Between last Thursday night and Sunday night, when I flew from JFK to Heathrow, I packed for my trip, packed up my apartment, successfully reclaimed my security deposit from the reluctant landlord, gave away many items too cheap to ship to Australia but too valuable to throw away – much to the delight of a friend who lives across the street and whose kitchen is now enhanced by both furniture and glassware – advised various institutions of my change in NY address now that I’m no longer tied by my lease to Brooklyn, rescheduled my flight back to Sydney, and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Which was a huge relief as I had mountains of unidentified paperwork to trudge through, rip up, file, or otherwise process, and had finally a spare and uninterruptible hour in which to do it.
So here I am in the north of London, in the company of my fine friends Maria and Paul, who I haven’t seen in two years. Photos to come – last night at a dinner party I even briefly wore a black wig; but then so did everyone at the table. I’m still sorting out which cords and plugs and things can be used in the UK without shorting my US laptop and electrical accoutrements.
Today Maria and I saw Germaine Greer in conversation for a BBC4 radio show to be aired on Friday; she was highly entertaining, self-deprecating and unflinchingly honest about herself and others, which is always refreshing in our air-brushed culture. She has a new book out about Anne Hathaway, aka the wife of William Shakespeare. We then had to balance ourselves out by going to Selfridges for a spot of shopping, although my most exciting purchase was a pair of pyjama pants and an adapter plug for the aforementioned US-UK appliance transfer.
Having just received the production schedule for the Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement, it’s going to be an extremely busy couple of months as the manuscript evolves from Word document to printed book. But what a surreal and amazing sort of “busy” to be. Do send me a note – I’m on my usual email address or just post a comment to this blog, I won’t publish it unless you ask me to!
