Category Archives: life

fashion, food, life

i can’t help but wonder where i’m bound.

Another blog so soon? I know. A few things that couldn’t wait:

L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele opens in London tomorrow. Better still, it opens in Stoke Newington’s Church Street – aka just up the road from us. I don’t care how long the queue is: I’m queuing. When we visited Naples (May 2015), I insisted that we passed the original every day to sample the kind of street-side arancini I cannot do justice in words. That I might taste that taste again – heavenly, heavenly.

Alain de Botton’s My Writing Day in the Guardian. When a piece of writing resonates so hard you just have to shout about it. It can be the greatest freedom, sometimes, to have to repress some of what you are. I sit quietly for hours. I’ll have a sandwich at the desk. I can’t sink into despair, scream or act all poetic: other people are watching. At the office, there’s a chance to edit yourself, thankfully. That’s why I go there.

My Acne Canada scarf. Let’s face it: I’ve been eyeing it up forever – plus, I start a new job in March and you know what they say: new job, new scarf. Plus, #investmentpiece. Plus, THE PACKAGING, THOUGH. So many heart-eyes.

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life

do what other people do – on sunday morning.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Four months, I see. Things have happened in that time – as things are wont to do – but, of course, it needed a quick phone-scroll to tell me what those things were. Turns out they’re both the usuals (birthdays and weddings and Glastonbury and Edinburgh) – and, as good fortune would have it, the unusuals (Lyon via Paris and Radiohead and Slovenia and I’m going to be auntie – auntie logsy! World’s-most-excited-auntie badge in the post!). And, so as to keep on that latter theme of the extraordinary, it’s to New York we go in two weeks, to call a warehouse in Brooklyn home for a few days. Oh – and I almost forgot – it’s September 2016, which means the 30ths are good to go. Oh, we do have some fun.

    

    

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The Cathedral bell, tolled, could never tell;
nor the Liver Birds, mute in their stone spell;
nor the Mersey, though seagulls wailed, cursed, overhead,
in no language for the slandered dead…
not the raw, red throat of the Kop, keening,
or the cops’ words, censored of meaning;
not the clock, slow handclapping the coroner’s deadline,
or the memo to Thatcher, or the tabloid headline…
but fathers told of their daughters; the names of sons
on the lips of their mothers like prayers; lost ones
honoured for bitter years by orphan, cousin, wife –
not a matter of football, but of life.
Over this great city, light after long dark;
Truth, the sweet silver song of the lark.

Liverpool – Carol Ann Duffy

life, literature
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life, travel

this love of life makes me weak at the knees.

We stayed at the Town Hall Hotel last week – partly for a birthday and partly just because. It’s an original Edwardian town hall turned hotel in Bethnal Green, so it was, of course, non-stop swooning. Ours was the Feature Suite, which turned out to be code for a very fancy bedroom door and oodles of character within. I even went for an uncharacteristic dip in the hotel pool. Our stay also meant a drink at the Peg & Patriot and dinner in The Corner Room, where my food was off-the-scale tasty – though I must admit the absence of side options left me hankering for a potato in any of its guises. Sadly we gave the incredible-looking Typing Room a miss – because they only offer a tasting menu [and have you met me and risk]. We also went for a couple in the very nearby Mother Kelly’s Tap Room [before dinner] [and after dinner]. I loved it all. Bethnal Green, you don’t half scrub up well.

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life, photography

find a feeling that feels okay – find another to blow it away

Told you time is disappearing fast, didn’t I? I’m working hard, hatching plans, soaking up the city. Here’s London, as captured by me, in the last few weeks. Featuring [if only by proxy] Mauritian street food at the Tottenham Green Market, The Coral at the Kentish Town Forum, Daniel Kitson ‘blathering on’ (his words) at the Battersea Art Centre, me at home (judging wine by the cover) – and, of course, Euston/the Thames looking nothing less than sublime.

  

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life

you expose the film in me – we’re drawing rings around the world.

Time is passing terrifyingly quickly. I’m one who avoids clichéd conversation about the effects of daylight saving or the fact that it’s windy out, but I just can’t help falling for the old adage that time passes more quickly as you get older – because it does. I blinked and missed January; my February is already spoken for; my 2016 is filling up fast. All I can do is make sure I’m soaking up the good stuff. Good food, people, places and books. On which note, I’m currently reading Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale For The Time Being (obsessed), we’re off to Berlin next week (third time lucky), and we can’t stay away from Tottenham’s Chicken Town (no, really – can’t stay away). Hopefully I’ll catch you again before February’s out.

