Halloween weekend was full of dancing and heavy eye-makeup and a slightly painful left leg. All my Actionette-related leaping around has caused my sciatica to flare up again, and my leg is tingly and heavy and just feels a bit weird. I am hoping someone invents a pair of MBT go-go boots so that I can continue performing. Although as they'd be the ugliest footwear known to man, I'd sooner resign.

Since then, I've been spending lots of time with baby Leon, or Cuckoo-Ricoo as I sometimes call him, to his bemusement. (Just as Polish dogs say 'how' (try repeating it loudly), and cats say 'mru mru', the cry of the rooster is 'cuckoo-ricoo!' Which still doesn't explain why I have that nickname for L.) He still naps, but finds little ways to rebel. He's taken to removing whatever trousers my sister or her husband dressed him in that morning, and chewing on them. I think he's trying to say he prefers onesies, and after seeing him in the indigo velvet dungarees with an owl on the front, I have to say I agree. Chomp on, little flea!

In November the Actionettes went to Rome for a weekend of prosecco, pizza, other amazing Italian food (courgette flowers stuffed with mozarella and anchovies? I'll have five) and an appearance at club night Twiggy. It was all fun and games until bastard EasyJet lost the communal 'ette suitcase. (Contents: seven kitschy washbags filled with false eyelashes, hairspray and black eyeliner, and my dancing dress.) After an hour of watching the empty carousel at Ciampino airport, we admitted something might be wrong and reported the luggage lost. We left the address of our HQ for the weekend and were told the bag would be on the evening flight from Gatwick, and that we'd be happily reunited before the day was out. Long story short, that didn't happen. We spent the weekend toiletries-free (well not entrirely, come on - we bought some cheapy ones to share, oh and seven toothbrushes) and I didn't have a dancing dress. On the night we performed, this wasn't actually as big a ball-ache as it could have been. The lovely Miss Corvette lent me her dress for the first set, and then I handed it back, slightly damp, for her to wear in the second. The only downside was thatwhile all the other 'ettes got to prance around in pink dresses covered in giant pink and red discs, I looked like I'd come straight from the office. It was still an amazing night.

So far today has been a big wet raspberry, but it'll get better around 7pm, when Mags and my two lovely sisters arrive for dinner. For the vegetarian sister there's cheese and salmon (yes, she eats fish), for the other vegetarian there's sausage and ham (she won't eat beef but everything else is fine) and for me and other sis there's a lot of everything else. Pumpkin, coconut and sweet potato soup, too.

Things I am watching on eBay

• Black cat brooches, to be pinned to orange dress for Halloween Actionettes gig
• Black spider brooches, as above, but they're too scary and I know I'd keep seeing them on my dress and freaking out
• Vintage biscuit tins and canisters. Plan is to buy some and bake amazing cookies, and give these as homemade Christmas gifts in the tins
• Usual lineup of 70s vintage dresses with puffy sleeves, patterned yokes and A-line skirts. Sigh.

Baby Leon, last seen on this blog at a cute five weeks, is now an all-crawling, loud-laughing, curious eight-month-old little sweetheart. He loves books and music and wiping his nose on his auntie's clothing.

How did I go nearly three and a half months without posting? It was easy. And it's not even like I was so busy doing amazing stuff the whole time. Since the end of June, I've done... nothing. Well, a bit of work, a weekend in Bournemouth with the Actionettes, five days in Wales for my and Steve's wedding anniversary, and not much else. I did buy tickets for next May's All Tomorrow's Parties, as it's curated by Pavement and I've wanted to go to ATP for years, so this was all the encouragement I needed.

Guilt has made me update this blog. I was reading about this thing http://www.broadsummit.com/about/ on Mimi Smartypants's blog, and it made me sad and jealous. If I'd been good and updated my blog daily, or at least a couple of times a week, maybe I would be attending the UK equivalent (although I bet there isn't one...) of this sweet shindig. A weekend doing yoga and tasting wine? At a spa? It's a hard life.

I had a look at some of the blogs of the attendees. I really liked a few, but there really is a certain arrogance you need to keep - and very regularly update - a blog. Whole conversations retyped, verbatim. Endless stream-of-consciousness riffs on your love/hate of sweetcorn. I mean, who cares? If I did like those other ladies do and wrote down every last thing that happened to me, my blog for today might read something like this:

Got up. Late. Coffee, toast and marmite for breakfast. Did some proofreading, but not enough. Faffed about online for ages. Steve went to Lewisham market to buy vegetables - he got me a really nice pumpkin. We had leftover chili for lunch: yum. In the afternoon I went to Brockley Mess and had ginger cake and a pot of Earl Grey. The cafe was full of mums with babies. I glared at a small child pretending to wail and it made me feel evil but actually very happy. Walked home.

