may is swiftly shrinking even as more seems possible everyday as summer finally arrives in london.

the new house feels lived in.  mostly.  we have a few things still to do like get the internet working.  buy new beds.  and prune back the lilac growing wildly in the garden.  

i haven’t had much time to write on tumblr the last few weeks. here’s a little of what i’ve been doing:

i’ve started a new design series from my the desk in the corner of my new room where i can work away and still watch the flow of life on the street.  pictures to come!

i went to see my friend maryrose watson’s exhibit as part of collect, the showcase for extremely innovative and unique craft at the saatchi gallery.  her pieces are all delicately woven yarn and thread that she dyes in neat geometric patterns and weaves straight onto the handmade frames, the results are designs that evolve as you move around them.

on a brilliantly sunny morning we joined the ranks of happy east london couples walking dogs and reading the papers awestruck by the sunshine out on the pavement at violet in london fields. i ate one of these.  c had very overpriced - you know you’re in east london - freshly squeezed blood orange juice.

afterwards we had sourdough toast outside at e5 bakehouse.

continuing the theme of exploring my new neighborhood, elisa and i met for dinner at a little of what you fancy, an overpriced but lovely hidden restaurant on dalston kingsland with about ten or twelve tables, candles and huge calla lilies in a vase on the communal table we sat at.  the wine and company were excellent, the food alright, the vegetarian option an uninspired bean burger again at the inflated price of twelve quid, not a bit of what i fancied as it turned out.

ridley road market. i’d forgotten how far you can stretch five pounds picking up all this for a fiver: avocados, carrots, beets, onions, oranges and ginger.  i think there’s a rumour it’s been renovated in time for the olympics, a phrase you hear everywhere in east london these days, and it would be a shame if it lost some of the scruffy, otherworldly, rundown quality that makes it what it is for most people, a reminder of other places, of a nostalgia for the lively african markets it mimics.

c’mon and keep going.  just a little longer. this is what i tell myself as i run.  run through london fields every other morning, with its leafy overhangings and people en route to work on their bikes and hurrying along the footpath, down past broadway market with its cafes doing a brisk business in pricey morning coffees and the other shops peeling up their shutters for the day.  down onto the canal, watch out for any cyclists hurdling by, head further east past the industrial live/work spaces of hackney, past the weird smells toxic waste and strange burning plastics under the bridge, a tarry smell that makes me run faster to get through it.  a little further and there’s a modern office space with monumental windows, a wall of glass looking onto the canal and i see workers settling into their desks for the day, the lights ping on at a school next door, and i’m still running.  i’m not sure how or why i’m still running except that something tells me it’s too early to stop, and that i don’t feel quite as bad as i did when i started running and that some days when i don’t run i find i miss it.  c’mon keep going i say again and wonder what the other people sashaying past with ease tell themselves to keep going.  and how can these other runners, professionals in their purposeful running shorts and lithe bodies and springy trainers, make it look so easy graceful even.

i’ve been listening to andrew bird’s new album, break it yourself, as i run and that’s been a big help.  the title song is gorgeous and melancholy and i listen to it on repeat as i run.

‘you’ve done the impossible now, took yourself apart, made yourself invulnerable.  no one can break your heart…so you break it yourself.’

it’s a mystery to me how a story starts. where does it come from, was it always there?  yesterday i started a new story, it pretty much arrived without much invitation but it was like i was waiting for it, like a best friend returned from a long trip. 

last week i moved into the house in london fields finally after three months of inconsistent laundry facilities and relying on the generosity of friends. london fields now feels like the centre of the universe, if it isn’t within walking distance or an easy cycle is it really worth it?

the ice cream van is making rounds as i write this and kids in their school uniforms are walking home. otherwise the street outside is quiet, residential and lined with pretty georgian family homes. but the house is close enough to the street and the window to my room literally hangs over the street to make it a constant distraction, what is happening out there, who is that, what did she say, there’s the neighbor with the dog again or the council dump service driving around a beatup armchair.  you can watch everything from my new window sitting at my new desk. 

