Latest Posts
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Unfinished and Inconclusive
I have been completely stumped writing this week’s blog. I started a few pieces but not finished one. They start off strong with heartfelt anecdotes, hyperbolic metaphors and sarcastic protestations before they drift and fizzle out. My blogs have found a structure of their own. They grew into a framework the way a toddler grows into an oversized jumper. Soon they will outgrow that jumper until it confines like a straitjacket. I wonder if being stumped this week is already this process in action; I just can’t see it yet. Change happens a grain of sand at a time. It… Continue reading
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What shall I do?
I find myself, a little too often, dreaming of a million other lives. Just earlier today I walked alongside the river and dreamed of a life where I do something creative and hands-on. In that life I have calluses on my hands from carving, nailing, painting and making something so original it doesn’t yet have a name. Sometimes I imagine a life where I somehow marry rich and become a woman who does yoga in the middle of the day. That life is full of ease, downward facing dog, spitefully holding my tongue and swallowing my pride. Often I imagine… Continue reading
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The devil appears in a red flame
I step out onto the street and it’s pitch black. The roads are empty and lamp light glows on the pavement. In my left hand I clutch an alarm with my fingers poised to pull the pin should anyone get too close. I’m aware of everything and everyone. I cross the road when figures approach. I stay out of reaching distance. My legs are electric and ready to sprint. My head twitches as a taxi driver slams the door shut. I can never be too careful. I used to think there was nothing I would drop my guard for. One… Continue reading
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Long happy shadows
The days are short and dark now. Compressed between them is a claustrophobic grey that lasts mere seconds before it’s night again. It’s always night or always going to be night. Night looms like an antagonist in a pantomime waiting for the crowd to jeer when they see it. At whatever point in the day I can touch it. This endless night makes me feel dragged down like everything is impossible. The next cycle of laundry, the next commute to work, the next time I have to touch my toes to put my shoes on; all of it unimaginable in… Continue reading
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My Japanese Grandma
My Japanese grandma is eighty-four and still rides her bike, even though we tell her she really better not. She cycles even though it takes her just as long to bike as it does to walk. I’ve stood on her front steps and called out ‘kiotsukete ne‘ (be careful) only for it to land on her hunched back as her head floats down the road and disappears. The last time I saw her was three weeks ago. Before that, I saw her five years ago and the time before that, it was a week before my tenth birthday. She has… Continue reading
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My legs ache from vigorously exercising my democratic right to vote
It’s exciting to pencil an X in a box. Whenever I vote I usually feel a good swing of momentum before. I like to look up the candidates and unintentionally scoff at the SDP’s ‘Stand Up to Woke’ campaign and then chuckle along to the anti-ULEZ and anti-LTN proposals from Howard at Reform UK. Consistently I vote the same way; Labour and Green. When I was younger, my sister told me that it was pointless to vote Green and I didn’t understand why. But now I see that one red sock in the white wash won’t turn everything crimson, just… Continue reading
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Name one thing worse than British lads on holiday — I’ll wait.
It’s nighttime. A group of English lads wearing button-downs and too-tight white trousers stand in a clump. They slosh their pints and yell. They smoke and chuck the butts in the centre of the circle. We are to understand that they are ‘real men’. One of them breaks free heading for the bar and almost bumps into me. He stops, slurs “Sorry love”. I sidestep and walk on, careful not to make eye contact. Everyone is looking at them but only from the corner of their eyes. Everyone is looking at them but only with their ears. Everyone is too… Continue reading
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We were lied to: smoking is cool
When I was a teenager at school, it was only the cool girls who smoked. They would go behind the huts that were built on the playground that were never removed nor replaced with sturdier structures despite always being referred to as ‘temporary’. If you were not cool, you knew not to go behind them. There was a general fear that if you did, they would think you would snitch and beat you up in apprehension. Back then everyone smoked straight cigarettes, Marlboro golds or reds that were £8.40 per pack with orange dipped heads. I remember one cool girl… Continue reading
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Blog Rebrand — Now that’s a good pants occasion.
The other day I woke up feeling groggy and gross. I knew my work day would be frantic and I was dreading it. As I left my room, I cast a longing glance over my shoulder to my bed and thought, ‘I can’t wait to be back with you again’, as if I were a young lad going off to war, leaving all my family and home comforts behind. When I feel like this, there is only one thing for it. My good pants. My good pants and an adorable little outfit because, even if I am crying inside, at… Continue reading
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Frontal lobe here I come
It’s my sister’s birthday this week! She is turning twenty-six and I can hardly believe it. She’s now saddled herself on the late side of her twenties and to celebrate I made a carrot cake. Gone are the birthday cakes of childhood and adolescence with Kit Kats stuck to the rim and a ball pit of smarties on top. No longer are we having Shrek, Barbie, or ‘whatever franchise has put out a new toy-themed’ cakes. Carrot cake is sleek, carrot cake is refined, carrot cake is graceful, carrot cake is oh so twenty-six. My sister turning twenty-six has made… Continue reading
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