Hold music

Lav goals: some pink toilets I saw (used) in Tokyo in October.

Hi, hi, hello, hi. In the past couple of weeks I've had two people ask me if my blog was still going? The answer was yes, of course, and then I paused, did the maths and realised quite how long it's been since I last posted. What is there to say, except 'I've been trying to make money' and dedicating as much time as possible to writing that pays me enough to survive. In short, it's been a really great past few months, and I've been writing for publications I've adored since I was a teenager and started this blog in the first place, which sometimes punctuates a day with a nice, glowy proud moment (especially when that day is the day in which I get paid for a piece.) The blogging will continue, and you can also find some of my recently published pieces over here.

In the meantime, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I am actually entering the tenth year of blogging which is insane because I started this blog when I was 15 and that just means there's a steady documentation of my teenage and not-so-teenage thoughts all neatly archived online for strangers to rummage through. But also, I really feel that things would have panned out quite differently if I hadn't thrown myself quite so keenly into blogging in the first place, while I studiously avoided homework and focused on critiquing fashun with the blogspot set and for that I am truly #blessed.

Pride Weekend

Charlotte Rampling, in a still from Andrew Haigh's 45 Years.

Tonight was one of those nights when coming home feels like a battle. Summer 2015 in Manchester has been an ongoing series of roadworks, bridges being bulldozed and 12 meter sinkholes opening up main thoroughfares. New tram tracks are being laid down, layers of ancient bodies unearthed along the way, whilst a couple of streets away the real, alive bodies of the homeless are shunted again, further out of public view, the latest push by the council, their belongings even cruelly thrown onto waste trucks, another tick box task to dehumanisation. A summer is funny when everybody takes it in turns to go away, and the city isn’t quite itself, but this summer it feels like Manchester has started to eat itself out of restlessness. I wait at the bus stop and watch diverted buses passing against the orange sky, but none of them are mine and there are cars beeping and beeping and inching along. Nobody is getting to where to want to be very quickly. Every moment feels slow but there’s also an excitable buzz hanging over the city; Pride Weekend. Horns and Mardi Gras beads abandoned on pavements, rainbows on cheeks, crowds of people smoking and wobbling outside of bars. Shoppers weaving amongst it all, also trying to get home. A van containing drunk and equally excitable people pulls up beside the bus stop and somebody leans out and shouts “YEAH! PRIDE!” and the people at the bus stop laugh, and one man says “it’s funny when they shout and then they just have to sit there until the light turns green.” And true enough, we watch the man lolling in the back of the van and he watches us back. Our bus still doesn’t appear, and I walk towards the train station instead. 

My head is in that foggy state of re-orientating after watching a film, and spending a couple of hours in another world. The world was a damp and lovely Norfolk, and the film was 45 Years. I fell fully into this world; the woman next to me was smoking an e-cigarette, the blue light occasionally falling into the corner of my eye line, and I didn’t even mind that much. I remained in my real world enough to notice that she was twitchy and birdlike, in her fifties with a woven braid at the front of her bobbed hair and an electric blue denim coat, nicely fitted, with badges from towns, cities and beach resorts around the world sewn onto the back. She had it laid over her like a blanket, and there was nothing annoying about her, even with the flash of her e-cig, because she was alone and I was alone and she and I were spending our respective evenings exactly as we liked. Each morning Charlotte Rampling wakes and walks Max, her Alsatian, through the fields which are foggy and verdant and British. The sky is that grey which is so bright you can’t tell if it’s close-by or deep and open, and sometimes you reach the afternoon without feeling like you’ve woken properly. Her mannerisms are slightly off-kilter and she walks like maybe she has recovered from a stroke, but maybe our bodies and joints just find new ways to sit as we grow older. Sometimes she shares silences with the man she’s been married to for 45 years, and much of their interactions feel comfortable and steeped in familiarity. Sometimes she misreads his mood, asks the wrong questions, and it’s a reminder that two people will always be separate, even if their identities slide higher on a scale of interdependent association as they age together. She plays the piano for the first time in a long time, reading Bach from a sheet of music. Then she puts the sheet away and improvises, and watching her hands I think of two times in the last two years I watched my Granny play the clavinova piano bought originally for me, and reclaimed when I lost interest. She taught herself to play beautifully, making it up as she went along (an approach replicated across many areas of her life) and the first time I listened, sitting at the end of her bed in her garden flat I was taken aback by this new skill; surprised and impressed and moved. Then she played again in her new house, in the attic she enjoyed for a short while as a studio. She had a Tchaikovsky figurine propped up on the surface of the clavinova which I didn’t recognise, so it was probably newly found in a charity shop. She played with her back to me, as I leaned on the banister and I cried a little bit because it was after her diagnosis and it felt so special to hear her play on one of my short visits back from Manchester. Quite mundane and just very sad. By the time she’d finished and turned around I’d stopped crying, because how boring it must be to be dying from cancer and have people crying on you all the time. She probably knew though. I watched Charlotte Rampling’s fingers move across the piano and had a cry in the cinema too. I thought about having sobbed quietly but uncontrollably a few months earlier in a screen whilst watching Love Is Strange, in a scene involving easels and unfinished paintings, which triggered the same feelings of Granny’s attic. I watched that film at the start of the year, so around 7 months ago. Some days pass uneventfully, but rarely is there a week that I don’t find some evocative association has crept up on me and I have to let myself go, right into it. Often I think about the whole compulsive sobbing thing, and feel a bit self-conscious to be experiencing such raw feelings over a grandparent when so many of my friends lost their years ago, and have even lost parents since. But sitting there in the cinema I thought about the line in Leslie Jameson’s The Empathy Exams which I had underlined on my lunch break today because it reminded me of my Mum, but which also felt comforting to me in that moment. “I would tell her she is going through something large and she shouldn’t be afraid to confess its size, shouldn’t be afraid she’s “making too big a deal of it.” She shouldn’t be afraid of not feeling enough because the feelings will keep coming- different ones- for years.” When somebody dies you lose them, but you lose that space in the family too, and so everybody has to move around accordingly and figure out how and where to stand without stepping on toes. They also have to figure out how much it matters if sometimes they do stand on toes, because, and I think I’m beginning to understand this, as you get older you want to feel more sure, and so compromise less. But you have to get the balance right of being very careful with the feelings of others, and very careful with your own. In the wake of a death the sensitivity surrounding this business is heightened and so this “something large” to be going through involves a small family quite consciously having to readjust and grow up even more, even if they are all grown-ups already. Because the grown-ups that were once right at the top aren’t there any more, and we’re having to learn to look down from new places. I watched as Charlotte Rampling sometimes says the wrong things, but is mostly always “true” to herself in order to be careful with her own feelings. I realise that any fantasy I had about a sense of sorted-ness coming with age was exactly that; a fantasy.

