Pointless nostalgic

Bristol's Wills Memorial Building. I didn't even go there, I just have a lot of feelings.

If I needed yet another reminder that I'm no longer a teenager - but instead a half-fledged adult with a full-time job and a pension plan - well, this week, I got it. So smug have I been for the last few months, riding on a wave of sheer relief at finally getting and managing to keep said job, I completely forgot about filling in my tax return (I was technically still self-employed as a proofreader until October 2013). And so last week, I received a delightful letter from HMRC stating that I owed them £100 and a completed self-assessment form. Fair enough, I'm a tit, I'll fill the thing in, HMRC will scoff in disbelief at how paltry the amount they're chasing me for is, and we can all move on with our lives.

Hahahahahahaha - nope.

I won't go into to details, because you'd combust with boredom, but you know the Black Books scene where Bernard tries to do his accounts and ends up making them into a smart-casual jacket? That's not comedy, that's a documentary.




DB and I have just got back from a very brief visit to [my future home] Bristol, where he spent his student days, and next week, I'm going with my brother to an open day at the University of Birmingham. My current mood is therefore uni-nostalgic - heartily so. I could totally go back to that halfway house between adolescence and adulthood, and spend another three years - and a few thousand pounds - on books and library time and endless essays. That would be much better than work - wouldn't it?

I don't really want to go back, of course. It would involve a PhD, and regular contact with academics and aspiring academics, and it's hard to say which of the two groups is worse. I like being able to step out of work-mode every evening at 5.30; I like being able to leave my office-self at my desk on a Friday, and practically skipping home because the weekend is finally within reach. You don't get to do that as a student; you're constantly thinking about your current assignment, the reading you've not done, and what in the name of Christ you're going to do with the qualification once you've got it. It's a 24/7 gig, academia, and I don't have that dedication. (I'm going to be a lousy parent, it seems.)

I'm nostalgic for the student lifestyle - I didn't think I would be, being the sort of person who has a proper Freak-Out if she doesn't have her weekends planned out down to the minute. But if I could go back now, I'd do it properly. I'd go all out; I would work the student cliches to their very bones. I'd read prodigiously, I'd write - not poetry, mind, no-one can tolerate a student poet - and I'd hang out with the most earnest, pretentious fellow students I could find - the militant feminists, the strident socialists, the opinionated and the insufferable. Why? Because when else are you surrounded by so many ill-thought-out but loudly and passionately defended opinions? I'd get into politics and history and Russian literature - because I would have the time.

And really, that's what I miss: the time. I did English and Linguistics - they're not exactly heavy on the contact time. And like almost every other 18-21 year old doing an arts degree, I didn't realise what a glorious gift those free hours and days were. The time spent drinking, hungover or killing time with my university boyfriend and his housemates could have been spent reading - absorbing all the knowledge and opinions my little head could handle.

I'm aware I'm romanticising the student life, looking back at it from a distance of over three years (my MA doesn't count, as I was quietly miserable for most of that year). The reality of it was different to how I'm remembering it now, and the second year of my degree was actually pretty grim. It can be a lonely life, and the support for students experiencing mental health wobbles is patchy at best.

So perhaps I don't want to go back. While I may have far less free time now - fewer hours to read, and write, and figure out what I think - at least whatever time I do have is mine alone. The trick is to spend it well.


Our drive back from Bristol involved some of this, and some of that.

Family ties

I wasn't what you'd call a pretty baby.

There's nothing good about getting old. I can say this confidently, as at the moment, I'm getting regular reminders about the horrors of being elderly. As you already know, DB and I are staying in his grandparents' house, as said grandparents are both in a care home suffering different forms of dementia. My own grandmother - positively bursting with life and good cheer four or five years ago - is poorly and frail, currently also in a care home - possibly on a temporary basis, possibly not.

