this week

Spring has come to Battery Point…

Another week has passed, a week in which I was braced for turbulence that never eventuated. Today I feel oddly fragile, like a bird with a sore wing. Nothing’s broken, maybe I’ve just flown into a window.

I’m writing this with the front door open (even though it’s cloudy in Hobart today it’s still warm) and a steaming cup of Bengal Spice tea on my desk, the smell of jasmine, lilac and wattle in the air, and the crow of the neighbourhood rooster echoing in the street.

Getting grounded, taking a moment to be here, now, in the moment - it always helps.

Favourite experience/s of the week

Lots of little moments of joy. Finishing a journal and starting a new one. A beautiful card and letter from a friend on the mainland. Two lovely morning runs with the smell of crushed gumnuts underfoot, a clear view of the mountain, a still river and wallabies watching me from the long grass. Another friend’s new book arriving, lying in bed with it, turning pages until well after midnight.

Reading

My friend Holly’s new book The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding - I’m trying my best to savour it and not succeeding, she’s written another page turner! I’ll say more once I’ve finished it but needless to say it’s sumptuous, sensory and poignant writing, as always, and I’m enjoying it very much.

My Tongue is My Own: A Life of Gwen Harwood by Ann-Marie Priest - I’m reading this to review for an academic journal and absolutely loving it. Thoroughly researched, lively and utterly riveting, I’m loving getting to know Gwen Harwood and the fascinating life she lived. Any good biography of a poet should send the engaged reader straight to the work and that’s exactly what this book has done for me - I’m now reading Harwood’s poetry alongside the biography, which is proving to be a fun, if slightly mind bending, experience!

Everything Feels Like The End of the World by Else Fitzgerald - I’ve started dipping into this short story collection which is described as “short speculative fiction exploring possible futures in an Australia not so different to our present day to one thousands of years into an unrecognisable future.” Certainly what I’ve read so far has felt very prescient! Full of fiery, flooding imagery, cities becoming unliveable. As I dipped into this earlier in the week we were told to brace ourselves for severe weather which ended up not reaching us down here…yet. Towns on the mainland already torn apart by flooding needing to prepare for more, and worse. So reading Fitzgerald’s stories felt odd alongside this, and everything else that has happened - it’s speculative but also very, very real. In many ways it almost reads like nostalgia for the world we live in now, because on some level we know it’s already been lost. Lots to ponder here.

GQ Magazine: 14 hours in the queue to see Queen Elizabeth’s coffin by Laurie Penny - would I have queued to see the Queen lying in state if I still lived in London? I really didn’t know, especially after reading this!

Paul Graham: Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule - an article from 2009 but still deeply relevant and relatable. It made me feel very seen. A must read for creatives!

Listening to

We Can Do Hard Things with Glenn Doyle: Hannah Gadsby, How to Communicate Better - always a pleasure to listen to Hannah who, as the whole world knows, is a very funny and deeply intelligent person.

How to Fail: Melanie Chisholm on mental health, self-worth and the Spice Girls - loved this revealing, tender and lively interview with Melanie, who comes across as someone very grounded and self-aware. I related to so much of what she had to say. Highly recommended!

Doing it Right with Pandora Sykes: a new to me podcast which I’m impressed with so far - her conversation with environmentalist and slow fashion advocate Venetia La Manna (one of my favourite Youtubers) was fantastic. Two articulate, passionate and well-informed women having an important conversation - it ticked all my boxes!

I’ve had Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony (his 6th symphony) playing while writing and working this week - in My Tongue is My Own, there is a lovely description of new mother Gwen in 1946 bringing her baby home from the hospital, back to their Fern Tree cottage, on the road to Hobart’s mountain kunanyi/Mt Wellington. She and her husband had just got a radio and Beethoven’s Pastoral was what came on as Gwen walked out on to the balcony, baby in her arms, as the snow began to fall. '“It was too much: that marvellous Movement…the snow falling, the great tall gum trees and to hold my own child. Every time I hear that great flowing theme, I am back there with the child, in the snow.” (88).

