Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

London is scorching. The asphalt is melting and finally I can leave my umbrellas in the hallway. I'm glad the last week of my 20s are finally going to feel like summer.

Yesterday we schlepped to Nunhead for a friend's barbecue. Nunhead has many hills, and in summer it seems hotter than anywhere else in south London, but the trip is usually worth the aches. I can't think of too many better ways to spend a sunlit Sunday than sitting in someone's back garden with meat cooking, drinks cooling, Aerosmith and Thin Lizzy Spotifying, and good people talking about European festivals, the problem with 'girl bands' and the wonder of Springsteen. I've lived in Peckham for three years now, and one sensation I will always associate with it is that hazy, can't-quite-see-out-of-the-lower-corners-of-my-vision, sunbleached late afternoon feeling that takes you over as you walk home after drinking in the sunshine. I never felt it anywhere else; picnics in north London never left me so hazed out, even if they went on twice as long. Perhaps Peckham has its own microclimate. It's almost exhausting but it feels like friends and not at all like work, and I know I'll always remember it.

Thirty is an odd one. I don't really care about life landmarks like this - I'm more concerned with banking treasured memories than marking off milestones But I can't deny it feels a bit odd. I feel accelerated; I feel like I have to hurry up and Get Things Done. I've always been scared of missing out, not having all the fun I could, letting the good times pass me by. So much so that in my mostly-legal hedonism I've probably not achieved some of the serious shit I could have. I want to be the girl with the most cake, both had and kept; I have no interest in putting away childish things or retreating into grown up greyness, but I know I need to put more time and push into painting, find a better-paying day-job, and generally figure my shit out. Suddenly I realise that the kids coming up from behind are ten years younger than me. Bruce Springsteen was 26 when he made Born to Run, and that was his third record. I have some catching up to do.

Very excited

This layabout blogger is going to be a paid-up member of society once more. No more daytime television or odd days of work for me for a while... I just landed a very serious executive PA job, starting at the end of the month.

My father and boyfriend's responses: "Congratulations!" My mother's response: "You'll need to sort your wardrobe out, dear. Not that you don't have wonderful clothes, but I think you might need to . . . er . . . " Yes, Mother, I know. Yours truly will be finally sorting out her tax this month and trotting off out in search of a couple of suitably executive looking shirts. Advice, Londoners? Where will I find beautiful shirts? Thomas Pink's shirts are a bit stiff for me... I need something with a narrow, slightly mannish fit and very sharp but understated collar in fairly thin fabric, nothing that looks like it could stand up on its own. Proper cuffs a bonus.

My mother is desperate for me to buy a silk shirt. I think this has been her ambition for me for some time now.

When in doubt, make stuff

I have been off work for the last week, for medical purposes, and have not been wasting my days. In between work emails [I can't just leave it all alone, the sky will fall in if I do...] I have spent much time at my sewing machine and dress form. The combination of that and my continuing lack of a camera cable is not helping my blog's cause, and for that I apologise. BUT! It will not all be in vain.

I am making:

- a backless mauve silk top, slightly 1930s style - a little like the top half of that dress that Keira Knightley shags about in for a couple of scenes in Atonement



- a crinkled mauve and green silk dress - initially documented here, it has been modified and will soon be finished. I toy with the idea of putting epaulettes on the shoulders, to lend structure and bash a bit of the softness out of the dress

- a Japanese silk drawstring purse, to replace one I lost last week. More people should carry their money about in pouches, for to fling them at surly innkeepers and tavern wenches in return for their mead or silence. There's a medieval elegance to it that's sadly missing in our shiny, seedy society.

- The trousers to end all trousers. A while back I waxed lyrical about these Paul Smith beauties:



On Sunday I bought several metres of beautiful pinstripe wool-cashmere. Unfortunately I was fleeced, and paid over the odds - had I waited a day, I could have bought it in Shepherds Bush for a quarter of the price. Curses! Still, I got my lining nice and cheap, and saw Henry Holland mooching about in A1 Fabric Stores looking very VERY quiffed and blond.

