HOW TO LEARN TO LOVE NORWICH

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Scribe Doll

(When You Really Don’t Feel Like It)

Chapter 2

A new city.

12th February 2013. Shrove Tuesday. I was greeted by the pretty sight of colourful flowers arranged in tall planters in the wide space outside the station. I tried to breathe in enough hope to flush out my apprehensions. After London, the slower pace of life was palpable within seconds, but I resolved to like everything about this new city. This insanely spontaneous gamble of mine simply had to pay off. At the junction between Prince of Wales Road and Riverside, my newfound determination was challenged by what I still think of as the slowest traffic lights in the city of Norwich, if not the whole industrialised world. As a native Roman, I consider traffic lights as sensible suggestions, to be followed judiciously, but not with unquestioning faith. Even after twenty years in London, my instinct in crossing the road was still dictated by the result of looking right and left rather than at whether the little man on the display was red or green. The good people of Norwich, however, waited patiently on the pavement for the lights to change and I decided to behave like a respectful guest and abide by their civic customs. Thirteen years later, although the Rome-born Londoner in me is still incorrigible, I have learnt that that particular junction can be quite treacherous, with vehicles zooming from several directions, so caution is most definitely advisable. Moreover, in cities where they are accustomed to residents playing by the rules, motorists tend not to have very quick reflexes.

One of the characters in Noël Coward’s Private Lives famously remarks, “Very flat, Norfolk.” I thought of that line while dragging my two heavy suitcases up the slope to Castle Meadow. One of them contained my clothes and other personal effects, the other, dictionaries: a Concise Oxford, an Oxford-Paravia and a Zingarelli. I use online dictionaries as an aide-mémoire, but trust the printed paper more.As it happened, after four months of almost total unemployment since walking out of my teaching job, I had signed a translation contract just the day before leaving London, Haus Publishing having taken a punt on an inexperienced translator for an Italian travel book. My first literary translation for a publisher. That sprinkled some hope over my endeavour.

A few days before I’d left London, a friend had put me in touch with his wife’s cousin, who had a free room in her house in Aylsham Road. Despite having printed out the relevant page from streetmap.co.uk and highlighted the route, it took me nearly an hour to get there, what with my luggage, and the bitingly cold wind. It felt much colder than in London. Sarah welcomed me warmly and showed me to my room. “I’ll make us dinner for tonight,” she said. “Do you like spinach soup?”

It was mid-afternoon and, not wishing to be an appreciative dinner guest that turns up empty-handed, I unpacked my luggage, then ventured into the city centre to buy a little appetiser. Sarah told me the city centre wasn’t far and gave me directions. I must have missed a turning somewhere, because I walked, walked and walked, couldn’t see anything resembling the picturesque photos of Norwich market I had seen online, and ended up back in Prince of Wales Road, where all I could find was a small Tesco. I picked up a few bits and pieces, including olives and, it being Shrove Tuesday, a packet of chocolate-filled pancakes. I wanted this new chapter of my life to start on the right note, and following tradition was non-negotiable. Night had fallen by then and, once again, I struggled to find my way back to Sarah’s. I decided to ask someone for directions, but, although it was only about six o’clock, there was hardly anybody in the streets. I rang her to apologise for being late and, by now tired and wondering if leaving London had been such a good idea, I finally arrived safely back at my lodgings.

“Do you have any friends in Norwich?” Sarah asked as we sat with bowls full of steaming, fragrant soup, buttering chunks of crusty bread.

“No, I don’t.”

“But you know people here.”

“Actually, I don’t know a soul.”

“So why Norwich?”

Leaving out the details of my challenging year, I told her about the seven bits of paper in the mug. I could tell that she was struggling to keep her facial expression still while trying to decide between disbelief, shock and something else I couldn’t work out. Meanwhile, I sensed that she went from considering whether she had agreed to let a room in her house to a mad middle-aged woman, to deciding that, even if mad, I was probably harmless and possibly even friendly. 

As I got ready for bed, I suddenly remembered the packet of chocolate-filled pancakes. It was too late to take them downstairs and offer to share them with Sarah. I briefly considered having them for breakfast the next day, but, no, just as Christmas trees are for Christmas and hot cross buns for Good Friday, pancakes are for Shrove Tuesday. I peeled the film from the plastic tray, eased out a sticky, oily mass heavier than any Nutella-covered pancake I had ever made or been served by friends and bit into it. A taste of sweetness so off-the scale it practically stripped my palate exploded in my mouth. I chewed, then swallowed what by then felt like a lump of thick glue. Then I covered the tray with the film again, put it back in the Tesco plastic bag and consigned it to the waste paper basket. I had observed Shrove Tuesday. I didn’t have to force down the remaining pancakes.

The next morning, Ash Wednesday, the fog had gobbled up the Cathedral spire. I thought of Gogol’s Christmas Eve, in which the devil seizes the moon crescent and stuffs it down his sleeve. Then I remembered my first visit to Durham, in 1987, when I went for my university interview. I went to sleep in the college guest room on the Bailey with the curtains open, my eyes slowly closing on the Cathedral, and leapt out of bed and rushed to the window, alarmed, as soon as I opened my eyes again, because the Cathedral had gone. It took me a few seconds to realise it was buried in thick fog.  

Here, in a city where I didn’t know a soul, I found the sudden disappearance of the one familiar landmark disconcerting. In a new place, buildings become your friends before people do. They are the first to whisper stories into your ear. They are the first to accept you. Because they have stood there far longer than humans and witnessed all kinds of follies, they have a more far-sighted view of life. 

Once again, the cold penetrated my bones. An insidious, creepy chill that slithered through the gap between my neck and my scarf, between my sleeves and my wrists, and breathed on the back of my head, where my tweed flat cap did not reach. I regretted not packing my brown beret. I nearly had. In a new city, I usually wear the most neutral clothes I have, to evade notice. I want to spy on the city before it makes up its mind about me. My flat cap, I told myself, is too striking, too London, too Fulham. But then, just as I was walking out the door, I threw aside the brown beret and put the tweed cap on my head instead. It was very much me and I wanted this new chapter in the new city to remind me who I was.