I finally get back to my house and it’s rather quiet, but I don’t mind too much because there’s a parcel waiting for me just inside the door that I wasn’t expecting. A house at night can be quiet, but an unexpected parcel at least stops it from feeling lonely. When you know that somebody has been thinking of you, the rest of the evening doesn’t feel quite so aimless. Like me, my aunt Mary acutely feels the gap of the ‘sensitive advisor’ role left by my Granny. Sometimes we both miss and need it very much and so we’re learning to go to each other for this comfort instead. The parcel was from her; inside, wrapped in beautifully illustrated paper (I know who we’re both channeling in our minds here) was Infragreen, a recently published collection of poems written by our cousin Kate. I feel thought of, and connected to Mary, and to Kate who represents the side of the family we feel a familial closeness for (and desire to be closer to) even though we see them rarely; most recently two funerals, a wedding and the novel lunch I shared in her garden when I visited London last summer. There’s something about poetry that elicits a school-ish feeling inside me, of somehow ‘not doing it right’, of reading poems self-consciously as if they are above my ability to understand. But I put my keys on the table and lie back on my sofa and plough through twenty in one go. She writes of green, wet gardens and rain, footprints on car brakes, and waking up in the early hours (mind racing but also dumbly half-awake) and the municipal journey of a tulip from a loved one, from Holland to wobbling over the edge of a vase at home. This doesn’t feel like a battle, and I turn each page feeling reassured by descriptions of nature which feel like the Norfolk scenes I was enveloped in a couple of hours ago. I read about foreheads and try to guess which family member they belong to, if any at all. I project memories of my trip last summer onto the words, imagining kitchens described as I remember hers. It seems right to be reading about the earth continuing to turn and school runs, and empty plastic milk bottles on counters and to have spent an evening alone feeling the presence and familiarity of a faraway loved one quite close, and not-so-faraway relations closer.

The Weekend List: Cut-out-and-keep special

Two of my friends running butt-naked into the chilly Pacific in April 2012. 

In this special 'cut-out-and-keep' edition of The Weekend List, I've asked some of my friends, and favourite online writers to share the essays and articles which have affected them for personal or professional reasons. I'm excited to round-up meaningful links from this bunch of people, some of whom have actually led me to my own cut-out-and-keeps or moments of reading something glorious. (I'm thinking lying on Formby Beach reading Juliet Jacque's Q&A in the Women In Clothes book in particular.) These are the reads that have helped to consolidate an idea previously hard to pin down; the oh yes moments that changed a way of thinking, or led to an enthusiastic sharing of links amongst friends and conversations in pubs. In short, these are cut-out-and-keeps worth returning to, and they're compiled together into one killer post, a go-to kit for bolstering and yes!ing. 

I used to keep a scrap book of the magazine and newspaper articles which affected me; they're still glued into an fluorescent pink notebook. There's a beautifully-written profile of Natasha Richardson, an interview with Jane Shepardson from when I was sure I wanted to work in the fashion industry, and a run-down of a morning at BBC Radio 4's The Today Show from 2011 when working in radio became far more appealing. There's a feature about Dave Gilmour and his son and their personal film club (and how Gilmour allowed his son to leave school at 16, so long as he continued to educate himself through cinema.) This article was from a 2008 edition of The Guardian- a tell-tale snapshot of me aged 17, cruising along at college, desperate to be done with education and throwing myself into my new found hobby- solo trips to the cinema. I'd forgotten about lots of these cut-out-and-keeps before I leafed through my old notebook just now, but at the time they all felt important and worthy of holding onto. More recently, after a string of flirtations and romances that didn't go anywhere, that left me feeling cold and like the people I'd been opening myself up to couldn't reciprocate, or couldn't see me, I read this Ask Polly column and suddenly had a new vocabulary for this sort of man: tepid. "You need to tell tepid to fuck right off," Polly said, and when I read that lots of things fell into place and I returned to valuing and loving myself and demanding that anybody I was going to be romantically involved with absolutely had to do the same. On my second date with my boyfriend (though I didn't realise that's what it was at the time) he asked me about my love life and I told him I was only interested in people who thought I was fabulous, and this new rule for myself and for others felt personally revolutionary even though in retrospect that seems like such a necessary wish to have for oneself. This is a celebration of the essays, columns and words which have allowed, and continue to allow these moments to fall into place.


But I Invested In You
Last year, my friends and I all read The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman. Afterwards, we referred constantly to this review by Sheila Heti, who analyses the troubling power imbalance in the book between Nate and his girlfriend Hannah (a “seven”/“co-worker material.”) The insight of Heti’s that bashed us over the head was how Nate “outsources the work” of their inevitable break-up to Hannah. “The women around him do the heavy labour of making relationships honest and tender, because that’s their position culturally…” Jessica Stanley, Writer and Freelance brand strategist, London.

Athletic Aesthetics
Brad Troemel's essay talks about ‘a new species of artist flooding the internet with content [inviting] the audience to complete their work by loving their brand, making the artists themselves the masterpiece’. This intrigued me: I'd always been fascinated by Nietzsche's imperative to turn oneself into a work of art, making it the basis for a short story that I first drafted in 2002 and rewrote several times over the next ten years. But the process that Troemel described was all too familiar, particularly where he talks about how social media (as well as precariousness, debt and unemployment) has led artists from making works to ongoing self-commodification, with the audience becoming part of the medium. Any loss in quality was offset by each public statement - a blog, a tweet, whatever - becoming an opportunity for personal connection with the creator, but after documenting my transition in the Guardian and on Twitter, I'd found this constant contact had utterly drained me, and I needed a new way of working. Troemel helped me to break my obsession with broadcasting every aspect of my life, and accept that I didn't need to be visible all the time - I was far better off taking as long as I needed to make work that I could be proud of. In the two years since I read it, I've become far happier as a writer, reconnecting with what made want to do it in the first place rather than remaining caught up in the endless churn of opinion. Juliet Jacques, Writer, London.

Structuring Life With Depression
I suffer from anxiety and depression; it's not something I make a secret of because what good does it do to further internalize fears and worries? (Not much). I came across this Rookie essay about routines and depression a few months ago during a rough patch, and within a few lines, I knew I'd be sharing it with everyone. The best part? When I shared it in my TinyLetter, my readers were also moved by it. I've found that I often share things online for the possibility of sharing a "you too?" moment with others. 2015 has been a bit of a strange year, but the guiding idea of this essay—"Might as well"—has been so helpful. It's so good, I'm just pasting a paragraph here: "My day starts with making the bed, and I’ve discovered that if I can complete this one task, the rest follow with barely a complaint. This is the principle of Might As Well. I made the bed, so might as well do the dishes, and shower, and take some blog photos, and get back to that bit of writing. Might As Well is the queen of forces: Never underestimate its power, for it is singular in its capacity to motivate while maintaining the lowest of low-key profiles—you get stuff done practically without noticing. You got out of bed, so you might as well have a productive day." Sarah Galo, Freelance Writer, New York City.

Yes, Men Are Better Writers
I encountered this blog post by Helen Addison-Smith almost exactly a year ago, when I was in an unhappy marriage trying to be a mother and a wife and someone who needed to write all the time. It resonated so much for me. After a year of trying to be more selfish, I'm now a single mother, but I'm still writing. There are no easy choices for us, and this goes a fair way to explaining why. Kate Feld, Writer, Manchester.