Eating

My favourite spinach, risoni and lemon soup - with loads of dill! Absolutely delicious as always.

Our favourite brunch, the Full Vegan, was enjoyed after a big 10km walk on the weekend. I haven’t seen our favourite sausages in the shops for a while but we make do with the hash browns, avocado, mushrooms and beans!

We had a Sunday roast with some wellingtons I’d made from the vegan sausage roll mixture and frozen the weekend before. After a bedtime flick through Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries, I was craving roast potatoes, crispy and golden, their edges made translucent with (vegan) butter. Utterly delicious!

We also had the usual tofu noodle stir fry, dhal from the freezer, and more mind-blowing nachos which are such a treat. I also made a broccoli pasta with miso, vegan cream and capers which was quite sensational.

Watching

We finished The Newsreader on ABC iview which was absolutely wonderful - I cannot recommend it more highly. Smart writing, great acting and an utterly compelling story. If you loved Morning Wars (The Morning Show), I think this is even better.

I caught up with a few of my favourite Youtubers while also catching up on my sewing - I’m making a gift for a friend who I’m going to see in a few weeks so wanted to get that almost finished. I really enjoy sewing while catching up with Katie, Miranda, Venetia, Helen and Phoebe. In Katie’s case, I do know her - we met at an Arvon Foundation event well over ten years ago now and stayed in intermittent touch for a few years. I didn’t realise she had a Youtube channel, and so watching a few episodes on her channel I felt like I’d spent the afternoon sewing and catching up with an old friend, which was really nice! Who are your favourites? Anyone I should be checking out?

Grateful for

Tom. Every time I am lost, he is the map that helps me get home.

Quote of the week

Not attributed to anyone in particular, just something I wrote in the last pages of the journal book I’ve just finished that felt pertinent this week. I think I read somewhere that everything that happens to you, you have a choice - whether you let it open you up, or close you down. This is my reminder to stay open. May it be yours too, if you need it.

Be open, not closed.

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post, or anything else, with me, please do! Have a happy weekend and I’ll see you next week xx

Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre 2023 Fellowships announced

I am beyond thrilled to let you know that I am a Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre Fellow for 2023!

The Centre announced the Fellowship recipients earlier this week:

This annual fellowship program provides placements for dedicated aspiring, emerging and established writers looking to develop a writing project. These successful applicants will have the time and space to work in an inspirational environment with special access to Katharine's Cottage, where celebrated novelist Katharine Susannah Prichard wrote most of her works. While in residence at KSP, these fellows also have access to an active community of peers through our many writing groups and workshops.

This means at some point next year I will have two weeks of immersive and focused writing time at this beautiful-looking centre in the outskirts of Perth, Western Australia, where I will be working on my PhD novel. Hopefully by then I will be well and truly on a third draft…maybe a fourth.

At the start of the year I vowed that 2022 would not be another year that I lost to imposter syndrome, which means I’ve put my hat in the ring for many things like this, things I might have been scared off applying for in previous years. Not all of them have come off but that wasn’t the point - the point was to try. That was the deal I made with myself. Just try - no expectations or cherished outcomes beyond that. The lesson Liz Gilbert taught me four years ago seems to have finally sunk in.

To say I can’t wait for 2023 now would be an understatement! Getting this news has been utterly wondrous and spirit-lifting. The day I got the email, I kept checking it to make sure I hadn’t misread it! It’s amazing what can happen when you get out of your own way and just try.

Thank you so much KSP - see you next year!

the last two weeks

The usual excuses, my friends! I seem to have blinked and it’s another Friday. And how is it October tomorrow?! I promise I will get back to more regular posting soon. I have two weeks to catch you up on, though there hasn’t been anything too exciting to report. Except…

Favourite experience of the last two weeks

The birth of and meeting my new nephew. Holding him, stroking his silky cheeks and downy head, marvelling at his tiny ears and fingers with those miraculous little specks of nail on them, watching his eyes flutter open and look at me. He is beautiful. I can’t wait to get to know him.