I strolled into the Cathedral. There was a service with imposition of ashes. I took a seat and watched the priest trace the charcoal cross on the foreheads of the faithful. The image of a phoenix flashed through my mind.

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HOW TO LEARN TO LOVE NORWICH

Posted on July 12, 2026 by Scribe Doll

(When You Really Don’t Feel Like It)

* * *

Just a little word before we start…

First of all, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to all those who, three weeks ago, read my Introduction to How To Learn To Love Norwich. Many of you left generous comments I found very moving. I don’t write just for myself, but to share and connect with others, so comments are very precious to me.

At this stage, I think it’s only fair to explain where I am going with this project. My goal is to make How To Learn to Love Norwich into a book. I have been jotting notes on it on and off for three or so years. 

Every writer knows and every creative writing expert will tell you that if you have any hopes of having your work published by a mainstream publisher, you don’t blog it online, because no publisher will touch something that has already appeared somewhere else. I am aware of that and that is why I have waited this long to post my Norwich book here.

Only I’m a literary translator, you see. And since I’ve been a literary translator, I have been all but unable to write, except as someone else: the writer I am translating.

As a teacher, an office worker and an actors’ agent, I managed short stories, plays and half a novel a prestigious literary agent asked me to send her as soon as I’d completed it.  That was fifteen years ago, just before I began translating and all but stopped writing.

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy translating. Only it’s a little like being a ventriloquist who speaks in someone else’s voice all day. By evening, your throat is too sore to speak as yourself. The years go by, and you gradually forget what you sound like, who you are. 

And so here I am, worried about opening the tap of my creativity and wasting its juice in case a mainstream agent and publisher decides to turn it into a book… when I don’t actually know if, once I’ve prised open the rusty tap, anything will flow out at all – or if it will be any good.

All this is to say that How To Learn To Love Norwich (When You Really Don’t Feel Like It) is an attempt at finding my self as a writer in addition to being an Englisher of other people’s writing. I don’t know where this search will lead me, to a cul-de-sac, a labyrinth, a narrow path through a dense oak forest or to a belvedere with a stunning view, or somewhere else, magical and wonderful. But I need to find out, and I need fellow travellers to hold my hand. Which is why your comments will be invaluable to me, so if you can spare a moment to drop me a line or two, I will thank you for it. Moreover, if – and only if – you enjoy what you read, please be generous, and share it. Think of it as telling your friends the address of a bakery you’ve discovered, that sells good bread, or giving them directions to a pleasant place where they can go for a walk.

Thank you for your reading this and, without further ado, here is Chapter 1…

* * *

Chapter 1

When your logic fails you, you take a gamble.

That winter of 2012–2013 I had lost my place in the world and felt I’d fallen off Society’s margins into a dark place where I couldn’t see my way ahead. I did a lot of sitting in coffee shops, eyes wide open to stop tears from flowing out. I watched people carrying packages of Christmas shopping, couples holding hands, mothers bouncing babies on their laps, and when a woman walked past the window, carrying a basket with a cat, a sob finally shook me. My Genie, my darling Genie was dead and all because of an incompetent duty vet. I imagined everyone I saw having a comfortable home of their own, settled in blissfully happy marriages, with successful careers, frequent holidays and, most of all, loving families with children. Children I had never actively decided not to have. The kind of families you see putting all differences aside and gathering by the Christmas tree in a Hallmark production screened on afternoon TV. I was the only human without even one of the above blessings. I was absolutely certain of it. There was no one and nothing for me. I was forty-eight and it was too late to fix my life. My friends, who were all “sorted” in one way or another, grew tired of my company and, after a while, so did I and that’s when my inborn quitting instinct saved me.

My mother used to say that I had tenacity. At the same time, I have always been a ready quitter. When I truly want something, I persevere at it relentlessly, but if I suddenly realise that, for whatever reason, it either is not right for me or the result is probably not worth the effort, then I’m out of there at supersonic speed. I have walked out halfway through films, plays, concerts, jobs and relationships. As long as my quitting does not affect someone else too much, I change course. Here I was, taking stock of my life and listing, with chilling anxiety, all the things I longed for, but didn’t have: a home of my own, a job, a relationship, close friends with a magic wand to help me out of my hole, and an animal. At some point, and I cannot remember how exactly, it suddenly dawned on me that not having these things I wanted so, so much I could barely breathe, was actually what gave me a certain amount of freedom. If there was nothing to keep me where I was, if nobody would miss me, then why stay? To quote Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, I had no strings to hold me down, so why not leave London? 

Only where would I go?

I spread my old Penguin Map of the British Isles on the floor and examined my priorities. I wanted to live no further than a two-hour train journey to London, in a place small enough to get from A to B on foot, with a church or cathedral where a professional choir sang evensong daily (I have loved evensong ever since, while doing my A-levels in Cambridge, I went to hear the choir of Kings College Chapel every evening) and a city, rich in history, with buildings whose stones would tell you at least five centuries’ worth of stories.

I drew up a list:

– Cambridge

– Oxford

– York

– Norwich

– Winchester

I weighed the pros and cons of each place. Cambridge was – and still is – my emotional home. My heart feels light and full of hope there. It’s where I crossed the bridge from adolescence to adulthood, where I first learnt that when you truly want something, sometimes you simply need to forget it’s impossible. But what if Cambridge had already given me what it was supposed to and returning there would not rekindle the magic? I didn’t know Oxford well and had always found it a little eerie, possibly because I’d watched too many episodes of Inspector Morse, but it was a splendid city, with a wide choice of well sung evensong. I’d been to York on a couple of day trips and had felt very comfortable there: it was a beautiful city with very friendly people. I had never been to Winchester. It sounded like a lovely place, although I feared perhaps a little too genteel for my taste. Norwich was somewhere I’d spent a weekend a few years earlier, although, for some reason, I could remember very little about it. I had a vague recollection of the Cathedral cloisters, but my lasting memory of it was one of visceral anxiety. During that weekend, I had gone to visit the Castle and that had turned out to be an unexpectedly and unexplainably frightening experience for me. I had bought my admission ticket when something I glimpsed with the corner of my eye propelled me into red-hot panic, so much so that I rushed out of the door, over the bridge and back into Castle Meadow, hyperventilating and shivering despite the late spring warmth. I couldn’t make any sense of it.  As I gradually calmed myself down, I tried to remember what it was I had seen that had frightened me so much. Faces. Heads. White. Sallow-white. Some kind of busts or statues at any rate. I felt stupid. I was a grown woman and had just wasted an admission ticket because of an idiotic overreaction to something I couldn’t even remember precisely.