Since Living Alone
My first attempt at writing this was just pasting the long quotes from Durga Chew-Bose's piece Since Living Alone that most affected me since first reading it when it was published, back in January. Now, in this version, there are fewer long quotes from Durga and a little more from Brodie, but that only serves to reinforce how excellent she is at describing what it means to be a woman alone in apartment—as I've been for just a few weeks now. Durga writes like I wish I could write, with such self-assurance and the kind of references and connections I can relate to and recognise immediately but would never think to draw myself. She writes like someone who's well-read but who doesn't want to rub it in your face and make you feel bad about not having the same cultural touchpoints or not having read the books she refers to. I mean—fuck, man—she makes the act of eating a pear seem like the most important and romantic act a single woman can perform in her own space. I am so obsessed with and jealous of and in awe of her ability to make me feel at once understood and envious. "I’d been avoiding myself with such ease that even when an obstacle presented itself—like the pained limits of a friendship that had run its course—my response was to adapt around it the way we circle street construction on our way to the subway without much thought, as if the ball and sockets of our hip joints, anticipating those orange pylons, swerve so as to save our distracted selves from falling into crater-sized holes…It takes me fourteen steps from my bed to my bookshelves and nine steps to walk from my front door to the globe lamp I’ve propped on a stool under a wall I’ve half-decorated, of which a poster I’ve framed hangs asymmetrically next to nothing more than blank white wall. That globe lamp is the first light I turn on when I return home. For nine steps when I walk in at night, after shutting my front door and placing my keys on their hook, I navigate the slumbered mauve and moon-lit darkness of my space. It welcomes me; the darkness and I suppose the lamp too." Reading this piece makes me feel the same way I did when the credits rolled on Life Itself, the Roger Ebert documentary: at once inspired to write better and tempted to give up the game because I'll never be this good. Brodie Lancaster, Writer and Editor, Melbourne.

One Year Later
My friend Bethany wrote this incredible post about reclaiming the word 'fat' as a factual description rather than a pejorative evaluation, which I read and send to people all the time. Regardless of your body type, it's a fantastic mission statement about self-acceptance and casting off the weight of societal norms. "Denying that I'm fat is denying me the chance to find any beauty in it," she writes. "I enjoy my appearance, whether or not you do. And that's priceless." Laura Snapes, Culture Writer and Contributing Editor at Pitchfork, London.

If He Hollers Let Him Go
One of my cut-out-and-keep articles is If He Hollers Let Him Go, written by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah for The Believer. Written in 2013, it’s a bit of an older one, but it really hit me when I first read it. I would have been a bit more green back then, and I remember thinking I wished I could write with her sensitivity, condor, and confidence. Since reading this she’s become one of my favourite journos of all time, and then as now, Dave Chappell is a personal hero. I don’t want to give too much away, because it have a really perfect ending, but it’s such a great study in how to write about a celebrity and a hugely covered subject in a fresh way, while still being respectful and treating them as a person. Funny, last month Good Good Girl held a workshop for writers and editors and we were speaking about certain articles you return to again and again for whatever reason. This is that article for me. I find it frustrating, because in the years since it ran I’ve never approached it for quality. But whenever I feel dejected about writing or my work it is also endlessly comforting that if done right, your words can be so effecting. Wendy Syfret, Editor at Good Good Girl, Melbourne.

Ask Polly: How Do I Make My Boyfriend Listen?
"And then there are smart women with lots to say who are also very sensitive and weird and analytical and incredibly talkative, who ALSO listen very closely. These women are often labeled “a little too intense.” We think way too much, and slice and dice everything under the sun like a Ginsu knife that’s been sharpened one too many times and is now capable of cutting a watermelon in half like it’s made of crepe paper." I've emailed this essay to all of the smart, special, sensitive women in my life. I grew up in a household where talking about my feelings was normal. When I was at university, I found myself surrounded by a group of people who were deeply uncomfortable with talking about feelings, let alone analysing them. To them, my tendency to delve into matters of the heart was seen as overly-emotional, hyper-sensitive and "taking things too personally." When I read this particular Ask Polly (and there are so, so many great ones), I realised that I wasn't an annoying weirdo. I was simply a sharp knife. Simran Hans, Freelance writer and film programmer, London.

If je ne suis pas Charlie, am I a bad person? Nuance gets lost in groupthink
I still think about this article and regularly allude to it in boozy political/social justice-orientated conversations. I first posted this article on Instagram under a photo I took of a mural that read Je suis Charlie in huge block letters that was located on one of the most traveled streets in Los Angeles. At the time of posting, I felt a bit nervous of getting into a social media conflict with a follower and friend about posting something other than absolute solidarity with the Je suis Charlie cause. My precariousness to press the "share" button is author Roxanne Gay’s point exactly; having a nuanced opinion is not appreciated in situations where groupthink has taken over. This point has undoubtedly been made before but is becoming more relevant when thinking about social media campaigns (think KONY 2012 or the rainbow-ing of Facebook photos in allegiance with marriage equality). I respect Gay for the bravery it took for her to write something like this for an international news-source knowing the backlash she would recieve. Her message is something I think about all the time when interacting in communal virtual environments. Kara Hart, Medical Genetics Programme Coordinator, East Hollywood.

The Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain 
When I was twenty I was with a man who was the great love of my life. He ended the relationship when I told him I loved him in a terrible nightclub. Although we carried on loving each other messily afterwards for many years, the end of the love as I desired it (uncomplicated, happy), was a direct result of the confessing of it. You would expect the effect of this to be a fear of making my emotions audible, but the opposite happened -- I didn’t mean to be the woman inspecting, and asking everyone else to witness, my wounds – I knew what kind of ancient dialogue/fetishized mythology this entered me into - but I was helpless to it; I was bored and embarrassed by my own pain, and I bored and embarrassed the people I loved with it; but still, over time, however shaming, it became something I defined my life by. So when I found The Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain by Leslie Jamison who asks the question, “why am I talking about this so much?”, it became almost holy to me; I pored over it; I carefully printed it out for the wounded women I knew (there were many), and passed it to them with reverence over pub tables. I carried it in my bag like a piece of scripture; a love letter granting me the permission to hurt, and to transcribe this hurt into the poems I was working on, without defending myself from “the old litany of charges” against “The Girl Who Cried Pain”. She writes, “I’m tired of female pain and also tired of people who are tired of it”, and in this line, and all the many others of its kind in this remarkable essay, I was first able to live with my pain, and then to move on from it, and to see, what she calls, the “last alchemy, pain-to-art, as possibility”. To use the Anne Carson line she references, “it pains me to record this, / I am not a melodramatic person”, but I will forever be in Leslie Jamison’s debt for creating a language for my pain, and showing me how “to find something in it that yields”. Harriet Moore, Literary agent and Poet, London.

Don't Try This At Home: Mooncup Edition
Stevie Martin's article on the humble mooncup is so bladder-shakingly funny, that when I originally read it way back in 2012, after semi-winding myself with laughter, I promptly shared it with all of my fellow Women of the Womb. But more pertinently, it really took me aback at how this ostensibly cool, clever girl was so comfortable about writing the gruesome, sticky details of periodhood. It's gross. But if it's normal for half of the population, why the hell are we so ashamed of it? I am now a proud "over-sharer" of my very normal monthly visit from Aunt Flo. And to this day, if anyone asks me what my favourite accessory is, I answer "my mooncup". Frankie Tobi, Radio Production Coordinator and Writer, Manchester.