That did actually feel pretty cathartic...

Dear Bike Courier,

Please hurry up and deliver the work I'm expecting, as having to wear clothing in this weather is making me want to cry.

Thanks,
IJ

London is EFFING SCORCHING. Muggy. No breeze. I feel sluggish, duntish, and other negative words ending in -ish. It's too hot to think of more. And tonight I have the task of making a cottage pie. A couple of hours of cooking on the stove and baking in the oven. This must be done, as I have a packet of beef mince that's going out of date* and (what possessed me?) when we did an online grocery shop I ordered a 2 1/2 kilo bag of potatoes. I don't want to throw food out, there's no room for the beef in the freezer, so even though all I feel like ingesting is crisps, ice cream and loads of water, a pie will be cooked tonight. If it kills me. And it might.



*Those words normally form the beginning of any dinner invitation to my house

Here's what we did in France: ate shellfish (oysters = yum, raw mussels = yuk), visited Pezenas (that's where the door knocker is from), lazed by the pool, cycled by the water, and cooked giant, elaborate delicious meals.

The last month has flown by. Dan and Therese came over mid-May, and at the end of the month we all headed to France for a week of cheese, wine, sunburn, swimming in our lovely private pool, and playing Tom and Steve's patented game, Aquaminton. (It's badminton played in a pool, and it's amazing.) Dan and Therese left last week, and straight away I was on a train to Newcastle for a gig at the Star & Shadow, a beautiful venue that is part cimema, part bar, part performance space. The Actionettes danced and there was a screening of Beat Girl, and lovely Michael, who was running the night, even provided us with giant bags of popcorn. I only got back on Sunday afternoon, and since then I've been to a yoga class and that's about it. Oh and I went to Beckenham for my sister Jasia's birthday drinks. Also I picked up my framed Jeff Tweedy poster by my new girl-crush, Diana Sudyka. Here's her blog http://thetinyaviary.blogspot.com/ and somewhere here there should be a pic of the poster... I don't spend a lot of money on clothing or going out and I don't have any expensive hobbies (reading? a lot?) but I'll happily pay £60 to get a great poster framed. My next dream purchase is a Marcus Oakley painting, or another of Diana Sudyka's posters...

I'm slacking off again... so here are some random snippets from the last few weeks.

• Little sister is back from Gaza for a couple of weeks! Hurrah! She's travelling around the UK and to Poland, and is then planning to return to Palestine for the forseeable future.
• Me and Steve had a weekend in Whitstable, a pretty seaside resort in Kent, our first holiday since the epic and amazing honeymoon in October. Seafood was eaten (April is the end of oyster season, so we tried to scoff loads of those. BEST ONES were covered in bacon and BBQ sauce. That's how they eat them in New Zealand, apparently. Gotta love those Kiwis), pints of local raspberry beer were drunk on the beach, seaside strolls were taken.
  
• The Actionettes have had a few cracking gigs lately, and we've more over the next couple of months. A few weeks ago we danced at Shunt, the soon to be shut down cavernous venue under London Bridge station, and last night we were the guests of the Dulwich Ukulele Club at their May Ball. The hall where the ball took place was decked in spring flowers, there was a Maypole and there was a Green Man ritual. I didn't quite understand it, but I was drunk by then. In June we're heading to Newcastle, then July has Gay Shame in London with the people from Duckie, a tiki birthday party in Bournemouth, and (fingers crossed) the Port Eliot literary festival in Cornwall.
  
• This warm weather is bringing with it the unwelcome return of fucking huge spiders. Get out of my house!
• Bank holiday weekend so far = good. Lie-in, impromptu picnic and frisbee in the Horniman Gardens, red wine and chips in a lovely Bermondsey pub.
• Night night.
  

Last night was date night. We kept it cheap(ish) by heading to the East End Thrift Store for their monthly shopping event. I thought this just meant they were open late, but NO, there was free booze too, which does indeed make it an event. I did pretty well - two sundresses, a floaty floral skirt, and a blouse for T. Steve bought a jumper and just hung out by the fitting rooms, drinking free beer and watching ladies getting changed. Oh and he was wearing the jeans with the bad zip, so his fly was undone too. Way to go, perv! We tried to go to Tayaabs after, but there was a scrum outside, and it was just too much hassle, so Lahore Kebab House it was. Giant spicy meal (so spicy that Steve cried), a walk across London bridge (less romantic for being in a howling gale), and watching The Apprentice on BBC iPlayer in bed. Perfect romantic night.

