If the EU referendum’s build up, grand moment and ensuing results have shown me anything, it’s really that no one truly has a clue what’s going on. I feel we all became a bit like Leo in The Go-Between (a brilliant book I’m close to finishing, having never read it before); certain that there are wrongs and rights out there, possibly even graspable, certainly fascinating, write-down-able in our diaries and letters as grand things to be held onto, yet subject to being rocked at a moment’s whim, and as changeable as the weather. Continue reading
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A tale of two teeth (all the better to bite you with)
I have lived three decades on this earth with excellent teeth.
– Really, let me just milk this for a while: trips to the dentist were a breeze. Both pride and sibling rivalry was high; my check-ups involved gentle smiles and predictable congratulation; my teeth were untouched winners; there was an excellent chippy next to the dentist (a tradition since childhood, as was the excited teeth-cleaning that happened before we all left the house). All in all, I danced in this universe, biting free, pure as can be, a remarkable advertisement for a life-long distaste for fizzy drinks. I was an innocent.
U n t i l n o w . . . Continue reading
Why I don’t eat eggs anymore
Video here.
Aside from posting occasional photos of what I love to eat on instagram (how clichéd of me!), you may have noticed that I never talk about what I consider to be moral choices around food. This is deliberate, and this is a rare and unusual share/post for me, but I also have to admit that I find the (much-lampooned) obsession vegans have with drawing attention to their cause understandable; it truly IS difficult not to want to draw attention to the reality of our food industry when you have decided to become aware (and it is absolutely a choice to become aware!) that many of its practices are very far from acceptable, shouldn’t be happening, and are spiritually, emotionally and in all other ways degenerative.
It is hard not to want to spread the facts, not to shout them from the rooftops; but it is confronting to feel judged for your choices and for shying away from the responsibility that comes with the impact that each of us have as individuals on a food industry which is rife with direct and countable victims, who are subjected to pain and suffering and mistreatment at unspeakable levels, needlessly. It isn’t personal choice anymore when there are victims involved. It’s a reality which any of us can choose at any moment to have no part in.
For a very long time I was vegetarian and saw nothing wrong with eating eggs. Continue reading
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
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
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
Tea & Epiphany 