Granny. She practically raised me - for the first few years, at least. She and Gramps had farmed for years, but retired either just before or just after I was born. The house they bought after selling the last farm still had a good two and a half acres round it, plus a paddock, because how could it not, after years of fields and fields? The paddock was, at various times, home to sheep (a ewe butted me into a shallow ditch when I was two; needless to say, I was not impressed) and pigs, named Pinky and Perky. We kept them for a while, then ate them. How's that for food miles? Between the ages of 8 and 12, I frequently asked if, since we had a paddock, couldn't we keep a pony in it?  Maybe even two? "Well, the fencing's not good enough, and it's costly to repair" came the reply. When I was seventeen, the fencing was suddenly repaired - because someone in the village was going to rent the paddock off us. To keep her horses in it. Pfffft.

At the other end of the property was a chicken run. As soon as I could walk, I was following Granny up there first thing in the morning, collecting the eggs with chubby toddler hands. I can still smell the chicken house now - a bit musty, a bit like damp straw, mostly just warm and feathery.

And then I got a year or two older, and we would go for walks on the common - the sizeable stretch of woodland onto which the property backed. We had Samuel, the springer spaniel, until I was 13 or 14. God, he was a brilliant dog. Smart (ish) for a spaniel, and always full of beans, in the way that the next dog - another spaniel, called Buffy - wasn't.

Writing about it now is like opening a floodgate. Each memory sparks another; I could be here for days, trying to cover it all. Learning to ride a bike without stabilisers on the lawn. Falling off said bike on the patio, skinned knees, ripped jeans. Evenings in the summer holidays where I'd be in the garden til 8 or 9pm, seeing the wild rabbits scamper about where the lawn met the woodland, watching the sun set in a riot of orange and pink, sitting on the swing between the silver birch trees and imagining being 'grown up'. I still have a soft spot for silver birches.

She taught me so many things, my gran. Some of which I will always live by: "never go to bed on an argument" and "never have an empty biscuit tin", and some of which I'll just remember with affection, such as her G&T making quantities: half and half. If I'm half as generous and giving as she is, I'll be happy (I suspect I'm not there yet) - one of her most-used mottos* was "there's always room for one more at the table". Sunday lunches were tight on elbow-room. Whenever we spoke on the phone, she'd always, always ask "is there anything I can do for you? Anything I can send you?"

*One of her other, more nonsensical ones was "coo, it's chilly-willy-wombles" whenever the weather took a turn for the frosty... Nope, me neither. I will, however, be saying that one to my kids, just to witness their bafflement. 

It's hard to know how to end this post without sounding morbid - Gran really isn't well at the moment, and I don't know if/when we can expect her to recover. So I will just say this: I am incredibly lucky to have had her help to bring me up, and I count myself lucky to have inherited her love of animals and the countryside, and her sense of humour, and her tendency to start laughing and not be able to stop.

I will hold on to those things.




This week I've been re-visiting Lissie's Back To Forever. It's such a gutsy album, that veers between gentle post-break up introspection and rowdy, snarly rock. So, if you want to feel like a woman on a mission - and who doesn't? - I can highly recommend it. Again.





Despite promising myself that I absolutely will not buy any more books until I've read all the ones I got for Christmas, I'd heard a lot of good things about The Girl on the Train, so when I saw that it was half-price in WH Smith's, I grabbed it and tried not to feel too guilty. I'd finished it by midnight the same day - it's a delicately-written "domestic thriller", which manages to keep the final twist close to its chest until impressively late on.

Bloody Valentines 2: on the other hand...

 Yes, this is just a picture of our dinner tonight. It is delicious, though.

It's never nice coming down off your high horse about something. I don't think anyone enjoys resigning themselves to the fact that perhaps they spoke too soon, didn't give something enough thought, were a bit too quick to judge. With that in mind...

A couple of years ago, I made my anti-Valentine's Day stance pretty clear. And, rest assured, I stick by most of it. I still can't be bothered to care about it, really.  However - yes, sorry, but you must have known it was coming - however, this year, I am feeling... Valentiney. I can see the appeal. Hell, I can see the need for a calendar day earmarked for romantic nonsense. Or, to put it another way: I certainly don't think one calendar day of romantic nonsense is going to do anyone any harm. Yes, it's cheesy and cliched and really just a money-maker for Thorntons and Paperchase, but you know, so's Christmas, up to a point. 

So why, this year, am I giving up being vehemently anti-V-Day?

Because life is fucking short (I'm not dying; it's just true).

