News coming soon...
Wednesday, 26 April 2017
Monday, 17 April 2017
Weekend Frolics Photodiary: Glasgow
A couple of weeks ago, I ended up on an impromptu 24-hour trip to Glasgow. The city's been on my radar for some time now - I've been to Edinburgh a couple of times, but I've heard Glasgow is often considered the better option for museums, arts and character. I'm not sure if I would have got round to visiting if not for various coincidences, but I'm glad I ended up there, if only for a day. I don't feel like I got enough exploration in to make any extended comments on the place, but I thought I'd share some photos and a few thoughts! That's all.
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| The Pot Still - local pub famous for its massive whisky collection. I'm not a big whisky drinker, but the beautiful range on offer just begs you to try it. I ended up with something smoky and...mossy? I don't know how to describe things. |
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| Botanical gardens. Featuring a fun carnivorous plant section (did not get to see anyone be eaten by plants). |
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| Hillhead Bookclub - a bar/cafe/vintage shop in the West End. Mouthwatering menu. Just on the right side of hipster. |
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| Kelvingrove Museum - beautiful lobby (where we managed to catch a free organ concert), some interesting niches of local and international art. |
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| Hanging from the roof of the museum. Good for photo ops. |
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| Very important Scottish cultural product. Not a proper trip without. |
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| First thing that happened when I got out of the airport was a guy at the taxi rank cracking a joke at me. Last thing I saw before I went back to the airport was this. Apart from the wideness of the roads and the colour of the stone, the humour is probably the thing that sticks with you the most. |
See you for another frolic soon!
Friday, 7 April 2017
My 2017 Cooking Challenge
Everything is basically a muscle. Your heart is a muscle. Your legs are a muscle. That table over there is a muscle...
No, I've lost what I was trying to say here.
Let's start again. As far as I can tell, everything is a muscle, in that you have to practice again and again, and the more you practice, the easier it gets to work it. I've found this to be true with learning Japanese, making sure I read every day, and of course working out....unfortunately, not all of these are things I've continued to do. It takes so much time to make the habit, which eventually becomes easy and natural - but allow yourself to fall out of the habit and it's suddenly as hard as it was at the beginning. It's like sweating and puffing your way through climbing up a mountain, and then sliding all the way back down on your arse.
Cooking is one of these habits for me. While living in Japan I got very used to cooking frequently, especially in bulk. But moving into a new flat with a tiny kitchen, with no radiator, in the middle of January, does not exactly inspire me. I want to be curled up in my bed with takeout, not huddled over a stove in a hoodie. Moving to a new city with loads of cutesy restaurants doesn't really help either. I've become more reliant on cafes for food - especially lunches - and it's having a bearing on my wallet and my waistline.
With that in mind, I've set myself a challenge. I will select 10 new recipes to try every month. I thought about making all these recipes healthy, but to be honest it's not my priority right now. My priority is to find joy in cooking and eating homemade food again. I'd also like to improve my basic skills - I'm not a bad cook by any means, but I could just get a little bit cleaner and more efficient with things like knife skills.
For the record, here's my first recipe. It's sort-of based on fettucine alfredo but mainly based on the fact that I love pasta and nutmeg. It was simple but went very well, and will definitely be a staple in my future comfort-eating regimen. It also turned out to be one of those recipes that gets better the day after you make it - the sauce thickens overnight and clings to the pasta all the more. Not diet-friendly, but very definitely me-friendly. I made it just before going to bed, so I will name it:
Delicious Creamy Midnight Pasta
Ingredients:
200g pasta
400ml tub of single cream
A big ol' slice of butter (50-100g)
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
A generous knob of parmesan
Salt and pepper to taste
1) Boil the pasta in one saucepan, melt the butter at a medium-low heat in another.
2) Add cream, and nutmeg, grate in parmesan. Cook the sauce for the same time as the pasta, stirring frequently, and adding salt, pepper and more of the nutmeg and parmesan to taste.
3) Oh...that's it. Enjoy hot or cold.
I will endeavour to update in May with how the cooking challenge is going, and showing you my favourite recipes of the month. Maybe some of them will even be healthy!
No, I've lost what I was trying to say here.
Let's start again. As far as I can tell, everything is a muscle, in that you have to practice again and again, and the more you practice, the easier it gets to work it. I've found this to be true with learning Japanese, making sure I read every day, and of course working out....unfortunately, not all of these are things I've continued to do. It takes so much time to make the habit, which eventually becomes easy and natural - but allow yourself to fall out of the habit and it's suddenly as hard as it was at the beginning. It's like sweating and puffing your way through climbing up a mountain, and then sliding all the way back down on your arse.