Reading

While it feels like I’ve been working non-stop (and I have!), I’ve also been reading a lot. My brain feels like it’s had some hearty meals.

I read Blueberries by Ellena Savage which I thought was excellent - so inventive, clever and affecting. I watched quite a bit of Parks and Recreation while I was reading it so somehow found myself reading this book in the voice of April Ludgate as it’s quite dry and cynical in its humour (I thought), which added to my enjoyment (though some parts of it, the first essay in particular, are not funny at all). At the same time, it’s so poetic and fragmented, and really pushes your perceptions on what you expect to find when you pick up a memoir. In fact, I started the book halfway through, because I opened the book at random and was so intrigued by what I saw, I read from there, and then went back to the beginning…which added to the slight disorientation, never quite knowing what to expect. What does it mean to write about yourself, your body, your traumas, the way you live in the world? These are questions which, on reflection, I’d like to have grappled with in a more intellectual way in my past work. The toothpaste is already out of the tube in that regard but these questions still really interest me and I love seeing how other writers play around with them. Savage is really clever and creative in how she straddles self-enquiry and enquiry about the world at large. I really loved it!

I also read Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder which I devoured in mere days. I was intrigued by a mention of it in one of Jen Campell’s videos and thought I’d check it out at the library. All I have to say is WOW. It’s a very clever and utterly surreal novel that has an element of fairytale about it (which are, after all, incredibly dark stories). It’s about an exhausted, rage-filled mother of a young child who starts turning into a dog. As in…she is literally turning into a dog. She starts growing fur, prowling the neighbourhood at night, killing small prey, and eating a lot of meat. Even her child gets in on the act! It was quite a trip to read this on Day 1 and 2 of my cycle, I have to say! Of course, it is an extended metaphor and a very, very clever one. I think every woman, mother or not, can relate to that rage that is so deep it’s in your bones at the sacrifices and behaviours that are expected of us, with or without children. Fabulous. Highly recommended!

I also started reading A.S Byatt’s latest short story collection Medusa’s Ankles which I’ve been dipping in and out of - again, very surreal fiction set in a recognisable world.

The Guardian: I enjoyed this piece on Lena Dunham, this one on writing the story of Australian history, this one on how more doctors are writing about the harsh reality of practicing medicine in this country but I particularly loved this one by writer Sarah Moss, who wrote about buying herself a small gift when at a low personal ebb:

Maybe we’re allowed to find small joys, in proportion to our situations, on a burning planet with the ancestors howling in our ears.

I was gutted to read of the death of Hilary Mantel, whose command of and passion for the craft of historical writing has had such an impact on my own work these past few years. I highly recommend all of her Reith Lectures which make for fascinating and compelling listening, in one of which she says:

You don’t become a novelist to become a spinner of entertaining lies: you become a novelist so you can tell the truth.

What an incredible human and writer she was, and what a legacy she leaves.

Sydney Review of Books: Hypocrisy, bruh! which introduced me to another (previously unknown to me) literary controversy surrounding a book I will probably never read but the real-life drama was very intriguing!

The Audacity: Not Your Gilmore Girl: A Meditation

LitHub: How dealing in facts helps fiction writers hone their craft

Listening to

Wellness Unpacked with Ella Mills: Manifesting, creating your dream life and adaptogenic mushrooms and How to lead a more fulfilled life, let go of perfection and the power of a daily gratitude practice - both very good episodes but particularly enjoyed the latter one. I should have liked to have known Sarah when I lived in the UK, I think we would have had a lot to talk about!

The Atlantic: How To Build A Happy Life: How to forgive ourselves for what we can’t change - a new to me podcast and I really enjoyed this episode.

