In the Circle

After six weeks with me in Stoke Newington, Maud the Cat has...

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:00:12 +0100

After six weeks with me in Stoke Newington, Maud the Cat has gone to her new home in Tufnell Park. Bye little furry monster. I have become accustomed to your face x

Reading List, Big Thing editionHello, I am happy. It’s a...

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:25:00 +0100

Reading List, Big Thing edition

Hello, I am happy. It’s a little weird to say that but also, pretty cool. I’m not sure what happens next, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed it will be fun. I mean, why not.

Some good things: London, all of it. Invitations to friends’ weddings; amazingly none of my friends are married yet so this is a first. The cinema, where I go just twice a year but then love it. That salted caramel ice cream cake thing at Hawksmoor, where for a moment I understood why some people claim foods are better than sex (but just for a moment). Stoke Newington, my London pocket. Science fiction. Thai food. Karima. Tara. Magni, my mother. The almost-summer feeling. The man who calls me Girlfriend and makes me blush.

[image]

“The writer has to negotiate with her memories, and with her reader, and find a way, without interrupting the flow, to caution that this cannot be a true record: this is a version, seen from a single viewpoint. But she has to make it as true as she can.” Hilary Mantel in the New York Times. (via @dailydoseofjess)

“But I didn’t ever have to go to an office, didn’t ever have to commute during rush hour, didn’t ever have to go to a meeting, and never had to buy or wear any article of clothing because it would be good “for work.” As my remnants of workwear wore out, my wardrobe devolved in a cotton-lycra blend-y direction. I got really good at creating elaborate procrastination regimens, taking advantage of my ability to do chores and errands on weekdays that office workers can only squeeze into their weekends and lunch hours. It took me several years – really, it took starting a business — for me to figure out that this attitude is anathema to getting any kind of work done; even if you don’t have a 9 to 5 job, it behooves you to be at your desk during those hours, even if it means taking more-crowded yoga classes.” Emily Gould, on the thing that seems to be turning into my Big Thing for 2013.

I can’t put my finger on why I love this Eva Wiseman piece but oh my how I do.

Christian Lorentzen on expatriatism, in the London Review of Books. (via @communitydisco)

Mills Baker on a triumph at 4am.

Amanda Hess on Angelina Jolie’s preventative mastectomy, in Slate. [Related: what is possible the most offensive Daily Hate Mail headline yet. I can’t even.]

Daft Punk spoke to Lauren Laverne on BBC 6 Music, and I listened to the radio in my own house for the first time in my life. Also, Caitlin’s ‘Get Lucky’ addiction diary (£). Song of the year, guys.

” “No. Because…” he chooses his words carefully, “my parents loved the f***ing life out of me. So I felt confident about the world. Not… entitled. Just like… I could step into the world. Investigate it.” ”
Caitlin Moran meets Benedict Cumberbatch (£) and yeah, she smashes it.

“You know what I need to do though? Put the phone down and ask myself who in the whole wide world is supposed to take responsibility for what I write if I won’t do it myself. … You have to stop walking around like a giant fucking question mark. You have to stop looking for reassurance from half-interested friends, and you have to stop asking other people to help you shape your work from start to finish. Calm the fuck down and get back to work.” Realtalk from Heather Havrilesky in The Awl. Oh, um, yeah. Ok.

Star Trek: Into Darkness has left my inner Trekkie squealingly...

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:16:00 +0100

Star Trek: Into Darkness has left my inner Trekkie squealingly ecstatic and that’s all I have to say about it. Oh except this: Benedict Cumberbatch. All bow to the Altar of Roddenberry.

Really getting into this Instagram thing. Something about the...

Sat, 11 May 2013 18:07:00 +0100

Really getting into this Instagram thing. Something about the fun of photos? Or just me, drunk in a pub. I fear it’s feeding into a narcissistic streak, as I do like being in the picture, equally surprised at what I look like every single time. But at least it’s contained, and it’s my own damn personal internet so I do what I want. And fun is being had, so I say, it’s all good x

The spring and chilli. (A recipe) I have the Daft Punk single on...

