At the weekend, I was lucky enough to meet E’s old work friend and mentor for brunch. I could write an entire post about the eggs that they serve at Alchemy in Leigh-on-Sea but maybe that’s something for me to sit and think on a little longer.
It was great to hear of their misadventures together, including him throwing pineapples at her when they’d over-ordered on them again. I should specify that they worked in a kitchen, as if this makes the anecdote any more palatable.

It got me thinking about the people I’ve had in my life that I now recognise as being mentors. I don’t like the business term of having a mentor. It suggests an earnest sit down over a cup of bad, machine-made coffee while making Five Year Plans like Josef Stalin.

Instead, these are people who have been there for me when I needed the guidance. Sometimes they are people that are senior to me in years or in a work setting, but in others, they have been established friendships that I later recognised had something else going on at the same time. There’s a certain respect that they have earned as a result of those engagements.

There’s S, one of the first bosses I had, who it felt truly accepted and understood me while expecting a lot at the same time. I haven’t worked with him for close to a decade but I can guarantee a message on my birthday and the occasional check-in when I’ve been quiet. He has a cool confidence, a powerful collection of aftershave/cologne and is a great problem solver.

Then I worked with R, who got me through a rocky patch. Somehow we swung a trip to Malta for work while I was going through a horrible break up. We spent a week eating delicious seafood and finding creative ways of hiding our beers on the receipts we submitted back to the office. He also helped me get into running and HIIT when I felt like a slug. R has the capacities of an older sibling, knowing just how much piss-taking is appropriate. Also, great beard.

I met J online after I read their first novel and got in touch to say how incredible it was. In turn, J read work of mine, offered fantastic feedback, and supported me through the last few years when I was really striving to get better as a writer and to make a name for myself. Their writing is some of the strongest I’ve read and I wait impatiently for the novel about working in a sex shop.

That moves us onto F and T, who have been paid to be there for me through the tough times. There’s still a level of mentorship that comes from being a therapist and the things they have taught me about myself are not to be overlooked. It’s still an ongoing process and not one I can see the end of at this point. I’m building out a toolkit of things I do know and can take comfort in.

The most recent is another J, who is now my agent. He delivers a firm but fair approach, holding me accountable for the work I’ve done while offering up this end-of-the-rainbow optimism to everything we have done together. I have total faith that this will change my life and the time he has dedicated to me has been incredible.

There are plenty of other people in my life who have been kind, have listened when I most needed it and, in particular, have seen me through the last five months. Maybe in time, they’ll become mentors too.

My grandma had a recipe for cheesecake that was unrivalled… until I went to Juniors in New York and considered my options. The below is an approximation of that recipe, taken from handwritten notes and with a little help from the Internet.

Ingredients:
Crust:
– 100g melted butter
– 160g digestives, smashed
– 1 tbsp golden caster sugar
Filling:
– 900g full-fat soft cheese
– 250g golden caster sugar
– 3 tbsp plain flour
– pinch of salt
– 2 tsp vanilla extra
– zest of one lemon
– juice of half a lemon
– 3 eggs and one extra yolk
– 200ml sour cream
Topping:
– 150ml sour cream
– 1tbsp sugar
– juice of half a lemon

Method:
Pre-heat oven to 180C / 160C (fan) / gas mark 4
Line a 23cm springform cake tin with parchment paper, clipped beneath
Melt butter and combine with smashed digestives and 1tbsp sugar
Press into cake tin and bake for ten minutes
Cool on a wire rack

Increase the oven temperature to 220C / 200C (fan) / gas mark 7
Mix the 900g of cream cheese until smooth
Gradually add 250g golden caster sugar
Then 3tbsp plain flour
Then a pinch of salt
Add in 2 tbsp vanilla extract, lemon zest and juice of half a lemon. Follow with the eggs, a little at a time.
Stir to an airy, smooth batter
Brush sides of pan with butter
Pour in filling and bang on worktop to smooth
Bake for ten minutes
Reduce oven temperature to 110C / 90C (fan) / gas mark ¼
Bake for 45 minutes
Turn off oven and open door
Let the cheesecake sit in the open oven for two hours

Mix 150ml sour cream with 1tbsp sugar and juice of the other half of the lemon
Spread evenly across the top of cheesecake
Cover loosely in foil and transfer to fridge for an agonising eight hours
Release the sides with a palette knife

This is why I’ve called it the breakfast of champions. Without careful planning, it won’t be ready until the following morning. Hence why I had it as soon as I woke up.

