Sunday 31 May 2009

• A day in the garden, most of it in just my knickers - to the slight shock of my companion. He soon got over it.
• The perfect twister ice lolly.
• Sleeping until I woke up, and realised the horrid dreams weren't real.
• One scarf, two ways: as a blanket on sunwarmed paving; and, later, as a surprisingly chic dress.
• Adding a street-found rusted key to a long necklace.

Saturday 30 May 2009

• A jay at arms length. Such a blue.
• A toddler on the train, smiley and happy - and desperate to touch a strangers hair.
• Being gently harrassed into waking up by a body returning to bed in order to curl around me.
• A Lea Stein green terrier, called Bob. I love him muchly.
• An evening in the East: dinner in the garden, dozing on the sofa, a mug of tea in bed.

Friday 29 May 2009

• A new game. Hours of fun, making co-conspirators inveigle themselves into really, really awkward situations. Poor old AB didn't have a chance.
• A productive lunchhour in the sunshine, and a sweet encounter at university. Relatedly, a deadline met for a long-ignored and begrudged piece of work.
• Cider in the park.
• A bubble of joy lodged in my chest for the latter part of the afternoon, becoming almost overwhelming as I scooted down Farringdon Road, plotting my evening. I was positively giddy.
• Sitting on the curb in the sunshine, four in a row.

Thursday 28 May 2009

• A pretty accurate character-reading in The Book of Birthday Fortunes.
• An impromptu drink in Highbury - a glimmer of things to come.
• A piece of work finished (even though it was at 3am - punching through that midnight slump was a little grim). A deadline should therefore be met. Nothing quite like taking it right to the wire to keep me buzzing in the small hours of the morning.
• Rapid-fire email banter between offices, from the mundane to the, quite frankly, filthily surreal.
• Some very, very good news from a friend. A wedding in the North East will follow this evening's Hampstead Heath proposal.

Wednesday 27 May 2009

• My book-based tactics acknowledged and lauded.
• The more I explain it, the more I work out that it might just be what I want. I think that's a good thing.
• An academic breakthrough - a data source for my dissertation.
• A tidied desk before I left the building. Satisfying - and unusual.
• Rolling over in bed this morning and just giving into the heaviness for a little while longer.

Tuesday 26 May 2009

• A different walk home.
• A car for next week, sorted.
• A chatty phone call from an all too distant partner in crime (conducted while wrangling two iceburg lettuces, an open packet of hula hoops and - eventually - my front door keys. Sometimes, being an octopus would be a good thing.)
• New shoes! (Well, second outing, but close enough...)
• Being given a box of multivitamins. Kind of a backhanded show of affection, I feel.

Monday 25 May 2009

• A dress that makes my eyes particularly blue.
• A handmade solution to a coffee pot dilemma. There's nothing I can't do with a pair of pliers and a coathanger. (The downside? I only came to the realisation that I was in need of a solution after the full bubbling pot had fallen over. Spectacularly. Twice.)
• A fit of the giggles half way through (Hollywood voice) Star Trek: The next generation (/Hollywood voice) at the Imax. I think the combination of the scale and the inadvertent campery got me.
• Coming home to a tidy room, quiet but for the sound of the fish.
• Studying at the BFI, glass of montepulciano and pen in hand.

Sunday 24 May 2009

• A lazy morning puddling in a Hackney garden, with all the accoutrements of Sundays: coffee, papers, idle chatter, abandoned sudoku.
• A long and rambling walk with Miss Hartwell, resulting in weary limbs and pinkened skin.
• Summer - oh, summer.
• The implication of a bar of dove soap.
• Champagne and rollercoasters at midnight.

Saturday 23 May 2009

• Appropriately, this video made me grin widely in the wee hours, a year to the day after this wedding. (Fab wedding film via Mighty Girl.)
• An easy evening, curled up with a bottle of red and a warm body.
• Stratford at dusk. Beautiful.
• Ross Head in silver leggings. Monstrous or wonderful?
• Wandering through a weekend Westminster plugged into twinkly Jens Lekman.

Friday 22 May 2009

• Warm concrete on bare skin.
• Returning to civilisation (albeit in Kilburn) - dinner with relaxed company and good theatre.
• A box of photos.
• An encounter with a once-crush.
• An afternoon bath with a book, a pencil and silence in the flat.

