Yesterday I headed to Kew Gardens to meet with Raphael, Marie-Pierre and Odette to spend an afternoon looking at odd exotic plants, eating Victorian sponge (very much liked by the little bird pictured below who pestered me for more) and climbing on the tree-top ladder. I am cultivating a growing interest in gardening, and I really want to sign up for this course, but given that my free space is a balcony and tiny terrasse, it’s probably not going to work.

The area around Kew Gardens’ tube station is unbelievably beautiful (think Gilmore Girls setting, complete with little books and flowers shop, French wine store and bakeries), but such cuteness filled my with rage. I mean, fuck, Bethnal Green is painfully ugly/smelly/dirty and yet everywhere I go during the weekends (Hampstead, Epping, Bermondsey, Belsize park, Primrose Hill - you name it) people seem to live in Victorian houses with huge gardens and quiet streets. How did that happen? How yeah, maybe it’s because nobody can afford a council estate house until they’re 50 nowadays and I have to live near dusty hipsterland with cheap rent instead. Fuck that.

I keep on thinking of my mother who kept on telling me, when I was a lone teenager glued to the interwebz all day, that one day I would regret not hanging out in our lovely garden in Tours an awful lot more. Mom 1, Jess 0 + crying.

Bitterness aside,

In french we call this ‘une bouture’ but I am not sure of the English equivalent. It’s surely one of the most amazing experiment done with gardening: take a stem, wrap it in mousse and plastic to conserve the moisture and leave it to grow, turning into another branches which can be later transplanted.

My obsession with benches continues. Someone get me one somewhere nice when I am no more, please.

Oh and plants, gardens, cakes, jam making and homesteading?  I guess that’s what they call being old, and yet I haven’t hit 25. Clearly there’s something wrong with this picture, because everytime someone says”festival” or “clubbing” I cringe. Give me white wine and a quite space instead please. I guess London will do that to you.

Wanstead park in Epping: the best London discovery we’ve made in a long time - except of course when we got lost and had to walk an hour between highways, Presbyterian churches and depressing nursing homes.

In Angel

The HIV data is horrible, but seriously - they totally got this ad wrong.

I would love to have a boat similar to these.

My dear friend.

Saturday afternoon was spent doing touristic activities.

Tomorrow will be spent looking for a job, waiting for a very intimidating interview on friday.

I updated the about page and the homepage (after one year of not having one, good job Jess), so maybe soon I’ll update it here with a real entry. In the meantime:

Amongst other things, well:

- a surprise gathering with my best friend from France and two of my dearest friends from Brighton, organised by a very devious boyfriend.

- a camera:

Model: Fish, the from-upstairs cat.