Cooking is one of these habits for me. While living in Japan I got very used to cooking frequently, especially in bulk. But moving into a new flat with a tiny kitchen, with no radiator, in the middle of January, does not exactly inspire me. I want to be curled up in my bed with takeout, not huddled over a stove in a hoodie. Moving to a new city with loads of cutesy restaurants doesn't really help either. I've become more reliant on cafes for food - especially lunches - and it's having a bearing on my wallet and my waistline.
With that in mind, I've set myself a challenge. I will select 10 new recipes to try every month. I thought about making all these recipes healthy, but to be honest it's not my priority right now. My priority is to find joy in cooking and eating homemade food again. I'd also like to improve my basic skills - I'm not a bad cook by any means, but I could just get a little bit cleaner and more efficient with things like knife skills.
For the record, here's my first recipe. It's sort-of based on fettucine alfredo but mainly based on the fact that I love pasta and nutmeg. It was simple but went very well, and will definitely be a staple in my future comfort-eating regimen. It also turned out to be one of those recipes that gets better the day after you make it - the sauce thickens overnight and clings to the pasta all the more. Not diet-friendly, but very definitely me-friendly. I made it just before going to bed, so I will name it:
Delicious Creamy Midnight Pasta
Ingredients:
200g pasta
400ml tub of single cream
A big ol' slice of butter (50-100g)
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
A generous knob of parmesan
Salt and pepper to taste
1) Boil the pasta in one saucepan, melt the butter at a medium-low heat in another.
2) Add cream, and nutmeg, grate in parmesan. Cook the sauce for the same time as the pasta, stirring frequently, and adding salt, pepper and more of the nutmeg and parmesan to taste.
3) Oh...that's it. Enjoy hot or cold.
I will endeavour to update in May with how the cooking challenge is going, and showing you my favourite recipes of the month. Maybe some of them will even be healthy!
Thursday, 23 March 2017
Skinny Windows
I don't appreciate the English countryside enough. That's one of the lessons I took with me when I came back from Japan - along with 'cold canned coffee tastes like cigarette butts and, like an Epipen, is only to be used when you might die otherwise'. Many, many times, when I told people I was English in Japan, they would begin to gush about how beautiful England was, how much they wished to go there, how quaint the villages, how green the hills. (And that was just the Americans.) People showed me tourist brochures they carried around with them like a good luck totem. And I just took it for granted a lot of the time.
I was not at all outdoorsy growing up - why are things crawling on me? why is there a leaf in my face? why mud? - so appreciating the countryside is something that I've only learned to do in the last few years. And even now, I often don't like to venture out for long hikes unless it's properly warm, so the English countryside is out of the question for at least three quarters of the year. Still, I've recently become aware of how little I've explored the countryside, in my own native Sussex and also further afield. I've never been to the Lake District, the Peak District, Cornwall or the New Forest. I know that on this small island there's a surprising variety of palettes - move from region to region and watch the changes in shade and softness of stone, darkness of tree, stubbornness of chimney, curve of street, moodiness of cloud. And so much of it I have yet to see.
A couple of weeks ago I tried to rectify my ignorance by spending a weekend in Norfolk. The first thing I noticed: all the buildings have skinny windows. Second thing I noticed: the ground is low, and chewy underfoot.
After a warm, cosy evening in a pub, I spent a grey Sunday morning treading across marsh, along the squishy fringe of the East Anglia coast. The edges of Norfolk are quite alien. I sometimes wonder if they could have filmed Tarkovsky's Stalker there. It is not hard to imagine the ground simply dragging your foot in and taking you out to sea. Down south, land and sea are two separate things. In Norfolk, I have learned, there is a lot of grey area. None of this bothers the dogs. I have also learned that every single person in Norfolk seems to have a dog.
I'm not sure if I liked the place or not. There is a kind of brackish, earthy beauty to it I suppose. Very brown. Perhaps I would have liked it better if I hadn't wandered onto an A-road with no pavement and been forced to take a detour through a cabbage patch that probably belonged to a farmer with a shotgun.
A few miles down the road, I whiled away the afternoon in a seaside village called Cromer, which was much more familiar territory to me. (If you grow up in a town with a pier, going to any other town with a pier just feels like going to the Bizarro World version of your town.)
Cromer's beaches are sandy, which is a change for a Sussex girl. I must admit being a little jealous, though I'm tempted to cover it up with scornful comments about how sand is for wusses and real beaches are made of pebble. There are also pristine cobblestone streets, leading up to a massive church. Like, a really massive church.
Couple of hours around Cromer, fish and chips, a train back to Norwich, and a National Express home. Not a huge adventure I'll admit, but a new way to spend a weekend.