Over the past month I've been fearfully ordering hundreds of pounds worth of new kitchen. I say fearfully because I can't actually believe that in a couple of weeks our crap old kitchen will be gone and we'll have an amazing new one. Is it really that simple? You buy the stuff, pay a man to fit it all, and voila, new kitchen? Why didn't we do this sooner?

I've also been trying to see my sister and Mru Mru a lot (mru mru is how cats purr in Polish. Just as Polish dogs don't say 'woof woof' but 'how how'). Not sure why I call L Mru Mru, I think it's because once when he was fussing and threatening to wail, I sang him a couple of Polish lullabies about kittens and he calmed down. Anyway, he is a little bundle of cuddly fun, and very sweet. He's about 5 weeks old and just beginning to smile.

Saturday is the Actionettes' crunch-bustin' club, Everything Must Go-Go. We're pulling out all the stops with careers advice, a black market stall, Lidl hamper raffle, and dancing till dawn. I'm not amazingly excited about our outfits, but it should be a good night.

Mostly pictures this time... Nice Friday things: Baby Leon, sunny sky, Co-op daffodils, tea and banana walnut cake.

Valentine’s Day was spent drunkenly caterwauling karaoke at the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. I belted out a version of ‘My Sharona’ so atrocious that even now, five days on, I cringe thinking about it. Steve went to watch some football and showed up at 9.30, but we did manage to have some romantic quality time together, kicking Mags’s and Emerald’s asses at table football. We don’t celebrate Valentine’s (let’s call it by its initials, VD, for speed of typing) but I still get upset when I don’t get a card or anything. Steve insists we agreed years ago that we instead celebrate ‘Ily and Steve Day’, the date of which is pretty fluid and generally falls a few days after VD, when all the soppy-eyed fools have gone back to sitting on the couch watching University Challenge, and the restaurant menus have returned to normal. So it was on Monday that I arranged to meet my husband at Mason’s, a restaurant in Ladywell we’d been wanting to try for years. It has a three-course evening menu for £13, so in the interests of staying local and staying cheap, he’d booked a table. The food was pretty good, and at that price you can’t really complain. Steve also gave me a big bunch of tulips and a lovely card of a cat doing yoga. Who says romance is dead? Happy I&SD!

Things to look forward to

Right this minute, as I type, my sister is in hospital preparing to give birth. I am on Baby Standby and obsessively checking my phone several times an hour for updates. She’s not fully in labour yet, so can still lie around texting me about how bored she is.

Holiday in France. At the end of May, we and some friends are going to the south of France for a week of wine, cheese, swimming in our own pool, eating amazing seafood, riding bikes (basically the entire holiday is going to be Flight of the Conchords’ foux de fa fa made real) and wafting around in maxi dresses. CAN’T WAIT.

Today is Fatty Thursday! Forget Fat Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday to give it its boring name. Tlusty Czwartek is the day in Poland where you make donuts and eat them all. My mum is doing the former, and I’m popping round later to help out with the other bits.

Things to not look forward to

Just been to the doctor, who diagnosed me with ‘classic sciatica’. Yippee. It doesn’t hurt, but my left leg is a bit numb and tingly and feels cold. No more aerobics for me, just swimming and a bit of yoga.

Swings and roundabouts

Just paid tax bill, still feeling I've been ripped off and massively overestimated the amount of tax I owe. So come April I'll grapple with it again and hopefully claw back some cash... May need help with this (Emerald! In exchange for dinner!) Good news arrived today with my credit card statement (NEVER a sentence I thought I'd write). I've transferred the balance of my ridiculously high-interest card to a 0% card, but I somehow overpaid the transfer amount. So essentially my credit card company owe me £540 and are paying it into my bank account. Woot!

Crafty things I've done while - ahem - resting these past few weeks

1) Made a maxidress to take to the south of France. It is made from a polycotton bedsheet which I dyed a murky grey/blue. It's a funny shape and I think the hem is a bit too narrow to walk properly in. I will still wear it. I'd take pictures and post them here, if I thought Steve could stop laughing long enough to hold the camera.

2) Work in progress: making stuffed bear/cat/rabbit hybrid toys for Maddy's baby and my nephew (due in about 3 weeks, so excited!). They're going to be made from a blue flowery Cath Kidston fabric someone gave me a few years ago. They're a bit freestyle and I apologise in advance for any nightmares/long-term trauma they may cause.

