I spent some of last week, at the time when I would usually be collecting my son from nursery, stood on a rooftop of a 16th-century building known as the Palazzo in a tiny village on the Umbrian-Tuscan border. I have loved that spot since I found it a couple of years earlier, four months pregnant and scrambling on the tiles to get a better view. This time around I shared it with my fellow writing retreat tutors, a precious moment in long, heart-filling days when we could catch up on how our teaching was going and what we’d encountered that day.

The first evening we gathered up there I was trying to find a reading from Hark, the book I’m bringing out next April. It’s become something of a tradition, to give our retreat attendees the first reading of a new book - I did it with Why Women Grow a couple of years ago. The proof arrived the day before I flew. When the other tutors saw it they cheered it on, bottle of prosecco in hand. We toasted the proof on the roof.

I don’t, actually, like reading from my work; I always find I want to change the words as I go. But it’s a meaningful moment in the strange transition that comes from a book being all yours to becoming an object on somebody else’s shelf. I read from a chapter in which I speak with an artist, who made a very tender work about her newborn son being in neonatal intensive care. And it felt like that reading - that important debut of Hark’s - couldn’t have had a softer landing. Warmth, care, tears, stories, hugs. After months of writing this story alone at the same desk I’m writing to you now, it was like a bubble rising in a glass. A glimpse of what Hark might become.

Proofs are going out now, which is exciting and scary and fun and all the other things. And I have one to send to a savour member! If you’d like it, do comment below, perhaps with what your tasty morsel has been this week, and we’ll choose a winner at random.

Other good things this month:

Tasty morsels

spontaneous nap burger

At the start of the month I took C to a new family dance class. It started off awkward, and swiftly became weirdly freeing, thanks to the realisation that your toddler doesn’t judge you for doing peculiar dancing in public to Bjork. Anyway, it tired him out and I didn’t manage to get him home in time to sleep. What happened instead was he fell asleep in the buggy and I wheeled him in the opposite direction, over the Thames and into Covent Garden where M and I sat in the sun and ate a burger, wholly spontaneously.

regency cafe

The Regency Cafe is worthy of its own dedicated post, really, but for now, a tasty morsel. Largely unchanged since the Forties, this no-frills caff serves breakfast foods all day and also more corned beef-based meals than anybody could really want. I went with a friend recently and over enormous cups of tea we set the world to rights. Social media has caused more queues to snake around the corner, but the vigorous ordering system (don’t sit down until you’ve ordered, once you’ve ordered get out of the way until your food is ready, woebetide if you miss your order being called three times) remains the same. I marvelled at the vocal skills of the woman working there last time: operatic when it came to shouting out the orders, barely a whisper when talking to customers over the counter.

teatime record store gig

As I explain in Hark, I used to go to gigs a lot. I don’t any more, for various reasons, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it on a bodily level. A couple of Saturdays ago C and I had embarked on an embroiled mission to find cavolo nero and stumbled upon an in-store happening at a record shop in Camberwell. Four painfully young-looking cool kids playing indie drone at 5pm. I stood at the back, C strapped to my chest, and delighted in the noise and the novelty of it.

sunday night bed picnic

Sundays are, somehow, better in autumn. Open fires in pubs and crunchy walks and making the most of what daylight you have. We don’t really need reasons to be tired these days, we are just… perpetually tired. But one Sunday evening we decided to watch Adam Brody (see below) from the bed, and have a little bed picnic of good bread and good butter and it was more delicious than it deserved to be, frankly.

archives

I’m researching something new! Which meant that one Tuesday morning (Tuesdays are my dedicated project writing days. “Project” is a euphemism for “book”) I trotted up the hill to Lambeth Archives. Archive-diving is something I’ve not done enough of, I feel. All these artefacts and bits of paper and stories hiding away in filing cabinets, and kind people directing you to have a rummage. I learned a lot about my beloved Lido, for instance, and about the existence of a hospital founded by women, for women.

robin

A Haven for Stories was glorious this year but the weather was, undeniably, better in the UK than it was in Umbria. If the weather is poor, people are more satisfied with how much writing they get done. If the weather is good, people delight in it but wish they’d written more. While I love teaching outside, the rain didn’t bother me because it conjured all manner of good earthy smells and delicious, pitter-patter sounds. I’d lie in bed with the windows open, feeling among the clouds. And then, out of nowhere, the fluting song of the robin. Just gorgeous.

‘book’

 C has learned to say ‘book’, which is adding to his librarian energy no end.

to read

intermezzo

I started The New Sally Rooney at the start of the month and it marked the beginning of a few weeks of really satisfying fiction (yes, I followed it up with Jilly Cooper, and I’m now onto Riders, because 600 pages of Rutshire is not enough). Plenty has been written about Intermezzo and I’m not sure I need to add to it, but I’ve found myself thinking about the characters in the weeks since.

columns

I’ve written a few lately! Namely, about growing wistful when gardening a space that might not be yours too much longer, for The New Statesman; and, for The Guardian, about planting things - specifically: trees, and new borders.

to watch

Adam Brody

Nobody Wants This is so bingeable it actually feels vaguely archaic to suggest people watch it here; I feel like everyone has already. We’re yet to complete the season, due to M and I rarely being in the house at the same time, and both of us taking time away this month, but it’s just become known as ‘Adam Brody’ after the former O.C star’s limelight-stealing in it. We’ve laughed a lot at it, and the episodes are only 30 minutes long.

Heartstopper

My favourite drama about LGBTQIA+ teens is back! I mainlined it in a week. I do rather miss the “no bad things can happen” storytelling of the first season, along with Olivia Colman, who couldn’t make it due to scheduling clashes, but it still made me bawl and feel fuzzy, almost at the same time.

to book

In case you’re unaware, I’m spending the next few months teaching things - namely, writing. Check it out!

to eat

harissa cod and chickpeas

A new-to-me Ottolenghi recipe that I suspect will become a staple over the next few months. You make it in one pan! Half of the ingredients come from tins or cans! A real throw-it-together, good-enough-for guests number.

sausage-cavolo nero pasta

This is a bastardisation of a classic Italian recipe, so there are a lot of different ways to make it, but M makes it from memory after seeing it in a colour supplement years ago. It was one of those dishes we became obsessed with for a small while, and will always remind me of being in an immaculate AirBnb in Norfolk and managing to crack a casserole dish in the oven, thus creating a giant baked pancake rather than a toad-in-the-hole, and using the sausages to make this instead.

Meera Sodha’s autumn pilau

We’re in the veg box sweet spot, where bags of salad still arrive but the season of obligatory turnip is not yet upon us. The other week we got both a butternut squash and cavolo nero, which meant that Meera Sodha’s autumn pilau was on the cards. The squash goes sweet and gooey, the cavolo nero softens, the whole thing is incredibly moorish and only becomes better the day after.

leftovers

sunday night tea

Alice Vincent · October 12, 2022

There was a time in my twenties when Sunday evenings were spent in the pub. At the time, my friends and I all lived in a corner of Hackney, either a few paces from one another’s bedroom doors, or a 10-minute cycle away. I think I knew at the time how rare and fortunate this was; London is sprawling, and to make friendships last here is to acknowledge that sometimes you will spend longer travelling than you will socialising. My city years have been built from minutes on buses.

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