Tue, 07 May 2013 15:51:00 +0100

The spring and chilli. (A recipe)

I have the Daft Punk single on repeat, like everyone else it seems, as it’s the sound of summer and it makes the blood rush a little faster. I’m all for that. I made a proper meal the other day too, as I like to do about once a quarter, which meant chopping up some chillies and getting the stinging chilli spirits all over my hands, inside my nose, and then later, even though I’d washed my hands twice, somewhere else where you really don’t want to get chilli. But the food - a spicy salmon soup which I believe stems from some newspaper weekend supplement from my press cutting days, is a winner, and Imran agrees with me. It goes like this:

Fry up an inch of ginger, two garlic cloves and two chillies. Then add two pints of stock, three tablespoons fish sauce, one tablespoon soy sauce, the juice of one lime and a teaspoon of sugar. Optional: add a split lemon grass stalk and fish it out at the end. Let it simmer for ten minutes. Then add four spring onions, some pepper and courgette, along with 250 grams of salmon, all chunky. Five minutes later it will be ready to serve up in steaming hot bowls that will make your nose run.

And then you can play ‘Get Lucky’ again and feel happy, because that song will do that to you. Like Pharrell sings: “We’ve come too far to give up who we are / So let’s raise the bar and our cups to the stars.” Chilli high five. I mean, was there ever a song more deserving of a rooptop to make out on? I think not.

Reading List, In-the-Circle edition May happened. Among other...

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:36:00 +0100

Reading List, In-the-Circle edition

May happened. Among other things. … Heh! I can’t explain and I won’t even try, so for now at least, here are some other people’s stories.

“I went to Homer, Alaska during breakup season, the time of year when the ice splits apart and things start to thaw. Breakup season, people warned me again and again prior to my arrival, is ugly. Sometimes it snows, sometimes it rains, but it’s always wet. Breakup season is all brown and gray in a state that’s usually crisp whites and blues and greens. But everyone, it turns out, is kind of excited about breakup season. They don’t compare the muddy thaw to summer, which is by then a distant memory, but to the winter they’ve just weathered. “Boy, it was a long one,” said the coffee shop owner from Corpus Christi who had a smoker’s rasp and stick-and-poke hand tats and a single diamond stud in his ear. “So breakup season ain’t so bad.” Ann Friedman

The prettiest girl in New York is a porn star. Amanda Hess’s cover story on Stoya.

What should we call girl pain? Safy Hallan Farah (via @britticisms)

How to ditch happily ever after and build your own romantic narrative. Amanda Hess from the ‘Good’ archives. #this

“I allowed [the photographer] to get to me because I was already over scheduled. Tired. Doubting my ability to juggle everything and doubting how much of the positive feedback on my aerial work and writing is because I’m actually good and how much is just because I’m naked on the internet. Wondering how much of my success in life is based on merit and how much is just beauty privilege. Unable to figure out how to even discuss these concerns without coming off like an egotistical asshat for calling myself pretty or beautiful in the first place.” Stoya on (not) standing up for herself. #AndSheWasWithholdingCaffeine

“Stability, intellectual peer and monster sex machine.” Robert Downey Jr describes his wife and yes (£).

Everything Caitlin says in this Evening Standard interview.

“Men I might regret sleeping with were it not for the music they introduced me to.” Lily Heron in The Hairpin.

Daily Fleetwood: Stevie Nicks’ original demo for The Chain - completely different than the final version, and mesmerising.

“What do you want to do when you get back on the internet?” “I want to do things for other people.” Paul Miller is back after a year without the internet (via @dailydoseofjess) #reallife

“What if news organizations confronted the reality that nearly all media will be ‘social media’ a decade hence? … What if news organizations acknowledged this - or even got out in front of it, ahead of the curve this time - and organized themselves as platforms for talent?” Big whoa idea by Nicco Mele and John Wibhey at Nieman Journalism Lab.

“It was 1968. Early summer evening, a Saturday. My mate and I were hitching home in the Essex countryside. We got a lift from a happy couple in a boaty car that smelled of leather and engine oil. We were 15, they were proper old, 20-ish. Relaxed and so very much in love. They treated us as equals, laughed at our jokes, we smoked their cigarettes. Walk Away Renee by the Four Tops came on the radio. We all sang along to the chorus. I felt a blissful certainty that life as an adult might genuinely be a laugh. The entire encounter lasted no more than 10 minutes. I have thought about that couple every day since. Every day, for 45 years. Imagine that. A Belisha Beacon of kindness pulsing through the murk of a whole life.” Ian Martin in The Guardian.