Would I come back to Norfolk? I think so. There's a few more place on my bucket list first. But I'm happy to have taken some shy, sandy first steps to discovering more of my own country.
 |
| My patch. |
I was not at all outdoorsy growing up - why are things crawling on me? why is there a leaf in my face? why mud? - so appreciating the countryside is something that I've only learned to do in the last few years. And even now, I often don't like to venture out for long hikes unless it's properly warm, so the English countryside is out of the question for at least three quarters of the year. Still, I've recently become aware of how little I've explored the countryside, in my own native Sussex and also further afield. I've never been to the Lake District, the Peak District, Cornwall or the New Forest. I know that on this small island there's a surprising variety of palettes - move from region to region and watch the changes in shade and softness of stone, darkness of tree, stubbornness of chimney, curve of street, moodiness of cloud. And so much of it I have yet to see.
A couple of weeks ago I tried to rectify my ignorance by spending a weekend in Norfolk. The first thing I noticed: all the buildings have skinny windows. Second thing I noticed: the ground is low, and chewy underfoot.
 |
| Like this. |
After a warm, cosy evening in a pub, I spent a grey Sunday morning treading across marsh, along the squishy fringe of the East Anglia coast. The edges of Norfolk are quite alien. I sometimes wonder if they could have filmed Tarkovsky's Stalker there. It is not hard to imagine the ground simply dragging your foot in and taking you out to sea. Down south, land and sea are two separate things. In Norfolk, I have learned, there is a lot of grey area. None of this bothers the dogs. I have also learned that every single person in Norfolk seems to have a dog.
I'm not sure if I liked the place or not. There is a kind of brackish, earthy beauty to it I suppose. Very brown. Perhaps I would have liked it better if I hadn't wandered onto an A-road with no pavement and been forced to take a detour through a cabbage patch that probably belonged to a farmer with a shotgun.
A few miles down the road, I whiled away the afternoon in a seaside village called Cromer, which was much more familiar territory to me. (If you grow up in a town with a pier, going to any other town with a pier just feels like going to the Bizarro World version of your town.)
Cromer's beaches are sandy, which is a change for a Sussex girl. I must admit being a little jealous, though I'm tempted to cover it up with scornful comments about how sand is for wusses and real beaches are made of pebble. There are also pristine cobblestone streets, leading up to a massive church. Like, a really massive church.
 |
| This picture does not show you how massive this church is. |
Couple of hours around Cromer, fish and chips, a train back to Norwich, and a National Express home. Not a huge adventure I'll admit, but a new way to spend a weekend.
Would I come back to Norfolk? I think so. There's a few more place on my bucket list first. But I'm happy to have taken some shy, sandy first steps to discovering more of my own country.
Saturday, 18 March 2017
25 Things I Learned By The Age of 25
Technically, I won't be 25 for another twelve hours, but officially it's been my birthday for an hour and forty minutes. I don't feel much wiser yet, although I do have a strange urge to yell at the damn kids mucking about in my garden (despite the fact that I don't have a garden and there are no kids). I feel like I haven't learned much thus far in life. But in case anyone wants to know my pearls of wisdom, here are 25 things I've learned before turning 25:
1) Avoiding thinking about a problem doesn't make it go away.
2) Don't buy clothes that are slightly ill-fitting, or slightly broken, or slightly weird, on the grounds that "oh, but it's *almost* perfect!" You will never wear them. Ever.
3) Make your bed every day. It will make you feel approximately 20% more like a successful person.
4) Be aware and honest about your weaknesses.
5) Remember that being aware and honest about your weaknesses isn't the same thing as working on them.
6) Discovery brand guacamole is terrible.
7) Don't turn down opportunities just out of fear they won't pan out as well as you hope.
8) It's okay to not look perfect every day.
9) If you heat leftover pizza in a frying pan, it gives the crust a freshness and crunch. Microwaves are rarely the best option for reheating.
10) It's not the end of the world if you're not good at something right away. Not being good at something and persisting anyway is called discipline. You need more of it.
11) Walking is nice, and healthy, and cheap. Walk everywhere.
12) Putting effort into organising yourself well is the best way to achieve your goals.
13) You will not achieve all your goals. That's okay, some of your goals are stupid. You are not going to design the world's first personal mini-submarine.
14) Write as much as possible, even if you're not planning on showing it to anyone.
15) People are too busy worrying about how they look to other people to think too much about how you look to them.
16) Showing a little bit of extra appreciation to someone, or paying them a compliment, can really make their day.
17) Always carry mints.
