Dear July, five & six: on turning 24.

A note: so, this post is a little introspective. The beginning of July always feels like a second New Year to me because of my birthday - meaning: a time for looking again and refocusing. (I shall widen my gaze tomorrow). But the ‘something I noticed’ comes in the form of these pictures. Yesterday my Mum and I left the house without realising we’d dressed up as opposites of each other. We often match unintentionally. Whether in clothes, ideas or our reactions to things my Dad says. Poor man. (‘What do you think of that car?’ ‘Hideous. It looks like a wasp.’ ‘Mm. That’s what your Mum said.’) 

Anyway – it reminded me a little of this illustration by Sara Soderholm. So when we got home, we tried to recreate the picture. 

♥

Dear July,

I turned twenty-four yesterday. It was the first of my 20-something years that I’ve been able to greet with a tip of the hat – ‘Well hello there, two four. How’d you do?’ – rather than with panic. My last evening as a nineteen year old (back in the day) was spent tucked behind cream coloured curtains on a window-sill, sort of (slightly pathetically) crying into the knees of my pyjamas because I couldn’t believe I’d let myself get to twenty without having Everything figured out yet. (Whatever that means. Still not sure.)

The person I’d like to be at twenty four is still more interesting than I am. She’s wiser. She’s written more. She isn’t so awkward. She’s less of a klutz. Her bedroom is tidier. Her hair’s not so frizzy. She doesn’t dance round the edges so much – she just says what she thinks: bam. She’s kinder. And wittier. And she probably doesn’t fall asleep at least one night a week on the sofa fully-dressed (a habit I seem to have picked up only this last year. Send help). She’s a lot less hesitant. She takes more risks.

But, hey.

I’m trying to treat these ‘could be betters’ with good grace. I might not speak fluent French. But, among other things... I did travel halfway across the world by myself this year to visit good friends. I built a website. I learned how to carve a pumpkin. I navigated the Paris Metro singlehandedly. I taught a class. I house-sat for my sister and her fiancé for a week and managed not to kill their cats. (That’s something, right?)

So welcome, twenty four. I’ll try and grow into you. May you be filled with light and love and may I write so much in the space of your 365 days that this novel I'm working on will be so close to completion that the words will sing.

♥

Today's poem: One Art by Elizabeth Bishop. (Quite a lot of these poems seem to be about losing. Any suggestions for ones about being allowed to keep things?)

impossible.

‘Isn’t it strange how last summer I spent a lot of time wishing this car had proper air conditioning? And how I drove to work most days with the cold air on full-blast – the windows open to let a bit of a breeze in?’

We were driving home, my brother and I, from Glasgow after (an amazing) Olafur Arnalds' concert. It was close to midnight. Sleet was smattering the windscreen.

‘Remember how warm it was?’ I went on, almost talking to myself. ‘How roasting it was in July? It’s hard to remember what that actually felt like...’

I was thinking of bare legs, and painted toenails, and skirts and dresses and sunlight dropping into my lap. There had been days in the café where it was so hot – so stickily, shiningly hot – that, as a special treat from the managers to staff, we were all allowed to unbutton the top button of our shirts. We were allowed to work tie-less for a while. 

If I've not mentioned it already, this winter has been wearing me down a little. The icy rain. The darkness. The whipping wind that makes my mascara run as I bundle down Buchanan Street towards the train station. A couple of weeks ago, the cold air dried out my skin so completely that I felt like I was walking around – counting out change, writing my name – with hands that belonged to a stranger. Cracked skin around my knuckles, scabby scaly roughness to touch. It took half a tube of intensive moisturising cream to rub them back into something I recognised.

‘Summer seems so impossible in the middle of winter,’ I said to Evan. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. ‘Right now, the summer feels so impossible.’  

He sat quiet, as he often does when he’s thinking. The rain had picked up outside now and streetlamps flashed watery orange light squares across the dashboard. I turned the heating up as high as it would go, trying to angle the air-stream towards my face. And then he said,

‘Summer will come again.’ (Saying the words slowly - as though he suspected I'd been talking about more than just the cold weather.) 

‘It’s not impossible,' he said. 'Summer'll come back round again. It does every year.’

The windscreen wipers squeaked. 

♥

I'm going to try and hold onto those words this week and maybe try and complain a little less. It feels imposssible, but Summer will come again because this coldness isn't lasting. It will come back around. 

It always does.

a gold dust glow (on possibility).

So, you might've noticed that I’ve changed things about a little (design-wise) on the blog. A small tour: look up! I now have links at the top of the page. Look to your right: there are little social media buttons which you can click on. Scroll back to the top: the messy looking fake-shadow header is gone! I think it looks a bit more like a proper blog now. (What do you think?)