BeWILDered: Elizabeth Gilbert gets Bewildered! Loved this one, it’s fascinating to hear what Liz has been up to and how much I relate to a lot of what she says!

The First Time: Masters Series: Sophie Cunningham - a very enjoyable window into the craft and work of a writer I have always been curious about but whose work I don’t know well. Maybe the time has come for a deep dive?

Eating (and cooking)

So many delicious things.

Creamy pumpkin risotto, pictured - absolutely scrumptious.

I made Deliciously Ella’s spiced cauliflower and cashew pilaf traybake, which was utterly divine. It’s a recipe from her new book, which I haven’t got yet - I got this recipe emailed as part of her newsletter (but I found a link online for it for you). I’ll definitely be getting the book, as hers are some of the ones I cook from the most often (and if you know me, and how many cookbooks I have, that’s saying something!).

Fennel, walnut and sun-dried tomato pappardelle from Special Guest by Annabel Crabb and Wendy Sharpe, a book on whose brilliance and delicious recipes I have waxed lyrical several times before. This is my favourite recipe from that book and one I love to make when fennel is cheap and plentiful.

Yellow split pea dhal with loads of greens from the garden and chilli - I wanted to use up a huge bag of yellow split peas that I bought during the national lockdown of 2020 when red lentils were nowhere to be seen. This cook-up helped me stock the freezer and the dhal was so nourishing and warming.

Speaking of a cook-up, I made Jamie Oliver’s pasta e ceci soup and a loaf of bread for my sister and her family for when they brought the new baby home from the hospital. I’m planning on making a vat of that soup for us too, as the sample I tasted for seasoning was very delicious indeed!

Vegan sausage rolls to watch the Grand Final with….which we ended up not watching much of at all! Sob!

We cheered ourselves up with nachos for dinner, which were heavenly as always. I used wombok cabbage instead of lettuce for a winter variation and we didn’t have any avocado in, but oddly that seemed not to matter - in fact, Tom told me he preferred it without.

I’ve also discovered Biscoff spread which is somehow vegan (how?!) and has proved to be very dangerous indeed. I made a version of peanut butter cups with it (with Biscoff instead of peanut butter, obviously) all of which disappeared far too quickly. I also made a vegan chocolate cake for a celebration and put dollops of the spread in the middle of the batter before baking. It was unbelievably good.

Vegan banana bread also made. It’s compulsory when there are spotty bananas in the fruit bowl, am I right?

Watching

We finished the whole series of Parks and Recreation for perhaps the second time this year. One of my favourites!

We finally watched the film Citizen Kane which in all honesty I had never seen - and I was astonished at how many Simpsons jokes and homages I suddenly understood, after all this time. Ahead of its time - absolutely. The greatest film ever made, as so many have claimed it to be? Not in my opinion. But worth watching all the same.

We also finished The Thick of It series which made me almost yearn for my former British workplaces in a very, very weird way. Though I don’t think I’ll ever yearn for the one that had its office inside Paddington station.

We’ve just started watching The Newsreader, which is on ABC iview here and I believe is also on BBC iPlayer in the UK. It’s just brilliant. If you liked Morning Wars (which is what it’s called here, because we have a show called The Morning Show, which is what it’s called everywhere else), you will love this - I think it’s even better, in many respects. We’re two episodes in and I’m already hooked. The series is set in Australia in 1986 and there’s something quite surreal about watching something set in a place and time when you were a young child and realising how much of it you remember.

Picking

Rainbow chard, silverbeet, cavolo nero. I also picked a big bunch of celery for my dad. In the garden itself I planted some broad beans and marked out a spot for my potatoes. Soon it will be time for spring planting!

Moving

I’ve felt like doing a lot of yoga this week - I really love Jessica Richburg’s channel on Youtube. She has a lot of lovely gentle practices. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence but ending my work day with some gentle yin yoga has also coincided with me sleeping better than usual. So I’ll be curious to keep that practice up!