“I can’t say in all honesty that it’s as if it was written by somebody else, but it was written by a different version of myself, and in a way, it’s more radical, because the selves we leave behind are more strange to us than strangers.” John Banville.

Fog city heart; Big SmokeMaybe it’s the cool and windy...

Thu, 02 May 2013 21:08:00 +0100

Fog city heart; Big Smoke

Maybe it’s the cool and windy sun, maybe it’s the communal excitement of a city full of people finally feeling the spring, but London feels a lot like San Francisco right now. This time last year, tomorrow to be exact, I left for a month by the bay, a trip that changed everything for me and all those other cliches. Every day I wrote about how much I loved it, before going home with a list of resolutions for how I was going to carry the SF spirit with me. Looking at it now I can confirm I’m on the yoga wagon, I’m progressing on the work stuff, I’m doing pretty well with getting those adulthood routines down too (sidebar: now that I’m no longer constantly late I’m finding lots of other people are … if that’s not ironic then it really should be). “As you get what you give, I’m hoping London will provide for me too, if I let it,” was the last thing I wrote before heading back to the UK, sick from having to leave let-it-carry-you San Francisco for fight-for-it London. But I remember knowing what I hoped for would probably be possible, and it was - because in many ways, these past 12 months may well have been the best year of my life. In London.

[San Francisco double exposure by Aaron Durand]

This is me on a late night bus, trying to work out where the...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:00:14 +0100

This is me on a late night bus, trying to work out where the camera is on my iPhone. Yes, my conversion to the Altar of Jobs is complete, and I can report it’s as I suspected: a source of constant joy. If Apple are going to be this good at running the world, they’re welcome to it. I may be a tech journalist who don’t know how to use emoji, and my Granny mastered the slide-to-unlock motion before I did, but I have an app that tells me when the bus will show up and I am very excited about that. I’m told this phase of iPhone-thrill will last about three months, so there’s plenty left. London, I’m going to Instagram you.

The Disapproval Matrix This is Ann Friedman’s excellent...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:14:00 +0100

The Disapproval Matrix

This is Ann Friedman’s excellent guide for separating haterade from productive feedback, which can be applied to life in general as well as journalism. Or both at the same time - at least that’s the goal.

Critics: These are smart people who know something about your field. They are taking a hard look at your work and are not loving it. You’ll probably want to listen to what they have to say, and make some adjustments to your work based on their thoughtful comments.

Lovers: These people are invested in you and are also giving you negative but rational feedback because they want you to improve. Listen to them, too.

Frenemies: Ooooh, this quadrant is tricky. These people really know how to hurt you, because they know you personally or know your work pretty well. But at the end of the day, their criticism is not actually about your work—it’s about you personally. And they aren’t actually interested in a productive conversation that will result in you becoming better at what you do. They just wanna undermine you. Dishonorable mention goes to The Hater Within, aka the irrational voice inside you that says you suck, which usually falls into this quadrant. Tell all of these fools to sit down and shut up.

Haters: This is your garden-variety, often anonymous troll who wants to tear down everything about you for no rational reason. Folks in this quadrant are easy to write off because they’re counterproductive and you don’t even know them. Ignore! Engaging won’t make you any better at what you do. And then rest easy, because having haters is proof your work is finding a wide audience and is sparking conversation. Own it.

Read the full article.

I slept through a good part of The Royal Tenenbaums as I watched...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:21:00 +0100

I slept through a good part of The Royal Tenenbaums as I watched it (again) while in the throes of food poisoning. Or it could have been noro. Either way it had me praying to things I don’t believe in. But Margot! So many feelings. Because I’m no longer sick, London is full of spring, and I am 32.

