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[...] Looking back on my diary from that time was revealing. I wrote often about feeling suffocated by him, being repelled by his declarations of love, loving him but not feeling passionate about him, finding him pathetic. I was shocked by my cruelty. I’d written, ‘God, men must have felt this way …

In my twenties, air travel became illogically affordable. It was easy to buy return flights to Spain or Poland or Italy for the cost of a new pair of jeans. I took one or two trips a year – short holidays in European cities like Turin, Bratislava and Paris with friends. But the glamour I thought wo…

I’ve just returned from a week in Tenerife, my first out-of-the-country trip since LA. It made me smile when one of the waitstaff at the hotel said to me, ‘hey I love your style – eating alone, with your bottle of wine and your book and your nice blue shoes.’ I had ordered a bottle of wine from her…

Each night the hotel staff would set up a table for two, with a small beach fire and hanging lanterns, at the apex of this view I first had. They advertised this as the ‘where the waves break’ table. I both wanted to eat at this table and knew I could not subject myself to the scrutiny of it. Is sh…

It was old enough to have a louche coolness but new enough to offer modernity and comfort without being intimidating.