Noticing

Magnolias in full bloom, everywhere. How the air when you go outside at night is fragrant with jasmine and wattle flowers. How alive everything suddenly looks and feels after a long winter. And yet, the minute you change your bedsheets back to the spring and summer ones, the nights suddenly dip back to a freezing two degrees!

Quote of the week

It had to be Hilary, of course. There were so many I could have picked but this one felt apt:

“The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.” - Hilary Mantel

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post, or anything else, with me, please do! Wishing you all a happy and safe weekend, filled with enjoyable things xx

this (last) week

Winter greens still going strong…

As I’m writing this on a Monday, it should be called Last Week! I’ve settled for the title above, as you see. I hope to get back to my regularly scheduled posting soon. Things have been a little crazy but I’m not complaining.

We’re currently waiting for a new nephew to be born - today is his due date - and very excited at the prospect of baby cuddles again! Wriggly toddler cuddles are, of course, great too but there’s something so special about cradling a brand new human in your arms. Expect that to be my “favourite experience of the week” in an upcoming post!

Favourite experience/s of the week

Finding out I was successful in my application for a 2023 Residential Fellowship at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Centre in Western Australia! Next year I’ll be working on my novel there for two weeks. To say I’m EXCITED and THRILLED and HONOURED would be an understatement!! More details to come on this soon.

A quieter but no less gratifying achievement was looking back through my journal volume before last - written in April sometime, I think - and seeing a list of four things I wanted to do this year, in terms of my writing, career and PhD progress. As of yesterday, I’ve done all four. I’m very, very chuffed. I’ll write more about this at some point because there have been some pretty seismic shifts for me of late, but all four goals were only to do with my output. There weren’t to do with anything happening beyond putting my hat in the ring, or reaching a certain milestone. Surprise surprise, these things are achievable with enough discipline. And achieving them has given me confidence to set my sights higher.

And, far out, the lifestyle gurus and self-made millionaires might be on to something - writing your goals down is pretty bloody powerful.

Reading

Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory by Sarah Polley - I read this at Tom’s insistence, as he thought I would get a great deal out of it. What can I say, he knows me!

I only knew Sarah Polley from her work on the Ramona TV series I watched and enjoyed as a child. I remember wanting to be an actor myself quite desperately as a child and lamenting that we lived in a part of the country where as far as I was aware there was no, or rarely any, call for child actors. I would read about stars of TV shows I watched avidly, children my age or a bit older, and about how the entire family was moved to Sydney or Melbourne for their career. I occasionally wondered why my parents hadn’t done the same - I had, after all, wowed audiences with my performance in The Emperor’s New Clothes. Having read Sarah Polley’s memoir, I am so deeply grateful my parents just let me be a kid and perform at school or in the backyard with my sisters!

Polley’s experiences are quite heartbreaking to read - how she was exploited and vulnerable for most of her early career, pushed to her physical limits, struggling with the tragic death of her mother when she was only 11, and how most of the adults around her, including directors, producers and her own parents, failed to protect her from, as she puts it, an industry that was built on exploitation. She writes with such fierce intelligence, and with the benefit of both hindsight and now being a parent herself, about these difficult years and experiences, creating a dialogue between the past and the present:

These are the most dangerous stories of my life. The ones I have avoided, the ones I haven't told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. As these stories found echoes in my adult life, and then went another, better way than they did in childhood, they became lighter and easier to carry.

I think that’s what I found so admirable about the book - that Polley unpacks these painful “dangerous” stories in the present, advocating for her younger self and giving her the voice she didn’t have at the time. Polley doesn’t vilify (all of) the people who should have known better or protected her; she even questions and acknowledges the fallibility of her own memory at times. A side effect of trauma, after all, is selective memory as a form of self protection. But it is in the aftermath of a serious concussion that Polley, as she struggles to recover, is urged not to lie in dark rooms and succumb to her symptoms. Rather, in order to recover, she needed to “run towards the danger”. She would only regain strength by pushing through and doing things that were painful. It worked, and so Polley applied the same philosophy to other traumas in her life. The result is a beautifully written, moving meditation on memory, resilience, vulnerability, strength, and coming to terms with painful things. Highly recommended!

