the april tide

ups and downs, london always and little keepsakes

April started in the best way possible, in my favourite city: London. I had already been in the British capital for 4 days and wanted to end the trip the way I love it most, with art, coffee and a lot of wandering.

I’m not new to London. It’s a city I lived in for three years, and one I’ve visited countless times before that. And yet I’m never tired of her. London is my first love. The first city I visited as an adult-ish person (I was 16), where I felt at home as soon as I set foot off the Eurostar, which used to stop at Waterloo Station back then (eeek!). London is also like that lover I cannot quite get out of my head and my heart. I’ll always return to it. No matter what. Whenever someone asks me about my favourite cities, London is always part of the answer. It’s hard to explain exactly why. It just is.

There are a few reasons why I left my favourite city after dreaming of calling it home for many years. Maybe one day, I’ll write about it here, maybe I won’t. Being back felt familiar in a way that’s difficult to put into words. Like slipping into a version of life that still fits, even if it’s no longer yours in the same way. The streets, the pace, the in-between moments, everything felt both known and slightly distant at the same time.

One of the perks of having called it home for a while is that the city’s busyness and dizziness no longer affect me. I’ve learned its rhythm. How to navigate it so it doesn’t feel too rushed. How to carry on with the flow when needed. How to find pockets of space where I can slow down and truly appreciate its beauty. Because it’s everywhere.

When I’m back in London, I’m in no rush. There isn’t any work I have to go to the next day. Maybe a drink or a dinner with a friend. Otherwise, the city truly is my oyster, and always welcomes me back to show me a new side of her.

I’ll never get tired of the city. She’ll always call me back. I don’t think I’ll ever really close that chapter. It feels more like a door I gently pulled to, knowing I could open it again. Leaving will always feel bittersweet. But I also know I’ll always come back. Some places don’t need to be part of your present to still feel like home.

Is there a city that still feels like home to you, no matter how much time has passed?

I shared a few moments from London over on my Instagram, if you’d like to wander a little longer with me.

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Each month, I like to take a moment to reflect and share a few of my favourites. Below, I’ve rounded up my picks in the following categories:

• Keepsakes – Moments to hold onto

• Media Stack – Digital detours that held my attention

• Music Interlude – Songs I kept listening to

• Objects of Affection – Small things that brought joy

• Bookmarks – Books I flipped through

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KEEPSAKES

April has been full of quiet ups and downs. Nothing major. Easy days and harder days came and went.

I have often found this month a little difficult. The weather doesn’t know what it wants. It has its own ups and downs. We had snow on the 5th, and 20 degrees a few days later. I felt it in my body, mind and heart, feeling unlike myself most of the time.

Some evenings I would shut everything down and head for bed early, not wanting to do anything other than fall into a slumber, hoping the next day would feel a little lighter.

Some mornings did feel lighter. I was more in sync with the day, following its rhythm, surfing its wave, letting myself be a little more present. And those were the moments worth keeping.

the quiet mornings
When my body wakes up before the alarm, urging me to ease into the day slowly, to open the window even slightly ajar, and listen to the world waking up. Sometimes I’m typing up an article, sometimes I’m taking a bite of my toast, other times I’m reading a few pages. Everything is still, except for the birds.

little kikis at work
Munching on Easter eggs for a week, hitting Blank Street for our weekly matcha pick-me-up on Friday, homemade cookies and tiramisu.

manchester
Hopping on a train very early to meet a friend in Manc. Being the passenger princess and letting myself be guided for once, seeing this beautiful city through someone else’s eyes.

seasonal stroll at the botanic
Every season, the rendezvous is booked. I’ll make my way to the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden to see the changes in nature, smell them, feel them, and listen to them. I’ve written about this stroll here, and how sometimes the list might say stay, but you just need to step outside.

petting cats on the street
Everything is in the title. There aren’t many cats roaming the streets of Edinburgh, so whenever I spot one and, most of all, get to pet it, it feels extra special, like a lucky charm for the day.

early walks in the neighbourhood
The plan was to get fresh bread. The store didn’t open until 9 on Sunday. I forgot about it. I had to slow my steps on purpose, look at the merchants from the farmers’ market preparing their stalls, and take the long route through the park. The streets were almost empty.

