An Autumn Day in Paris with Pastry and Poetry

Harriet Davidson's Day In The Life (Full of Links!) is here.

Welcome back to our monthly newsletter series - A Day in the Life Full of Links! This dispatch is written by Harriet Davidson, who is so creative it’s impossible to wrap up all she does in one succinct title. Currently living in Paris, Harriet is a writer, a cook, and creative collaborator, currently working on various creative projects, including a personal writing project, as well as working across the culinary and creative direction and collaborations of recently founded artist residency La Gonette. Prepare to throw your entire life away to pursue perfection in Paris, as Harriet did.

[This email is so full of said perfection, you might have to click to expand it in full!]

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Harriet in her kitchen. Image by Doreen Kilfeather.

9am

I wake to the first ring of the church bells across the road, and lay still, counting the rings that follow. This morning it stops after ring number nine. I lay in bed for a moment and think about Sydney days, when I’d wake at 5am. I smile at my 9am behaviour, a habit I have the French to thank for. My relationship with time has changed since moving here, it doesn’t seem to matter as much, perhaps something to do with having wanting to be right where I am for as long as I can remember, so now that I’m here, it’s time to just be. It’s straight to the kitchen, to my yellow and black percolator that I bought in Rome from Sant' Eustachio il Caffè going on ten years ago now with one of my dearest friends — I’ve used it every morning since. I have hot lemon water before I take my black and strong coffee back to bed. It’s one of my most favourite moments of the day, that moment of crawling back into bed, anticipating my first sip of coffee. I grab my notebook and my laptop, light the candle next to my bed, and crawl into my white Merci sheets — a purchase I made the day I moved to Paris, having flown 24 hours across the world. It was raining that day. And I came home, made my bed in my new home with my new crisp white cotton sheets and got into it. A feeling to never forget.