18) If you know you're going to regret something, but think about doing it anyway, maybe don't do that thing. I am surprised this something it took several years to learn but apparently it did.
19) Trying new things will (mostly) not kill you.
20) Learn languages, and then maintain them. You will lose them faster than you think.
21) Water parks are actually fun and not that terrifying.
22) The best day to do something is the day you decide to do it. I actually got this one from a Japanese t-shirt.
23) You can get a lot of useful life advice from Japanese t-shirts.
24) A few people are awful. A few people are the nicest, most genuine, wonderful people. Most people are all right.
25) You are actually all right.
1) Avoiding thinking about a problem doesn't make it go away.
2) Don't buy clothes that are slightly ill-fitting, or slightly broken, or slightly weird, on the grounds that "oh, but it's *almost* perfect!" You will never wear them. Ever.
3) Make your bed every day. It will make you feel approximately 20% more like a successful person.
4) Be aware and honest about your weaknesses.
5) Remember that being aware and honest about your weaknesses isn't the same thing as working on them.
6) Discovery brand guacamole is terrible.
7) Don't turn down opportunities just out of fear they won't pan out as well as you hope.
8) It's okay to not look perfect every day.
9) If you heat leftover pizza in a frying pan, it gives the crust a freshness and crunch. Microwaves are rarely the best option for reheating.
10) It's not the end of the world if you're not good at something right away. Not being good at something and persisting anyway is called discipline. You need more of it.
11) Walking is nice, and healthy, and cheap. Walk everywhere.
12) Putting effort into organising yourself well is the best way to achieve your goals.
13) You will not achieve all your goals. That's okay, some of your goals are stupid. You are not going to design the world's first personal mini-submarine.
14) Write as much as possible, even if you're not planning on showing it to anyone.
15) People are too busy worrying about how they look to other people to think too much about how you look to them.
16) Showing a little bit of extra appreciation to someone, or paying them a compliment, can really make their day.
17) Always carry mints.
18) If you know you're going to regret something, but think about doing it anyway, maybe don't do that thing. I am surprised this something it took several years to learn but apparently it did.
19) Trying new things will (mostly) not kill you.
20) Learn languages, and then maintain them. You will lose them faster than you think.
21) Water parks are actually fun and not that terrifying.
22) The best day to do something is the day you decide to do it. I actually got this one from a Japanese t-shirt.
23) You can get a lot of useful life advice from Japanese t-shirts.
24) A few people are awful. A few people are the nicest, most genuine, wonderful people. Most people are all right.
25) You are actually all right.
Wednesday, 1 March 2017
Where are my glasses?
I cannot begin to explain how such a small thing is triggering the unraveling of my mind.
I have not seen my glasses for two weeks. They are not in my kitchen. They are not in the bathroom. They are not in the bed. They are not under the bed. They are not on the shelf. They are not under the sofa cushions. They are not at my desk at work. They are not at any other desks at work. They are not at my parents' house or the place where I volunteer. They are not at my boyfriend's house. They are not at the doctor's office. They are not in my mother's car. They have come unstuck in time and space.
They have to be somewhere and yet, somehow, they just aren't.
When I taught English as a foreign language I learned that one of the hardest things to get right as a non-native speaker are prepositions - why "in the morning" but "at night"? Why "on the train" not "in the train"? - but right now I feel like I'm done with prepositions as a general life concept. Once you look on top of a pillowcase and under a pillowcase, and then with only a slight hesitation look in the pillowcase, and then begin to wonder if it would be possible for your glasses to somehow be wrapped around the pillowcase in some four-dimensional manner that you simply can't see, you realise that our perception of physical objects and the relations they have to each other are basically a very complicated way to convince our brains that there is order in the universe and we're not just all hurtling on a big rock towards hell and chaos. In a weird way this might be the most frustrating thing to have happened to me all year, because it should be so simple and yet it isn't. They should be right next to me, or on the counter, or on my bedside table, but they refuse to be there, preferring to taunt me from invisible universes. They appear in my dreams, just out of my reach and inexplicably the size of the obelisk from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I am the Tantalus of the studio flat.
Please tell me if you find my glasses.
Sunday, 12 February 2017
How to Keep Going
Warning: this does get a bit self-help-y.
I'm writing this at exactly midnight on Sunday night/Monday morning. Another week has come and gone and I feel a bit crap because I haven't done my weekly blogpost again. Loyal readers - all eight of you - will know that one of my New Year's resolutions was to do one post a week, but so far I feel like I just haphazardly rush something out before bed, or else don't get it done until a couple of days late. Looking at the publishing dates makes me feel like a failure.