I love living in my neighbourhood because it means being far enough from the centre to not feel fully in Edinburgh, while still being close enough to walk there. This city is so small. Sometimes it feels like living in a little bubble.

I got fresh bread and free coffee. I came back home and baked a strawberry loaf. It was 9:30 am.

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MEDIA STACK

source: IMDb.com

Minari (dir. Lee Isaac Chung, 2020)

In my last article, april bookmarks, I explained how I was nose-deep in books exploring family stories. It was the same for my monthly watch.

Minari follows a South Korean immigrant family of four moving to rural Arkansas in the 1980s. In the pursuit of the American Dream, Jacob moves his family from California to a 50-acre plot in the middle of nowhere, to start a farm and grow Korean produce for the families who make the journey like him and his wife to the US every year.

The film focuses on the complexities of the immigrant experience, financial hardship, family resilience, and the search for home and community.

I found the movie truly beautiful in many ways. It’s visually stunning, with lush scenes of the Arkansas landscape, but what stayed with me most was how intimate it felt.

Watching Jacob and Monica’s relationship slowly deteriorate as the farm begins to pick up felt incredibly human. Jacob becomes so consumed by his need to provide for his family that he slowly loses sight of the people themselves. There’s something deeply heartbreaking about watching someone believe that money alone will fix everything.

The film also explores generational gaps with so much tenderness. When the grandmother arrives from South Korea to take care of the children, the entire atmosphere of the movie shifts. Those moments between her and the little boy, David, were some of my favourites.

Minari is intimate, moving and quietly powerful. It explores the American dream while grounding it in something far more personal: the search for belonging, stability and home. The title itself, Minari (water celery, a pungent herb commonly used in Korean cuisine), becomes a metaphor for the family’s resilience and ability to grow in unfamiliar soil.

read this if you feel drained even on easy days by The Slow Post

April has mostly felt like this. No big events, no particular pressure, and yet my batteries couldn’t fully recharge, no matter how much I rested. My energy kept slipping away, leaving me slightly depleted.

When I arrived at the paragraph “I often feel more energised on days that are objectively busier. Days with structure, movement, things to do. I move through them with more clarity, more focus, even more ease.” it truly hit me.

Reading Tanvi’s writing made me realise that rest is not simply the absence of things to do. Real rest happens when my mind is no longer fragmented, when I stop multitasking and reduce my to-do list to something clear and achievable.

Sometimes it means putting my phone on ‘do not disturb’ for a few hours, unloading thoughts onto paper, or being more intentional with the things I consume and the way I spend my energy. Taking an online class on a subject I’m curious about, reading pen in hand or watching a foreign film with subtitles somehow helps me feel more grounded and present again.

read this if you feel drained even on easy days

The Best Book You’ll Read May Never Reach You by Tual’s Desk

As a bilingual reader, I’ve realised over the years how much my reading experience is shaped by language availability. Sometimes, I’ll search for a title in its original language on Goodreads and the likes, only to realise it hasn’t been translated into English yet. Sometimes I’ll see books circulating widely in French literary spaces that English readers may not even know exist. And selfishly, it frustrates me, especially because most of my reading comes from the library.

A good example of this is Han Kang. I’d easily say she’s one of my favourite authors and yet, I’ve barely scratched the surface of her work simply because I’ve only read what has been translated into English so far. There are books of hers that have been available in French for years, but still haven’t made their way into English. 바람이 분다, 가라 was first published in 2010, translated into French as Pars, le vent se lève in 2015, and still hasn’t received an English translation.

Now that Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024, part of me hopes more of her backlist will slowly become accessible to English readers. But it also made me realise how uneven literary access can be, and how much timing, publishing priorities and language shape what we get to read. Tual articulated this beautifully in their article.

