I am sitting in the Tea Lounge on Union Street in Brooklyn and it is full of screaming babies. I like children well enough but really. On the upside I suppose this place is entirely staffed by hot gay women which gives Ruby something to distract herself.

Given that Manhattan is the most expensive city in the country and I make no money at all I spend a lot of time thinking about money. Today I was thinking that if I ever sell my book maybe I should move to Ireland so I can live there tax-free. :> (I keep thinking, surely that can't actually work. Maybe you have to write an epic Irish poem to qualify.) If nothing else, it's indicative of an enviable attitude towards artists and writers, one that I've always noted exists more outside the US - we only have respect for writers if they make lots and lots of money, and that's mostly because Americans are always impressed by people they think make bucketloads of money for doing basically nothing at all.

I remember when I was on vacation in Mexico five years ago, in a tiny town called Puerto Angel, and I'd run out of books to read. My boyfriend at the time, a generally useless person who had occasional flashes of worthwhileness, went to the manager of our hotel and explained that I was a writer, and since I was a writer, I needed to have books to read, and they needed to be in English, because I didn't speak any Spanish, otherwise I would expire from lack of inspiration or something. The manager was like, "Oh, a writer! and took me to the house of one of the wealthier women in town, who collected books (in all languages - I am not sure she read them - I think she just liked to have them) and explained that I was a writer, and therefore needed books, and she let me take whatever books I wanted. (I ended up taking Timothy Findley's Dinner Along the Amazon.)

And then there was the time when my parents were living in France, in Samois-sur-Seine, and Air France lost my baggage at CDG, and the airline offered to compensate me for the contents of the bag, and my mother called them up and explained that her daughter was a writer, and her work was in the luggage and therefore replacing it was not an option because of course work is irreplacable. (At the time, I mostly wrote in longhanded and was halfway through my thesis project for college, which was a linked bunch of short stories, so mostly I was merely horrified at the thought of having to do the whole bloody thing again.) So eventually they found my luggage and drove it out to the small town where my parents lived, and the porter rang the front doorbell and handed me my bag, and I was very pleased. "Yay, my luggage!" He said, "You understand we had to examine the contents of the bag to determine that it was yours?" Me, "Yes." Him, "In any case, mademoiselle, I have read your novel. It was very engaging." My mother, "Haahahahha!" Me, "Argh." Him, "I have made the following notes and corrections..." Okay, he didn't say that last bit, but it would have been funny if he had. In France everyone is a critic.

Wah, the guy sitting next to me smells. Clearly this is not going to be a good Tea Lounge day.