Thursday 21 May 2009

• The fish cleaned, finally.
• Picking up a sought-after book. Why are artists poor, indeed?
• An ersatz cheese and ham toastie. Close enough.
• A double take and subsequent twinkle.
• Lime cordial.

Wednesday 20 May 2009

• A moment of perplexed silence as I walked away from a policewoman this morning. I'd stopped to say "This is the daftest thing I've said in a while, but there's a bird stuck in a fence up opposite Downing Street, and I know there's probably nothing you can do about it but I just thought I'd let you know...". Her response was "You don't mean, like, a pelican, do you?" A pelican? No. I don't mean a pelican.
• Being found just before I got lost.
• Nachos!
• Passing notes like school children.
• New underwear, with such pretty buttons.

Tuesday 19 May 2009

• Dappled sunlight across green scarves.
• A new Time Out.
• Sleeping with my window open. Cold air and warm bed.
• The solution to my hated light fitting. Long-desired and a semi-ideal compromise. Despite being in place for a few weeks, it still needs tweaking, but is close enough for the moment.
• Angel Delight (butterscotch flavour, naturally).

Monday 18 May 2009

• The mop top pulled back into a very sad stubby little pony tail - dear god, I need a haircut.
• The golden glow of evening through my bedroom window.
• A 'Cadbury Single' - the tiniest chocolate bar in the world.
• Phone calls to check I'm still alive.
• A clothes-horse covered in stripes of varying but coordinating shades and widths.

Sunday 17 May 2009

• Yellow peace lilies as the first thing I see when I wake up.
• Hibernating in my lair.
• Egregious. A good word.
• Working out that the scuttling noise during quiet moments is not in fact mice overhead, but the plastic that covers the chimney billowing.
• The curious contents of my flatmate's bookshelves, including little wonders such as Getting The Love you Want, The Dance of Intimacy, The Great Cholesterol Con and Batsford Chess Openings. Fortunately, I feel too rotten to actually pull them down and examine the contents.

Saturday 16 May 2009

• Companionably listening to Radio 4, drifting in and out of sleep, curled up close despite the lurgy.
• Dr Witt multivitamin green juice. A terrifying shade of green but surprisingly good. Purchased simply on the strength of the name.
• A text proclaiming a hoopoe sighting in Norfolk.
• Lucozade, and popcorn eaten with chopsticks.
• Blankets on the sofa.

Friday 15 May 2009

• Sleep, sweet sleep.
• A stupidly debauched night - where persistance paid off and led to new horizons.
• Laying my cards on the table.
• The view from the 5th floor function room at the Royal Festival Hall. Westminster looked like a Turner as the mist and rain set in.
• A small brown bird tapping on my window, perched in the ivy around the windowframe.

Thursday 14 May 2009

• People are so nice when you walk through London after dark clutching a bunch of flowers taller, wider and more yellow than one's self.
• Another prize signed, sealed and delivered without a hitch. Hoorah!
• The moment, at about 2.30am, that despite the insomnia, I realised I felt as healthy and perky as I had all day. (It was but a fleeting moment, sadly.)
• Watching a very tiny green caterpillar inch its way up a man's coat. I may have inadvertently transferred it there from the aforementioned forest of rescued flowers.
• That tinny little sound? Coming from somewhere in my bag? Wasn't just yet another symptom of comms flu, but my ipod singing Dancing in the Street at me - my ipod which I hadn't left on my desk. Happy days.

Wednesday 13 May 2009

• The moment at which, having returned to work at 7.30pm exhausted and flu ridden, I discovered that, contrary to appearances, I hadn't lost my phone. Phew.
• A jacket potato lunch.
• Long, hot shower leading to clean, soft and shiny hair - then curling up between crisp clean sheets.
• A six minute proper meal when I got home.
• Tracking down Let the Right One In on my bookshelves at work - I knew I had it somewhere.

Tuesday 12 May 2009

• A small, polite and pretty 'Thank you' written in red and white chalked copperplate on a pavement slab in Trafalgar Square.
• Beethoven and Bach at the Wigmore Hall.
• A parcel in the post - with what looks like a fab book and a long-desired piece of art.
• Broccoli and noodles slurped from a big blue bowl.
• A warm breeze in St James' Park.