But then I look at them again and I think - well, this is my sixth post of the year. And it's been six weeks. Okay, so if you discount the one where I literally just wrote "tuna sandwich" there's only five. And if you discount the one that was only a couple of lines, it's only four...
...and if you discount whatever this is, it's three.
But that's three more than nothing. And it's following on from nine months where I didn't post at all. For a hobby that I'm balancing with a full-time job and various other life demands, it's actually not that bad. Maybe I need to stop feeling so guilty all the time for not committing myself 100% to everything when I only have 100% of me to give (85% if you allow for naps).
As I said in my last post, I have an all-or-nothing tendency where a key part of being productive is feeling like I'm being productive, and riding the wave of that energy, if that metaphor doesn't make me sound unbearable. If I waste a day sitting around, it lowers my mood and makes me feel guilty and useless, which tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of convincing myself I can't do anything and perpetuating the cycle of doing nothing again and again. If, on the other hand, I get lots of things done, I feel like I'm capable of more. I can keep going. If I could have that feeling all the time, I know I'd be so much better at life. So: maybe part of being productive isn't just about doing everything right away. Maybe it's about forgiving yourself when you don't do everything right away, so you don't feel worse and get worse. Maybe I have to get a more accurate picture of how much I should expect myself to do, and realise that there are only so many hours in a day. Maybe the trick is, instead of punishing yourself for failure, to give yourself the privilege of letting it go so you can keep going.
Even right now, with this blog post, focusing on the positive of how much more I've posted in the last few weeks has spurred me on to finish this post. I was originally telling myself just to start it, do a couple of sentences, see how it goes, and yet now I'm finishing it within 27 minutes of starting it (sorry about the unedited feel). I feel like this is probably a healthier way of going about things than my usual all-or-nothing tendencies - managing my goals and breaking them into smaller pieces when I don't feel totally up to them. Of course, I want to draw a line between letting go of failures and outright complacency, but I'm also going to accept that finding that line will take some time. We all struggle with that to an extent, I think, so I shouldn't expect myself to get the balance right instantly.
I'm going to bed now. It's 12.27 and I'm really tired. Happy though. Happy I kept going.
I'm writing this at exactly midnight on Sunday night/Monday morning. Another week has come and gone and I feel a bit crap because I haven't done my weekly blogpost again. Loyal readers - all eight of you - will know that one of my New Year's resolutions was to do one post a week, but so far I feel like I just haphazardly rush something out before bed, or else don't get it done until a couple of days late. Looking at the publishing dates makes me feel like a failure.
But then I look at them again and I think - well, this is my sixth post of the year. And it's been six weeks. Okay, so if you discount the one where I literally just wrote "tuna sandwich" there's only five. And if you discount the one that was only a couple of lines, it's only four...
...and if you discount whatever this is, it's three.
But that's three more than nothing. And it's following on from nine months where I didn't post at all. For a hobby that I'm balancing with a full-time job and various other life demands, it's actually not that bad. Maybe I need to stop feeling so guilty all the time for not committing myself 100% to everything when I only have 100% of me to give (85% if you allow for naps).
As I said in my last post, I have an all-or-nothing tendency where a key part of being productive is feeling like I'm being productive, and riding the wave of that energy, if that metaphor doesn't make me sound unbearable. If I waste a day sitting around, it lowers my mood and makes me feel guilty and useless, which tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of convincing myself I can't do anything and perpetuating the cycle of doing nothing again and again. If, on the other hand, I get lots of things done, I feel like I'm capable of more. I can keep going. If I could have that feeling all the time, I know I'd be so much better at life. So: maybe part of being productive isn't just about doing everything right away. Maybe it's about forgiving yourself when you don't do everything right away, so you don't feel worse and get worse. Maybe I have to get a more accurate picture of how much I should expect myself to do, and realise that there are only so many hours in a day. Maybe the trick is, instead of punishing yourself for failure, to give yourself the privilege of letting it go so you can keep going.
Even right now, with this blog post, focusing on the positive of how much more I've posted in the last few weeks has spurred me on to finish this post. I was originally telling myself just to start it, do a couple of sentences, see how it goes, and yet now I'm finishing it within 27 minutes of starting it (sorry about the unedited feel). I feel like this is probably a healthier way of going about things than my usual all-or-nothing tendencies - managing my goals and breaking them into smaller pieces when I don't feel totally up to them. Of course, I want to draw a line between letting go of failures and outright complacency, but I'm also going to accept that finding that line will take some time. We all struggle with that to an extent, I think, so I shouldn't expect myself to get the balance right instantly.
I'm going to bed now. It's 12.27 and I'm really tired. Happy though. Happy I kept going.
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