3) Not crafty but long overdue - a new kitchen is on the horizon for the J-D family. AT LAST. I detest my kitchen with a passion. It has no storage (people think I'm exaggerating, until I show them space for a few food items and 4 mugs and they shut up), doors hanging off their hinges, and massive gaps behind the units, forming an adventure playground for mice. But we bit the bullet and headed to Ikea, and got a not-too-terrifying quote for a new one.

Am nearly as excited by the prospect of a new kitchen as by the imminent arrival of my nephew.

WHAT A DAY. Fired our cleaner* as we can't afford to keep her. She was fine about it (I paid her double for today) and it'll be a bit of a relief to be able to find stuff in the house again. All random bits of paper with very important things on them tend to get shuffled into neat piles, and forgotten, and I nearly screamed today when I noticed that my very expensive left-handed fabric scissors had been washed up and left in the cutlery drainer.

If you hadn't guessed, I'm broke. I know - how chic. Everyone's broke, everyone's 'economising' - TopShop instead of Marni, Southwold instead of Thailand. What fun! But as someone with a flexible income, I'm living from cheque to cheque and counting my pennies. Trying to think of what to sell on eBay. Clothes? (Really should - I have over 50 dresses, most of which I've never worn...shameful.) Hair? (Not long and luscious enough, sadly. Maybe in 6-8 months' time.) Steve? (That man costs a LOT to keep.) Am trying to make my own fun, too. Here's my top five free fun things to do.

1) Bubble bath, manicure. Drink wine in the bath for added luxury. More realistically drink random sugary liqueur from drinks cabinet.
2) Read! I have a ton of books to get through.
3) Long, bracing walks. Ideally not along the South Circular.
4) Read blogs/online news.
5) Sew. Am making a dress into a top, and shortening things I've never worn in the hopes that they'll now fit/somehow be more appealing.

Even I got a bit depressed reading that list.



* Yes, I KNOW it's bourgeois, fascist, Tory whatever to have a cleaner, but she's really nice, I pay her well, and she only comes for three hours every two weeks and spruces the place up a bit.

Happy 2009. Not sure why, but I'm not really loving Christmas any more. It just seems increasingly like a month or so of stress and scrabbling around to get gifts for everyone, and then sitting around stuffing my face for two weeks, followed by a month or so of self-hatred when I can't get my jeans on. Well that's what it was like this year, anyway. Sorry to sound all bah-humbug, but I think next year I'd like to take a ten-day vacation over the Xmas/NY period...

What else? Well, it wasn't improved at all by the Israeli strikes since the 27th, as my sister is in Gaza. She was due to come home on January 17th but as the boat she was supposed to travel on has been hit (thanks, Israel, for that too) she'll be there a while longer. And to be honest she's not in any hurry to get out. As the British representative of the Free Gaza movement, she can't just run home as soon as it kicks off. But it doesn't reassure me to know that when buildings are being blown up, rather than sheltering, she'll be heading towards the explosion.

January 15th is our 6th dating anniversary... I'm getting S a present, seeing as his Xmas gifts from me ran to a Terry's Chocolate Orange (in limited edition hazelnut!), a copy of Revolutionary Road, and some stroompwaffles (?!). We did venture out to John Lewis at one point, only to both become distraught at the crowds and the fact that the entire shop had been picked over. I wanted to get a jigsaw and there were none. Steve wanted a leather satchel. Nothing. We also wanted to get a goose or a duck for our Xmas dinner (traditionally held on the 29th or 30th of December), but no game was available.

Pics are of Our People's Christmas meal, eaten at 10.30 as cooking took 5 hours (Steve) and tidying the dining room (me) nearly as long. On the menu: pork belly cooked with garlic, herbs and orange, roast potatoes, pigs in blankets, sweet potato & black pudding mash, honey roast parsnips, sprouts with chestnuts, stuffing, and gravy. And port and champagne. Cheers!

