I have been entrusted with the care of a fishtank for one week and already things have got out of hand in a deathy fashion. It was only two days ago that my mum and step-dad absconded like lusty teenagers to a caravan in Suffolk for their anniversary and I’m pulling my bloody hair out….
What are you?
A friend just sent me a quote. It’s one of my favourites. Roald Dahl. “If a person has ugly thoughts it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it….
Change. History. Time. Feet.
I need to grow up and get better shoes. You can’t traipse around London for three days solid in worn-out Converse and not expect your feet to hate you by the end of it. Those soles are thin at their best, when they’re new, but when you’ve worn them the equivalent of ten times round…
The Zen Phosphorescence of General Knowing
I was thinking that being 37 is a funny age. But they’re all funny ages aren’t they? Because we’ve never lived them before, so they all feel a bit odd and clunky, like new shoes that need to be worn in. Just as you think you’ve got one era of your life straight you move…
Pie & Miles Davis
I was going to write about pie. We made one yesterday and I still can’t move and now it’s all I can think about. Pie. But have you ever tried writing about pie while listening to Miles Davis? It can’t be done, even about a really memorable pie. You start writing about pie while listening…
Well Hard Wild Nature
Say what you like about the world and all its faults but nature never stops giving you things for free. Nice views, food, inspiration, water… haircuts.
Death & A Chick Named Barry
It felt terribly twee driving out into the country to look at antiques on a Sunday afternoon in my late thirties in a skirt that came just below the knee. I mentally noted it. “Look at me, in a skirt below the knee, driving out to the country to look at musty old things on…
Keep the Momentum
So we’re still in a bit of a pickle, perhaps even more of a pickle than we feared for a bit, but hopefully it won’t be a pickle for long. That seems to be the boiled down upshot of the election. The Tories tried to smear Corbyn with their hysterical “He’s mates with the IRA!…
The Good, The Bad, & The Poolside
It felt like the best time & the worst time to get away. Leaving for Spain a week before the election, with the Labour campaign stepping up, with people really starting to think that no matter what they thought of Corbyn they were still prepared to invest their vote in a strategic stand against the…
Amess on your Doorstep
Don’t you hate it when you don’t say any of the things you’d like to because someone catches you unprepared? When Sir David Amess MP knocked on my door last Friday I was caught utterly off-guard and ever since I’ve been forehead-slappingly cross at myself for not saying better things to him. I suppose that…
Men of the Sea
I’ve always been comfortable on boats. Mum told me at a young age that I was made on a boat in Nice. Dad, a lifetime sailor, had dragged her screaming across the English channel to the South of France, and there – presumably while he comforted her WHICH I CAN’T BEAR TO THINK ABOUT OBVIOUSLY…