There’s nothing quite like the discovery of something in London that you have never been exposed to before. These things can happen quite by chance, by stumbling across something wonderful and realising you’ve missed it each time your train has floated right by or right under the spot.

Nowhere is that more relevant than on the Maltby Street Food Market, where the trains can be both seen and heard. Rope Walk is built into the underside of the train line, and the constant rumble serves as a backdrop to the sounds of frying cheese and influencers thinking out loud about how to block the crowds out of the shots of their experience.

For us, it was a case of getting some drinks, getting some food and then getting some more drinks and some more food. We started with half a dozen Maldon oysters with a couple of Old Fashioneds, the unlikely combination working in our favour and feeling overly indulgent. Sitting at the side of Rope Walk, we were able to watch the crowds go by, keeping an eye out for wrapped packages of food that could turn our heads.

After walking the full length of the market, E settled on an arepa from Cheese Blanket, famed for their fried cheese, folded into cornmeal-based flatbreads – a dish from Venezuela. We shared a halloumi and plantain arepa, which may have changed my views on my favourite bread and become an honourable “munchion” when I eventually secure my place on Ed Gamble and James Acaster’s podcast, Off Menu.

I picked up a beef and chorizo empanada with chimichurri before regaling E with the story of when I stayed in the Costa Rican rainforest and an old mama taught me to make them by hand, before manning the fryer because I could not be trusted.

There were so many options at our disposal that we made plans for another trip before we were done. E picked up two bowls of gyoza from Gyoza Guys – both the chicken and the tofu, which we had with chilli oil and onions.

I have a confused relationship with food and to spend time in a place like that is to understand what it means to live to eat. Everything we had was the best bite. Each cuisine from around the world compartmentalised into a gentrified and Instagram-ready presentation, and who are we to deny ourselves that?

Woke up feeling like someone had pumped my stomach full of rich food and booze and used my lungs to smoke twenty cigarettes. There was a clear reason for this. It was our third and final day in Paris and exactly that had happened.

Unfortunately, it was time to check out and walk to the only thing I’d booked in for the pair of us to do, at the ungodly hour of 09:45 on a Sunday – the Paris Catacombs. Somehow, in my various trips to the city, I had never visited, and neither had E so it fit our little Venn diagram of things we both wanted to do and hadn’t done.

Descending, I was alarmed by how low the carved tunnel ceilings sat, keeping a hat on to soften the blows to my clumsy skull. It truly is an eerie and incredible experience, feeding into the fascination I have with death and our relationship to it. It’s hard to know how to arrange ones features to reflect that these are people, that they lived lives and had likely suffered on their way out. That was until E told me she had “the headbone is connected to the neckbone” as an earworm. Meanwhile, a version of The Killers’ Bones played on a loop in my head.

On the way out, we checked the gift shop out (and it was one of the best) before getting a late breakfast of croque monsieur, while trying to work out what to do with our day. Three is enough days for a city break. I’d stay a lifetime in Paris but that experience would obviously look very different. We found another food market and Arènes de Lutèce where we sat and watched people playing boule. Sat with another flat white, it was the perfect spot to see enough of the city that I could imagine us being filmed from behind, on a bench, like characters in a Woody Allen film, without the weight that is obviously carried by any such observation.

Knowing we had to get to le Gare du Nord on time, I was anxious we had a direct line on Le Metro, which meant riding out the afternoon with a couple of cocktails. We returned to Montparnasse for a vodka martini and a margarita respectively, along with the foolhardy purchase of another pack of cigarettes. We stayed there until we were drunk enough for dinner and went inside. The service was great and again, we had timed it to avoid the busy period in the late afternoon when the French eat. We split a dozen oysters and a dozen escargot, which were both excellent. I could get used to this life of wine, woman and song. I then had the steak I had been waiting on since we arrived and E had moules. It felt opulent and right for us to finish up our trip in this way. By the time we had finished that and another bottle of wine, I was pissed, but we had enough time to make our train, and finish up the trip with another couple of rounds of drinks.