Monday 11 May 2009

• A besuited man, staggering under the weight of a box labelled 'Out of Control'.
• A perfectly ripe pear.
• Just about getting home.
• Long skinny shadows that make my legs look a million metres tall.
• Hoping that Ellie might live less than a finger width away.

Sunday 10 May 2009

• A productive couple of hours in the Hollywood Cafe across the road, where the coffee was flowing and the wifi was an unexpected bonus.
• Getting enough work done to justify heading out to see the Le Corbusier at the Barbican (and stopping at the library on the way - am v good).
• A beautiful film.
• Halloumi.
• Walking in widdershins around a plant pot in my overgrown front garden while on the phone.

Saturday 9 May 2009

• A heron stalking along the side of a silent and dark Camden canal, as all the hipsters bowled along on the bridge above.
• New red lipstick.
• The view from the library (observed while gulping an entirely illicit coffee, smuggled in wrapped in my scarf. (cunning and elementary - as evidenced by the security guard asking me if that was a coffee I was clutching. I said no. I lied.))
• Reciprocal friend crushes.
• A blue dress.

Friday 8 May 2009

• A monkey shoulder moment.
• Sun on the rooftops as I leave the office.
• Giving into sleep on the sofa (though I realised this was a bad decision in retrospect, when at 3am I woke up, apparently for the day. Two hours of sleep is NOT ENOUGH).
• Plotting tactics for someone else's date.
• Last summer's skirt, reinvigorated. Gok would be proud.

Thursday 7 May 2009

• A helicopter fly-by - sixteen big helicopters in a row!
• The discovery that it is possible to buy, in the Bloomsbury Waitrose, an ostrich egg to cook and eat . Incredible.
• The quotes at the bottom of Alex's emails. Today: "In my opinion it's a shame that there is so much work in the world. One of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours a day - all you can do for eight hours a day is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy." William Faulkner (The Paris Interviews)
• A big bowl of asian-esque salad.
• Doug Ross and Carol Hathaway. Hee!

Wednesday 6 May 2009

• The indulgence of taking time on the way home from the station for a very early breakfast in a cafe, with tea in a proper brown betty.
• A perfect evening, with a skyline view, a glut of sushi, a soho haunt and easy company.
• Sun-warmed leather across my shoulders.
• Red tulips on my green bookcase.
• "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled." Repetition is always funny. I laughed out loud as I walked past Spearmint Rhino and associated very large bouncers. Smooth.

Tuesday 5 May 2009

• The view across London from Holly's balcony, lit by evening sunlight and traced by the strains of music sung above.
• A squeezebox!
• Condensed milk, boiled in the can - readymade by Nestle. An inspired touch of added value.
• Room and self clean and tidy, both soon sullied.
• Parlant en francais sur l'internet, sans aucune raison.

Monday 4 May 2009

• Writing on a large sheet of brown paper with a multitude of coloured pens.
• Delicious (but hideously ugly) lentils, with spices and mint and vinegar.
• A long and steaming hot shower with Radio Four blaring (all about phonetics) and a new bar of Dove. Simple pleasures, indeed.
• A large magpie in amongst the pink blossom of a tree above Parkhurst Road.
• The smell of rain on warm concrete.

Sunday 3 Mary 2009

• Watching the journey fly on the journey between London and Luton.
• Polenta in three different forms, at two different times.
• A dream that coloured the rest of my day.
• Carnival after dark.
• A terrible, terrible but much needed cup of coffee from a machine at the train station. Despite the grim taste, the warmth of the cup resting on my knee as I clutched it in two hands was sustenance enough.

Saturday 2 May 2009

• An epic walk of shame in glorious sunshine.
• Butterflies in Hackney.
• Light glowing through the stained glass in my flat.
• Chickpeas and aubergine and spices and lettuce - another successful scavenged meal.
• The smell of clean washing drying.

Friday 1 May 2009

• Listening to Oasis far too loudly at 4am in a candlelit kitchen.
• Flurries of cherry blossom.
• An impromptu evening in the pub, with unusual suspects.
• Clips from Channel 4's Big Art Project.
• Pizza at lunchtime.