I also finished an ARC of Free to Go: Across the World on a Motorbike by Esa Aldegheri, which is out in the UK now and is being published in Australia in November. It’s a very cleverly written travel memoir that, a bit like Sarah Polley’s book, sets up a dialogue between the past and present. Trapped in lockdown in Scotland in 2020, Aldegheri finds herself homeschooling three children and lamenting her lost freedom, not just related to the pandemic but due to Brexit and the rising xenophobia associated with it. She remembers a wild, freeing adventure she and her now husband took some years earlier, riding a motorbike from Italy to New Zealand - a motorbike she was the primary rider of. Aldegheri ponders the idea that women are expected to ride in the sidecar of a motorbike (referred to as riding pillion) as well as in the sidecar of life; their desires and dreams often being secondary, especially once motherhood enters the equation. The book switches back and forth from the exhilaration of the open road, travelling through remote Central Asia, India, China and then Australia; to the mundane, stultifying reality of pandemic living. Though, Aldegheri wonders, how free was she in the first place - as a woman, a mother, a European who has made her life in a country that has left the European Union? Even on her incredible adventure, before marriage and children, there were still constraints and borders that were hard to cross. How do you navigate the world, literally and metaphorically, as a free-spirited woman? As you can imagine, I related hard to a lot of Aldegheri’s observations!

Listening to

The usual writing playlists - I have grown particularly attached to an old Nils Frahm favourite, Corn. I vividly remember standing on a platform at Moorgate station back in the day, waiting for a delayed train, and having it on repeat. I couldn’t find it on streaming for years and was delighted to rediscover it a few weeks ago.

I am also halfway through this amazing episode of Between the Covers: there is honestly so much to unpack here. I have long been a fan of “The Hero’s Journey” both as a narrative device and as a spiritual philosophy, but I had never appreciated how rooted in colonialism (and conquering) it is. This is a fascinating conversation and I am excited to write more of my thoughts about the “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” because I think it definitely applies to the novel I’m writing at the moment.

Favourite Friday Night Fodder!

Eating

I’ve got to start taking pictures of every meal again - it’s a very reliable memory jog!

Monday: Chilli made with black beans, kidney beans, leftover mushroom and walnut ragu and leftover homemade salsa, served with brown rice, coconut yoghurt and pickled jalapeños

Tuesday: Pasta with sunflower seed pesto

Wednesday: Roasted tofu, carrot and pumpkin with satay sauce and rice

Thursday: Both of us worked late, so it was DUMPLINGS (ready in 10 minutes)

Friday: Beetroot quinoa burgers (I loosely used a Deliciously Ella recipe - I subbed the quinoa for leftover brown rice) and homemade vegan mayo with fresh basil - OMG both were amazing! The mayo is keeping well.

Saturday: Sweet potato mac and cheese

Sunday: Leftover sweet potato Mac and cheese, turned into a bake (with breadcrumbs and cheese on top), with cavolo nero on the side

I made a delicious homemade dipping sauce for the dumplings on Thursday based on the OTK bang bang noodles sauce recipe, which is equal parts tahini, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and a splash of maple syrup. There was plenty leftover so we’ll use that for a stir fry noodle dish this week.

I also made Deliciously Ella’s nut butter chocolate chip cookies - well, my version thereof! Added a few extra bits and pieces, and they were divine. We had no self control around them, the whole batch was gone by Saturday!