Reading List, Orbital edition “I tell you this to break...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:42:00 +0100

Reading List, Orbital edition

“I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.” [Mary Oliver]

[image] … Spring is here for real and it’s not a relief, it’s an electric shock. Happening: lots of work, lots of miles on the Overground (the unofficial London Orbital), lots of listening to The Black Keys. The new Daft Punk track is delicious. … Another thing, and this is big for someone who’s always hated being misunderstood: I’m starting to realise I don’t really care what anyone thinks anymore. *drops mic, walks off stage*

“To move with purpose is to rebel against the world that manipulates how we exist within it.” Britt Julious in WBEZ, writing beautifully on how to walk like you own the place. #strut

“I don’t actually think these events really happened to me, but they’ll still come to mind when I think back on a time when a secondhand event seemed to hold some kind of truth that reality did not.” Tavi Gevinson. Ooooh I remember feeling like this. [See also: the existence in this world of Before Midnight, the second sequel to Before Sunrise, which was out when I was 15 and I wore out the tape. I can’t even think about this last instalment, I’m too excited.]

Experience matters, by Jon Reiner in The Atlantic (via). Basically, it’s that Thoreau quote again: “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

Madison Moore knows good sex [Thought Catalog] #4

Caitlin Moran proves why she’s the queen in this piece on how to drink - properly. (£)

“There’s no point in your language being “correct”, if only 12 of your friends can understand it.” Helen Lewis on perfection in language.

“Because life is very, very boring if we don’t scare ourselves.” Penelope Trunk and the realisation of wanting not happiness, but an interesting life.

Ann Friedman on the Longform podcast, on why she’s so excited to be working at this moment in media. #patronus

The personal self: One more from Friedman on merging the personal and the professional - this is from last year but it’s still sound, and not just for journalism. There are some things I’m not talking about still, but maybe it’s time to bring my whole self to the table? … I’m thinking a lot about this at the moment.

Winter is over, people! It happened! Spring is here!

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:10:00 +0100

Winter is over, people! It happened! Spring is here!

‘You are (on) an island’ project by Alicia Eggert...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0100

‘You are (on) an island’ project by Alicia Eggert and Mike Fleming (via).

“For a while, I thought I had no real interests - no theater, concerts, museums, stamp collections. Only ambitions and ties to people, of a certain intensity.” Renata Adler, Speedboat.

What Mike and I did on our second date, which wasn’t a...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:00:00 +0100

What Mike and I did on our second date, which wasn’t a date, until it was. © Mike Marcus; Bermondsey, July 2012. Nine months.

Reading List, Spring-is-being-Dreamed edition“Since the...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:15:34 +0100

Reading List, Spring-is-being-Dreamed edition

“Since the thing perhaps is
to eat flowers and not to be afraid”

[Image by Peter Zéglis; quote by EE Cummings. Am resisting the urge to call it the ‘Coldsnap edition’, as I like to keep it sunny side up. But to record-cold March: don’t let the door hit you on the way out. And hello April, I have plans for you!]

“It was about doing the things you’ve always wanted to do. It was about being the person you’ve always wanted to be. It was about seeing things yourself, staying curious, learning, laughing, confronting your fears, finding what you love and never letting go.” Britt Julious on being a solitary person, beautifully.

“When you were not writing, you’d ask yourself, ‘What am I doing? Why am I doing this instead of work?’ ” Renata Adler interview in Believer Magazine (via)

Kara VanderBijl hits refresh, in This Recording.

“To resist is an active state.” It’s Eva Wiseman.

Ben Lytal on maps, in The Paris Review.

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” A thought-provoking essay by Anna March in Salon.

Tomorrow is a latter day: Oliver Burkeman on the Book of Mormon. I can confirm the hype on this super-offensive musical after Imran and I went to see it the other week. And this is from someone who hates musicals. [In related offensiveness: the Found Footage Festival! After which Laura and I came out wide-eyed with wonder over how insane and wonderful the world is. Jazzercise! Worldliness! Oh it goes on.]

“This is not relevant to the post. But I need you to know it because it’s fascinating to me, and I want you to be fascinated by the article, too. I loved the song the guy wrote. I loved the photo Melissa edited. I want you to see the amazing things I see so that we can talk about it.” Penelope Trunk.

“I don’t think there are “good girls” and “bad girls”, I think there are girls “who think food is the same as sex” and those who “don’t”.” Kate Carraway is good at Twitter.

