just to say...

More writing, and less random phone photographs will come soon. From where I (metaphorically) stand just now, I can see the next two months; they are full of essays, studying and exams. So I suspect updates on here will become more sporadic. Maybe not though. We’ll wait and see. I like to surprise myself.

For now though, here are five recent noticings:

 

♥ Running in public is kind of a faux pas. Being a blend of commuter and last-minute-er, I tend to do a lot of it. Coat buttons popping open, eyes spilling, hair unravelling, legs aching. (I missed my bus today, even though I ran. So I then had to run for the train, which I caught. Phew.)

♥ Laughing --- so --- hard --- you can’t --- quite --- breathe --- is better than ice-cream: soul-cleansing, less milky. (I ended up laghing like this today with my friend, for the first time in ages.)

♥ I think it is funny how all the statues in George Square that were built to honour ‘great men’ (and woman) end up acting as rest-stops for seagulls. They leave the Great Men with heads stained white with --- well, you know. (Not very dignified. Maybe that’s why all of them look so stern.)

♥ When waiting for public transport, women – even the skinny ones – tend to cover up their stomachs (with bags, with books, with coats, with their hands). Men on the other hand - even the fatter ones - let their stomachs hang out (they leave their coats unzipped, they rest their arms on their knees, they rub their stomachs absentmindedly). Interesting!

♥ (So far,) John Keats’ letters are very beautiful. I found them today in the library, when I should have been writing about Alexander Pope.

(Anyway! After seeing the time, I absolutely must go to bed now. I’ve got a busy writing day tomorrow. Did not want to stay up this late!)

Pictures: Claire Owen.

tea and cakes and things.

I found this teacup necklace at the Granny Would be Proud vintage fair in Hillhead Bookclub on Sunday. (We were in having brunch for my Dad's birthday.)

After brunch, it was so sunny so we went for a wee wander around the West End of Glasgow - my favourite part of the city.

We went for (earl grey) tea and (cinnamon crumble, strawberry pavlova, and coconut) cakes at a very cute, retro place on Ashton Lane (Aunty M's Cake Lounge). They were delicious. 'The best cake I've ever had in my life' according to my Mum.  

This bizarre (or creepy) plate was hanging up in the wall in there. Quite strange.

The Oxfam Bookshop in the West End is magnificent. (Compact? Really?)

 

♥  

so long, so long.

On Saturday my sister and I were at a friend's 21st birthday party (a ceilidh, which was such good fun. I was in the middle of reading 'Sense and Sensibility' as well, so it felt very Jane Austen-y to be at a dance).

After the party we took home three blue balloons. (They were offered, I hastily add; we didn't steal them.) 

The funnest part of having a balloon is watching it float away. Strange, yes, but also true. So I thought I'd take some pictures with it before I let go ...and then everyone that was home decided they wanted a picture with the balloon too.

♥

functioning.

On the bus home the other day, I looked out the window and saw that we were driving parallel to another bus on the motorway.

Suffering as I do from chronic nosiness, I looked at the people in the window seats and noticed one boy listening to his iPod, staring at his phone. The lady in front of him had fallen asleep, and the man in front of her was eating a sandwich and reading a magazine (quite a skill. I can’t read and eat at once. Things tend to fall out of the sandwich onto the page, or I can’t keep the book open, or something like that).

 

Another lady was daydreaming out of the window, and then the man in front of her was listening to his iPod and staring at his phone, and the boy in front of him was listening to his iPod and staring at his phone, and the girl in front of him was listening to her iPod and staring at her phone, and the man in front of her, and in front of him, and him, and her, and him.

Something about it made me shudder.

While technology can be wonderful in many ways it is also quite isolating, and doesn’t do much for individuality. All of those people probably were listening to different music, and texting different friends, but they just looked exactly the same. Robotic.

I got a fright when I looked down and realised I was sitting in exactly the same position: phone in hand, music in my ears, vacant expression. I bundled it all away and pulled out a book instead!

♥

As an aside: The book I was reading was on satire - I’m looking at it for an essay - and this paragraph from it make me laugh a bit:

[A writer] tells of a guest at a large party who said to the host, 'Who is that ugly woman sitting by herself?' 'That,' said the host, 'happens to be my sister.' 'Of course,' said the embarrassed guest, 'I didn’t notice the resemblance.'

~ From An Introduction to Satire by Leonard Feinberg (1967).

Ho ho.

(pictures from: here.)

I feel happiest with myself when...

...I go to bed with ink-stained fingers. With studying comes many brilliant things: interesting ideas, thought-provoking words, brain-expanding.

But, for me at least, it also causes a lingering feeling of guilt: I always feel like I should be doing so much more, more, more than I do already. These fingers are proof that I've actually worked hard during the day and, phew, I can relax.

Either that, or they prove I need to get some new pens...

(I found this little doodle in my journal the other day. I can't draw hands, so most of my drawings are shy.)

♥

I'm reading Sense and Sensibility just now for English. And it is wonderful. Jane Austen has had no small part to play in my ridiculously idealised notion of love, but I do so love her stories. So witty. And beautiful.

doll doppelgänger.

We’ve had this doll for years. A family friend (one of my preschool teachers, ‘Miss Chris’) who used to work in Romania brought it back for us.

She’s lived all over the house (the doll, I mean, not the friend): in the lounge next to photographs, in the sitting room on the bookshelf, in the kitchen on the window ledge (see picture).

A while ago I noticed that she looks an awful lot like...

Margaret Beckett! The politician. Ah ha ha! I just remembered this again today when my brother was watching Question Time. Funny, huh?

...well, okay. Maybe not an 'awful lot'. But she does look a little bit like her, sure she does? There is a faint resemblance, yes? She is vaguely ...Beckett-like?

...maybe it's just me.

(Picture from Google Images.)

out and about.

On the bus the other day I found lots of (Disney Princesses) wrapping paper on the floor. There must have been an on-the-go birthday party earlier that morning. (In one way this is quite cute; in another way, this is technically littering. Come on, people. Bin your rubbish. Recycle it, even. ‘Save the trees, man.’)

I saw this abandoned bear at the bus station today. It looked so sad, with its little bow-tie. Who left him, and why?

My sister and I went out for lunch to the (amazing) Butterfly and the Pig this weekend and halfway through my cheese and tomato toastie I noticed that the stairs above us were decorated with hand and foot prints. My first thoughts were: ‘Cool.' And then: 'That guy must have really big hands. And big feet.’ And then: ‘How on earth did he get his feet up there?’ Did he bounce, head first, on a trampoline? Or did he stand on his head? If so, how tall is this person?? He must be fearsome to behold.

♥

Whoever said that there is no mystery left in the world obviously needs to clean their glasses. I'm off to read some more Romantic poetry (with a capital R) now.

three things.

[one.] the light is lingering longer this week: shining through the slits in the blinds and the bookcases, slipping around the flowers on the windowsill, making patterns on the walls.

[two.] just over a year and a half at university, and I now find it near-impossible to read a book without a pencil in my hand.

[three.] I have the words of this (my Mum's favourite) poem  inside my head today:

♥

Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver.

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety—

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

(Picture from: here.)