Imma start wearing taps.
10.03.2026 20:40
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Imma start wearing taps.
A pair of black low-rise boots seen from behind, showing significant wear on the outer heel.
lol I bought these shoes 10 days ago. I am death on shoes.
Thank you! It was really fun to have an excuse to dig through my files for this topic.
Just realized that I really should have included a piece of graffiti I saw from a bus in Penge Sunday: “Merry Pengemas, you filthy animals.” Very London, that.
Yes, and OMG.
Because I'm in London, I'm thinking about London, and thus issue 14 of my newsletter, This, Not That, is a commonplace book entry full of quotes about one of my favorite cities, a place I've been coming to for 30 years and still love as deeply as ever.
this-not-that.ghost.io/issue-14-lon...
Text from Beryl Bainbridge’s An Awfully Bug Adventure: They stood in silence, looking down into the darkness as though waiting for a curtain to rise. There was a sudden seep of orange light as the door of Brown's Café opened and the slattern in the gumboots staggered out to sling washing-up slops into the gutter.
“The slattern in the gumboots staggered out to sling washing-up slops into the gutter.” That’s a good sentence.
Emotions weren’t like washing. There was no call to peg them out for all to view.
—Beryl Bainbridge, An Awfully Big Adventure
A photo of Regent’s Park showing green grass and a lot of yellow daffodils.
Good morning, friends, from London! (Flowers back home in early March are still but a dream.)
Maybe—if so, thank you!
He almost irritated her by telling her she was kind. She was, but she was not pleased at having it recognized so soon.
—Henry James, “A London Story”
I would not have believed before that anyone else could hold that spot, but, yes, now I’m all in.
There is an air of futility about it that is balanced by ongoing determination to keep at it that I liked. It’s quiet and very (Englishly) restrained. In an afterword, Deighton quotes a critic who says there are no villains in Deighton, and I can see that. The sense of place & period is strong.
A paperback of Len Deighton’s Berlin Game on a pub table.
My god, this was good. I can’t remember which of you recommended Deighton, but I am extremely grateful.
It is only the very devout who toy with heresy.
—Len Deighton, Berlin Game
A baby grand in a bare studio.
Realized I had an open hour today and decided to find a piano studio to book. I had to walk all of 300 steps from my hotel lol. It was good to get to play a bit.
A stack of paperbacks: Confusion, All Change, Casting Off, and Mr Wrong.
Took me four shops, but I did complete my Elizabeth Jane Howard collection.
Three parakeets sitting on a large tree in Kew Gardens. One of them is nicely ensconced in a hole in the trunk, just its head sticking out, while the others are near that one, looking as if they’d perhaps like to trade places.
Good morning, friends, from London!
I’m in London and had the Platonic form of a lousy March day here, 50° and the sky a gray so uniform you’d swear color could not even exist.
Discount this as you will for the fact that I’ve been reading Deighton, but: A man just trotted out of a mews carrying a camera, then quickly took photos of the back, side, & front of a Porsche parked in front of a church. Glanced around, disappeared back into the mews. Spy? Detective? Car now gone.
He turned around and smiled the sort of smile that is the legacy of ten years behind a bar.
—Len Deighton, Berlin Game
A close-up of some orchids from Kew’s annual orchid show.
Good morning, friends, from London!
He liked clichés. They were, he said, the best way to get simple ideas into the heads of idiots.
—Len Deighton, Berlin Game
It was the sort of interior that is designed at great expense by energetic divorcées who don’t take cheques.
—Len Deighton, Berlin Game
An entry from a guidebook for the branch in Whiteley's of Bayswater, which praises the staff, "with genuine enthusiasm for books that is really refreshing."
From Book Lover's London (2006), on the branch of Books, Etc. where I worked thirty years ago. The store (and the small chain of which it was a part) is long gone, but it's nonetheless nice to see this praise for the staff, some of whom are still my friends.
He rushed off to London, and consoled himself with his millions.
—Anthony Trollope, Ayala’s Angel
Chapter 2 of Berlin Game is basically the set-up for Black Bag (which was one of my favorite new movies last year).
Bret was the sort of American who liked to be mistaken for an Englishman.
—Len Deighton, Berlin Game
I saw it at Hatchard’s last night and they had to shelve it on its side, long side sticking out, because it was too tall to stand up in the section with Taylor’s other books.
A breakthrough: The bell captain at my hotel, where, COVID aside, I’ve stayed annually for 15 years, recognized me as a regular.
And in book news, one of the porters is reading Henry Kissinger’s The White House Years.