Hemingway famously said that Paris was a moveable feast. I certainly hope that’s the case.

Woke up with a wine hangover but no alarm. A blessing and a curse. Those of you in the know are aware that a wine hangover is up there amongst the worst of them. To clear our heads, we went for a run around le Jardin du Luxembourg. It helped but the coffin-sized shower cubicle attached to our room and the almond-scented shower gel took care of the rest.

We walked north, found a food market and beside it, La Maison D’Isabelle, a patisserie that is listed in enough of the top places to get croissants in all of Paris. That was good enough for us and along with two baguettes, the stodge helped settle our stomachs and the flat whites from Le bon moment on Rue des Bernardins woke us up. Stopping in the park besides S&Co, we watched some French boys playing football with their dad and dipped our fresh pastries in the dregs of our coffee. That’s French living. The breakfast of champions.

Further down the river, we queued for Musee D’Orsee, which, thanks to Brexit, we were told we had to pay to visit. Just when you think you’ve got your head around the losses that came from that absolute misstep, here’s another. The museum was amazing, with beautiful marble statues, huge tableaus, Whistler’s Mother and a Van Gogh room full of chancers taking selfies.

We stopped for a beer and a cigarette in a brasserie before walking to Le Marais in the 4th, where E kept talking about the best falafel she had when she was last in the city. She couldn’t remember anything about the place but said she would recognise it when she saw it. We put this to the back of our minds until we got there, searching frantically for somewhere to get falafel on the busy streets. Ducking out of the way, we found Chez Hanna, which not only did the best falafel but was also the place E had been talking about all morning. She was right, of course. The food was amazing and we timed it perfectly, with everyone else seemingly finishing up their lunches before we were served.

We had been recommended Canal St Martin so walked there for a negroni and to be bide our time before we could fit in another meal. Paris is for love and Paris is for eating. We then had a couple of Old Fashioneds and I had two limoncellos for some reason before dinner at Le Verre Volé, which Anthony Bourdain recommended in Parts Unknown. We sat out on the street and had another bottle of wine, getting pissed enough before our food arrived that I wasn’t sure I could taste it. When E refilled my glass, we were rightly chastised for not doing it in the French way. It was very much a megapint. After a misstep where we queued for a club we were unlikely to get into, we got an Uber back to our hotel and fell into a drunken sleep.

Up at 4am for a 6am train out of Euston. Spent the night between the peeling walls of the cheapest hotel I could find within walking distance of the station. We both admitted to having stayed in worse, which should be a damning enough note on any accommodation.

Getting up that early is a holiday must and the buzz takes away any of the fatigue felt if the commute is one of necessity. It also meant being in Paris before 10am, shouldering our way through the building work and domino shelves of Shakespeare & Company. At one point, E said that she could imagine us back there when my book comes out. That’s the kind of positivity I live for and, as I looked at the posters stuck to the glass front and the queues of people waiting outside to be allowed in, I could really see it. Only part of that vision was blurred by Ethan Hawke’s Jesse doing something similar in Before Sunset.

We walked for miles along The Seine, wondering if we looked like tourists while searching out a point along the river where we could get the shot in front of the Eiffel Tower. We stopped in a tabac for the required packet of Lucky Strikes. Knowing that food anywhere else in the area would be double the price, we settled in for a meal. I ordered steak hache, pretending I knew what I was doing and then being surprised when an unseasoned and unbunned burger made an appearance. E had a steak with peppercorn sauce. My DuoLingo levels of French only got us so far before the kind waitress either spoke in English or showed us pictures to get a point across. We smoked some more before climbing up to the 2nd etage, which was clearly a bad way round to do such things. There is a certain pride in overtaking other intrepid explorers who see the lift as a cheat.