So that's what I'm up to for the foreseeable. No expensive nights out for me... just hard graft over a hot sewing machine. The credit crunch, they say, is a-coming, and by God I'll be ready and well-clothed when it does.

A short tale

Once upon a time in a great big city there was a lady, and she had an unused sewing machine. It sat in a dark cupboard for five years, because it did not have a pedal, and without its pedal the lady could not use it. She sewed clothes by hand, but it took a very long time, and she did not make many. The sewing machine was very sad. It wanted to help the lady but it couldn't.

Then one day the lady went to a magical sewing machine shop in Camden. The man in the shop was very helpful, and kept the shop open for her because she couldn't get there until the evening. She bought a small black pedal and some scissors, and when she got home, she took out her sewing machine.



Her sewing machine was very happy with its new pedal, and its light glowed happily. It whirred and clicked, and its metal parts didn't even need oiling.

The lady took out all of her bobbins and threads and beads and sequins and needles and pins and tape measures and ribbons . . .





. . . and made a proper sewing box.



And then she settled down to work, and made a skirt. When she sewed clothes by hand, it would have taken her a week. The lady made a skirt in one evening.



It was made of beautiful pea-green tweed and it fit her perfectly.



The lady was very happy and the sewing machine was very proud.

The lady couldn't believe she had wasted bloody YEARS bloody well hand-sewing, and was secretly VERY cheesed off, but didn't say so to the sewing machine, because she didn't want to remind it of all the years it had sat in its cupboard in the dark, all alone with the dust and bookboxes and old shoes and occasional spiders. Instead, she patted her sewing machine kindly, and went off to bed.

The sewing machine wondered what it would make next.

Here comes the revolution

I'm terribly excited. For years, I have been struggling to make clothes by hand, armed with nothing more than a needle, thread, box of pins and a mirror. It's very frustrating, having to pin garments to one's own body [not quite literally, you understand] to see if they fit yet. Things that ought to take an evening take weeks.

Tomorrow, I am getting one of these:



Once it arrives, I will get a new pedal for my never-used sewing machine, an instruction book so I can work out how to thread the infernal thing, and the revolution will begin.

New coat

I meant to post about this last month, but didn't. As per a couple of posts below, I've been seeking a good knee-length coat for a while now. The only long one I had is a very lovely but now rather beaten up black wool-cashmere belted 40s-style coat by Tara Jarmon - too heavy for spring weather.

I wanted a delectable, unusual trenchcoat with proper buckles - none of this cheap slide-buckle/tie-belt absurdity. Sadly it's not easy finding the coat of one's dreams when one doesn't have the budget of one's dreams.

I had finally accepted that I wasn't going to find my coat on the high street, when I was directed to Burberry's factory store in Hackney. Unsure of what to expect [a striplit room full of people hunched over boxes, rummaging furtively? A chilly railway arch with one row of last-season stock? A high security facility to which one could only gain access by invitation or staff privileges?] I took the two and a half hour round trip it takes me to get to that end of London, and wandered in.

It's huge and well-lit, on one floor, the size of a big high street store, and everything's very well organised. They have everything - coats, dresses, bags, umbrellas, shoes... The tops start from £9, but that was not what I came for.

I found this:



I tried on every trenchcoat they had. I had been after a beige one, but none of them fit quite right - too big in the shoulders, belted too low on the waist. This one was the only one that fit me like I really wanted it to, and happy coincidence of happy coincidences, it turned out to be the cheapest too, at £195 - not pennies, but far less than I expected.

I love it. Not too warm, not too flimsy, goes with everything, and dry cleans well - your slovenly correspondent managed to stab it with an inky line of black kohl one day, and it dry-cleaned out perfectly.

Also it folds up into a travel pillow. With its own bag. Amazing.

I now never need to buy a coat again. Maybe.