George Saunders Had Read The Best Book You'll Read This Year
I first read this on my laptop, in bed in my flat in Shoreditch on a Monday night, a month off finishing my Masters. Outside it was grey and cold and snowy and I had this weird, poignant sense of anticlimactic disappointment. All my education was coming to an end, and what was it for? I had gotten a job that was objectively my dream job, and in many ways everything was great! But, but (my lip quivered) – is that all there is?? I wondered, pointlessly, about the future, about life. And then I read this profile of George Saunders, which is brilliant because it’s a cleverly-written, sensitive profile of an author, but also because it’s about George Saunders, an author who has taught me ultimately that life is going to be OK. Because it is. And because the whole point of it is that sometimes you are disappointed and sometimes you are angry and sometimes you are joyous and it’s all big, wide and expansive and maybe it’s OK if you can just try really hard and be kind at the same time. I can’t believe it took reading a profile in the New York Times Magazine to get me to realise that. I’ve sent this one on to many friends – and revisited it myself many times, when I’ve forgotten – since then. Those final lines in particular have become a mantra for me: “Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.” Ana Kinsella, writer, and editor at Bon Magazine, London.

Going With The Flow: Blood and Sisterhood and the London Marathon
The story about Kiran Gandhi free-bleeding at the London Marathon resonated with me because my best friend is an elite runner where I live in Sheffield and he's always trying to improve his times despite injuries or other setbacks, and although he doesn't menstruate, health, injury recovery time and mood on the day can really affect performance. I appreciate why Kiran didn't want to start mixing up her routine with menstrual management that might irritate or chafe during the run. No menstrual product is every going to be leak free, no matter how shaming the ads or how great the innovations. My own comedy and (menstruation-orientated) education and engagement work aims to take the stigma out of leaking in a fun, tongue-in-cheek way and I was so glad to see someone doing this for real - it happens more and more lately and it's great that menstrual taboo-breaking is gaining momentum. Chella Quint, Comedy writer and Education consultant, Sheffield.

The Weekend List: No. 21

Happy weekend! This Weekend List is a dispatch from Korčula in Croatia; it's the last day of our holiday- that funny day when the tendency to take open-mouthed naps in the scorching afternoon heat and reflect on 'real life back home' subsides to being ready to return and put plans into action, and drift less. There's the last-day-of-the-holiday guilt of throwing away half-eaten lettuces and knowing that you probably won't spend as much time reading paperbacks back at home, but that you will, for a fixed amount of time, feel more at peace with sleeping in your own bed and looking out of bus windows.

Culture

"Elvis opened his eyes, blinked, as if he wasn’t sure for a moment what I was doing there. He twitched a shoulder toward the phone. “Would you mind calling room service and ordering me a fried-egg sandwich?”" Men and the Menu

Jenny Holzer in Interview Magazine

“Vic gave us a job in the Arsenal laundry, so we could earn some cash and play football at the same time. We were scrubbers! Doing the first team men’s kit.” Excellent profile of England's women's football team.

Spotify playlist of the soundtrack to Eden which is so great and you must see if club culture, euphoria on dancefloors and feeling it all is your vibe.

"Eschewing social history in favour of misogyny and murder is far from uncommon in our public historical storytelling." Jack the Ripper, ‘interesting history’ and masculine violence.

Life

"I was going through all these crazy thoughts and analyzing whether I was ether a) a crazy chick who needs to just calm down and reach for an effing tampon or b) a liberated boss madame who loved her own body, was running an effing marathon and was not in the mood for being oppressed that day." Going With the Flow: Blood and Sisterhood at the London Marathon

"Community papers can do this stuff: they can grill or gild local power, make space for voices outside it, and tell you where to find the chili-pepper festival or the soup kitchen or the voting booth." Death of a Young, Black Journalist

"I want to say that at various points in your marriage, may it last forever, you will look at this person and feel only rage. You will gaze at this man you once adored and think, “It sure would be nice to have this whole place to myself.” The Wedding Toast I'll Never Give

Snacks

These Lists; a collection of reading lists from artists, writers and musicians. (Does the act of sharing a reading list oblige you to show off? Is a part of me 'showing off' by writing Weekend Lists? Probably only as much as we all constantly 'show off' in various ways.)

Charles Manson's Hollywood; a fascinating series of episodes about the notorious killer shoulder-rubbing with celebrities from the You Must Remember This podcast.

The Weekend List: No. 20

Images: Lee Kang-Hyo, a rug from Aelfie's Instagram, Ethiopian coffee via Tangerine and Cinnamon, Toby Glanville. 

It's Sunday! I'm especially happy because it's my day off and I can work my way through the miscellaneous pile of possessions still spread out in the dining room after I moved house two weeks ago. I started my day with a perfectly soft boiled egg and listened to Pet Sounds after watching Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy this week. It's raining, so I can't hang my washing on the line; what July is this?

Culture

• A film about a Korean Potter on Youtube.

• How an advert gets banned.

• I bet you wish you'd gone to this conference about FOMO

• Toby Glanville's photographs of British workers in the 90s

• Women Make Movies catalogue

Sex

• The Complicated Politics of Where To Come

• "It’s a social expectation for many of us because we have inherited a legacy of kissing celebrated through art and literature and amplified over time." What's in a kiss?

Food

• My new favourite blog, Tangerine and Cinnamon, surveying the history and culture of food, with killer reading lists. 

• My Life In Food by Ruby Tandoh, whose new column for ELLE is giving me reason to buy the magazine again. 

Style

• Kendrick Lamar's Reeboks

• Vibrant rugs, pillows and homewares from Aelfie. 

Listening

• All Day Long: Portraits of workers in the UK, from fishmongers to ballet dancers.

• The Politics of Dancing.

• Tame Impala's new album is so good. I've had The Less I Know The Better on repeat, and it contains the lyric "she was holding hands with Trevor, not the greatest feeling ever." *Thumbs up*

<< Explore the Weekend List Archive >>

Two songs

Two super duper songs. The video for Camille's Au Port feels like pulling a 2002 copy of i-D Magazine from a shelf; spaghetti straps and white lycra on a beach, while Shadow of Blood by Lena Platonos would surely soundtrack the sexy, dangerous bar scene on a Greek Island from a Patricia Highsmith-esque crime novel. 

Current Mood

Work shirt, Margaret Howell x Tate; Devil cupid skirt, Ashley Williams; Aviator sunglasses, Topshop; Green knitted tee, Topshop; Badges from Etsy: Keep on Streakin'! pin badge, Langley Research Centre pin badge. Socks, Feat Sock Co; Hair barettes, ASOS; Linen Sandals, Etsy; Tove Jansson: Work and Love by Tuula Karjalainen.

