We spent a night away from the baby at the weekend. M had a birthday and threw a silly, raucous little party for people in Soho and I wanted to give him (us) the gift of not having to wake up at 7am and immediately play with a baby. So I booked a hotel room in town (my astonishment at the size of London hotel rooms, even Quite Nice ones, is yet to abate) and we got in after midnight and promptly awoke at 6am. Such is life.

Still, it felt like a kind of milestone. And while staying the night in central London feels fancy, waking up in central London feels magical. I always forget this. I’ve lived here for nearly 15 years now, seen all parts of the city at all kinds of hours, but the novelty of waking up and stepping out into Holborn or Marylebone or wherever else you would normally only get to on a bus feels fresh fresh fresh.

By 8.45am we were out and walking around the corner to Fortitude Bakehouse, which is so good we joined the queue even though it only opened 15 minutes earlier. Then we took our buns and our drinks and pottered to Russell Square and laid the wax paper the buns came in on the benches, which were speckled with rain, and sat on that to keep our bums dry and shared the buns and looked at the daffs and smelled the daphne and spoke about the baby we’d left with his grandparents and Bloomsbury and how our lives had put us right there at that very moment. And it was lovely, really, far lovelier than the hotel.

Other good things this week:...