The Gateway Pie from Ann Friedman. Am mentally compiling my own pie on this topic; so far I’ve got Adderall, Pinterest, and emoji :/ [Also, Friedman’s weekly newsletter of what she’s written has a little reading list in it too, and it’s worth subscribing to just for that.]

“We think not being grateful and not feeling joy will make it hurt less. We think if we can beat vulnerability to the punch by imagining loss, we’ll suffer less. We’re wrong. There is one guarantee: If we’re not practicing gratitude and allowing ourselves to know joy, we are missing out on the two things that will actually sustain us during the inevitable hard times.” Brené Brown, in this post by Jessica Stanley on not being afraid to be openly happy about it anymore. High five.

My article in Maura Magazine: On my own personal internet,...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:28:53 +0000

My article in Maura Magazine: On my own personal internet, Google Reader and a grave insult. Get it here.

Wanted: A hair cut, the top Stevie’s wearing, a ticket to...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 23:01:00 +0000

Wanted: A hair cut, the top Stevie’s wearing, a ticket to New York, and for summer to come. More than anything, I want to get my arms out from my winter coat. This is the third spell of frost this spring and I’ve been a trouper, but enough now. I want to crouch down at the side of the road, in my Converse and blazer, and smell mud.

My name is Jessica Furseth and my weapon of choice is a Walther...

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 10:00:19 +0000

My name is Jessica Furseth and my weapon of choice is a Walther PPK Passport. Read ‘Berliner Pretzel; Cornish Pasty’ in This Recording.

Reading List, Wordsmith editionKenny: You must fancy her...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:06:00 +0000

Reading List, Wordsmith edition

Kenny: You must fancy her rotten.
Spike: Who, Lynda? I’d drink her bathwater.

Press Gang! So many feelings. Image by Damian Loeb. This list is full of worthsmithery, because that is ultimately what it’s about. Ok not all of it. There’s also spring, red wine, coconut ice cream, and this: Buckingham Nicks’ 1974 version of ‘Sorcerer’. Happiness.

“I can remember the smells of every one of my boyfriends - one smelled of flan, one of wool sweaters removed in fall from the wooden drawers in which they’d spent the summer, one of Pears soap, one of paisley (imagine what a paisley would smell like - like a father, I guess), one of puffed rice, one of coffee that’s percolated upward through the top of a skull. I once had a confused relationship with a smoker. I kept trying to get a sexual read off of him, but he just smelled like smoke. I deemed him unknowable and broke up with him.” Heidi Julavits (via) and, ehm, swoon.

Sophie Heawood’s Vice column every Friday is so my new favourite thing. The last paragraph in this one kills me.

“Beauty breeds beauty, truth triggers truth. The cure for writer’s block is therefore to read.” Matt Haig on writing, in The Telegraph

“And because doing something is always better than doing nothing, and because sometimes in order to do something you have to do whatever it takes.” Emily Gould

Eva Wiseman is feeling better now, but she was ill. [The Guardian]

Texts from the Babysitters Club. [The Hairpin]

When you hear hoofbeats, think zebras. [Ciara]

“A tablet is never just a tablet, but is hope sealed in a blister pack.” Love this piece by Gaby Hinsliff, on the placebo effect. [The Guardian]

Kate Stull on The Billfold, being my hero in this piece on being an introvert and asking for what you want.

““It has to do with: what is the fundamental core of human nature?” Early Enlightenment thinkers wrote about how it is creative character that separates humans from the rest of the organic world. This character is manifested most clearly in language. Later intellectuals extended this idea to the social sphere. “So, if there is anything that restricts a person’s natural need to carry out creative work under their own direction, that is illegitimate.”” Lunch with Noam Chomsky, The Financial Times

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” [Margaret Atwood]

Ten houses in ten years in London: A story of hope over experience

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:34:00 +0000

[An expanded version of this was published by The Billfold, in their Rental Histories series.]

1. Acton (1) - 6 months
The year is 2003, and two fresh graduates from Southampton roll into London to take it all on. Unfortunately they have no idea what they’re doing, which is why they’ve ended up in Acton, West London. Ten years later, this is still the worst location I’ve lived at in the capital, plus the rent there was more than what I pay now. My friend and I broke the contract early and never really spoke of it again.