The next morning, after a stern self-talk, I marched back to the Castle, purchased another admission ticket and, having spotted the “heads” in question, walked straight at them. White. But a sallow, dirty kind of white. Eyes closed. All hair shaved off. Again, I felt something inside me constrict my breathing. I read the exhibit labels. Death masks. Of men and women, convicted of crimes, hanged in Norwich Castle. There are things you can’t un-see, and these death masks, evidence of the darkness human ignorance and cruelty can sink to, haunted me for a long time afterwards and, even now, I will avoid them when visiting the Castle.

Recalling this episode, I briefly considered ruling Norwich out, but then decided to act as an adult.

Which city should I move to? I compared and contrasted pros and cons until they got so tangled up, I couldn’t pull them apart. No matter where I chose to move, there was a chance I would be making a huge mistake and the uncertain outcome of my decision was smothering me in stress. Enough, I thought. Enough. All my life I had only ever acted through careful mental reasoning and deliberate calculation of causes and effects, and look where it had got me. I forced my brain to shut up, took a sheet of A4 paper, folded it many times and cut out seven equal rectangles with a paper knife. I wrote one word on each little piece:

Cambridge

Oxford

Winchester

Norwich

York

London (just in case I should stay)

Other (just in case I should think of somewhere else)

I folded each piece of paper as many times as I could, threw all seven into a mug, covered it with my hand, shook it, closed my eyes, pulled one out at random and unfolded it.

Norwich.

What did I have to lose?

That night, for the first time in months, I slept soundly, my mind in a new state of peace and the hope of belonging. Somewhere.

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HOW TO LEARN TO LOVE NORWICH

Posted on June 21, 2026 by Scribe Doll

(When You Really Don’t Feel Like It)

Introduction

“Norwich named as best place to live in the UK” (BBC, 20 March 2026)

“The historic city with a ‘small-town feel’ named the best place to live in the UK” (The Independent, 20 March 2026)

“Norwich named as the best place to live by The Sunday Times” (Norwich Evening News, 20 March 2026)

And the source, hiding behind a paywall, that started this: “Norwich, Norfolk, named best place to live in the UK 2026” (The Times, 20 March 2026)

For about two weeks, friends – even those living abroad – sent me links to similar articles. “Yes, I know, I know,” I replied. That is, I knew somebody had proclaimed the city where I live the most desirable residence in the United Kingdom. I did not know what had inspired this opinion – or whether or not it truly was the best place to live.

For me, it all started when I was still living in London, with writing Norwich on a piece of paper – a small rectangle, one of six identical ones, carefully folded into four. On the others, I scribbled Cambridge, Oxford, York, Norwich, London, Other. I dropped them all into a large mug, which I covered with the palm of my hand and shook. Then I closed my eyes, picked one and unfolded it. Norwich. And so I came here. On Shrove Tuesday 2013. 

I had hit rock bottom in London, where I had lived since 1994 and assumed I would live for the rest of my life. My beloved London, my adoptive home. I had recently walked out of a teaching job where I was subtly bullied by my boss. I was still grieving the death of my cat, Genie, killed by an incompetent vet. My friends started to avoid my company. Nobody wants to be with someone who is unhappy, weighed down by too many problems. People are afraid the load will spread to them, drag them down and drain them, too. Despondency can be contagious. No one ever tells you that. Or else your friends hate feeling helpless and seeing you reminds them that they are failing to help you, and that’s an uncomfortable feeling.

“Don’t leave London,” the few friends to whom I voiced my plan told me. “If you run away from your problems, they’ll only come after you.”

There’s no copyright on platitudes.

Actually, running away can save your life. It can give you a new lease of life. Running is movement and movement dispels stagnation. Getting away to a new place can clear your head and give you a new perspective, a panoramic view of your journey thus far, a clearer understanding of the crossroads where you took a wrong turn. You cannot retrace your steps to that fork in the road and take a different path, but, from your new vantage point, you can head somewhere new. You can change your course. It’s a moment for finding your bearings after years of trudging in the same direction, hunched over, eyes on your feet. Taking stock of your life makes you stand up straight and look around, look ahead. Moreover, whatever therapists and self-help books may advocate about change coming from within you, it’s much easier – or at least less hard – to undertake this change when what is outside you changes first. It’s difficult to change – be it  your attitude, your belief system or your thought patterns – if, day by day, it’s the same routine, the same job, the same colleagues, the same bus or Tube or train ride to work. Then, in your leisure time, the same friends and acquaintances who’ve known you for years and expect you to act in a particular way. You could say that once people have pigeon-holed you, they won’t allow you to break out of the mould, that they don’t like the image they have formed of you to be disturbed in any way. We all are creatures of habit. You also say that you are reluctant to alter your behaviour because you are anxious about potentially disappointing the people around you, and so losing their affection, their interest, their company. Their love. Isolation can be a frightening place.

When you move to a new place, everything and everyone is new, often unfamiliar. So you’re practically ejected from your old habits and forced to adjust to your new surroundings. You may try and act physically the way you recently did, but, before any changes even begin in your mind, your body – your best and closest friend, who never lies to you if you care to listen to it – takes the lead.