Am just about done with Christmas shopping, in every sense. Reached the stage where I was just buying things and not giving a hoot if people actually liked them or not... This was directly attributable to spending half an hour wandering round TK Maxx listening to Noddy Holder roaring 'IT'S CHRIST-MAAAASSSSSS!!!' and nearly culminated in me panic-buying my father-in-law a pair of tight briefs and anti-wrinkle cream. Got ahold of myself and purchased him some real ale instead. Tonight the kitchen production line will be in full swing - I'm making dark chocolate and hazelnut truffles (with orange-vanilla liqueur) and ginger and white chocolate cookies for various family we're seeing over the next few days. Am pretty happy to have done all my Christmas shopping for around £100. I made quite a few things - Steve had a couple of jumpers he didn't wear, which I felted in the washing machine. I cannot reveal what they have been recycled as, due to some of the readers of this blog being the 'lucky' recipients... I always feel faintly apologetic giving home-made gifts: 'I made you this - sorry.' But this year I'm actually pretty happy with them, the only downside being that due to cutting yards and yards of fabric, my left thumb has pins and needles and goes numb when I press on it in a certain place. Like when I'm holding a pen or a fork. Ooops.

Here's one he made earlier (about six months ago, in fact)

Spent the morning on a frantic scurry to M&S in Beckenham, to take advantage of their crunch-busting ‘2 dine for £10’ offer. You get a main course, side dish, pudding and a bottle of wine for a tenner. There’s not much choice for vegetarians (boo hoo for you!), what with the mains being a seafood paella, chicken breasts with apple sauce (yuk), Italian beef meatballs, and a whole chicken. I was tempted to get two chickens (usually £7 each) as part of the deal, but in the spirit of Christmas decided to not be greedy, and leave some for the poor suckers who couldn’t get there till after work.

PURCHASED TODAY

Beef meatballs with provelone
Whole chicken for roasting
Potatoes with rosemary and tomato
Roasting potatoes
Sticky toffee puddings
Selection of British cheeses
Bottle of Chenin Blanc
Bottle of Shiraz

Usual price: £32.90
Special price: £20

Ker-ching! It gave me a warm glow, I can tell you. Not least because now I can theoretically cook an entire meal without having a nervous breakdown/ bursting into tears. Steve does most of the cooking in our house, and does it best. This is mostly down to innate mad kitchen skillz, but also because he follows a recipe, shops for specific ingredients, and locks himself in the kitchen for three hours creating a gourmet feast. I use what’s in the house, don’t like to dirty more that one saucepan, and season most savoury dishes with an Oxo cube and ketchup.

But when it comes to baking, that man can’t touch me.

I'm back! And it only took me half an hour to sign in to Blogger after forgetting my password, which email address I'd used etc...

What's been going on in the 18 months since I last posted? Still freelancing, still (mostly) loving it. Steve and I got engaged in October 2007 in Sardinia, during the last week of sunshine the island had that year. After a few false starts on the proposal front over the holiday (he got a glint in his eye on a deserted beach, but a wasp spoiled the mood; again on the roof terrace of the World's Crappest Museum in Alghero, but I was too crabby to be approached), he got down on one knee in a cafe, and through my tears I managed to blub the word 'yes!'. We then celebrated with prosecco and crisps, followed by a horse & cart ride around the old town, lunch in a fancy restaurant, and hiring bikes in the afternoon. (Actually, we may have done the last bit the next day, but as all these activities would constitute my perfect day I'm selectively remembering it like this.) A ring was finally purchased in June 2008 (ahem...) and the wedding took place on September 20th. The groom wore a custom-made grey three-peice suit and a neat beard, the bride wore a $200 dress, £16 shoes, and jewellery and underwear that cost way more than that.
Honeymoon was a blow-out trip to Argentina and Uruguay, where we upped our iron levels with steak, chocolate and red wine, rode horses in the Andes, visited an amazing cemetary, and saw lots of birds. We returned to crashing poverty, kicking ourselves (OK, I was kicking us both) for not really saving up for the wedding or the trip. That's what credit cards are for, right?

So, December. I'm trying to catch up on lost earnings by working 6-7 days a week, and everyone's getting homemade stuff for Christmas (I apologise in advance).

Married life is like cohabiting life, but somehow different, too. Without wanting to be a Smug Married, it's just... nice. Like you're a team - you have to be, it's too late to get out of it now. Divorce is a lot of hassle. It feels like you have someone on your side, all the time.

It seems that after many, many years (about four, I think) of happy if sporadic blogging, it’s time to call it a day. I hardly ever update (I keep forgetting my login and password, which doesn’t help), and in my freeform workday I don’t schedule time to blog (which I should), and in the evenings there is wine to be drunk, TV to be watched, dinner to cook and a sunny garden to sit in. (I tried taking the computer into the garden and working from there but the screen was so dark I couldn’t see shit.) But I am still around, still guiltily signing up for things and then not working on them enough (see www.girlsrockuk.org) and still dancing like a drunken 60s loon every few weeks (see www.actionettes.com for the evidence…)
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu.