On the subject of change, here’s something I’ve noticed recently: it is possible. Change, I mean. Change is possible. Here’s how I know it: 

I used to hate ginger* and now I don’t.

After years of feeling queasy at the thought, I’ve started enjoying ginger beer... and Three Ginger Tea has risen up the ranks to become my favourite herbal tea (as I described it recently in a letter: ‘it’s very warming and leaves a tingle like gold dust at the back of your throat’).

Other things I used to hate and now don’t include: mushrooms, uncooked tomatoes, coriander, and red onions**. I now love all of these things (deeply. In a moment of unchecked sincerity, I recently told my brother: ‘I’m really passionate about mushrooms’. He laughed quite a lot. I suppose it was sort of an odd thing to say in retrospect). These changes are encouraging. They give me hope.

If my taste-buds can change their opinions on coriander – moving from a place of disgust (‘it tastes like sick’) to one of near-fervour (‘we must have it with EVERYTHING’***) – then maybe other parts of me can change. 

Like: my inability to hear alarms in the morning or the way my first instinct is usually to hide from/pretend not to notice people I’ve been hoping to speak to when I see them on the street (o! shyness, you wily fiend). Things like: my phobia of insects, or the issues I have finding shoes that fit, or the way I fall in love with impossible notions, or my habit of leaving things to the last minute. Maybe. We’ll see...

(NB. My feelings towards marmite will never change. Gross black salty concoction.)

(Pictures snapped on my iPhone. Notes:

*I’m talking about ginger, as in ginger-the-foodstuff, not ‘carbonated drinks’ or ‘individuals with red hair and freckles’.

**I still don’t really like raw red onions, but this has more to do with the way they linger powerfully on the breath post-eating than their actual flavour.

***Everything especially includes: chilli con carne, fajitas, and chicken and mushroom curry.)

I think that possibly maybe I'm falling for you

While I was waiting for my sister on Thursday (we were going to see a ballet), I had some dinner in the window seat of a fish and chip shop down the street from the theatre. What with the rain-soaked pavements, and the diner-type restaurant, and the fact I was alone with my book and my yellow mug of tea... it really would have been the ideal opportunity for a passerby to walk past the window and – a pause, an intake of breath, a meeting of eyes – fall in love with me. 

He would have walked past the window a few times, fighting with himself, with his natural shyness – hardly noticing how wet he was getting from the sudden deluge – until – ‘What have I got to lose?’ – he’d have run into the cafe – the bell on the door jingling – and walked over to my table – me looking up, wide eyed, surprised – and, in a half-whisper: ‘I don’t even know your name – but - it's just - I just had to say...’

Of course, this didn’t happen. And as far as I recall, the door didn’t even have a jingly bell on it, and it wasn’t really pouring with rain: just drizzling. And actually, if someone did decide to run up to me when I was by myself, I’d be absolutely terrified and incredibly suspicious and would probably shout for help.

But it was a nice thought. 

♥

(Post title from: this song)

I was once a tall tree

I noticed this toilet-door graffiti in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow*. There were the usual graffiti suspects scrawled over the door (e.g. ‘Yer maw!’ or ‘Lucy + Gregg 4eva!!’ [enclosed in a crudely shaped heart] and so on), but I liked how a few of these were quite poetic (and uplifting). I've never met anyone who has admitted to writing on toilet doors. I wonder what gives people the urge to do it:

('If you are reading this then be happy. 'Cause, hey! You are alive')

('One day you will be loved the way I am. You deserve it, trust me.')

('Choose life.')

('I was once a tall tree/I was once a child')

♥

*Incidentally, I was at the Mitchell Library during the Aye Write! Festival – a wonderful book festival which runs every year over a few weeks in the spring. Over the past few years I’ve heard lots of interesting writers including David Aaronovitch, Germaine Greer, Julian Baggini, Susie Orbach, and others. (I’ve yet to go and hear a poet or a novelist. This will be a must for next year...)

The evening these pictures were taken was quite exciting as, rather than going to listen to a reading, I was actually giving a reading along with two other students from my year at university. (I’d received an award for a piece of flash fiction as part of Strathclyde University’s writing completion: the Keith Wright Memorial Award, judged by Ewan Morrison.) An amazing – if slightly nerve-wracking – experience! My first ever public reading, and also the first ever time I've been given a spot of money for a piece of writing. 

that's old news.

Something I couldn't help but notice is...

I passed my driving test! I passed it (on the first attempt) ...in November. Quite old news now, I suppose, but it's still exciting. I get little moments while rumbling along the road where I suddenly realise: ‘Huh! I’m actually driving a car.’ (Both wonderful, and slightly terrifying at the same time).

