London & Paris diary: part II
Bluets on stage, secret vintage, Freak Orlando, bookstore obsessions
At the end of May and beginning of June, I travelled to London and Paris with my best friend. I covered the first part of the trip in this post, and you can find the continuation of the daily diary that I kept below. These entries cover from my friend Paige’s departure to my own trip home, and so are mostly days when I was travelling and exploring by myself.
Tuesday the 4th: Paige wakes up at 6:30 and I walk her to the hotel doors to catch the Elizabeth line to the airport. I go back to bed and by the time I am up again, she is at her gate! I pack and clean the room, then pick up a strawberry ricotta tart for breakfast. I haul my suitcase to [secret hotel name] for storage. It is already heavy and yet I still have so many bookstores to plunder! Then I am off to Kew Gardens, a trek that everyone makes a big deal about but is surprisingly easy from Russell Square. I’m writing in the gardens now, resting from carrying my heavy overnight tote with me, and tucked away under a canopy of vines. Tonight I will stay with my friend Hannah in northeast London. We will have Indian food for dinner at a local restaurant that is painted pink! I go from my little writing corner to Kew Palace, where George III was isolated when unwell, along with his family who were likewise confined to the floor above him. I find the visit quite sad, since the house is so lonely and spare, a place of shame and torture, really. It starts drizzling as I cross the lake and turn through the redwood forest. I follow the path to see Queen Charlotte’s cottage, which reminds me of Marie Antoinette’s Hameau de la Reine at Versailles. I have seen many rare plant varieties that are strange and delightful: my favourite is the endangered Monkey Puzzle tree, which has the overall shape of a pine but the branches look almost like a long string of rubbery artichokes. It takes about an hour and a half on the Overground and bus to cross much of London and get up to Hannah’s, but my tired feet and back welcome the chance to sit and finish reading Sina Queyras’ Lemon Hound. Dinner is delicious and then we watch Ugly Betty back at Hannah’s flat.
Wednesday the 5th: I am up early and at Hannah’s suggestion, I head to Esters cafe for breakfast. I eat muesli with rhubarb, kumquat, and strawberries, drink a whole pot of tea, and watch the residential street come to life. I catch a nice long busy ride to the British Library and sit in Tavistock Square to update yesterday’s diary entry and wait for the London Review Bookshop to open. When it does, I indulge: £60 later, I have 5 new books that I am buzzing about, especially Celia Paul’s Letters to Gwen John. I’ve bought lots of criticism and arts writing—I must have missed it last year during my Fields exam. I eat vegetable soup and ciabatta at the cakeshop while I’m finishing edits on an academic journal article that will be published at the end of the summer in Camera Obscura. I slowly head towards the hotel, stopping to visit The Horse Hospital, a slightly spooky gallery that I’ve always wanted to check out but never have. I wait for my room to be ready in the hotel lounge, resting in a deep, velvety armchair. At last, I am there and it is perfect… a little hideaway with a desk by the window that folds up to reveal a mirror, plus high ceilings, crown moulding, a narrow bed… it is a simple room, really, but I couldn’t have dreamt of anything more perfect for me. I FaceTime my family while they are having breakfast, then I nap and unpack. I order a milkshake from my favourite diner to pick up while I walk to the Barbican for a film screening. Once there, I am delighted to see the lakeside for the first time. (For those unfamiliar with the Barbican, it is a brutalist housing complex built on a second-century Roman fort with an incredible, extensive arts and community centre at the heart of it, along with museums, schools, and 2000 residential units—I dream of housing/cultural spaces like this at home! It is massive AND creative AND communal). Before my film starts, I buy a Carrie Mae Weems catalogue from the gift shop and see the free Soufiane Ababri show. In Cinema 2, I watch Freak Orlando followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker, Ulrike Ottinger, and hosted by scholar Rosalind Galt, who I’ve actually cited in the article that I was editing earlier. Though overlong, I love the film’s commitment to creating an entire world as well as its wry humour. I am sleepy so I bus home rather than walking, and saunter up Lamb’s Conduit Street past lots of full, glowing restaurants and pubs. Life here is so constant and it always looks wrapped in a bit of a glow, at least from the outside.