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Now that I’m safely ensconced in a new year – read: have rediscovered how to work, use the tube and live without six helpings of cheese a day – I think I’m ready for a moment of reflection. There I was, busy thinking 2015 had passed by pretty unremarkably, until I watched one of those year in review things on the telly (right in the thick of my festive laze) and came abruptly to my senses. It was right then that I looked back more mindfully, considering each month in turn, and realised that, actually, 2015 was filled from top to bottom and side to side with all the richness of life.

When we left London, we left it for Copenhagen, Naples and Paris. From Naples, we had the privilege of visiting Pompeii. In the summer, we went to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Festival No.6 in Portmeirion and, of course, indulged in those precious few days at Glastonbury in Somerset. (Scotland, Wales, England – you don’t half put on a good show.) Throughout the year we ate some sensational food in sensational places. We laughed at comedy, cried at stops-you-in-your-tracks theatre and – well, I lost count of all the gigs. Some highlights, off the top of my head: Joanna Newsom at the Salle Gaveau, Blur at the Wolverhampton Arts Centre, David Gilmour at the Royal Albert Hall, King Creosote at the Barbican, Mavis Staples on The Park stage at Glastonbury and Gaz Coombes in the Town Hall Sessions at Festival No.6 (and that’s not to mention The Who, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan & His Band, Morrissey, The Libertines, Patti Smith, The Staves) (and so many more).

And, as is life’s wont, the year brought with it sadness and grief too. Sometimes, we even found ourselves feeling totally disillusioned with the world. But there was also a beautiful baby, who arrived in our lives and altered so many futures – just like that. We were able to make our home even more of a home. Then there was that elated day when I watched one of my oldest, dearest friends marry the love of her life. While the extraordinary may have escaped me directly, life – extraordinary, detailed, fabulous life – certainly didn’t. And if 2016 is half as full as that? I’ll be a lucky girl.

               

life

you promised me a feeling – something to believe in.

Gallery
food, life, music

i have what i need – and sometimes the wind.

Though I love London – and ardently – sometimes I feel like I’m getting it all wrong. Sometimes we’ll wonder where to go for dinner – and minutes, hours, or even days after that, we’ll still be stumped. I deliberate on decisions like this so much precisely because I don’t want to get them wrong. I have a list longer than I could show you with my hands of places I want to go, but in that moment, none of them ever seem to quite fit. Too far away, too busy, too expensive, too niche, too deep-fried. He wants bao buns, I want mac’n’cheese. Sometimes we’ll go somewhere off-list and it’ll be brilliant and after revelling in that for a while, I’ll feel despondent and defeated because it wasn’t on my list at all and how many other brilliant places are there that haven’t made it onto my list, that I might never uncover?

And that’s just the food. The same goes for the music, the art, the comedy, the views. Our city couldn’t be richer in it all and it’s exactly that which makes me feel, all too often, like I’m getting it wrong, looking the wrong way, missing a trick. But every now and then there are the long Sunday afternoons in the pub, where the lights are just right and the rioja just flows. When you step out into the cold to catch a gig and you’re so glad you did. When you glimpse a view by chance and you feel privileged to have done so. And so, below are some of the times we’ve got it right, in this order: Elvis Perkins at Dalston Victora | Sunday afternoons at the The Red Lion, Leytonstone | This Is The Kit at the Scala | reflections on the River Lea | Sunday roasts at the Hackney Plough, Homerton | John Grant at Eventim Apollo.

   

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life, travel

there are places i remember, all my life.

Last Monday, we were in Paris. We walked along the river, lit candles in Notre-Dame and lunched at Holybelly – a few steps away from the Canal Saint-Martin and moments away from a future tragedy. Then we caught the train home. Cut to this Monday, and we’re starting the week a little sadder. Feeling connected, but disconnected; weak, but strong; despondent, but proud. I took the photograph below this time last week on the Rue Lucien Sampaix. I like to think it speaks – in its own little way – of beauty, community, tradition, love and unending hope.

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