Change, whether you go looking for it or at least allow it to find you, begins on your first morning in the new place, when you get up and look out of the window. You have some – if not all – new reactions and, consequently, thoughts, because what you see through the window is new. In fact, even before you look out of the window, when you wake up on that first morning in your new place, your eyes open to the sight of different walls, different furniture, a different light and sounds. This unfamiliarity may be disconcerting at first, but it will put your senses on alert. You’re suddenly paying attention to the world around you instead of drifting through it mechanically. Maybe you eat a different breakfast, drink a tea that tastes different. Then you step out into the street and walk past different buildings, architecture, colours. You stroll past different shop windows. All this newness inevitably affects your physical senses, consequently your body, your body goes on to affect your mood and your mood affects your thoughts.

Eventually, you meet new people who don’t know you, so don’t assume or expect you to speak or act or think in any particular way. You’re not obliged to play the part you’ve been playing on cue for years. This is your chance to choose how you react and respond to external stimuli. Your chance to reinvent yourself. By “running away” you have gifted yourself this precious, golden opportunity. For many, it can be the opportunity of a lifetime. A new leaf on which, instead of doing the same old lines, over and over,  and over and over again, you can create new writing, you can create yourself a new story. 

To be continued…

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Luna

Posted on May 10, 2026 by Scribe Doll

(Getting to know each other, one step at a time.)

“It’s like having an alien life form in the house,” Howard remarks. He has never lived with an animal before, except – he always hastens to correct me – a moggie his parents had when he was a toddler, “who always ran away whenever she saw me.” He also remembers with fondness a neighbour’s Border Collie he used to take out for walks. 

“It’s always been just the two of us,” he adds in a tone of mild regret, “and now it’s like having a third person in the house.”

There’s no like about it. We now do have a third individual sharing our living space. A new member of the household who comes with her own backstory, emotional baggage and – who knows? – perhaps even expectations. Only she can’t utter them to us in human language and we humans, who have been increasingly alienated from nature over the centuries, have lost the ability to sense anything that can’t be channelled through words.  And so when this otherwise silent new member of the family begins to emit distressing-sounding yowls in the middle of the night, every night, I’m at a loss. The first few nights I negotiate the traditional Norwich stairs – so steep they’re practically vertical – to find Luna standing over the toy her fosterers sent with her, saying it’s her favourite, but with which I have never once seen her play. It’s a soft, grey little thing that could be a seahorse or a newly-hatched dinosaur, and may or may not have once contained catnip. The moment she sees me coming, she walks away from the toy.

Later, she repeats the ritual with other toys I buy for her, in particular a soft gingerbread man she picks out of her toy crate and drops on the downstairs landing before breaking into her nightly lament or call or command or – oh, heck, what do I know? I’m only human.

One night, sleep-starved, I hide all her toys, but she finds one of Howard’s sheepskin gloves and carries that to the bottom of the steep stairs.

What do you want, cat? Have you brought me a gift? Then why don’t you bring it up to my bed instead of forcing me to risk life and limb in the dark? Are you bringing me the gingerbread man because you can’t bring me a mouse?

She flashes me a golden-yellow glance and leaves me staring at the toy, feeling stupid and unnatural for failing to understand.

I ask for advice from Facebook groups of cat owners and receive a volley of responses suggesting a list of reasons for this sleep-sabotaging behaviour. Some comment, complete with the now ubiquitous, imbecilic 😂, that there’s no point in my trying to understand the logic of a cat’s behaviour. I find this attitude somewhat upsetting. Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense. As a literary translator, it’s something I keep repeating to myself, even when a sentence in a text I’m working on reads like the creation of beings from another Solar system.  Everything that happens in this world has a sense, is the effect of a cause, has a backstory – even if we often struggle to pinpoint it.

An acquaintance gives us a laser pointer.  Naturally, Luna chases the red dot all over the flat in a frenzy. Every muscle is taut, pupils so dilated one can barely see her yellow-gold irises.  Only after I switch it off, she can’t find peace, but keeps prowling around the place, searching for the red dot of light, evidently frustrated, angry and bewildered.  She even ignores the treat I shine the beam on.  It occurs to me that this is a cruel game, where the cat never stands a chance of actually catching the pretend prey.  I throw the laser pointer away.  Then, a couple of months later, desperate to have one night’s sleep uninterrupted by yowling and gingerbread men, I buy an LED pointer in the hope that a half hour of zipping around the place may wear Luna out and make her sleep all night.  Again, she whizzes and zooms after the red dot… until she suddenly stops and stares at my hand for a long time, ignoring all else, processes something behind those yellow-gold eyes, and leaps at my hand.  She has worked it out.  Now, every evening, she jumps on the coffee table, where the LED torch is lying among the remote controls, picks it up by the strap and drops it on the wooden surface with a clang.  We play and there’s no more frustration or anger or bewilderment. Only fun.

A few days ago, I noticed Luna jumping on the radiator to chase something on the wall. I realised it was my wrist watch casting reflections.  So did Luna.  So now she paws at my watch until she knocks it off the coffee table, apparently demanding to play.

Anatole France wrote “Tant qu’on n’a pas aimé un animal, une partie de notre âme reste endormie.” (“Until you have loved an animal, a part of your soul remains asleep.”) There’s something very special about loving an animal, as opposed to a human.  You can talk and listen to a fellow human in the same language, and that is an advantage, of course, but can also be limiting.  All too often, we restrict our communication to verbal language, even though there is so, so much more than can’t be conveyed through mere words.  Building a bridge of communication with an animal requires patience, inquisitiveness, respect and hope.  It takes time, and when you start, there’s no knowing how little or how long it will take.  What Luna is teaching me, among so many other things, is patience – not something that comes naturally to me, although I confess I find it much easier to be patient and accepting with animals than humans.  Perhaps the very absence of verbal language makes imagination possible and there’s nothing like imagination to build bridges.  Imagination is rich in possibilities.