Current mood: HAVING A JOB AGAIN (and one which allows me to write in the afternoons and have nice conversations with members of the public.) Listening to I Like by Tink, consistently wearing open toe sandals with neon nail polish, having a really nice guy in my life who, among other things, helps me make sense of my private tenant rights, and is down with me sometimes dribbling drinking water down my own chin for comic effect. Continuing to feel sad that I can't pick up the phone for a catch-up with my Granny, attaching lots of emotion to the novelty of the clothes that still smell of her (and won't for much longer), enjoying the ongoing process of cherishing her possessions and reading her old books. The feeling of summer, of warmer, tanned skin and the pavements smelling like July is just around the corner. Of wanting to buy new clothes, and making moodboards in lieu of spending. Feeling like my actual age has matched up with how I've felt in my head for a long time, feeling in the moment but also understanding (and learning to be okay with) the fragility of that contentment. 

The Weekend List: No. 19

Happy Weekend! A mini, and somewhat 'Unintentional Nostalgia Special' edition of The Weekend List, because the things I've been reading and consuming tell me I've subconsciously been in a retrospective teenage sort of a mood this week. 

Clockwise from top left: Zoe and Ian C Rogers, Alice Tye, Take The Skinheads Bowling (Bill Mather for The Modernist), films referenced in films. 

• "Rogers is skating through the streets of Santa Monica, Zoe standing on the front of his board. Zoe splits her time between her parents 50-50. On the days when Rogers drops her off at school, the other kids watch Zoe get off his board and tell her how cool her brother is." How a 40-Year-Old Skater Is Bringing The Punk Credo to Digital Music is a 2012 profile on Ian C Rogers (now a Senior Director at Apple Music) but also a cool chronicle of a Dad-daughter relationship and growing up with young parents, which is something I also experienced. (Though for me this involved more pasta and pesto and less touring with the Beastie Boys.) Zoe Rogers' show 'Zoe Radio' was the first podcast I listened from 2004 after reading about her in ElleGirl's 'Badass of the Month' feature. I listened to on iTunes and on my metallic green iPod, heard Brendan Benson and Don't You Worry 'About A Thing by Stevie Wonder for the first time, and in my pre-blog world I thought it was very cool indeed that I was able to listen to a teenager like myself broadcasting live from a radio show from Los Angeles. 

• "In my brain, Dionne was like royalty. I wanted someone that felt like they were part of a royal family in some country somewhere. She just had that feeling of power and grace, as though she was ready to wave to the public." The Definitive Oral History of How Clueless Became an Iconic 90s Classic.

• "I debate whether to keep reading the Sally Mann memoir, but instead I look at couches on Craiglist, which turns into looking up wooden chairs. It has been raining for hours." I really liked Jessica Hopper's Enormous Eye diary entry.

• "She had a great wardrobe and a cool job as a journalist (no joke, she had a reporter’s notebook and a news desk). And she had a pretty hot sex life. It involved a lot of plastic dry-humping." Hang on, was everybody else play-acting sex with their Barbies too? My Barbies Had So Much Sex. It Was Great.

• Bowling skinheads, Saltdean Lidos and The Birth of Cool. 'Entertainment' is the latest of The Modernist; it's all pleasure-seeking and has the best spotted cover.  

Snacks

• Films referenced in films.
• Artist Alice Tye is currently travelling around the United States and tweeting wonderful, cinematic photographs.
• Women in Foreign Policy.

The Weekend List: No. 18

Clockwise from top left: Ariel Finch, Gareth from The Office, Posh and Sporty photograph via eBay memorabilia store.

Culture

• "One thing I did find hard to chronicle was the strange effect this all had on my sense of myself as a continuous subject. For many months, coming out and changing my name seemed like a major rupture: having people refer to me differently and treat me differently felt far more sudden than anything that later happened to my body." He to She by Juliet Jacques.

• "Within seconds, Mrs Banksy had gone full Costner on us, physically shielding her husband in the car. Then she realised who it was and quickly calmed down, and we stood for a moment sheepishly chatting about the sheep." Morwenna Ferrier's account of Banksy buying her house is really funny.

• "They thought they were building a classroom, and it turned into a bank." Net of Insecurity: the first in The Washington Post's series about the internet's vulnerable flaws and why they may never be fixed. Note: miraculously WP hasn't created a page for the series, so you'll have to root for yourself.

• "I read and try to follow politics because it gives me a different kind of courage. It’s the same courage I get from reading poetry or experiencing art: there is another way of existing outside of the safety that you know already... I don’t want to feel too safe." I went to see Jenny Hval perform this week. Having known very little about her, I am now fascinated, listening to her latest album over and over and seeking out interviews.

• “You need to prepare sneak attacks on society. Hairspray is the only really devious movie I ever made: the musical based on it is being performed in practically every high school in America, and nobody seems to notice it’s a show with two men singing a love song to each other, that also encourages white teenage girls to date black guys. Pink Flamingoes was preaching to the converted, but Hairspray is a Trojan horse.” A cut-out-and-keep: Life Lessons from John Waters.

Style

• From David Byrne to Gareth from The Office: Raven Smith's wonderful compilation of tailoring in pop culture.

• Ariel Finch, who has the coolest name, a taste for homoerotic cowboys and whose Tumblr is always leading me to press open link in new tab.

• Personal style and, specifically, vblogs that don't make me want to die from fashion stylist Sally Lyndley. I now realise Sally styled that Pop Magazine Drew Barrymore spread in 2008. It was all varsity-meets-grunge, cheerleading pom-poms, cigarettes and plaid and when I was 17 I thought it was everything, and tore it out (rare move for a fashion magazine collector) and stuck it onto my bedroom walls. 

Snacks

• Spice Girls memorabilia on eBay.

• Chuck's Miscellany.

• I voted for Guac + Roll as Best UK Food Blog in the Observer Food Awards. Here's how you can too.

>>Not done yet? You can peruse The Weekend List archive here.<<

The Weekend List: No. 17

Images: Everyday Iran, Still from What's Your Number? via Born Unicorn, Hillary Clinton buying a burrito via David Hepworth, Don McLean. 

The links and words which have been littering my tabs bar, and sitting in my brain for the past fortnight. This weekend has been gloriously sunny. Yesterday was spent in Sheffield visiting Doc/Fest, playing with Oculus Rift and lazing in the sunshine at the Peace Gardens with beers and watching Grey Gardens. Come evening, back in Manchester; curry from Al Madina, homemade White Russians and watching Paul McCartney live in concert via a pair of cardboard virtual reality goggles and feeling excited, rather than pessimistic about technology (a reference to that Internet Hangover article linked below.)

Life

• "I think women don't really want to talk about how obsessed they are with being thin, so they abstract it by making it into a philosophical thing, because then no one will question it." Fariha Roisin talking to Ana Cecelia Alvarez as part of The Hairpin's wonderful Self-Care series, which is essential reading.

Culture

• From Frankie Goes to Hollywood's video game, to clips from British television programmes you've probably never heard of, Juliet Jacquet's In Search of The Miraculous is a great scrapbook-ish blog.
• "Non-professional bloggers feel like a dying breed, privacy is non-existent, our most essential social media platforms have grown tedious and rife with harrassment, content is branded and SEO optimized within an inch of its life. Everyone I know is "thinking about deleting Facebook."" I'm not in total agreement with Meaghan Garvey's gloomy prognosis of The Internet Hangover, but she is on-point about the mercilessness aspects of internet culture today. 
• Women in Comedy (aka Amy Schumer, Gina Rodriguez, Ellie Kemper, Tracee Ellis Ross, Lena Dunham and Kate McKinnon) chewing the fat, talking Hollywood, politics and terrible things said in auditions.
• Sheila Heti's Wikipedia page, annotated by Sheila Heti.