Happy smingus dingus, the Polish festival of throwing water over each other! We thought it was this morning and much kitchen-based wet frolicking ensued, but actually it's next Monday. Don't tell Steve!

I pretty much stopped keeping up with music and going to gigs (apart from Yo La Tengo) a couple of years ago. I just didn’t know who was new, who I’d like; I’d never heard of the hot new bands. I relied (and actually still rely) on recommendations from friends, especially Jodie, Therese and Anamik. But I’ve recently discovered the Fred Flare boombox. Showing every one of my 31 years, I am rocking out in my home office to Of Montreal (Heimdalsgade Like A Promethean Curse – crazy name, amazing song), the Shins (I’m so 2005), CSS, the Changes, and New Young Pony Club (and that’s just one DJ’s selections). They also throw in classics like the Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry and some random NKOTB (does it matter that I was a fan first time around?). Suddenly even ageing indie kids like me can be hip to what the young ‘uns are listening to…

Creative Cooking

Me and the boy decided to defrost over the weekend. This decision was sort of thrust upon us, seeing as the fridge (yes, the fridge) had about 6” of ice on the back wall. We had a big jar of pickles in there, and it was filled with ice. (Steve took a photo.) So we turned up the heat (or turned down the cold) and left the door open, not thinking this would affect the ton of food we had in the freezer… Sunday morning, and the frozen bagels are soft. The veg, pastry, prawns, mixed berries, fish fingers, Chicago Town pizzas* etc are all gently thawing. We put in an emergency call to Tom, who despite being skinny can eat three portions of everything, and still have room for pudding. I made a giant veggie curry with spicy stir-fried prawns, and a (bloody delicious) mixed berry pie. Waste not want not. But what to do with those five chicken breasts…?

*the official drunk food of the J-D household

So not much has been going on these past few weeks - although I pretend to work really hard I actually do a lot of sitting around, drinking tea, and reading trashy magazines (Grazia has been replaced with high-street-fashion bible Look - Steve is disgusted, although he sneakily reads it... sometimes they have a piece on Beyonce, Scarlett or Zooey). During March and April I'm working in-house at a big company for 2-3 days a week. I sit at a desk, sometimes with amazing views to Hampstead Heath or St Paul's (the office is on the 14th floor), and check proofs for picture books, or input corrections, or sign off covers. It's fun, I get to work with my friend Christine, and I'm never sitting around twiddling my thumbs. Plus, I get a taste of why I left full-time publishing in the first place. A lot of the women working there (it's children's publishing - therefore 99.9% women) seem dissatisfied with how their careers are going, the amount of work they have (too much), the shitty 'no paid overtime' policy all publishing houses somehow combine with a deeply ingrained and well-observed long-hours culture. I figure 3 days a week is the maximum I can stand to be in an office. Spoiled, moi?

What a surreal night. To celebrate the Oscars Soho House has a party for its members. A friend of mine has membership and asked me along, as everyone else has day-jobs and can’t stay out drinking till 6am on a Monday morning. So we met in Bar Italia at midnight (I felt incredibly conspicuous on the train, in my evening coat and black patent heels, until I got to Soho that is, which was like 10pm on a Friday) for double espressos (£3.80?! Yeah, that perked me up pretty quick. I know it’s an institution and all, but bloody hell. I can’t even calculate the mark up on that). Bagging a good table in Soho House, we were brought bellinis. And then more bellinis. When the free champagne ran out we were bought a bottle by a man who seemed to know everyone, and asked the waiters to take care of us. He took turns flirting with me and Anna, and his conversation ran a very fine line between being obnoxious, offensive and laughably charming. He left at about 2am, after showing us a photo of his hot son, who is studying in Paris, and was replaced by another guy, one of the founders of Soho House. The conversation with him was even more surreal – at one point he asked me if I’d ever been to the New York branch of Soho House and if I went to Cannes and I wanted to have a quiet word and tell him that he had me confused with someone else. We’d both be pretty embarrassed when he realised I was a freelance editor, lived in an unhip part of south-east London and wasn’t a member of any exclusive clubs. At 4am giant trays of food were brought out – scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, hash browns, mushrooms, fried bread, tomatoes, smoked salmon – and there was a scrum for the buffet. Anna and I stayed till the bitter end (about 5.30), staggered out into the freezing darkness, and went to wait for the 176 bus which rather conveniently runs all night.

Update: it took me about 3 days to recover from this all-night shindig. I'm not as young as I used to be...