Luna can’t tell me her backstory.  She can’t tell me about how her kittens had vanished by the time she came back from hunting.  She can’t tell me that she searched for them everywhere, calling, crying.  But I can imagine it.  She can’t tell me that, in her first few  weeks with us, she left the living room as soon as the television was on because where she was fostered before I adopted her the TV was constantly blaring, she can’t tell me that her every muscle shrank away from my touch because small children used to pat her all the time, unaware of her boundaries.  Or that she easily gets sensory overload.  That’s something I’m only too familiar with myself, so it’s not hard to imagine it in her.  She can’t tell me what she’s been dreaming when she wakes up in the night and rushes to me, miaowing until I open my eyes and look at her, and then she goes back to sleep.  Imagination brings us closer than words ever could.

And so as Luna lets me in a little more every day, it’s a precious gift.  We’re two individuals from different species, but both made of flesh and blood and bone, and a heart beating inside us and that other something that makes us special.  We are each learning about the other’s boundaries, and about what makes the other one tick.  We are learning to trust each other.

Six months ago, when this cat with gold-yellow eyes first came to live with us, she bristled at being caressed and pushed away with her claws whenever I tried to pick her up.  Now, every morning, she expects me to stroke her glossy black coat, scratch her jowls and brush her before she has breakfast.  Very often, I wake up and see her curled up at my feet.

Earlier this afternoon, I scooped her up and held her while kissing her head.  This time, she stayed in my arms for a good few seconds before pushing me away, gently, claws sheathed, and jumping down. Perhaps for those few seconds, much to her surprise, she enjoyed the cuddle.

Another step forward.

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Luna

Posted on April 5, 2026 by Scribe Doll

(The First Couple of Weeks)

For better or for worse, I ignore the advice of the rescue shelter and the cat experts on YouTube, and allow Luna access to the entire house as soon as I open the door to her carrier.  And as soon as she exits her carrier, she slinks out and, with the occasional trips to the food station and litter tray, takes up residence under the sofa for the next two weeks.  And yet on the very afternoon of her arrival, I line up a dozen treats between her hiding place and me, sitting against the wall, and she emerges gingerly, sniffs the air, looks at me with those golden eyes of hers, then eats the treats one by one, all the way to the last one, which I am holding in the palm of my hand.  She sniffs my fingers, the edges of my hand, picks up the treat, crunches it, then gives my hand a brief lick before retreating.  Every day, she comes out to eat treats from the palm of my hand.  So you trust me, I think.  I try to touch her.  She recoils.  No.  No touching allowed.  

One day, life gets on top of me.  Work, money, physical and emotional exhaustion.  I slump on the sofa and burst into tears.  And, suddenly, Luna is sitting at my feet, looking up at me, blinking slowly.  I am overwhelmed.  This little black cat is my friend. This little black cat is comforting me.

After a couple of weeks, K. suggests blocking all access to the under-sofa area, to force Luna into the open.  We wedge our heaviest dictionaries into the gap between the sofa and the floor.  Luna watches us, sitting with her front paws together, like a ballet dancer, her tail coiled around her.  It takes us half a dozen attempts, because she always finds a way of edging through and hiding again.  When we finally succeed in sealing off the area, she readily jumps on the sofa and lies there, nonchalantly, as though it is really no big deal.

Every evening, when Howard and I sit in the living room to watch television, we hear violent scratching on the underside of the sofa.  And not just anywhere.  Just under where we sit.

“Luna, stop it!”

She is clearly lying on her back, front paws clawing at the bottom of the sofa, scattering small pieces of sponge and fabric all over the carpet.

We slap the sofa.  “Oy! Enough!”

She continues.  Howard reminds me it’s a new-ish sofa.

“At least she’s not scratching the upholstery,” I say feebly.

“Try spraying the sofa with white vinegar,” the receptionist at the veterinary surgery suggests.  “Cats hate the smell and it stopped my cat from destroying the furniture.”

It’s a heavy, three-seater sofa, but we manage to tip it onto its side and spray the area generously.  Even after we have aired the lounge, the smell of vinegar is pungent.  Luna struts in and slinks under the sofa, apparently impervious to the vinegar.  More bits of sponge fly out that evening.  

We collect Amazon boxes and cover the entire underside of the sofa with a double layer of cardboard.  This way, the vandal can attack to her heart’s content without causing damage.  That evening, we do not tell her off for scratching.  She stops scratching from that moment on.

*   *   *

I am determined to feed the mini-panther as healthy and natural a diet as is realistically and practically feasible with a formerly wild animal that has been alienated from nature by humans making it into an apartment pet who enjoys lounging on soft furniture.  A pet shop owner assures me that raw meat is the only way to go for a natural cat and hands me a packet of frozen beef.  “How natural is it for a cat to kill a cow?” I ask.  He swerves from the subject and tells me the meat grade is of several A’s.  

I look at the price tag.  “Why don’t I just buy meat intended for human consumption from the supermarket?”

He tries to find a counter argument, but fails.

I open a tin of tuna fish and present it to my apartment feline.  She sniffs it and turns away, haunches like a fashion model.  I try sardines, mackerel and pilchards.  She gives me one of her If you like this stuff, you eat it looks.  I buy an expensive tin of something described as “poultry and game”.  She stares at it and struts off.  I take out the magnifying glass to read the list of ingredients and discover it contains 1% green-lipped mussel.  Apparently, fish and seafood are not her thing. But when I open a tin of wild Atlantic red salmon for myself, she partakes of it enthusiastically.

I read that eggs are among domestic cats’ favourite foods.  I serve her a dollop of scrambled egg and a wedge of omelette.  Unseasoned, of course.  She makes the closest a cat can to a grimace.  

We settle on grain-free tinned food – chiefly variations on a chicken theme – with a minimum meat content of 89% for breakfast, a piece of baked chicken or beef mince for dinner and kibbles in between meals, as snacks or treats.

Then, a couple of nights ago, I fry myself two eggs in olive oil and shake generous amounts of salt and pepper on them.  My TV dinner while Howard is at the cinema, seeing the latest Sorrentino.  I turn away for fifteen seconds and Luna is on the coffee table, licking the runny egg yolk from my plate unapologetically.  I guess, like me, she will not eat eggs unless they are seasoned.  I’ll fry a third egg next time.