Food

• Two things I want in a cookbook: 1. An photograph to accompany every single recipe. 2. Prose that brings to life the sounds of a produce market, of a family around a table, or the pleasure of a summer peach in a brown paper bag. Last week I listened to The Food Programme's two-episode Jane Grigson tribute, and I now know that my latter desire is thanks to the legacy of this food writer, who died a year before I was born. A household name I knew very little about, I look forward to leafing through her books purely for pleasure, no need to cook.

Listening

• Running Up That Hill: Kate Bush Covers for Reproductive Rights
• Crying in the Chapel by Don McLean

Snacks

• Grandmothers smoking hookah whilst preparing squid, men playing chess, and kids on scooters. Everyday Iran is an Instagram account featuring everyday scenes captured by photographers living and working in Iran.
• Born Unicorn, a goldmine-ish archive of beauty products and perfumes featured in film and TV.
• David Hepburn blogs at least once a week and his posts are short and sweet without compromising substance. The Loo Read of the blog world, if you will. Also, great post titles like "Whenever I buy fast food I feel like Peter Mandelson in that chip shop" from the man who writes those indispensable radio previews for The Guide. 

Feeling Myself (and not Feeling Myself)

Really, really feeling myself when I wear at least one half of this ASOS brocade suit I bought this month. 

I'm grateful to Nicki Minaj, Beyonce, and Kim Kardashian for bringing some new vocabulary into 2015 which really hits the nail on the head when it comes to celebrating self-love. I'm thinking "I was feeling my look! Can I live?" and Feeling Myself. I like the multitude of meanings covered by Feeling Myself. To me, there are three major strands: of feeling your baseline, familiar self, and inhabiting your body, rather than tagging along behind it, which is how it can feel on self-conscious days. Then there's the simple notion of feeling your look in the moment, or of touching yourself physically and revelling in it. 

Feeling Myself is a more accessible shoulder-shrug version of "I woke up like this." Not everybody feels smoking hot when they wake up. When I'm Feeling Myself, it's usually because I've washed my hair, and I'm wearing my favourite orange lipstick, or because I've just had a great catch-up with a friend. Or because I'm dancing. It's not because it's how I woke up. Those things aside, having a neat go-to phrase which simultaneously sums up unabashed personal confidence and references a cultural zeitgeist of women publicly hair-flicking together gives a name to the power in thinking yes and so uploading a photograph of yourself on Instagram. I love that the act of taking a selfie has reached the point of being about self-love, rather than mistaken for pure vanity. A fear of vanity can do a lot to stop women celebrating themselves, and a selfie symbolises that the person taking a photograph of them-self and uploading it, has bulldozed through some of those associative barriers.

I've been thinking a lot this week about Feeling Myself, and not feeling myself. As somebody who has blogged for almost 10 years, from the age of 15, I've thought about how Feeling Myself (and all that entails, selfies included) changes as you get older. Without realising, I rarely post selfies, or photographs of what I'm wearing on this blog anymore. That's because during this blog's lifetime I have transitioned from teenager to 'real life adult person living in a world of potential employers' and unconsciously pandered to a sense that I should temper posting photographs of myself. A sort of 'you're not still doing that, are you?' niggle. Last year at work a marketing manager from one of Manchester's large arts organisations said in a meeting that he'd found my blog and enjoyed reading it, that he felt he'd visited my flat after seeing photos I'd uploaded of myself in my sitting room. On the one hand, I rated his honestly for saying that, rather than feeling obligated to this strange social code in which none of us are sure the extent to which we're allowed to reveal that we follow each other online. On the other hand, I was at work, and unsure if it undermined my professionalism. It made me feel sort of vain and unserious to have that brought into a work context. That's the reality when you share things about yourself in such a public forum, as so many of us do. There were moments like that, and there's the matter of being in a relationship in which there's a large age-gap, and of seeing selfies as an indicator of being the younger, less serious of the pair. Selfies as being something 'young people do', and that his friends, or colleagues might find online and not really understand. The thing I realise is that I am utterly serious. Serious about Feeling Myself, and as many women as possible Feeling Themselves. And I miss posting photographs of myself and what I'm wearing on my blog. I think there's a tendency to view Feeling Myself as a baseline state that grows stronger as you get older, and doesn't need to be pronounced in public lest that be mistaken as a defensive act of bolstering. But I think it's a mistake to view selfies and public acts of self-love with that mindset. 

Feeling oneself isn't a constant, unchanging state of mind. It's really fragile, and it's easy to distinctly not feel yourself. This month I've had emotionally wobbly moments, and have really not been feeling myself. So much of the time that comes down to treating yourself with a merciless judgement you wouldn't wish for anyone you care about to be under. So it seems sort of incredible to be able to veer so far from one direction from the other. Taking stock, and having moments of striding down the street, mentally dusting off your shoulders like I've got this, has gone some way to alleviating those feelings for me. It has also affirmed the importance of 'Feeling Myself' as being an act that takes place online, as well as in public IRL. It feels even more important to keep posting selfies beyond teenage years if it helps to undo a concern that these photographs symbolise a frivolity rather than the hefty whack of a flagpole going into an earthy mound, and a declaration of Feeling Myself unfurling in the breeze as bugles play into the intro of Run The World (Girls). On a Monday morning. 

I went through my laptop's Photo Booth archive this week. Taken over the last four years, it charts changes in hair colour, bedrooms across different cities and countries and varying levels of comfort with posing. It was affirming to look at these photos and think you looked great. I don't do it so much now, but I used to have a tendency to look at photos of myself from two years ago and idealise my weight, my skin and my hair at that time, and to think that was the ideal. I realised I was constantly applying this logic to my two-years-ago self, and it followed that I should be celebrating my current self now. Yes, why not just start now. Let yourself feel good, and make a head-start on when I'm doing it two years down the line anyway. 

Final thanks to Christina Aguilera and Lil Kim, Nicki Minaj, and Beyonce for providing an intensely motivational soundtrack while I wrote this. 

The Weekend List: No. 16

This week's Weekend List is dispatched from Berlin. I've only just arrived and am already doing that typical (creepy) thing of transplanting my life into somebody else's space as we're renting an apartment through Airbnb, which we clearly chose for this explicit purpose. The kitchen floor is painted bright green, and positioned above the table is a painting of a friend egg. A balcony just about overlooks the canal, and all of the cheese plants in the living room (obligatory feature, tick) are in much better nick than mine. My snakeskin boots are in the shoe rack, and there's a sky blue 1970s Ford Cortina parked outside, which I'm pretending I own. I keep walking between rooms nodding to myself like yes, this is my alternate life for the next week. I am going to read all of the books on my bedside table and eat all of the falafel and return a better person. Lo! We'll see how that goes. Without further ado, the latest Weekend List. Pop the kettle on, and maybe Beyonce, which is the view from here.

