Random Thoughts on a Sunday Evening in London

There's great Mexican food to be had here

Seriously! It's called Mestizo, it's near Warren Street, and it's tasty af. I went with my friend Tom, who's not Mexican, and his friend Axel, who is Mexican. Axel and I both agreed that the place was the real thing - right down to the tamales and the al pastor and the pork chile verde.

I'd gotten resigned to decent but not stellar fare, with the best examples being Wahaca and Chipotle, but I'm pleased to see that there's some actual good Mexican food in town now. I still remember what passed for it when I first moved here in 2001: the awful and touristy Chiquito in Leicester Square that served stale tortilla chips. Since then the UK's Mexican game has improved slowly, but inexorably - and the fact that there's now a pretty big Mexican community means that the food's coming along.

So much walking

This year I've set myself the ambitious goal of hitting 3 million steps. I've just hit 330,000 for the month, so I think I'm well on the way. Just one of the advantages of living in a city and not having access to a car.

Though I do miss my podcasts and not having to worry about getting run over by crazy drivers all the time.

So little writing

The negative side of all this social butterfly activity is that I seem to have very little time and mental bandwidth for writing. I've managed to get blogs out every Sunday so far, which is good, but most of the rest of my time is going... I don't know where. I have ambitious goals, like submitting twenty stories again (I managed 21 last year) but I don't seem to have the energy to do it. In part because the commute home's a little more hellish and it takes longer to get home than to get to work.

I'm already freaking out (as a general rule) that I'm squandering my life, and this is just one more anxiety-mosquito buzzing around my head and nipping me when I let my guard down.

On the plus side, I'm reading a fair bit more (thanks to the commute) and going to a lot more writers' events. But still not much actual words on paper...

Moving into the big Waterstones

It could be that one of the things tying up my time at the moment is visits to the flagship Waterstones on Piccadilly. My obsession with the place grows and grows - after lunch I walked with my friend Tom to Tottenham Court Road, and from there eventually made my way to Piccadilly, reasoning that I probably had to get to Green Park to get home, so I might as well stop in...

The problem remains that I don't have a load of space for all the books I'd like to buy. I managed three yesterday, short ones, and it felt good because I'd been holding back until my first paycheck came in. But I'm surrounded by wonderful, interesting books and bookstores, all of which I want to support. I just can't take everything back with me.

I guess I'll be making a few donations to the charity shop before I leave in March...