To be continued

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Luna

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Scribe Doll

(Part One)

Let me make one thing clear: I am not her “Mum”, “Mummy” or “Mother” and she is not my “baby”. She is a person in her own right.  One could even say that she is my equal, only from a different species.  I am a Homo sapiens, she a Felis catus.  Although some of the looks she gives me suggest she harbours some doubts about the sapiens part. 

It took me twelve years to a) convince my husband that this was very, very, very, very, VERY important to me and b) find a consenting landlord.  In France, it is against the law to forbid a tenant from keeping a pet, but in England, a prohibition is written into your lease.  And they call it a nation of animal lovers.

I love cats and dogs equally but, being a very highly-strung individual, I would find it unbearable to live with someone like me, so I find the company of cats more soothing.  A dog adores you so much it wants to be just like you.  Yes, yes, let’s be highly-strung, agitated, irrational together! A cat gives you a stare that says, Get a grip or get a therapist.  Moreover, I find few things as relaxing as the sight of a cat slowly, lazily grooming itself.

K., a friend’s daughter who volunteers at a London cat rescue centre, immediately took it upon herself to find me the right Felis catus specimen.  A few days later, she e-mailed me an extensive collection of photos and videoclips.  She put in a good word for a large, cream-and-brown neutered tom with blue eyes.  “He’s a big softie who’ll follow you around everywhere,” she said.

“If I wanted a big softie who’d follow me around everywhere, I’d get a Labrador,” I replied.

No, I’d had twelve years to plan this to the minutest detail.  I wanted a female kitten.  My two previous cats were females and I find them more gutsy than neutered males.  A young kitten was imperative, so that I could mould it into the perfect member of our household.  I simply didn’t have the mental head space or the stamina for an adult cat’s emotional baggage.  Here I am, buckling under the weight of my own.  I’d even thought of a name: Luna.  I don’t know why.  I just liked the idea of a cat called Luna.  The right kind of name for a familiar.  Of course, one would first have to get to know the cat for a few days… Musetta instead, perhaps?

I scrolled through the photos sent by K. and clicked on the video links.  A few beautiful, regal-looking mollies.  A couple of tiny kittens.  I watched the clips of them being cute, playful and suitably irresistible, but, strangely, wasn’t drawn to them.  I reminded myself that kittens are hard to find and these were gorgeous.  I scrolled further down and there she was, staring at me from the screen with big, earnest, gold-yellow eyes. A black molly of eighteen months or so, rescued from a feral colony in East London.  The rescuers had called her Luna.

“Well, you did want a Luna,” Howard said.

No, I wanted a kitten.  That was non-negotiable.  I carried on looking at photos and clicking on links.  But the gold-yellow eyes kept following me.  There were other black cats up for adoption.  Let’s face it, all black cats look pretty much the same in photos.  A black outline with two yellow slits.  Except that there was a wealth of thoughts behind Luna’s gold-yellow slits.  There was a kind of depth in her eyes.  I clicked on her picture again and read her mini-biog.  She was described as a “polite” cat  who had adapted well to indoor living with her foster family and played gently with their small children.  While living on the streets, she had had two litters of kittens, all taken by urban foxes.  I imagined the heart-wrenching yowling of a mother cat coming back from hunting and frantically looking, in vain, for her kittens.  That’s not emotional baggage, I thought, that’s full-blown trauma.  I hoped she would find a kind, gentle human to adopt her and I went back to admiring the tiny kittens.

A couple of days later, K. phoned to ask if I’d had a chance to peruse the cat list.  “I know you’re set on a kitten,” she began before I could say anything, “but I was wondering if you would consider an adult cat at all.”

“Which one?” I asked, although something inside me already knew her answer.

“Luna.”

If that’s not Kismet, what is? I thought.

“Why her in particular?”

“From how you describe the kind of cat you’re looking for, I think you’d like her.”

“Okay.  Yes.  Bring her, please,” I said, a big sigh of relief escaping from not sure where.

And so, the following Saturday, 15th November 2025, K. drove Luna all the way from London to Norwich.  Apparently, she was silent for the entire duration of the journey.

I took the carrier K. was handing me, raised it and peered through the grating.  A pair of gold-yellow slits looked back at me inquisitively, but without fear, and something in my heart felt the way you feel when you meet an old friend.  “Hello, Luna,” I said.  “Welcome home.  I hope you’ll be happy here.”

To be continued 

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Snow Moon

Posted on February 1, 2026 by Scribe Doll

Outside my window, the night has fallen softly on this first day of the Celtic spring.  Although still naked, the trees across the street have lost some of their winter gauntness and you can just about make out the small protuberances of future leaf buds on the tips of their branches, which reach out into the silver-grey sky.  The black shape of a squirrel leaps fluidly about, one last foraging venture before sleep.  The gentle rain has ceased and there are glistening patches at the foot of the lampposts.  The curtains have been closed over the Victorian bay windows, revealing just a sliver of light through an unintended gap. The cars are parked outside the houses for the night.  

The Snow Moon is yet invisible, cloaked by a thick blanket of cloud.  I caught a glimpse of her dress rehearsal last night as, still waxing, she glowed through the skylight on our upstairs landing, casting a rectangle of bright white light on the carpet.  I had woken up for no apparent reason.  The cat was curled up at my feet, fast asleep, there was no sound from the neighbours on either side of us, and, judging by the extinguished street lights and pitch-darkness in our street, it must have been after one or one-thirty.  I stepped into the rectangle of light, looked up and stood moonbathing in the silver-white glow.  The Snow Moon, almost perfectly circular, was looking straight down at me and I wondered if she had roused me from my sleep.  She stared down, blindingly white, ribbons of cloud drifting across her face like locks of long hair in the breeze.  Now I wonder if I was invited to her dress rehearsal because the sky is too overcast for me to admire her in her full glory this evening.