Some books become global because they are translated into English early. Others remain regional, obscure or delayed for decades, regardless of their quality. Sometimes the “canon” of translated literature in English feels less like a reflection of the best books being written and more like the books that successfully crossed the border.

That’s also why translation fascinates me so much. Translators are not simply translators, they’re “bridge-builders” as Tual puts it. They shape the stories we get access to, the voices we encounter and ultimately the way we understand the world.

The Best Book You’ll Read May Never Reach You

Documenting a quiet life in Brooklyn small apartment

I have found a lot of solace watching vlogs by this channel. Short, simple, mundane vlogs. Repetitive and yet deeply focused on small details and everyday moods that turn daily moments into something a little more cinematic. It inspires me to be more present.

We often focus on the big events, the milestones, but the everyday is what quietly carries us through life, even if it escapes our memories as quickly as it happens.

I have countless little photos and videos on my phone. The light casting soft shadows on my walls, then my coffee table, then the creaking floorboards. The meal I put together without following a recipe. How blue the sky looked that morning. The moon lingering on my walk to work. Ducks braving the river current. Bluebells taking over every patch of grass in spring.

And I never get tired of recording those moments, even if they stay hidden in my camera roll, even if they eventually get deleted when I need more storage space. These tiny fragments of everyday life somehow hold me together.

Documenting your life does subtle but powerful things. It turns “nothing happened” into something you noticed.

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MUSIC INTERLUDE

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OBJECTS OF AFFECTION

I’ve had really bad shopping habits in the past, especially when it comes to clothes. Dips in my mood would often result in me swiping my card for that little boost of dopamine that we all know doesn’t last very long.

Changing jobs made it harder to rely on clothes to fill emotional voids. I also wear a uniform at work now, which made shopping start to feel a little pointless. The uniform has its perks because I don’t have to think too much about what I’m wearing, I’m not overspending, but personal style has always been a big part of how I express myself. Somewhere along the way, I lost a small part of myself through that shift. I look at my wardrobe, and there’s so much in it, yet so many things I don’t have time to wear or even know how to style anymore.

After thinking about them for months, I finally treated myself to two pairs of shoes: Dr. Martens Crazy Horse Mary Jane Shoes in dark brown and Birkenstock Boston in taupe. Mind you, I scored them both for a reasonable price on Vinted.

Maybe because I’d had my eye on them for a while and they felt like thoughtful purchases, the dopamine hits every time I wear them. I fear they’ve become part of my personality now.

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BOOKMARKS

April’s reading felt unusually connected. I kept gravitating towards stories about family ties, inherited stories, and the weight of the past. There was a lot of historical fiction this month, alongside books rooted in generational trauma, identity, and resilience. Some were heavy, some more tender, but they all seemed to circle similar questions about what we carry with us, what gets passed down, and how people continue to endure despite everything.

Here’s a list of all the books I finished in April:

• Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto (short stories)

• The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin (literary fiction)

• A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang (historical fiction/magical realism)

• Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior (historical fiction/magical realism)

• Minbak by Ela Lee (historical fiction)

• Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett (literary fiction)

• Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix (literary fiction)

Standouts for me were The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin, Minbak by Ela Lee and Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, though A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing has also stayed with me. You can read my full reviews here:

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April was a month of contrasts. Some days drifted by gently, others felt heavier for reasons I still can’t fully explain. But somewhere between quiet moments, spring walks and stories about family and belonging, there were still many small things worth holding onto.

Lately, I’ve been trying to pay more attention to those moments instead of rushing past them. The fresh bread in the morning. A cat poking its head out from behind a building, inviting me to follow it before flopping onto the pavement for belly rubs. Light on the kitchen floor. A conversation with a friend. Tiny keepsakes in ordinary days.

As we move further into spring, I’m hoping for a little more steadiness, a little more energy and many more moments outside.

What’s something small that made April feel special to you?
And what are you looking forward to in May?

Until next time,

Amandine

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