Thursday the 6th: It is Thursday and I am so tired. I get a cinnamon bun from Fortitude Bakehouse for breakfast and eat half of it in Russell Square, but it is too massive to finish (saying something, for me). I still have time to kill this morning, since my first stop is meant to be the Bloomsbury Farmer’s Market for lunch, so I finally end up going to the Italian café at the edge of the square where I have a hot chocolate and read Celia Paul. I always wanted to eat here when I lived in London but for some reason I never felt as though I could. I don’t know why I was so precious about it, but it is nice and I like that Paul is writing so much about this very cluster of blocks! I feel as though I might look up into a window and discover her in her studio. For lunch, I get a zucchini salad from Liberty Kitchen and talk for a while with their two cooks, who want to hear about Canada and why I love London so much (they’re so proud of it—particularly the food and multiculturalism). I get on the tube to the V&A and wander between sculptures until discovering that the 1pm lecture I’ve come to see is cancelled! Instead, I get a ticket to the Tropical Modernism exhibit where I learn about architectural ambitions and training programs in post-independence Ghana and India. I think architecture is hard to curate insofar as having meaningful objects present in the room, so I mostly do a lot of reading wall texts, but it is nonetheless an interesting show. Without the lecture, I still have loads of time so I drink ginger tea and read in the courtyard, then walk 20 minutes up the street to The Mosaic Rooms for Performing Colonial Toxicity, a show on the afterlives of France’s nuclear testing program in Algeria, which includes collaged secret documents and screenshots from leaked YouTube videos, as well as survivor testimonials (I’m reviewing this for an art magazine, so more to come). There is a DHL delivery person here to pick up a package and while he waits for it to be ready, we chat for 5 or 10 minutes since he happens to be passionate about nuclear disarmament himself. I like talking to strangers here because they are interesting and friendly without any motive, except to maybe learn or share something that excites them. In the gift shop, I buy Isabella Hammad’s The Parisian and read about some of the gallery’s truly incredible programming.
I take the tube to Sloane Square in Chelsea to wait for a ticket to the stage adaptation of Bluets. Once again, I am obscenely early, and so after I get my resale ticket, I wander around Chelsea and pop into Miista to drool over the most beautiful boots I’ve ever seen and have pizza for dinner at Vardo (very mid, unfortunately). The play brings out tones I hadn’t necessarily felt in the book but that make me appreciate it more—if Nelson’s book felt like a deep, rainy blue when I read it, the play was a polluted slate, going through the motions of a depressive state, with flashes of Derek Jarman, lapis, and cobalt pushing through now and again at the corners. The director uses a lot of screens and microphones, which is compelling but also hectic, so that it often feels as though the (excellent) cast are rushing around rather than getting to sit in the text more comfortably. It doesn’t help that my nose runs a lot during the show and at one point I sneeze loudly. I meet the man who sold back my resale ticket because his wife couldn’t make it, and he is full of pep, very excited to have helped someone out! Another friendly and memorable stranger! I go home for an early night in the hopes of banishing my nascent cold.
Friday the 7th:
A good sleep, mint tea, and a halloumi/avo sandwich from Leon revive me and send me on my way to Portobello Green for the Friday morning vintage market. I have done Portobello Market before, but was never wowed—it turns out that I had not been going to the actual vintage stalls, which set up on the Green specifically on Friday and Saturday mornings. These folks know vintage—I was dazzled by authentic 19th-century frocks, feathery French dressing gowns, shearling coats, and my ultimate choice of a leather 80s racing jacket. I walk the market road after shopping and get a smoothie, then travel across the river to the Tate Modern. I sit in the sun and read The Ice Palace while I wait for my friend Tasha. We go to the Yoko Ono retrospective—I am always a bit floored by how ahead of her time Ono was, doing performance art before it was really known as such or institutionalised. I like how many parts of the show are tactile and participatory: we walk on, stick our hands through, drawn on, and hammer different works, then even restage Bag Piece, draping our bodies into live sculptures under a sheet of stretchy fabric. We have tea on the top floor and take the tube to Bond St, parting ways to run errands. I stop by the Photographer’s Gallery (in fact it is closed and the two ‘shows’ I had wanted to see are just mini installations on the street), then skip over to the very posh streets to the West where I have dinner at Mercato Mayfair, a food hall in an old church. It is beautiful and my Pad Thai is great, though the space is cramped and hot. Tasha and I meet up again, now with her flatmate, for a Charli XCX album launch party, where I am swept up in the moment and get a t-shirt. Carrying it back to the hotel in a “365 PARTY GIRL” bag at only 8:30 feels a bit ironic, and it is a beautiful night, so I stop at WC Bar Bloomsbury for a cocktail on the patio as the sun goes down. In true Tia form though, I am still washing my hair and getting into bed by 10:30.