The air feels calmer, gentler, today, after the unbridled, sometimes violent energy of the last two or three weeks, the time of year when spring feels like a bully trying to usurp winter’s throne before it is time.  My least favourite time of year.  The time of headaches, dizziness, weakness and foul moods ever since I was a child.  A time of instability and uncertainty. 

It’s Imbolc.  Spring matriculation day.  Spring has grown from an entitled teenager to an adult who knows she is equal, but not superior, to the other three seasons.  She can now focus on preparing to blossom and bloom over the next couple of weeks.

And so I bid goodbye to my beloved Winter.  Rest well, my gentle friend, and return with new magic up your sleeves when the nights grow long again.

Welcome, Spring, with your blossoms, your moody weather, unpredictable winds and temperamental showers.  I look forward to seeing the trees across the street grow a glossy green mane.

Now it’s also time for me to close the curtains in our house.  And as I approach the bedroom window, there, in the distance, slowly spreading from behind the horizon of black rooftops, a patch of silvery-white light, like gossamer over the now dark teal sky.  I wonder if it’s the Snow Moon rising.

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Season Lag

Posted on December 7, 2025 by Scribe Doll

What kind of person says she misses the Norwich winter when she lives in Nice? Yes, Nice.  That place on the Côte d’Azur, with the perennially cyan sky and soft, golden haze that sets the ochre and terracotta buildings aglow at sunset. The city with a bay that’s an expanse of apatite and aquamarine blue with flecks of mother-of-pearl.  And Norwich, yes – in Norfolk, in East Anglia, England (do I need to describe the climate?)

Well, this person was me this time last year.  A person with acute season lag.  If the expression doesn’t exist, it should.  I don’t know how else to describe the sense of unsettling confusion I felt on waking up in the morning, wondering what month it was.  Although I grew up in Mediterranean cities – Rome, Athens and Nice – I had until last year spent most of my adult life living on a island where the seasons are well defined (except summer, perhaps, which has commitment issues) and the weather is so unpredictable that it’s a favourite national topic of conversation.  

In Nice, my senses were suddenly in a state of limbo and bewilderment.  We moved there in September 2024 and I basked in the sensuality of a warm, bright autumn, but in late October things began to feel out of sync.  With almost nothing but umbrella pines, cypresses and other evergreens around me, my eyes craved the sight of the red and gold leaves of deciduous trees.  My ears longed to hear psithurism: that gently rustling, swishing sound the wind makes when it blows through the thick mane of a tree, making it quiver and sway.  It’s one of my favourite sounds, because it’s a sound I hear in the late summer and it heralds the approach of autumn, which I always associate with renewal and new opportunities.  Maybe it’s because I’ve never grown out of academic terms beating the time of my year, for me 1st September feels more like a New Year than 1st January.  On 1st September, I fill my mental satchel with new purpose the way, as a girl, I used to fill my satchel with new books, new pencils and new notebooks.  

I have a dear friend who hates autumn.  “Everything starts to die,” she says.  I don’t see nature dying in the autumn, but rather growing in inner power because it’s the time when she seems to say to humans, I have given you all of myself for two seasons. Now it’s the “me” time, the time to replenish and nurture myself.  And she becomes so self-confident that she trusts us to still find beauty in her as her trees stand proudly bare, unadorned by the leaves that have concealed the strong branches that reach ambitiously to the sky.  The tree sheds its leaves, but that is so that these may form a warming, protective blanket for its roots.

On Hallowe’en 2024, it felt odd not to be wearing, if not a coat, then at least a thick woollen jacket and a scarf. 

Where was autumn as I knew it? My body felt as though it had skipped a stage of the year and didn’t know how to adapt to what seemed like a slightly cooler extension of summer.  My Nice friends commented on the change in season they could sense in the air, of which I was totally unaware.  When it rained for a couple of days and just about every person I  encountered complained bitterly about the unfairness of it, my heart was light and jubilant.  I felt at home.  

Skipping a season was hard enough, but skipping two was even more disorientating.  Where’s the winter?! my body cried out.  Where is the kiss of cold on my skin? The lady from whom I bought olives and sun-dried tomatoes in the Cours Saleya market commented on the wind blowing in from the Alps. What wind? You mean this light breeze? Where are the gales that shriek and moan and rattle your window frames? 

When, on the evening of the winter solstice, I decorated the Christmas tree, it was more through mechanical habit than enthusiasm.  Even the day with the longest, most mysterious and magical night of the year felt to me as though it was happening in a distant world from which I had been banished.  I was homesick for the lead grey, purple, pink, gold and silver, shapeshifting East Anglian clouds.  I sat on the Promenade des Anglais, my brain bullying me into appreciating the stunning beauty of the red sunsets bleeding into the teal evening sea, while my heart longed for the dark, dramatic winter sunsets of graphite and gold I used to watch from my Norwich balcony.  

I missed the darkness.  Without that darkness, I had no canvas on which to project the colours of my imagination.

Of course, I couldn’t really confide my homesickness to many of my Nice friends.  Who wouldn’t have thought me insane? After all, Nice is filled with expats who fled these grey skies I love so much.

When I was once describing the East Anglian skies to one of my dear friends, however, she asked to see some pictures.  I sent them to her.  And this woman, a talented artist, saw, just from my photos, what I meant.  And this woman, who has never yet seen the East Anglian skies, was inspired to paint them.  Her picture now hangs in our living room.

When that so-called winter turned to spring, my body felt much happier.  Sunlight and warmth in the spring and then heat in the summer – however sweltering – felt normal, so to speak, even though – not having had a “proper” winter – I found it hard to appreciate them.  After all, I felt as though I had lived in the same season, give or take a few degrees, for ten months. 

When we moved back to Norwich, I watched the approach of autumn with intense attention.  I smelt the slightest change in the air, observed every tree slowly turn from green to blushing red, to ochre, to gold with unprecedented greed.  I spent hours on our kitchen window seat, breathing in the autumn wind and watching the birch across the street change colour.  When autumn tiptoed into winter, I welcomed the lengthening nights like friends who nurture my creativity.