2. Acton (2) - 2 months
As a temporary arrangement, I moved in with my boyfriend and our other friend in their cream-carpeted semi facing a very loud road. The bus stop outside meant you couldn’t watch TV with the windows open. I was unemployed during these two months and thoroughly miserable; I don’t want to talk about it.

3. Chiswick - 15 months?
The Acton Three moved up in the world, to a nice flat just next to Turnham Green tube. It’s pretty pleasant there: there was a lovely chocolate shop that sold lavender truffles, and a coffee shop on the other side of the park. London started to agree with me while I lived in this flat. The porter looking after the block, however, did not; he regularly left notes about drying laundry being visible through the window from the road. I still don’t really know what that was about.

4. Dulwich - 1 month
Temporary dwellings after breaking up with my boyfriend of nearly five years. This marked the move to South London, but I don’t remember much about this place other than there being a ghost in the master bedroom. We all agreed on this when discussing it in retrospect, but were too fearful to acknowledge its presence while still living in the house.

5. Camberwell - 10 months?
A spider-infested but otherwise nice basement flat on what was allegedly one of the most burglarised streets in London. Top tip: if anyone you know move to such a location, please do leave them to their ignorance; we have the Daily Mail if we want to live in paranoia. Positives to this flat included the neighbours’ cat, but the endless bus journeys to get to the tube is the overarching memory, not to mention a general reason never to move back south of the river ever again. Prejudiced, yes, but that’s my opinion.

6. Spitalfields - 10 months
This little flat marked the wise, wise move to East London. I could see Spitalfields Market from the living room window, a fantastic feature which was strongly reflected in the price, meaning my boyfriend and I were financially unable to take advantage of our new and fancy location. I spent a lot of time wandering around Brick Lane late at night, a consequence of being a night worker, not a street walker - although there were surprisingly many of those there. You really don’t want to run into one of them under the fluorescent lights in Tesco at 7am. Every few days I’d get a bag of fresh bagels, which at 15p a pop from Beigel Bake was budget food. It wasn’t bad at all.

7. Shoreditch - 18 months?
I found this flatshare in a Shoreditch sink estate on the internet while in a daze, brought on by looking for a new job and a new house while also contract-bound to co-exist with my ex in the tiniest flat ever. The fact the ensuing dark-side-of-Shoreditch life worked out as well as it did was a stroke of luck. The estate kids threw water balloons, sure, but they never managed to hit me, and it was the perfect place to live when I was single and needed a crowd on my street to walk through when coming home late at night.

8. Mile End - 10 months
Really nice flat, this, and the high-speed trains from Essex which brushed up against the wall every 15 minutes provided this interesting suction effect in the air. I lived with a friend who was a cleaning nut, and he deemed my domestic efforts so insufficient that he preferred to do it all himself. It seemed like a good arrangement at first, until his control-freakery leaked into other aspects of our lives and it became absolutely necessary for me to leave. I’d go into detail, but I seem to have blocked out most of it. Safe to say, this is a cautionary tale.

9. Limehouse - 22 months
My longest stay at a London address to date. By this point I’d started to notice how a good flat would invariably reveal an issue to do with plumbing or the other humans and lead to short stays, while the shitty flats tended to result in long stays. This was no exception: the company was good, but the Poplar border-location was terrible and every single household appliance broke while we lived there - some more than once. A constant feature was how the shower would swing rapidly between hot and cold, meaning I can now wash like I’m Roadrunner. It was cheap though, so we put up with it until the rent went up by 20% overnight and we left in shock. It was probably for the best.

10. Stoke Newington - 15 months and counting
My favourite house so far: it’s big, it’s full of nice people and touch wood, no major issues have yet to be identified. I mean, the mice moved on almost right away once we got the sonic repellers. If anyone’s curious, I’ve identified the key to houseshare happiness: a mixed group of three to five people, a cleaning rota and a working boiler. I moved to the Stokey-Dalston borderlands last December after a two-week stay at a friend’s to tide me over the search, which I actually conducted with some care this time. (In hindsight, this may have been the core problem leading to many of the previous duds.) This is also my first North London postcode, meaning I’ve done the circle. To my surprise, I absolutely love it up here. “I may never move again,” she said.

[With a nod to Jean Edelstein’s excellent series on her London houses.]