Accidental Courtesy, Sunday roast and crying

1. Daryl Davis. I finally got around to watch Accidental Courtesy on Netflix. Brilliant documentary. Humbling and honest, and inspirational. I was left speechless gasping in disbelief at the rudeness of some of the people he sat down with. How did he manage to keep his cool? I wish I had a fraction of his confidence and self-belief. What kind of strength you must possess to be able to confront such bigotry?

2. Sunday roast with friends. Especially the cabbage. And the potatoes. And the chicken.

3. Just a month to Christmas. Whoo hoo! I want to see my friends and my family. I hope to get home for Christmas.

4. The cat with a piece of string. When watching the kitten is better than watching TV. He’s so pure and adorable.

5. Crying for no reason whatsoever. I know it’s a weird thing to be grateful for but it’s extremely liberating. Sometimes that’s all you need.

Smoked mackerel risotto, Daryl Davis and CCTV

1. I barely got out of my pjs today. Great Sunday. I worked, though. A lot.

2. The best smoked mackerel risotto ever. Lemon makes everything better. It was exceptionally good.

3. Daryl Davis. His courage is monstrous. He sat down with a member of the KKK to talk, to try and figure out why somebody could hate him because of the colour of his skin. After years, the KKK dude renounced his ideology. Mr Davis’ documentary, Accidental Courtesy, is on Netflix. If you don’t have time, check his TEDTALK. It’s un-believable.

4. People who use ‘woke’ ironically. Honestly, until this week I hadn’t realised people use it unironically. I regret this loss of my innocence.

5. CCTV. The fact that there was actually CCTV footage to prove that the 9-year-old accused of groping a woman was in fact innocence. This stuff freaks me out. What would have happened to him if such footage didn’t exist? And that’s why you investigate claims rather than automatically believe all women. Because we’re humans and humans make mistakes.

Malai Kulfi, bad housemates and an Indian restaurant

1. India club restaurant. I had never heard of it before. We went today for the first time. Sitting on the second floor above a run down hotel on the Strand, it’s a very unadorned restaurant attached to a lovely club. The walls are bare. The menu is paired down and the waitress are polite but no nonsense. The food was nice but nothing to write home about. The ice cream was insanely good and the company was even better. The bill was reasonable.

2. Malai Kulfi. My new favourite thing. Now I have to discover if I can make it at home.

3. Bad housemates. I am so grateful I no longer have to deal with bad housemates. Whenever we have dinner with friends conversation often moves to anecdotes about terrible housemates. It’s a very London thing. Our dinner companions tonight were recounting stories about their extremely eccentric flatmate. Both my husband and I have had our share. And let me tell you: I’m grateful I’m not there anymore.

4. When you finally understand what your cat wants. A few days ago she started bring very fussy about food and getting very agitated. We were getting concerned because she was obviously losing weight and since she’s still nursing five kittens you can see that was not a good thing. Last night my husband had the genius idea of moving her food much closer to the box where her kittens are. All is well. In half day she wolfed down twice the amount of food she normally eats in one day; her weight is going back up and she seems quite content. I feel guilty but very relieved.

5. Two documentaries: Me Facing Life, the story of Cyntoia Brown, a young prostitute of 16 tried as an adult and convicted to a life in prison for the murder of a client; and Rikers Island, a documentary about the New York jail infamous for being very violent. They are both part of the course I’m doing. I wish the course in general was more balanced. It presents a very one-sided opinion of the whole story but it certainly stirring up interesting reflections.

A flat iron steak, another good documentary and a wonderful painting

1. Flat iron steak. We went for dinner to Flat Iron in Covent Garden tonight. I had the signature flat iron with chips and cabbage and the husband had the rib eye with chips and creamy spinach. The food was really good, but we were expecting that. What we were not expecting was how tasty the side vegetables were going to be. The spinach were really creamy with lots of Parmesan and the cabbage was tastier than you have a right to expect cabbage to be with lots of butter. The service was also terrific. The Covent Garden branch has the added benefit of free salted caramel ice cream covered in shaved dark chocolate. Heaven!

2. A Saturday with my husband. I’m grateful for the time we spend together and I know how important it is because I know how much I miss it those rare occasions when maybe we go a couple of weeks without quality time together. His sense of humour and his ability to make fun of me and of himself restore my faith in the world.

3. A friend trying to do the right thing. A friend of mine did something terribly stupid and managed to hurt somebody I really care about to in the process. He told me he wants to get his shit the together and make it right. It takes courage and guts and humility to try and remedy a wrong, and for his courage I’m grateful.

4. Another excellent documentary called Slavery by Another Name based on the homonymous book by Douglas A. Blackmon. I watched it this morning as part of my Coursera course. It explores the aftermath of the abolition of slavery in the US, and about the incentives that were created in the Southern states to incarcerate the black population in order to supply plantations with workers.

5. Tate Britain. I have a very conflictual relationship with museums and galleries. My mum used to take me when I was tiny and I used to hate them. Fundamentally because they were huge and I was small and I didn’t care about art and we would spend so long in them and I would get tired and she wouldn’t care. We would spend interminable hours in them with the vague promise of a movie afterwards. My husband loves galleries and museums, and he asks for so little that I’m happy to do what he wants. Today we went to the Tate Britain because they have manu paintigs by Turner and Constable. I saw and fell in love with this painting by a British artist called Luke Fildes called The Doctor. Take a look at the expression on the father’s face. It’s incredible. For some reason this painting moved me very much.