I feel really uncomfortable about selfies. I also feel really uncomfortable about how uncomfortable I feel about selfies. Continue reading
thoughts and confusions
Online dating: great, but actually a little bit rubbish
(I once read that one clear symptom of being British is that it is impossible to intone the word ‘great’ without sounding sarcastic. ‘Great’ is a word most naturally reserved for sarcastic occasion. Ever since, in cross-cultural exchanges, and due to this absolute truth, I have performed a small inward giggle and self-enquiry whenever I allow the word to flutter free from my voice, which isn’t often (but the word is usefully efficient and gleefully positive, so it does get out now and then in emails, etc.); and also, unlike most of the people who self-describe their category of humour on dating sites, I don’t think sarcasm is a particuarly inspiring humble-brag, so I usually err on the side of the gentle, far more British and authentic ‘quite good’ or ‘quite nice’. Therefore, please take my use of ‘great’ in the above title as evidence of my uncertain and unstable opinion on the subject of today’s pondering.) Continue reading
Meditations (also: Houses, Curtains and Boats)
Elephant Journal has just published an article of mine:
‘Where God Is: On Home, Travel & Displacement’.
It’s very personal and confessional, a bit silly and a bit serious, and gets to the root of my eternal cravings both to travel the world and to be at home. I could gaze at the beautiful photo they’ve used (above; credited in the article; heaven in sunlight and flaking paint; they even have a sunflower on the door) for ages. Continue reading
What time is it?
This is quite an exciting question to be asked, when one has a brand new watch with a radical time-telling layout.
For years I refused to wear a watch (far too oppressive) but I was given a beautiful watch for my 21st birthday, which I will always lament and sing eulogies for, having lost it a few years later (it had an unreliable clasp, even if it was otherwise perfection personified on a wrist, and once was delivered by the very concerned postlady, who’d found it on our driveway; little villages have the best postladies). It was white gold, had a mother of pearl face that shone like the moon at certain angles, and was so delicate and fine overall, with tiny seashell-esque links, it was like wearing a slither of pure, understated elegance.
It has taken me the best part of a decade to complete the sulking mourning process and find a replacement watch that I actually like. One could argue that I’m quite fussy about these things. To misquote Cher from Clueless as she likens choosing new shoes to choosing from her several male admirers, ‘You see how picky I am about my watch and it only goes on my wrist.’ Continue reading
North South East & West; How to be Both, or More
(Note: I found this blog post saved in my ‘drafts’ folder. I’m not sure when I wrote it, why I didn’t quite get around to clicking ‘publish’ and I never actually do a ‘draft’, preferring instead to pour things out in an unthinking flurry of fate and parentheses, but here we are. Its content seems timeless, at least… So I’m giving it an airing.)
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On Physical Beauty
I was talking to my friend about this just the other day (and forgive me, but it’s a topic I have often wondered about, doing what I do for a living); isn’t it weird that when you feel you look your worst (jet-lagged, ill, hot and bothered, no make up, mosquito-bitten), that’s when you get the most attention from men in the streets (and, er, from waiters…), whereas when you put the effort in, feeling you have really dressed up and look pretty good, that’s when absolutely no one notices?
I’ve also found many times that images which are favourites in my modelling portfolio were taken when I (secretly) know that I wasn’t feeling my best or most attractive. There seems to be very little rhyme or reason to this.
I think it’s quite a liberating thing; Continue reading
The Horse’s Mouth; clean as a comet
Excited though I am, I’m currently in the wild throes of pre-trip book-anxiety.
That is, as my must-pack-light head screws itself firmly on for a 7-week-ish jaunt around the southern hemisphere, I find myself eyeing up all of the books in my general vicinity and twitching at the idea of not being able to pack them (I once packed four books for a three-hour train journey, but I don’t think that sort of thing is to be repeated or expanded or extrapolated in the 7-week backpacking scheme of things). Continue reading
On Japan, Magic & Pillow Breath
Japan has been high on my travel lust-list for well over a decade; I even had flights booked to go there on my way back from Australia (via Bali) three years ago, but ended up forgoing them both to stay longer in Oz. Ever since, I have considered it, with yearning, each spring and each autumn (do I want the cherry blossom or the autumn leaves?) and have repeatedly had to cast the country aside for other ventures. I know I’ll go sometime and it will be magical; I think I want it to be a trip in itself – not just a stop on the way to or from somewhere else.
In the meantime, two of Japan’s most unrelated outputs (though halfway through this blog post I promise you a tenuous link) have shown up in my life recently.
Firstly (and I don’t want this to turn into a book review, but…), I have been caught in the avalanche of magnetising media surrounding The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, a recent, clutter-toppling phenomenon written by Marie Kondo and published nearly two years ago. Continue reading
The Girl Who Went Up…
… Is the title of one of the short stories I’m playing around with at the moment.
For some, utterly bizarre reason I haven’t yet identified and for years didn’t even particularly notice, I have traditionally oscillated between writing poetry and writing novels. (No mid-way; mid-way has been for losers; I’m all about the full-way. Or something.) Many authors, probably quite reasonably and intelligently, recommend building up to writing novels via short stories, as though they are mainly instrumental spurts of intent and skill (maybe pain-staked, maybe accidental), a bit like lifting weights before lifting a car (terrible analogy, sorry; and people don’t generally lift cars*). But I never really bothered.** Continue reading
Danger, Displacement & Well-fried Falafel
The best review of a hotel I think I have ever read included pleasant remarks about the towels and staff, but noted in the ‘negatives’ section that ‘the streets outside were full of strangers’.
Tea & Epiphany 