And once you get out of your student funk, and into a life where all the things that really define you have to be crammed in between 6pm on a Friday and 10pm on a Sunday, you realise that this is it - this is all we've got. Here, now. You have to seize your joy where you can. There are more than enough dark, depressing, horribly unfair events unfolding everywhere, all the time. If we have a chance to revel in being totally and utterly, revoltingly in love, then by God, we should grab it with both hands and not forget that it's a bloody great privilege.

And also, why not? If you're lucky enough to be with someone - and it is luck, really; a game of numbers and fortune (the lesser-known book franchise) - then why not utilise the opportunity to embrace that, and indeed, them?

I'll admit, part of my new-found enthusiasm for V-Day has come from actually having a good idea for a couple of small gifts for DB. I'm a terrible present-buyer, so whenever I do have a flash of inspiration, I feel the need to act on it sharpish. I'm not really bothered about receiving anything myself (no, really), because I can't think of anything that I need or want, and anyway, it's my birthday next month. Also, the usual Valentine gifts designated for women are, for the most part, wasted on me. Chocolate? I do not need any encouragement to eat it. Don't be an enabler, unless you can handle me wanging on about the calorie guilt. Wine? See 'chocolate'. Flowers? I'm just not particularly interested in them. The flowers that give me most joy are the ones you find growing in woods or on roadsides - accidental flowers. Bluebells, snowdrops, primroses, daisies. It doesn't help that I have an incredibly poor sense of smell - you'd be better off buying me a nice bit of Brie.

As I've said, the vast majority of Valentiney bullshit irritates the socks off me - and most other people, I'd wager. I certainly won't be posting photos of a massive bunch of roses on any social media channels (#bestboyfriendever), nor will I be tweeting about how "blessed" I am, or how much I love "my man" (I'm getting queasy just typing this, and it's nothing to do with the amount of malted milk biscuits I ate this afternoon). FYI, unless you are a sassy black woman, or an eighties disco queen, you cannot get away with calling him your man.

But I stick by my sort-of U-turn on this one. A bit of romance is only ever a good thing. So enjoy it.

I cannot emphasise how much I love the song I'm going to link you to, and how much I regret completely forgetting about this band's existence. This track is what would have become of Bruce Springsteen had he grown up in Vegas in the eighties. Singing along and punching the air: not optional.

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Beer and cheese: on moving in together

I finally have my own kitchen, cluttered and temporary though it may be.

So Drummer Boy and I have sort of moved in together. Not properly - we're looking after his grandparents' house (as they are sadly both in a care home now) while decisions are made about what becomes of the property. The house is conveniently three doors away from my own parents' place, so it's easy for me to dash home when I get too cold, or I run short of socks.

Here's a few things I've learned in the ten days or so we've been unofficially cohabiting.

1) Gender stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. In the last week, I've heard myself say the following things:

"You didn't make the bed this morning!"

"Why do you just leave things in the sink? Or by the sink? They don't have legs, they're not going to walk themselves through hot soapy water on to the draining board."


"Erm, do red knickers not belong in a dark wash? I was kind of hoping to have some underwear this week..."

2) The idea of something is often far worse than the actual thing itself. For reasons that were 70% hormonal and 30% genuine angst, we managed to have a serious argument every day for the three days before we actually moved in together. Once actually in the house, it was all sunshine and rainbows and "do you want a cup of tea?"

3) I have spent the last three days complaining about, but trying to hide any 'evidence' of, having fallen to the Communists/having Aunt Irma to visit/hosting the Red Wedding (pick your euphemism). He's an educated and liberal man, but by God, he must be protected from the realities of menstruation.

4) Tea and cheese is the best post-work, pre-dinner snack. On Fridays, swap tea for beer.

5) It is possible to be quite comfortable in a house that errs on the side of chilly, has a lot of floral wallpaper and brown carpets, and is home to a set of curtains that can best be described as "quintessentially Seventies". You can just make them out below:

I was describing them to a work colleague, who has a degree in something art-and-design-related, and she got really excited and said "Ebay them! Seriously! Some vintage fabric freak will go nuts for those!"