There, we were offered a couples photoshoot, which we took, but then couldn’t stop laughing. The idea of doing anything so serious and cheesy sending us both into fits of giggles. When the photographer went to show us the photos, the file was corrupted and I was pleased I wouldn’t get to see all of my gangly six foot frame, with arms crossed, stood back to back with five foot three her. It would have looked like a Disney Channel original movie poster. The story is better when something goes wrong.

Following Montparnasse Tower like it was Mount Doom, we had a beer at La Rotonde, one of Hemingway’s favourite bars, and then took the lift and stairs up 59 floors to the viewing deck to watch the sunset. I hadn’t been to Paris since 2019, before the pandemic. It felt like a lot longer in a lot of ways. So much has changed and to be there with someone, to experience that together instead of staring around at the strangers and wondering if I was aloof enough for them was a nice change.

After checking in to our hotel, we went to Le Dome, completely unprepared and underdressed for the opulent traditional French restaurant, which again, was a place Hemingway frequented often enough that they have a set menu named after him as well as his black and white photo on the wall. It only took half a dozen oysters and a bottle of wine for us to get into a deep and meaningful conversation that continued until the other tables cleared out and we moved on, now in search of cocktails.

At Chez Papa, we continued to set the world to rights until the lack of sleep caught up with us and we called it, ready for day two.

It has been a week. The problem is that I have nothing to complain about in this space. On top of having a job that I enjoy, I’m also grafting at my novel, trying to get it into the right place for it to go out to publishers. It’s a very exciting time but my daily routine of getting up at 5am, hitting the gym, showering and then working on my manuscript until I have to start my actual job at 9am is a lot. On top of that, I’m then trying to be present in all other aspects of my life. This all means that by Friday, I am absolutely done. That’s how I feel today. It’s the sense that if I don’t stop soon and take care of myself then I’m going to be a danger to myself.

More than anything, this is a reminder to everyone to look after yourselves, slow down and lean into a relaxed pace. I haven’t sat and read a book or had a bath in the longest time. Those are the kind of things I’m talking about. If I had time, I’d eat a whole pyramid of Ferrero Rocher while a Lush bath bomb did wonderful things between my thighs. That may well be my treat on Sunday night as a reward for getting through the week.

Exciting things are coming. I’m really proud of myself. I’m working hard to look after myself and set a future up that I can thrive in. For now though, just take care.

I’m very much aware of how obtuse my last couple of posts have been. There are a number of recent changes in my circumstances that I don’t think are appropriate to share outside of those that it directly impacts. As ever, that hasn’t stopped people from sharing their thoughts on my life outside of those it directly impacts.

In the last week, there has been an identified change in the way things have been discussed and I am very grateful to have that back. It goes a long way to talk directly to people about what you need and your expectations. Still, the rumour mill continues to churn. Those who preach being kind are often those who are most likely to throw dispersions in. Anyone who messages me out of the blue asking how I am is to be carefully considered before I let them in. And that’s not like me. I’m generally an open book. It’s just a shame that we have to be a little defensive for a while but it’s brought everything into sharp focus and will ensure that we get what we want ultimately.

I’m doing really well. I’m looking after myself and I can feel that happiness permeating the things I’m doing and the people I choose to surround myself with. What more could I ask for right now?

When I was young, and cool, I was in a band. The main reason we were in the band was to tell girls that we were in a band. Some of the time it worked. One of the songs that we wrote, and I think specifically Mike come up with the title of, was The Sun Will Come Out Soon. I don’t know if it had the intention of hitting me square between the eyes with a revelation over a decade later but here we are.

This week, I was walking through Shoreditch and the sun cut through the clouds and the buildings and hit the side of my face. I had this profound feeling that I hadn’t noticed the sun in a long time.
Now this could mean any number of things. Chiefly, it could be a coincidence. Better than that though, it was a metaphor. I hadn’t noticed the sun in a long time.

The sun is always there. It might be behind clouds. It might be over the horizon but it’s always there. I have been so deeply stuck in my own head that I didn’t notice much of anything. I agreed to things that I don’t actually want because it seemed easier than giving it any focus or fight.

Recognising the sun and feeling that glow was life affirming. We aren’t through the full harshness of winter but I’m coming out of my own period of hibernation and I’m hungry.