I really should start writing an
autobiographical pocket novel called ‘The unbearable loneliness of a being on bank
holiday weekends’ or ‘Izzy’s day out’ or ‘I should have stayed at home’ and the
story would go like this. One weekend someone doesn’t have time in their life
for vegan cake, and another obviously less antisocial individual escapes to
mainland Europe for coffee leaving
you all alone staring at the ceiling of your tiny tiny studio flat in a part of
town that’s suddenly turned into something too trendy for your
run-away-from-home self to hang out unaccompanied by a freelance jewellery
designer husband and a toddler. But not all is lost. Never mind washing your
hair (it adds to the charm), you jump on a train to dear Peckham, where people’s
main concern appears to be the price of plantains and you can wander around middle
Eastern bargain stores that resemble Narnia and art galleries and take photos
of songbirds in alleys and sit in cafés sipping rhubarb tea and writing
postcards to worried parents who now label you as bohemian, then go back home with
a new-found quite concerning feeling of belonging, a bag of blackcurrant sweets
and twelve hundred grams of strawberries for your (almost) raw vegan cheesecake
because as it turns out, you are one of those people who do have time in their
life for vegan cake and I fail at seeing anything wrong with that.
The end.