6) While I've spent the last two years or so wishing we were living together, it does take some getting used to. In the week it's fine, because I'm out of the house between 8.15 and 6.15. The weekends have been a bit "are you still here? Can't you go out? No? All right, I'm going out. No, don't come with me."

7) But when all is said and done, I picked a good'un. He is easy to live with, and - importantly - supremely tolerant, and doesn't mind that I get into my fluffy white dressing gown at the earliest opportunity once I get home from work, and proceed to waft around the house like a cuddly ghost. Most touchingly of all, when he could tell I hadn't slept well on Sunday night (that 'back to work' dread after a week away from the office had me waking up every hour or so), at 6am, he whispered "have an extra hour in bed and I'll drive you to work". I could have cried with gratitude. Sitting next to him on the sofa now, while he reads out funny comments in AskReddit threads and I try and stop him reading over my shoulder, I feel incredibly lucky - and incredibly smug.


In other less nauseating news... if you want to make the most of Orange Wednesdays before they're gone forever, go and see Whiplash. It's amazing, and you don't have to be a drummer, a drummer's girlfriend, or a jazz fan to enjoy it. I didn't think I'd live to see the day where I enjoyed a pyschological thriller about jazz drumming, but I have.

This has nothing to do with jazz drumming.

A book-based blog post

I'm at the end of a week off. After becoming known in the office as the person who never takes any of her annual leave*, I came to my senses and decided to take a Whole Week Off. It's been blissful, I'm not going to lie. I've spent far too much money, watched far too many make-up and beauty tutorials on YouTube (we've all got our time-wasting habits), and have sort of temporarily moved in with Drummer Boy. But that's a whole other blog post in itself, so I'll hold that thought for now.

But best of all, I read a whole book in the course of about a day.

That didn't used to be an achievement. I've always been a fast reader - I remember 'racing' Laurence Chacksfield in Year 5 to see who could be the first to finish Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I did 636 pages in the space of two afternoons (and won, most importantly). Not bad for a ten-year-old. But now I'm lazy about reading anything longer than 1200 words during the week. Spending all day every day typing, retyping and re-arranging words has made me loath to try and absorb any more of them when I get home. This week, however, I had time, glorious time, so I dove headfirst into Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty.

It's a well-paced thriller/crime drama (it manages to pull off being both) about a successful scientist who begins an affair with a rather mysterious chap, and is later attacked by a colleague. These sets of circumstances collide - somewhat predictably - in a grim fashion. While the plot itself is unspectacular, the writing is taut and elegant, and the characters are proper, well-rounded people (you feel you could know them). Sometimes, novels that flip back and forth along a timeline can be frustrating, but in this tale, it's skillfully done.




I got a hefty stack of books for Christmas (some of which are there on the right), but have barely made a dent in it yet. I have very nearly finished Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay (second from bottom), and have been totally awed by it. She covers everything from the complexities of girl friendships, to how we deal with rape and sexual assault, to how, in our culture of 24-hour news and constant social media updates, we respond to tragedy and disaster. She is wise and eloquent, but her wisdom is shot through with humour and empathy, so reading her work is like spending an evening in a quiet bar with your cleverest, wittiest friend. Two stand-out chapters are the one where she conducts a complete, scathing and brilliant post-mortem on the Fifty Shades [of utter wank] phenomenon, and the aforementioned chapter on tragedy, from which the following lines are taken:

"I have never considered compassion a finite resource. I would not want to live a world where such was the case."

Now there's a thought that rings in the ears.


Truth be told, I'd love to do this in video form - a sort of "here's what I'm reading this month" vlog (and I shudder at that word, it's a heinous portmanteau), but I lack the equipment and editing skills, and I'm paranoid that when played back, my voice would sound like an overexcited nine-year-old's. Still, it's an idea I might hold on to. 

*For ages after I started, I felt bad about taking any more than two or three days off - because a) my struggle to remain sane and anxiety-free when I have nothing to do is well-documented, and b) I was initially genuinely worried that I would forget how to do my job.

Have a slice of sunny pop-rock - I know nothing about this band, but this is a catchy little number.

Alternatively, there's this - it's one of my current favourite running songs, and it's also almost faultless.