Having a little rest, gearing up for tonight.

I'm going to my work with my best friend, kitchen is closed tonight, minus an oyster bar. All my chef buddies are bringing their friends as well. It looks like when we mix all our groups, there will be about 30 of us. I'm going to don my vintage 1930's double breasted gangster suit. I smell an epic one. See you all on the other side. There will be photos.


Here's a good party song!

Well, after another 6 months of silence. I'm here again. Not sure if anyone is still reading. I'll keep it short and sweet for now. Work is great, I'm doing my first consulting job next month, turning a Shoreditch late night bar into a daytime diner with amazing food. This combined with my usual cheffy job, January is panning out to be quite lucrative.

Other things are more meh. My friends are and remain brilliant. I would be nothing without them. In other matters, however, I keep putting my faith in the wrong people. I want so much for myself, that I think I sometimes see things differently from how they really are. It does show me that a year and a half after I split with my ex wife, I'm still not ready for a relationship. Wish I was, especially in winter.

This sounds like the inside of my had these past weeks.

So is it a normal occurrence to realise the most important things in hindsight?

I think the love of my life is a girl back in Portland. I've known her since 2006 and we've been creeping slowly back into each other's heads over the past year. In the end it hit me like a runaway truck. Bam. She's the girl. So very weird the way things work out. Trouble is, she's getting her PhD and I'm not going back to America to live, not ever. So we have 3 years to wait. These days, second best is just not good enough. So i settle with two visits a year, I saw her last in February in Portland and see her next in September when she visits me here.


How cute are we, seriously!?

It feels like this song

I'm back after a year's absence! Maybe this time I'll actually get my arse in gear and copy all my blogs going back to 2004. It's amazing what a long part of my life these blogs cover. All through the 3 countries I've lived in, through the 3 great loves of my life, though all that growth. Through my old artistic pretension, through the tacked on writer angle I took, just so I could have an angle, through my humbling and humiliating experiences when I first came abroad, through my wedding and soon through my divorce. Through it all there has been a slowly creeping strength, and now my life is nearly what I want it to be. Nearly. It's never finished.


I'm blessed,
just to be,
more or less,
Standing in the afterglow of rapture,
with the words the rapture left.

So, I'm still sorting out dinner party pictures. It's probably for the best that y'all don't see them, I was out all night the evening prior and managed to sleep from 9-2 and pull everything off in less than 5 hours. How i did it, i have no idea. My bakewell tart was a triumph.

So instead I offer you some other random photos of my escapades this summer.





That's all for today, not a lot new to say. Ask me next week.

That's all I have to say about that.

Dinner party tomorrow. There will be pictures and drunkenness.

My buddy Louis is coming to visit this weekend. I met Louis when I was living in France, back then he was just teaching english in the local fac des lettres (university of humanities, one might say, literally "school of letters") and since that broke arse year in France, I've come to London, and am on the verge of massive success as a chef. He's since gotten his PhD in French and Philosphy, he is one of the most intimidatingly intelligent people I've ever known. That said, boy can drink. Should be an epic weekend.





Oh and this is amzing!

I had a pretty epic weekend, so epic, in fact that I'm just writing about it now. So two of my closest friends here in London, a couple are moving to Sydney in the land of Oz and Leo left yesterday. This saturday we had a big leaving do for him, which started normally enough, dinner, drinks etc. But then it turned into a house party made up of the four closest friends. Long story short I got home on Monday morning, 36 hours after going out. Epic indeed. A proper sendoff.


Kit and Leo I'll miss you guys.

In other news, I've settled in to this whole solitary existence, I'm pretty fucken happy with it. Mostly because I really like who I am right now. I'm just about who i'd like to be. That's a pretty big something.

Things have become more subdue, subtle. The feelings are more of a dull ache, I only feel them at home, but in the interest of saving money, I spend too much time at home. Plus, going out and getting drunk can only fix some much. In my younger days I would be off skirt chasing now, but these days I just can't be bothered. Things are getting pretty good on the friend front. The new housemate is moving in on friday, and I'm really looking forward to having her around. She is pretty wicked cool!



I have a strange craving for Doritos. Weird