the house is a spindly affair with narrow creaky staircases and stripped floorboards with perfect gaps for swallowing rings and coins, in our first week we stepped on a cockroach and we flooded the garden, but it has a grace to it, the massive windows invite the world in, the neighborly world of the street and the private world of the expansive back garden with its out of control wisteria. every time i go to the kitchen or upstairs to turn the heating on the bright purple and white wisteria catches my eye overhanging obesely from the fence.  a true gardener would want to get her mitts on the tree and get down to pruning it back, but there is something apt in its wildness.  this is the closest to the city i’ve ever lived, right on the cusp of the bars and cafes and hipster hangouts of shoreditch and dalston but somehow, unbelievably, there is a kind of abundance of garden all around this new house, space to breathe and room to get down to writing and making jewellery again.

let’s face it i would not be running in the first place if it weren’t for a foolhardy decision i made before my 30th birthday to ask friends for a challenge to launch into my 30s with a bang, as i’d already decided looking back at my messy, unpredictable and experimental 20s, that this would be the decade of getting shit done.  and what better way to start than having a handy and long list of amazing challenges to follow through. and come my birthday in september the challenges rolled in, some people like my dad didn’t get the brief that it was a one challenge per person type of thing and sent ten (but they were all good karma california things so i was touched he’d taken the time to think of me and what it might mean for me turning 30) and my best friend meara sent a list of 30 with some whoppers like learn how to code, and find a meat that you like.  they were all incredibly thoughtful  gestures from my friends and family, responding as it were to my cajoling them to send them my way, and now some six months later i have to admit for the most part i have done nothing but ignore them. in fact some friends have sent emails, how are the challenges going, and i’ve ignored these too.

so in the next six months i have a lot of ground to cover.  some i’m bound to fail like lara’s suggestion i live six months in a developing country and make friends with a girl my age and find out how she lives. but others remain eminently within my potential like dave’s listen to luther vandross in the bath with candles, or my sister, get a manicure or pedicure once a month for three months. i’ll post the full list soon.

how does this relate to running? well sam’s was to run a half-marathon and after two months of running, albeit not every day and i still can’t go for more than 45 minutes and i probably look haggard, exhausted, irritable and nothing as nonchalant and graceful as all the other runners i see, i’m pretty on track for this challenge only hoping that i can keep it up.

today i ran along the regent’s canal from old street to london fields listening to this american life,an episode with a fitting title, you are your own worst enemy.  i’m still such a beginner it is embarrassing to have people run with me or to talk about it much, but as it may just be the challenge i’m most on track with i thought i’d try my best to write about the experience and who knows, maybe it will be just the kick in the ass i need to get the other challenges up and running…

some of the best days in london are unplanned, pure stumbling days where the city makes its own plan for you and sends you down alice in wonderland trails and one thing leads to the other and without any map or agenda you end up eating catalan charred onions on a sunday on the southbank, listening to a sonnet in farsi at the globe and walking into a benign looking bookstore with a twist in kingly court drawn in by the sign that says: leave a book, take a book

and so i left julian barnes’ the sense of an ending and took don paterson’s collections rain and god’s gift to women. oops i took two. but no doubt i’ll be back, and i’ll bring more books.  i stayed for about twenty minutes utterly absorbed by the free books and the whole time i was there, with all the hubbub and usual shopping crowds going shop to shop down carnaby street, nobody else came in, nobody else seemed curious or intrigued or giddy like i did. i felt like a kid at christmas.

it’s only on for a few more weeks. go have a browse, lots of faber poetry and thames and hudson picture books.

Carnaby Book Exchange – London’s most diverse free book exchange

this came as a shock. i’m not sure how i missed this, yet another news story that didn’t make the news in the uk.  today i read this articulate article in the new york times from novelist anne patchett on the inexcusable lack of a winner in this year’s fiction category of the pulitzer prize, america’s biggest literary prize.