Thursday 15 January

My first crush of the year doesn't seem to be working out. As Tattetta tells me tactfully, if a woman wants to spend time with you, she'll find a way of doing so. If she doesn't, she won't. I rarely look at the 'problem pages' of Tatt's mechanical journal, lest I see myself within. However, following my every confession - whether relayed to her by pigeon or worldwidewotsit - I advise my solicitors to glance over her work and carefully calculate my commission. Ever generous, I will wait to collect my purse until she moves back from notoriously pricey London; not that this looks likely – she’s embracing it with treacherous lust, something I find myself never quite able to do, despite the tentative purchase of a Mollusk carte this year (allowing subsidized travel on anything steam or herbivore powered within 300 yards of St. Paul’s). Likewise settled in London, Mimi is undertaking a final edit of her book for Dodo and being lined up for interviews with select members of Fleet Street (Thackeray!; Parochipolitan). I expect the hacks, and soon the nation, to be steamrollered by the Northern ideas factory that is our Ms Pixel. Nearby Rosa, our Scandinavian inspiration mill, is enjoying luck more similar to my own– hacking heroically into the void while straining to save her suitors, rather than herself, or the bother.

For all the secure cells of friends my favourite part of London remains the handsome Camden drinkery where I take Sasha today, following a fleeting work trip. I like the fact that the place is just far enough way from the rush and push of the nearby souvenir shops; adore the wood and leather, the candle-lit smoking grotto at the back, the memories of drinking here with a new love, grinning like a Cheshire cat while dog-sitting for my Uncle in Hampstead. Most of all I like the way that I by now know the exact route from its exit onto Chalk Farm road to Euston and the train home. And the fact that Sasha buys our tubs of beer thereon.