As I write this, I can hear raindrops tapping against my sash window and the wind moaning faintly.  Across the street, I can make out the birch, skeletal, now totally bare.  There is something confident and powerful about a tree that has lost its leaves.  This is who I am, it seems to state proudly, unafraid to be seen in its intimate nakedness, the furrows of history and experience on its bark visible to all.

It’s winter.  I am whole again.

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“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Scribe Doll

(Apologies for re-sending this: I understand many subscribers were unable to access the earlier post. I hope technology will cooperate this time.)

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

The phrase wormed its way into my ear even before the decision to move back was made.

Rattled, hounded, flummoxed and exhausted by French bureaucracy – a maze even without the extra complication of Brexit – I can’t remember which one of us first voiced what we had both been wondering for a few weeks, but dreading to admit even to ourselves: “Do you think we should move back to Norwich?” Thinking about it, it must have been me. I am the great quitter in the household.  Never had any sticking power. The one who walks out of a show during the interval if I am not enjoying it.  Or leaves a well-paid job with fringe benefits because I hate it. Once I realise I’ve made a mistake, something isn’t right for me, isn’t likely to get better or, if it did, the cost would be too high, I head for the emergency exit.  

Howard is the level-headed one, the one who perseveres, who doesn’t give up, who stays for as long as it is possible. Maybe the show will improve after the interval, maybe the job will get better, maybe it wasn’t a mistake.  Wait and see.

Still, once the possibility of having to go back to Norwich was uttered out loud, the sense of failure, crushing disappointment and overwhelming dread of a second international house move in less than a year made it at times hard to breathe.

Packing again, when we still couldn’t always remember where we had put everything after the move to Nice? Lifting heavy boxes again when our sprains and minor injuries had only just healed? Looking for a new home after finding our current one –however far from ideal – barely eight months earlier? Were we really doing the right thing? Moreover, the expense of two moves in one year would be very difficult to bear.

As my panic-struck brain was bouncing off the walls, Howard kept saying the one thing that made it land back into my skull: “What’s the alternative?”

The alternative would have been more of his lying awake at night, keeping track of all the forms we had filled in; of my waking up in the morning, my heart pounding so hard it felt as though it would tear through my chest, wondering if there were forms we’d forgotten to fill in.  I always joke that Italian bureaucracy is part Kafka and part Goldoni. French bureaucracy is pure Kafka. People smiled when I said that I’d rather translate La Chanson de Roland than have to navigate the impenetrable, labyrinthine language of administrative French.  

Before moving – permanently, we thought – to Nice, we had taken exploratory trips, made enquiries, done careful research. Lists of pros and cons were drawn up. Worst-case scenarios imagined. Sums done. We found answers to all the questions we thought of asking.  

Only there were questions that it never occurred to us to ask.  

In the end, I’ll never know for sure if we hit a brick wall because it stood unavoidably before us or if we simply grew too exhausted and confused to avoid it.  Imagination is the first step to a successful outcome and when you’re so physically and mentally tired you don’t have the strength even to picture your desired outcome, all you have the energy to hope for is peace of mind.  And sleep.

“What will people in Norwich say?” I finally blurted out as though that was a more important concern than the actual move.

I can’t remember what Howard replied exactly, but it was something along the lines of Why would they say anything? And if they do, why do you care? 

Norwich is a relatively small city.  Most of our acquaintances here know one another, and there can be a touch of Jane Austen’s novels in social gatherings and curiosity about our neighbours’ business.  More than once I’ve met someone who exclaimed, with a varying blend of excitement, as well as a pinch of triumph at being in possession of privileged information (information is a valuable commodity in relatively small cities and each morsel can be dressed in more than one sauce), “Oh, I hear that you –” followed by the account of an alleged adventure, disaster or extraordinary feat that made my relatively small life sound a great deal more glamorous than it is.  And now, I thought, these same people, all sympathy, would exclaim, “Sorry it didn’t work out” and my imagination and paranoia would add, Thought you were too good for us, did you? Look at you now, come crawling back.

Of course, nobody would be unkind enough to say that or think that.  Of course not.  Well, a few might think it.  Those, perhaps, who have lived decades in the same house, who find it odd that someone over thirty – let alone fifty or sixty – should still be renting their home, have had several different professions, and not had children.  Those in whose presence I always feel socially defective.  But why the hell did I care, anyway? I have no idea, but I suddenly understood people who, after emigrating and falling on hard times, are too ashamed to return to their home country.  It’s hard to go back with anything less than a spectacular, envy-generating improvement in your life.  Of course, I kept reminding myself that there were a few of friends who would not judge, smirk or make seemingly anodyne remarks that somehow managed to leave scratches on me.  I decided to focus only on them.  I figured that if they said Sorry it didn’t work out, they would add (and – when it came to it, they did) At least you had the courage to try.  

As we organised, packed and grew even more stressed and I found myself freefalling into burnout, there were dots of light to keep many of my shadows at bay: my friends. During our ten months in Nice, I had the joy and the privilege to meet a number of women who became treasured friends.  French, Australian, British, Irish, Fijian, Austrian, American. Generous, supportive, warm women with whom I felt I could be myself.  Explore this myself.  In that nurturing, accepting setting, I learnt more about this myself in ten months than in the preceding ten years.  Funny, how some people can bring out the best in you, then hold up a mirror so you can see this best in yourself. 

Sorry it didn’t work out.  I thought about this sentence for the entire train journey from Nice to Norwich, from the blue Mediterranean to the grey North Sea.  We’d planned to settle in Nice permanently.  That wasn’t possible.  But isn’t everything in life a lesson if you’re able to learn it? But this is not just a lesson.  Dear friends. Getting to know myself.  Invaluable gifts.

Yes, after three and a half months back in England, people still say, “Sorry it didn’t work out in Nice.”  To most of them I reply “Thank you” or “Oh, well” and smile politely.

It may not have worked out as we’d planned.  But it did work out.

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“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

Posted on November 30, 2025 by Scribe Doll

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