Saturday the 8th: After breakfast, I take the bus to Hampstead. It has clouded over right before our scheduled swim at the Ladies’ Bathing Pond, so my friend Rachel and I lumber through the Heath while intermittently raising the umbrella. We follow the fearless old ladies—regulars at the pond—though we lack some of their vim; it is so cold that it takes about two minutes to stop hyperventilating and breathe normally again. I adjust to the temperature, but in the cold, swimming is a much greater effort and I am knackered after one lap. We walk back past lots of happy dogs and land at Burgh House for soup and brunch. The inside of the house is closed for a wedding reception that we have to barge through—with our hefty bags and dripping hair—everytime we have to access the toilets. I meet my cousins’ family at a pub nearby and we catch up about their recent safari, new flats, etc. I end up at Waterstone’s (whoops) and get Susan Sontag’s diaries and Deborah Levy’s The Cost of Living. I meet Rachel again, this time in Notting Hill for dinner at Caia. We have Wye Valley asparagus in hollondaise, sweet potato agnolotti with brown butter, pecans, and belper knolle, and grilled artichoke with smoked feta and nocellara. The dessert is a twist of ice cream with popcorn and other salty treats on it. We part ways at King’s X and I head home to pack. I feel as if I live here now because everything is so comfortable and familiar.
Sunday the 9th: My last morning! I take my time getting ready to check out—how did four nights in my sweet hotel cave just evaporate? I get an iced chai, rose & raspberry jam, and a honey cake at Gail’s, then walk through Seven Dials to Covent Garden for brunch at Dishoom (Rachel’s favourite, noted for its bottomless chai). Rachel brings her friend and we all have naan rolls with some incredible unnamed sauce, then head to LRB for a final browse (I have cut myself off from book buying, and get only souvenirs for others). We walk all the way to Miel, my favourite bakery for which I have packed to-go containers to take back to Canada, but the owner tells me that they no longer make my (sacred, coveted) tomato-basil foccaccia! I push through the tragedy and get a pear tart, which is nice but expensive. I say goodbye to Rachel and happen to walk past the Gower St Waterstones on my way back—as fate would have it, they are selling a limited edition, special run of Jacob’s Room, which is one of the few Woolf novels I don’t already have. Whoops again. Then I’m collecting my bags, making sure everything is packed, and on the lift at Russell Square station, watching the city slip away through the little window as we dive underground. It feels so fast, like watching the text on a document get deleted, all gone in just a few clicks. On the plane now, anxious for home, a bath, family, my favourite things. But also to be back here again soon.
Read the first part of my trip diaries here:
London & Paris diary: part I
I recently traveled to London and Paris for two weeks with my cousin and best friend of 24 years, Paige. We visited friends and explored the cities. For the first time in my life, I successfully managed to keep a diary recording what we did each day, albeit briefly. I’ll be sharing a transcription of these notes over two parts in newsletters to come.
What I’m Reading:
Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm (translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel)
Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe
Performing Remains by Rebecca Schneider
What I’m Watching:
The Bear, Season 3
New Girl (632nd rewatch - approximate)
Dick (1999 - also a serial rewatch because it’s basically my favourite movie ever and girls just wanna stop the US war machine etc etc)
Fantasmas
What Else I’m Doing:
Spending time on gorgeous Lake Huron (Ontario’s “West Coast”)
Cooking for friends
Trying to decide if I should finally get MUBI but also trying to save money
Chopping off all of my hair