Watching

Thor: Love and Thunder (4K Blu Ray) - I’ve never been disappointed by a Taika Waititi film (or by anything involving him, his TED talk is hilarious!) and this one was no exception. You know you’re in for a wacky, laughter-filled ride. Thor Ragnarok is one of our favourite Marvels, and we wondered how on earth Taika would top that - the answer is with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) seeking inner peace; his ex Jane (Natalie Portman) coming back into his life in a very powerful form but hiding a painful secret of her own; a disappointing meeting with Zeus (Russell Crowe), “never meet your heroes",” Thor laments afterwards; a terrifying villain in Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) whom you manage to feel a little empathy for; and some screaming goats who made Tom and I lose it every time they appeared. The soundtrack is awesome - it’s basically 80s and 90s rock, dominated by Guns N Roses - and it just manages to be both funny and moving at the same time, like most of Taika Waititi’s work. There’s some wonderful symbolism, I thought, about children being at the mercy of adults when it comes to real crises that are going to affect them in the future (climate change, for example) and it also sets up a sequel that has the potential to be equally hilarious!

Best Sellers (iTunes) - Tom and I synced up our in-flight TVs so we could watch this together on the plane to London four months ago, and we really enjoyed it, so we were keen to give it another watch in the comfort of our own home and without the need for subtitles! It was wonderful to see it again and absorb its quiet brilliance and admire the direction and acting. Ambitious young editor Lucy Standbridge (Aubrey Plaza) has inherited her father's publishing house, and things are not going well. Every book she publishes is universally panned by critics and book-tubers and the publishing house is on its last legs financially. She discovers she is owed a book by Harris Shaw (Michael Caine), an utterly cantankerous, alcoholic, reclusive author who originally put the company on the map decades earlier but hasn’t published a book (or been seen) since. Desperate to save the company, Lucy insists Harris honour his contract and release a new book; she makes no edits on the proviso that he comes with her on what turns out to be the book tour from hell. Very funny and touching, and genuinely surprising in places, I enjoy any movie about a writer, even a washed-up, booze-addled old curmudgeon like Harris, who is played brilliantly by Michael Caine.

The original blog banner from 2005…..

Grateful for

I just realised as I was writing that on this day in 2005 (SEVENTEEN years ago?!) that I published my first ever blog post. Seventeen years. I had only been alive for a bit longer than that at the time!

What seemed like a very small thing ended up being one of the most momentous things I’ve ever done. It changed the course of my life. Who knows where I would be right now without it. I am very grateful for that, and for everyone who has read and continued to read my work over the years, who continues to offer support and encouragement to this day. It is so very special to still hear from people who have been reading since the very beginning. You know who you are. I am so, so humbled that you’re still here. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Admittedly, I have had moments over the years where I deeply regretted starting that blog too - moments where I felt overexposed and attacked, frightened and vulnerable; when that world was very new and not very many people could relate to or understand some of the things I had to deal with. I’ve also sometimes wished that I had known how dangerous it can be to start a narrative about your body in public. But, as Sarah Polley said in an interview about her book, I’m very happy with my life as it is right now so it’s hard to feel regret about anything in the past. It’s also hard to regret the decision when, as I mentioned above, I still hear from lovely people all over the world who are still on the journey with me, people who have been some of my most generous friends and cheerleaders over the years. The good has far outweighed the not so good. There are things I’d do differently, with the benefit of hindsight, of course. But no regrets. Only gratitude.

Quote of the week

“You cannot use someone else’s fire: you can only use your own.” - Audre Lorde. The quote continues: “in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it.”

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post, or anything else, with me, please do! I hope you find things to savour and ponder and that give you joy this coming week xx

all the lives we live

Cooking with Theo Randall in London, 2013. Photo by Soolin Cottle.

Sometimes I look back at pictures of things I’ve done, people I’ve met, experiences I’ve had, and I have to pinch myself a little. I can’t quite get my head around it. Was that me? Did that really happen?

I’m stunned by all the lives we live. And stunned that there are more, undoubtedly, to come.