Images: Holly Blues, Roisin Kiberd, Prada x Dancers of Tanztheater Wuppertal as part of AnOther's MOVEment project, The Bookery Cook's Instagram, Gutting a Squid via Good Good Girl. 

Life

• "For decades, pop culture and media have set up a clear binary between single women and their coupled counterparts... Single women? They drink whiskey at the bar alone and have the power to swing elections. Coupled women plan "compromise" vacations and buy a lot of cleaning products." I feel like Ann Friedman collected my thoughts and current brain debris for: Honorary Spinster: Can I Be A 'Single Lady' Without Being Single?
• "You have more rights to your image on CCTV than you do your Facebook photos." Roisin Kiberd walked around Dublin, using an app to take control of public CCTV cameras, and take selfies.
• "I don't want women to go through life responding to compliments about their work with, 'Oh it's just a thing, it's not that great.'" How To Take A Compliment. (Thanks Sim for emailing me this link this week.) 
• I've had lots of conversations recently with former bloggers, and readers of blogs. We've spoken how the medium has changed, and how we crave the sort of blogs we used to read, which have since become defunct. It feels like there are less blogs updated with as much frequency and 'honesty' (I know, whatever honesty actually is..) as there were in say, 2009. I know that's because lots of the bloggers I once followed were teenage. Now everybody has grown up, we want to stretch ourselves, to write in other places. We also have to make money, and the time spent working is what often stands in the way of blogging in a regular, and satisfying way. Sometimes people can't write in the same way now that they're employed and obliged to be accountable. That said, I still relish blogging here, and these conversations have led me to dig around for new blogs to read. One of my new bookmarks is Holly Blues, and I like it very much. Holly is 25 and writes about family life in Falmouth. She blogs about bringing up two small children, getting caught in downpours on the way to the shops, watching her family as they snooze, frugality, making things and how very, very tiring parenting can be. What she shares feels very generous and full of love, and I like reading about her life, which feels very unlike my own, but not so dissimilar in other ways. 

Culture

• "Now sounds like always being connected together people online, I think it sounds like economic uncertainty, it sounds like post-WikiLeaks... Multiple browser windows open...everything jammed together but on an equal playing field." I found watching musician and sound-artist Holly Herndon in conversation fascinating. 

• AnOther Magazine's MOVEment project explores the intersection between fashion and dance in a beautiful series of collaborative films.

Food

• Good Good Girl's Shit You Should Know series continues with How To Gut And Clean A Squid. (which led me too..)
• The Bookery Cook, excellent food blog run by three sisters. Follow them on Instagram for photographs of gelato, Mexican beer and bowls of insecty snacks. 
• A short film about chef Margot Ferguson.

Listening

• There are lots of Philip Glass-related happenings on BBC Radio 4 this week. There's a play about the time Philip Glass and Steve Reich ran a removals business, and Glass' memoir Words Without Music, has been serialised as Book of the Week. 
• Bring a Plate. One of my new go-to podcasts. Last week I listened to this episode while I walked my recycling to the bank and fully gave myself to Laughing Out Loud. Don't ever let a fear of other people ruin your podcast guffawing, especially when you're listening to Peter and Bec re-telling the narrative of Save The Last Dance. 
• Cheryl Strayed's advice column Dear Sugar, turned into radio form.
• Do You Love Me?, 1978 hit by Lebanese family band Bendaly Family.

Snacks

• An invisible conversation between hip hop and art before the 16th century.
• It's lambing time. More reason to follow writer and sheep farmer James Rebanks on Twitter, as he posts updates from the Lake District, of Hawthorn greening and slippery newborn lambs. 
• Ruby Tandoh speaks to ethical clothes brand Birdsong London. 

The Women Are Emailing

Painting: Karin Mamma Anderson's About A Girl (2005)

"I use the word 'coup' because I think that people should be nervous because women are emailing each other. Women are DMing each other. The women are talking. The women are emailing. You could be pen pals with one person for 10 months, and then that person that no one knew about writes this piece and just drops it, and that piece comes from emailing with women." Durga Chew-Bose*

*Listen to this clip from 25;05 minutes in, because I'll be referencing it throughout. 


I'm having a bit of a moment over here. I've spent the last month going on dates with women and I am high on it. I've had cocktails in the novel sunshine of daylight saving time, beers in the shade, stacks of welsh rarebit on my lunch break, and pre-9am breakfast coffees. Call it networking, call it brain-picking, call it cooking up a big cauldron of condensed female energy; I've spent the last four weeks on a hunter-gatherer mission, and these women have been sharpening my spears.

To start: last month, I returned from a week of holidaying in the States, (of binding up my bowels with doughnuts for breakfast and realising I am in love), with a thud back to reality. I was sat down, and told that I'm being made redundant from work. This was obviously a bummer. Particularly when you live alone and have to cover next month's rent. It was also a bummer because it gave that corner of my brain, the one everybody owns, which is so determined to plant a seed of doubt during a lull in confidence, a reason to say "Aha! You did do something wrong!" Thankfully my stronger tangle of pink brain cells has mostly been able to extinguish those thoughts, and quite quickly I was able to think you know what, maybe this is the right thing, a cosmic kick up the arse to get to work on my writing, and the unfulfilled projects that have been stewing. The thoughts that chip away at me in the shower in the mornings, when I'm scared of a moment passing before I've managed to get my head straight, of somebody else having the same idea and doing it better. They're the things I often feel too tired to work on in the evenings, which in turn makes me feel worse. That little voice again: everybody else is working harder than you, so why can't you just do it?

Enough of the voice. I set to work sending emails to women I like, women I admire, women I've had good conversations with over wine, asking for their advice, and most of all not feeling bad about asking for advice. And so tonight, when I was listening to Another Round, and to Durga Chew-Bose talking about the power of quiet email exchanges with women, and how they feed into our creativity, I hit rewind three times, and then sat down to write this.

Wikipedia has a page dedicated to Consciousness Raising, to the women that gathered in their New York apartments in the late 1960s and went around the room, talking about their lives and shared issues, giving a voice to feelings previously felt below the surface. My ears pricked when I heard Durga talking about email because it confirmed my experience; the same thing is happening now, but it's happening quietly over Gmail. And Twitter. For me, these are emails are long, and rich and full of feeling, and when I find one sitting unmarked in my inbox, I'll often honour it with the same rituals as I might a shiny new magazine. Find a quiet moment, put the kettle on, and savour it. It could be an email I've ended up printing out, or an emoji-laden tweet which feels like a knowing high-five across an ocean. Sometimes it's just reaching out and asking somebody for a contact in order to pitch. The point is though, we feel good when we talk. And what does that feeling do? It builds us up, fills in the gaps and affirms in a way to help us to get things done. I honestly think too much is made of the idea of women talking in bathrooms (hey men, we're sitting, you're standing, that's all there is to it) but there's an allure in the notion that we're in there concocting ideas, a coven around the hand dryers.

We are increasingly concerned about online security; in the wake of the Sony email leak, of the scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton's private emails, people have become more nervous about what could be unveiled from their own accounts. I actually relish what we might find. A big old pile of treasure, of back-and-forth emails between women over months and years, just yearning to be typed into Letters From... anthologies, to be bought and left beside toilets to continue the cycle. A revolution in a loo read!

