break­ing news — some­one else made my din­ner (oh, and we moved house)

Break­ing news — oh my god, we went… wait for it… OUT TO DINNER.

For the first time since Feb­ru­ary 2020!

It was ridicu­lous­ly excit­ing. The sim­ple joy of a plate of FOOD appear­ing in front of me, eat­ing some­thing I would­n’t have a recipe for, shar­ing some­one else’s plate, and THEN the emp­ty plate is tak­en away and that’s ALL? For the sim­ple require­ment of giv­ing a love­ly per­son in a mask some mon­ey? Who knew how thrilling such a thing could be.

For 17 months I have pro­duced din­ner at home every sin­gle night, with oh, maybe five excep­tions when some­one mirac­u­lous like my moth­er-in-law gave us a fan­cy deliv­ery. Even those, though, were “some [lots of!] assem­bly required,” and of course clean­ing up. Din­ner at this dar­ling local restau­rant, Louie Louie, was a rev­e­la­tion. Crispy fried aubergine with some spicy toma­toey top­ping and creamy mayo dip­ping sauce, then soft shell crab…, her­itage toma­toes and the ten­der­est lamb chops on record. Talk! With oth­er peo­ple, per­fect strangers who haven’t been liv­ing with me for 17 months. Divine.

The din­ner out in the Wal­worth Road was real­ly the first cel­e­bra­tion since our move here. The place is sim­ply bonkers. Here’s the outside.

There have been so many beast­ly days, includ­ing Mov­ing Day, obviously…

The trans­for­ma­tion of the space has been pret­ty over­whelm­ing. Here is what we call the “mez­za­nine” on the first day.

And the awful day of Vit­sœ com­ing to install the shelves below, which bizarrely fit­ted to with­in two cen­time­tres of the avail­able space.

And then here is the fin­ished view, a day lat­er when we’d decid­ed what art­work to go where, and what small, pre­cious objects should be includ­ed in the upper shelves. Our favourite pho­tographs, mostly.

Then every­thing got set­tled into place, look­ing from the sit­ting area toward the kitchen, and upward into the bed­room floor. Pre­tend you’ve got your back to the book­shelf wall.

And when you come to vis­it, here’s the view from enter­ing the house.

It’s been quite stun­ning see­ing this huge, cav­ernous, rather cold place turned into a cosy home where things just seemed to fall into the per­fect place for them (includ­ing a kit­ty or two).

The kitchen is a chal­lenge, to be hon­est. The faucet almost does­n’t clear the sink, so every night’s wash­ing up is a bit of a night­mare. I keep try­ing to decide if the cost of replac­ing it is worth what­ev­er oth­er thing I could­n’t buy. There’s almost no stor­age in the actu­al kitchen, which for a semi-pro­fes­sion­al cook is real­ly not OK, so we’ve co-opt­ed the adja­cent “bed­room” into a per­fect­ly beau­ti­ful, cool, airy, serene pantry. I’m sure Rose­mary won’t mind sleep­ing in there when she comes. I’ll pro­vide a can open­er, obviously.

There are small pock­ets of per­fec­tion, like this con­stel­la­tion of sculp­tures by the divine Sara Dodd. 

I think this arrange­ment is just inspired, and like many inspi­ra­tions, it’s dri­ven by lim­i­ta­tion. The cur­va­ture of the walls here, under the rail­way arch, means there’s very lit­tle wall space on which any­thing can be safe­ly hung. But as a result, this group­ing is per­fec­tion, to my eyes.

At night, the view from upstairs on our bed­room floor is just mag­i­cal. Every night, after a chal­leng­ing day, I take a deep breath and realise how lucky I am to live in this per­fect­ly bonkers, awk­ward, beau­ti­ful place.

I’ve found the per­fect food shop, “Oli Food Cen­tre,” just around the cor­ner. As Ste­fan from SNL would say, “This place has every­thing.” I go every day, even just to buy one thing. It’s based on Turk­ish cui­sine, but hon­est­ly, it has every­thing. Except fish.

For fish we go to our local Mor­risons super­mar­ket which has per­fect­ly fresh fish at the end of the day for almost no mon­ey. There’s also a new Argen­tin­ian butch­er just down the road, who don’t actu­al­ly seem so far to know how to butch­er their meat prop­er­ly, so you get hacked-up bits of things, but the qual­i­ty is lovely.

The girls came to din­ner! We’re dou­ble-vac­ci­nat­ed, so we felt almost safe. Almost normal.

And since then, it’s been us vis­it­ing them, because… CLAUDINE.

The girls have been wait­ing for her for months, absolute­ly months, being giv­en tan­ta­lis­ing pho­tos of her baby­hood until it was deemed she was ready to be adopt­ed. Clau­dine Anchovy Ann has arrived. We’ve been to vis­it sev­er­al times, bear­ing gifts, espe­cial­ly books for her child­hood education.

Our two lit­tle old feline ladies have tak­en to the new house with a vig­or. Tacy espe­cial­ly loves climb­ing to the fierce­ly hot upper regions, our sup­posed study, but not until cool­er weath­er arrives. But noth­ing about the expe­ri­ence both­ers Tacy, who makes her way up and down sev­er­al times a day.

After a love­ly stroll around a local park with an exten­sive wild­flower crop, and edu­ca­tion­al dis­plays to explain it all, we have decid­ed to rename Hermione “Com­mon Toad­flax.” You can see why.

Of course, as most of you know, there is REAL news com­ing very soon. I’ve been occu­pied for the last five years, and par­tic­u­lar­ly for the crazi­ness that was lock­down, with my new book, “Vol­ume Two” as we think of it.

In the next few days, I think, we will be mak­ing the offi­cial announce­ment of the title, the cov­er image, and the open­ing of our vir­tu­al “shop” which will con­tain many delights.

Hav­ing sur­vived the move and all the asso­ci­at­ed dra­ma, we are all very, very ready to show this pre­cious new baby to the world, and open up the world for pre-orders, as the book itself makes its way to the US and the UK over the oceans. Watch this space!