaring above.
• Stained glass and red votives.
• Whisky and cards into the wee hours.
• Sourcing a long-desired antique poster.

Thursday 4 June 2009

• Dangling my feet in the water of a rediscovered lake.
• Cava for breakfast.
• Dragonflies and buzzards.
• Taking Heat magazine to bed. Wonderfully awful.
• A striped ice lolly, dripping down my wrist.

Wednesday 3 June 2009

• Swallows swooping and frolicking over the pool.
• Diving into cold salty water.
• Stars above the washing line as I tipsily brought in the dried sheets.
• An airport switchover.
• The first of many many games of shithead.

Tuesday 2 June 2009

• Driving in the sunshine, windows open, Burt blaring.
• The first citron presse of the summer.
• Sitting on big stones in the river.
• Tomatoes, so many tomatoes.
• A revelatory text on a moonlit stroll.

Monday 1 June 2009

• Lying on my back in the dark on the warm pathway, staring at the stars to the strains of Top Gun.
• White wine cut with soda, taken on the lawn about an hour after arriving, upancking, cleaning and just generally sorting things out.
• Windows and doors open in the house.
• Ross and Ellie, grinning from Wetherspoons wearing each other's hats.
• A surprisingly good coffee at Tottenham Hale - bought simply because I'd spectacularly kicked the mug I'd made at home, just too late to put on another pot.