“My brain takes a vacation just to give my heart more room”

Spirit animal.

Summer is here, and it is everything.

Some good things lately: Instagram. Butterfield Green. 24h smoked salmon bagels on Stoke Newington High Street. Kindle for iPhone. Karima, still. The Coach & Horses. Crystal Palace. Falafel; shawarma. Texts from Tara. Pret, the safest pair of hands. Sleeping by open windows. Coffee in the morning, sweet addiction. Imran, and all the luck in the world. 🍀⚓❤

(Source: Flickr / girlonahottinroof)

London I love you.

“The city is wilder than you think, and kinder than you think. It is a valley and you are a horse in it. It is a house and you are a child in it, safe and warm here, in the fire of each other.” [Robert Montgomery]

Plans.

“And just when I thought I couldn’t get any higher - he spooned me.”

I know ‘Sex and the City’ is terribly unfashionable right now, but I’m convinced the revival will come. Eventually. Anyways I’m ill in bed so I’m re-watching seasons 1 - 3, the halcyon days, for the first time in years. This is where Carrie chain-smokes and dates actually inappropriate men, and the first sex scene we ever see is one where our girl skips out on a guy after having him eat her out, non-reciprocated. This is the Carrie whose reaction when something unexpected happens isn’t shock, but amusement and thrill. I’m also aware of the fact that I’m getting to the age which these women are at in the first season, and some of the stuff they’re saying is making a lot more sense to me now … I must have been 19 when I watched it the first time, when it ran very late every Monday on cable; I discovered it by accident but soon it was in the diary as my little secret treat, a year or two before it went supersonic. I should add that I’m aware the show wasn’t perfect then, and it certainly isn’t now, with all the marriage-obsessed dating, and some bizarre shaming around some pretty normal sex stuff (the “blowjob tug-of-war”, really?). Not to mention all those references to money and designer gear. But those brunch scenes where the ladies talk filth are priceless, and from my personal experience, as true to life as any TV show I’ve ever seen. A treat, still.

It’s spring in London and everyone’s in love 📯

Random Access Memories.

So, the the Daft Punk album is out today after what I think has been an unreasonably long wait. I mean, as easy as it’s been to listen to Get Lucky on repeat, we were always going to want more. And now that it’s here, Random Access Memories is bloody marvellous, and that’s from someone who’s not really that into music, and especially not into Daft Punk. But it’s the sound of summer, this album, it’s got so many feelings, tapping into all the things that ever happened to you. Little worlds live inside each of the tracks, threatening to collapse time and space in on you in a chaotic, ecstatic heap. Memories available for random access, hence the name. Sophie Heawood put it this way: “It builds, like a drug that you’ve taken and you know is coming but then you aren’t sure if you want it or not. Little flecks, electric sparks, coming off it as it builds. It’s too sure of itself, making you a little unsure of yourself. It sounds like something you wanted, and now it’s here you want it to stop, because it scares you. But you sought out this nightclub fear, and you know you did. It grows up around you, getting louder and bigger and enormous.” Instant classic, guys.

[This fabulous image of Frida Kahlo in a Daft Punk shirt is by Fabian Ciraolo]

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

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.

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.