I like the warmth of the faint orange glow from the streetlight outside our window in the late afternoons, just after it has been turned on and the dusk is setting in. It reminds me of dim light cast sideways on a face, highlighting the shapes of cheekbones and nose. The angles of the wall around the bow window and the muted colours on the bookshelves stand out against the white of the furniture which, even though only a shadow of their real colour, oddly appear to be even more white in contrast with the dim orange glow of the windows. With the thick white vertical blinds closed the window is only four golden squares reflected and slightly skewed on a shadow screen. The beauty of the white blinds is that they amplify the daylight when closed, allowing us to create the illusion of a private world in here, invisible from the street. We can rotate them or open them like curtains. Sitting at the round pedestal table in the bow window we can turn the blinds so that the sunlight casts thin strips of yellow on the table and the carpet and yet still hide ourselves from the street view.

They only switched on the streetlight a couple of weeks ago. I was disappointed when I first noticed the installation, convinced it would intrude too much with that stark burnt yellow glare characteristic of most streetlights. But now at night when I walk through to get a drink from the kitchen light highlights the space and warmth of the room. When the sky is dark with rain the vertical blinds are zigzagged with the shadows of writhing raindrops.

There is a picture of the centre of a white rose on the wall, a faux-canvas I bought from Ikea, with its petals peeling back towards the centre. Staring at it reminds me of the rapid motion of those sped-up movie clips on the early versions of Encarta that showed the blossoming of a flower or the skyline of a city at dawn. I love the rich shadows and the crisp outline of the petals. The creams and yellows highlight the colours in the room. On the pedestal dining table there are three candles—cream, yellow, and dark red—on a square cream porcelain plate filled with grey shiny pebbles. A shallow round hand-made dish on the white coffee table holds another handful of the pebbles, and at the corners of the table sit two coasters—American flags—I won at a Dirty Santa game in the States last Christmas. The shelf beneath the coffee table is full of books and papers we are currently reading.

In the left hand corner of the room, opposite the white three-seat sofa, is a teak television cabinet shaped like a stretched hexagon with French glass doors opened onto two shelves: one for the video player and one for the DVD player. Our 14” Sony TV I got for my 15th birthday sits on the top, and beside it a small striped lamp with a thin black iron stand. There are two overhead lights, both fitted with uplighter shades which cast light in huge circular beams on the ceiling, dispersing a bright warm glow throughout the room. We bought a cheap silver reading light that sits beside the couch. I always sit on the left, Lori on the right.

We’ve put a few pictures on the walls now, but still not many. There are two pictures I took—one of the steps at Montmartre in Paris and one of a village in the south of France—on the wall beside the bookshelves. Four more of my pictures are in oak frames leaning against the wall below the window waiting to be put up. We bought large sheets of wrapping paper from Stanfords (travel bookshop) in Covent Garden which are actually large maps—one of Paris and one of the world—which I've put up on the walls in the study for inspiration beside the cork board (and the white board that is still leaning against the wall waiting to go up.) I will get around to putting up the pictures, but for now I think I like the pure cream walls and the space they create. All the same, I miss the pictures from our walls in Hattiesburg. Each one was like a captured moment in time: most of them were ones I had taken (saves money on posters!) and others were of places we had visited. There was even a poster in Lori’s room of a tiny restaurant called Le Monde des Chimieres (the world of wishful thinking) on the Ile St Louis in Paris which we subsequently went in search of on our next trip. We found it and photographed it just in time; when we went back it had been converted into a dark and modern establishment with stencilled writing and white lights.

The kitchen is tiny and beautiful. I love to sit on the sofa and glance over at the closed French door with the lights shining inside. It’s the perfect size for two people to prepare and cook meals, which we have been doing with delight. Having a dishwasher significantly affects our eating habits. We're both more adventurous in the kitchen, trying new things and experimenting more, since we can easily sweep all the pots and pans into the dishwasher. We’ve experimented with a new dish – a lime chicken – which involves marinating the chicken in lime juice for a few hours, something we relish because it makes the whole apartment smell green and citrusy. Roasted asparagus with lemon, a dash of balsamic vinegar, and a few shavings of parmesan is a new favourite, as are carrots quartered lengthways and roasted with olive oil, coriander, and thyme. We bought some lamb chops with mint and mango to try this week, and last week we made a tiny herbed roast turkey breast with balsamic onion gravy in addition to the apple and balsamic pork I mentioned before (which we have to do again – it was delicious) and chicken marsala (chicken with mushrooms, shallots, marsala, and cream with tagliatelle).

With all this cooking, eating out has to be all about the experience rather than the food. We went out to Starz tonight as a reward for a day of hard work (which I am purposefully not mentioning because it was so tedious). An American restaurant in Exeter under the iron bridge, Starz claims Tex-Mex American and was top of our list to try next. Unfortunately, there was a shortage of space and we had to sit in the bar. The food was good—I had something called a North & South Starz: barbeque chicken and a half rack of ribs with fries and coleslaw. Unfortunately I’m a little prejudiced by my experiences at “real” American restaurants, and the ribs were no where near as good as the ones at TGI Fridays in Bristol, the closest you can get to an authetic American meal around here (we’ve been there twice already since the beginning of term, and it’s over an hour away!).

We decided to spread the "evening out" between tonight and tomorrow night, so we’re eating in tomorrow and going out to the movies afterwards, possibly to see Elizabethtown, which came out last weekend. I want to see The Constant Gardener too, but I’m not sure if that’s out yet. Since it will be Saturday night I’m expecting it to be pretty crowded at the Odeon, but we’ll get there early. I’m looking forward to a night out. We’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow before then, though…!

C’est tout.