London, I’m learning, isn’t any one thing. Other cities I’ve lived in have been mostly one thing. Berlin: dark artsy Neverland. Sheffield: grungy student paradise. Melbourne: affluent hipster metropolis.
Continue readingLondon | Simba
My little brother has been helping me a lot recently. Dealing with the break up, plus starting a new job, settling into a new city, and adjusting to the unavoidable loneliness of London, there’s been a lot to think about, and at times… (deep breath; understatement of the fucking century incoming) I’ve struggled.
Continue readingAvignon | Encore
The train from Marseille to Avignon was a pleasant 90 minutes. The south of France looks like Spain, and reminds me of family holidays when I was a kid – walking along in flip flops and baggy shirts down to the beachfront restaurants for an evening meal, the night air warm, crickets chirping in the bushes.
I met Seth at the station. I’d been running late, and when I found him outside he was leaning on a railing, shaven-headed, grinning at me through a pair of dark sunglasses.
“Hello mate,” he said, when I came in for a hug.
It’s always nice to be back.
Continue readingMarseille | A Reunion
I’m on a train rocketing across the south of France, and from the window I can see the ocean and hills and a rusty abandoned car with lime green paint. Daniel Bedingfield has come on shuffle somehow, and it’s making me feel like a wide-eyed young girl on a 1990’s road trip.
Continue readingLondon | One Million Hamsters
On my first weekend in London I went to Alexandra Palace. This was with Sam, his girlfriend Christie, and Sam’s flatmate Lydia. The four of us piled into one of those cars you can hire for something like £7 an hour. It was a one-hour drive through central London, and Sam got all flustered driving while the rest of us talked and drank pink gin and tonics out of little cans.
Continue readingLondon | Lord of the Rats
Because I’ve been trying to be proactive and find friends and happiness and whatnot recently, I decided to do some volunteering in London.
Continue readingLondon | St. Reatham
I’m growing fond of Streatham Hill. It’s a buzzword for ‘shit’ around much of London, which I quite like. I ask somebody at a party where they live and they say ‘Pimlico’ or ‘Balham’ or whatever, and I say ‘nice’, and then they ask me where I live and I say Streatham and they say ‘oo’—the same sort of ‘oo’ noise people make when a footballer on the telly trips up and his shin bones burst through his calves.
Continue readingLondon | Yet Another Accidental Spangling
Well I’m not on antidepressants anymore lol.
Continue readingLondon | Soma
In one hour, my phone will ring. It will be a doctor, someone who I understand is called Laura, and she will ask me what is the matter and I will tell her I think I am depressed, and I will ask her to help me by prescribing me anti-depressants and therapy—the latter, of course, only if NHS waiting lists allow.
Continue readingLondon | Crew
Hello you.
Today is a hangover day because yesterday was band practice in a room over in Camden somewhere. I’m saying ‘band practice’ in a very casual way that implies I do it all the time, but this was actually the first in almost a decade. I was round at Sam’s garden in Clapham two weeks ago for beers, and we drunkenly decided to form a band once we learned Sam’s colleague Mike, who was also present, can play the drums. Sam plays guitar, as do I, so there you have it: band.
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