When I was little(r) I'd always just assumed that I’d learn to drive when I 'grew up'. I remember making plans with my sister about all the things we’d do when we could drive (important things like: ‘go to the cinema pretty much all the time’ and ‘go to the swimming pool whenever we feel like it’*). The closer I got to seventeen, though, the harder it was to picture myself actually driving a car. I’ve wrestled with quite debilitating anxiety since I was about eleven – something that I’ve only very recently learned how to manage – and, up until this past year, I just couldn’t visualise myself feeling well enough to drive.

So this is a major achievement in more ways than one! Something which seemed near-impossible even just a year ago has now become a reality. Encouraging to realise that change is possible, that wellness is possible (and that nipping along to Morrisons to get a loaf of bread is also now possible).

Hooray!

(Oh, also. While on the subject of ‘that which once seemed impossible’: I completed and submitted my dissertation last month (my dissertation on that most unfathomable of subjects: the humble sandwich). Now comes the long wait till June for the results.)  

*alas, we’ve not yet done either of these (cinema trips or swimming). I’ve mostly just been driving to work and to pick my brother up from school and whatnot. Being a full-time nurse (her) and in your honours year of university (me) doesn’t really leave much time for doing much else. Plus, I don’t think we factored in the whole ‘we’ll need to pay for the cinema tickets ourselves’ thing! One day soon though!

noticings through instagram.

In the midst of all the busyness, I've been trying to capture life through snapshots. I'm saving up for a DSLR camera at the moment (they are bloomin' expensive), but there's really something to be said for a good camera on your phone. So much easier to carry about, and much more subtle. Here are few things I've been noticing recently:

 

[one.] autumn is here.

[two.] sunlight and sea through my train window. I do like to live beside the seaside.

 

 

[three.] the first train ticket of the semester (this is my last year as an undergraduate ...which is kind of terrifying. Fourth year, so far, has been a return to form though. Looking forward to the rest of the year!)

 

[four.] editing the Strathclyde Telegraph is well under way. The Fresher's edition has already been published, Issue One is out this week, and I'm writing, gathering and editing Issue Two at the moment!

 

[five.] After about six years in one of the smallest rooms in the house, I've moved (into my sister's old room). Much warmer, brighter, and bigger.

 

 

[six.] me at the Theatre Royal reviewing a Scottish Ballet performance for the paper.

 

[seven, eight, and nine.] Trying to notice beauty in the autumn weather. A rainbow at the station...

 

...blue sky in a puddle...

 

...mist on my train journey.

 

 

(Also... I realised that I forgot to mention earlier on here that the literary magazine, Octavius, that included my short story has now been published. It has been since August, in fact!

 

Quite exciting to see my own words in print!)

 

♥

 

birthday noticings

A few things I spotted on my (twenty-first) birthday last week:

[one.] Stars and candles on the breakfast table. (Birthday breakfasts are always a big thing in my family. Menu this year: orange juice, granola with vanilla yoghurt and berries, roll and sausage with or without brown sauce, numerous cups of tea ...or coffee, if you so desired.)

[two.] A flower box in Glasgow's west end. If I ever live in France (somewhat unlikely as I don't speak the language, but who knows! I might just marry a French man and learn it) then I will have a window box of red geraniums. If I never get round to living in France, I'd still quite like the window box.

[three.] A photograph at the Oran Mor (where we went for 'A Play, a Pie, and a Pint') with this underneath. I was taught by Louise Welsh in first year. She marked my very first official short story (a somewhat melodramatic - but lovely to write - tale about a circus elephant and true love).



[four.] Another house spotted just outside the Botanic Gardens (I'd like to have lots of potted plants leading up to my door at some point in my life, as well as the window box... maybe even in the same house. I just need to get over my bee-phobia).

[five.] A self-help book in the Oxfam bookshop with Smiles as the author (very suitable sir name). Unfortunately I was too busy taking a picture of 'Smiles' that I didn't notice the book of essays by C.S. Lewis sitting beside him until I got home and looked at this picture. Drat!

[six.] A devilish looking Ford sign (I'm learning how to drive in a Ford by the way. It took me four lessons to learn this information myself. Turns out when you start driving lessons everyone likes to ask: 'So what kind of car does your instructor have?' Not the kind of information I pay attention to. 'Em... a blue one?')

[seven.] You know your 'little' brother, is not so 'little' anymore when he is quite a bit taller than your mother. 

[eight.] These daisies were in my Gran's garden. I agree with Kathleen Kelly in You've Got Mail that daisies are the friendliest flower.

[nine.] Possibly the largest apple pie I have ever seen in my life.