Some of these platonic dates I've been on during the past month has been everything Tinder never was. I haven't had to watch a bored face gaze over my shoulder, and often after we've parted ways, comes the Holy Grail of Network Dating (don't be scared to call it that): The Follow Up Email. Don't be mistaken, these aren't bland niceties. They are the minutes taken by your invisible secretary, of the cool stuff you discussed. A reading list containing gems from the Rookie archives, a technique for avoiding procrastination, a link to the eye pencil she was wearing, and which you asked her about. One of my favourite gems, which Marisa kindly shared with me, was her '5 at 5' habit. Each day at 5pm, she and her friend would email each other (of course) a list of five things, relating to personal development and their careers, that they wanted to achieve. Then they'd check in the following day for an update. So, this could be booking onto a course, applying for a job, or asking a potential new mentor out for a coffee. I don't know if they still do this, but I like the idea of holding yourself accountable to a trusted friend who can say come on, just do it.

I'm not trying to say that every coffee I have must now require An Interesting Woman and A Takeaway Gem. (Nobody has time for that much sustained depth.) I'm just giving email, and Twitter their dues. They can feel like time vacuums sometimes, or a strange vortex in which Great Stuff Is Constantly Happening To Other People, but as a medium they can make really good things happen too, if you can help yourself to click that little X at the right moment, and take the good words off to a quiet corner, for as long as you need. Maybe even 10 months or so.

Moving Moodboard

Clips: 1. Bride and her Dad dancing to Taylor Swift. 2. Simon Cowell and paparazzi. 3. A horse on El Toro Beach, Mallorca. 4. Freddie Mercury tired of interviews, 1984. 5. Game of table tennis between an 'old man' and 'young challenger' in Leicester Square, London. 6. Bear hunting for salmon in British Columbia. 

A collection of good, weird, familiar and mundane clips collected from the internet, and set to a groovy Italian soundtrack. Look, and listen to it however you like. 

A step-by-step guide:

Step 1: Press play on Nico Fidenco's 'Se Mi Perderai' right there at the top. 

Step 2. Press play on each of the video boxes, hitting mute at the same time, or experimenting with however much sound you would like from each. Scroll up and down, watch it all come together. 

Step 3: Enjoy a Bride and her Dad dancing, Freddie Mercury swigging from a stein, Simon Cowell and the strange mundanity of celebrity worship, a skittish horse, a hungry bear and an old gent beating a young gent in a game of ping pong.

Step 4: When it is all over, go on as you were.

Previous Moving Moodboards can be found here and here. Some of the videos have since been deleted from YouTube. That's okay though, if we wanted things to be permanent we might look to other places than the internet.

Queen Turner

"I think we should have a day when all women don't go to work. If a handful of people in this country are going to decide whether or not we will receive healthcare, whether or not we have control over our bodies as to when we wish to have a child, then what would happen if 52% of the work force one day just withdrew and reminded those people in Washington how important we are?" Kathleen Turner, whose voice is my new favourite thing to listen to, on Here's The Thing.

The Weekend List: No. 15 (The Feb 14 Special)

In honour of February 14th, this Weekend List is dedicated to love stuff. And before you roll your eyes, please know that this edition doesn't stray far from my usual interests in the mass of varying types of love; from solo-love and friend-love, to domestic-love and lovesick-love. This list isn't here to make anybody feel bad, and I hate that Valentine's Days is always offered up as this day that you either opt in or out of. We're all alone, and we all love other people in varying capacities; Valentine's Day should be the most universal day of them all, and celebrated with that sentiment as a starting point. Settle back into it. Here's an accompanying mix I made, featuring lines like "When I trust you we can do it with the lights on" and "I want to call you but I don't. I want to be smarter." There's Jarvis Cocker, and Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor, who are in my mind among the best popstars to sing about love and sex. Plus there's Joni Mitchell's song For Free, which was my January soundtrack when I was thinking and writing about my Granny a lot, and this ode to a stranger playing clarinet on a street-corner is one of the most quietly romantic songs I've ever heard.

Closeness with others

This time last year I listened to Dory Previn back to back, and wrote about the romance with others, and with one's own self.

Sigmund Freud's Porcupine Dilemma.

A conception and a Bed and Breakfast in Vermont. I've included it in a list before, but I love to come back to this short piece from Meghan O'Connell.

Nakedness

Your Fave Fantasy is Problematic by Kitty Stryker.

A list of sexy films compiled by the British Film Institute.

And sexy illustrations.

Breaking up

A poem I return to each time I lose somebody, my feelings for them, or when I'm trying to blanche myself of the sad, unplanned heat of either of the two. W.H Auden's The More Loving One knows the peace of looking up at the sky and becoming re-grounded. (Listen. Or Read.)

"You are supposed to know opaquely and elusively and abstractly that everything is not over and that your purpose in life is so much huger than you can every imagine and is still saturated with value and that you will eat pesto and read Stephen Dunn and live in Manhattan." Break-up advice from one friend to another. (I didn't think seeing a tattooed bottom below this page would be part of the bargain, but I suppose you can't always plan these things..)

Alone Time

"I count living alone as, in a manner of speaking, finding interest in my own story, of prospering, of protest, of creating a space where I repeat the same actions every day, whetting them, rearranging them..." Since Living Alone by Durga Chew-Bose (one to cut out and keep.)

Dinner For One: an episode of BBC Radio 4's The Food Chain, dedicated to the melancholy of eating alone.

"I hated coming home from buying lingerie, obviously carrying a bag full of bras and panties.. In order to put it on, I would hide in the bathroom. During the reveal, he'd be reading a book about genocide and the cat would be taking up my space in the bed." Against Domesticity by Randa Jarrar.

Platonic Love

Where was it? Sometime recently I was reading a blog co-written by two female friends who described themselves as life partners, who were each married to other men. You know that feeling. It's when you walk home from the pub after sharing a bottle and spicy nuts, putting the world to rights with your best friend, and your belly feels warm and you clench your hands with an excitement reserved for promising third dates, except you know each other better than that already. And you might think to yourself, god I can't wait to grow old with this woman. It's tricky though, because like any romantic relationship the two of you might yo-yo, with one needing the other more at times, and feeling that acutely. Also, in most cases, we have multiple versions of this person in our lives. Few people pass years with just one archetypal playground best friend. There are many, each best girlfriend with her own corner, own needs and purposes, rarely overlapping with the others, though they all share a common description. My best friend. My favourite people to text are best friends. They really get it, and those threads of in-jokes and shared ugly photographs keep the world turning. Once I lay in the aisle of a train carriage, looking purposely ugly and pretending to be dead, with one best friend taking a photograph of me, so I could send it to my other. The one I have an on-going habit of playing dare games with. Now that I'm in a new relationship (I know!) I'm feeling this best-friend love more acutely. You have to tread carefully to balance the varying affections, to not let best friends get left out, but also to understand that this yo-yoing is all par for the course. Nobody really actually wants to be Frances Ha's Sophie, but then again Frances goes off and has that shit trip to Paris and finally puts on a production of her own. So who knows, it's all supposed to happen. In honour of it all, are text messages shared with my best friend this week, shortly after midnight: