your humble narrator.
I feel like August was a roller-coaster month. The month went by so quickly, but also seemed to be a massive slog. Unusual during the summer that people typically never want to end, but I have never really been a summer person.
Good old British weather is having an identity crisis, one that I’d like it to fix if people would be so kind as to stop polluting the Earth. The heatwaves left me incapacitated and I seem to have done nothing but eat and spend money this month. Read more
For a society that is full of people self-diagnosing as autistic, nobody is obsessing over and fixating on music like they should be.
I jest. Sort of.
Last month, I thought about the tragedy of realising you’re in a memory as it is being made, and it made me think about those ineffable feelings that engulf us whenever we hear or smell something familiar.
I think music has fallen into the box of ‘things we’ve tried desperately to optimise’ – skimming through albums, popularising seven second snippets of the catchy parts and going viral with them. We hear way too much music without actually listening to it – there’s a subway take that expressed how I feel about this so well. Read more
As a millennial and a Tumblr gal back in the 00s and 10s, I started to feel like I was existing on Substack in a sea of people who are getting younger and younger than me and, if I am very candid, having less and less in common with me. It’s comforting to know that there are so many of us who refused to disappear when blogging dissolved or turned into the shitshow that is Twitter.
I write the same way I did when I was in my twenties, which probably contributes to why I feel like an old ugly duckling on here. The cynicism has never left me, my general anger at the state of the world has only compounded, and I probably will say things that will offend some people. But I’ve never cared about that. I’m not interested in reading about beauty trends, living a soft life, being a thought daughter, or how to become intelligent and well-read. I do what I want (while wearing winged eyeliner), and I already am intelligent and well-read. I don’t understand why many other people can’t get there on their own too.
I don’t care for censorship and trigger warnings, either (probably why the kids think we’re so inappropriate). I don’t believe in walking on eggshells because you want to appeal to everyone and then making sure you only make content that everyone will like. We’ve all walked different paths and have seen the world through different eyes – blogging is for everyone and, for me, the point is to be real. Why would I want to read a carefully curated piece of work that serves to be the same as… everything else? Some people have been able to live a nice, easy life; others have seen the horrors and want to share with the class
I want to read about what people are thinking, I want to read about personal experiences and all the little things that make their lives (and writing) different from everyone else’s. I want it to be accidentally adorned with their own personal flair and I don’t want it to be so censored. Thoughts can be ugly when they’re not censored, and it seems we’re scared of that.
Christmas wasn’t white, and the street was quiet when fireworks lit the sky up on New Year’s eve. I remember this period having qualities that would stir up nostalgic feelings in me, time off from school playing in the snow (in my skimpy pyjamas and slippers, infamously) and the neighbours down the street all standing in their driveways with champagne (or Shloer) in hand the moment the clocks struck midnight, screaming HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! at each other.
We had Queen and Take That with Don’t Stop me Now and Never Forget ringing in the new year on the TV and now we have Murder on the Dance Floor and Life is a Rollercoaster. Does any Gen Z individual even know who Ronan Keating is? I even spent one New Year’s Eve around a decade ago watching the fireworks in London (I use “watching” very loosely; really, I was stuck in a crowd for hours and having a jolly good time just hanging out in the freezing cold whether or not there were colours and smoke in the sky. ‘Happy new year Lon-don’ shouted the very drunk and happy European man as we all trawled to the tube station at snail pace that night. Never doing that again). Now, London’s firework display is a giant advert for whatever money-grabber is out at the time (I have not and will not watch Wicked, even if you play it through the London Eye).
Inb4 anybody freaks out about the formatting (which I also hate): below is a stream of consciousness, my internal monologue as I was walking to the gym the other very dark morning. It’s so interesting to me that some people don’t have an internal monologue – but I suppose it is similar to me not being able to visualise anything in my head.
There are no breaks, no paragraphs, no clear new ideas (except the million ones condensed into one giant ball of everything my brain has ever contained). Everything is written exactly as it happened upon me, read it if you wish. Tell you more about it later. Enjoy.
I woke up early this morning and decided to stay at home. A slow morning, one that wasn’t riddled with the rigid rules I decided to set myself the day before, a structured check list of errands and things to do. I didn’t go to the gym. I didn’t go for a walk to get in my eight-thousand steps before nine-a.m. I didn’t go to the shops to buy my groceries for the week and I didn’t think about getting in my protein and healthy fats.
I simply woke up, went downstairs, and made myself a tea.
It’s just me and the cat. As soon as he spotted me, he started skulking around and meowing by the door to be let out – but I didn’t want to have to watch over him and devote these first precious hours to preventing his stealthy escape from the barricaded garden walls. Why does he want to do that? Why can’t he just want to be still like me on this slow Sunday morning? But eventually I give in and open the doors; kind of because I’d like to enjoy the fresh air myself this morning, but mostly because his little face and tiny paws propping him up on my legs to be carried have moved me, although I know it is but manipulation. He doesn’t actually want to be carried and he will jump away from me as soon as he feels the warm air on his whiskers.