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'I'm truly quite relieved that we are both leaving this place at the same time,' My Pregnant Friend said to me in the staff room at work. 'For serious, I genuinely question how you function on your own.' She had just watched me try to peel an orange after lunch. I don't like the white pithy bit- who does?- and so I had decided to peel it with a knife so that I was left only with blood-orangey goodness and didn't have to pick bits out of my teeth before the next lesson. Only, by the time I was finished I was left with an orange the size of a walnut because most of the fruit was still nestled in the skin I had tried to peel off; I had juice in my nostrils and on my arms up to the elbows, and the table was strewn with skin, liquid, and the my tears of frustration. I CAN'T EVEN PREPARE FRUIT PROPERLY. I lose. I've backpacked the world, achieved a first-class honours , performed to audiences of thousands (fine. Hundreds.) and yet I still struggle to take

So the cafe I normally go and write in every morning- the one with the fit grey-haired man who I have yet to find the nerve to smile at, let alone talk to- has been closed for renovation. This means I have had to seek cappuccino-and-vagina-writing solace elsewhere. I picked a cafe close to work because I had never been in it when more then 4 people had occupied tables, so it was quiet enough to work in, and it meant that well. I was was close to work. The place is run by two old guys who in my imagination I call the Thin Old Man and the Fat Old Man because my imagination is tired from inventing synonyms for the word fuck and producing detailed fantasies of how Ryan Gosling would be all, 'Hey girl...' in a conversation opener that would undoubtedly conclude with me sat in his face. The bar is also totes my favourite of all the places because they once gave me free chocolate. Yes, emotionally I do operate like a seal: I'll clap and do tricks if you feed me , otherwise I

'It's gone. That thing has my entire finished manuscript in it and it's gone.' At 9 p.m. on Wednesday evening, my life was taken from me. Every copy of my manuscript- the one that I have been working on for two years- was stolen. Gone. Disappeared. Taken. 'We're going to be late for dinner,' I had said to my two girlfriends, glancing at the time on the cell phone beside my empty spritz glass. 'Let's pay up and go.' I'd stood up and pushed my stool away from the bar to reach down for my bag: a brown brushed leather man's satchel, with knots in the strap because it was too long for me, and a big oil stain on the bottom left-hand corner from where my pesto gnocchi leaked once. It's a bag that many people have joked, 'Jesus, what is in there (Insert cliche here: Bricks? The kitchen sink? Your ex-boyfriend's severed head?) ' as they have moved it or passed it to me or walked into it and broken a toe. And every time I reply the

One of the most exciting things that can happen to me now that I am no longer based in England is mail. This is for many reasons: 1. Post making its way all the way from another country to my actual address in Rome is a magical occurrence, because 75% of international packages get misplaced in this godforsaken infrastructure-less country and never make it to where they are supposed to be going. Arrival alone is success. 2. When post does arrive, it has a big picture of Jesus on it, because sticking big religious pictures onto a delivery for a godforsaken infrastructure-less CATHOLIC country is the only guarantee that said delivery will arrive. As my Dad tells the woman at his post office, “Because you see, nobody fucks with Jesus.” (Also: Yes, I am aware of the irony in calling a Catholic country Godforsaken but like duh. WELCOME TO MY LIFE. Italy IS a mass of contradiction because nobody filed the paperwork properly. They were having cappuccino.) 3. Deliveries are only ever from Mum a

I’ve never had a pregnant friend before. Well. No friend that has been pregnant on purpose and past the three-month cut-off mark. Wait, what? We’re starting this off with a tasteless abortion joke? Sorry I’m not sorry. Anyway, it’s dead interesting- in a biological experiment kind of a way, like using a mooncup and monitoring your output, or squeezing blackheads on somebody else’s back- and I’m learning proper well loads. Like, nipples. My pregnant friend texts me all the time with nipple updates. Not unlike the areola of a fat African tribal woman now, she’ll say. Or gas. Pregnant women get hella gassy. I quite like the competition. She’ll walk into the staff room at work and apologise in advance before belching Homer Simpson-eqsue, and then I’ll do the first half of the alphabet in response and she’ll look at me with relief and gratitude and say, ‘Thank you.’ Dude. Totally my pleasure. Pregnant women bake a lot and start feeding people with peanut butter energy bars and birthday cake

Last night, I said to Calum over Skype, ‘I need to talk to you about my life plan,’ and he said, ‘Shoot.’ I said, ‘I have diagrams and lists and it’s all very boring,’ and he replied, ‘We’re planning a life over three different continents. Boring is the last thing you’ll ever be Laura.’ And that was a really nice and reassuring thing to say, but also made me think of what somebody said at work once. When I was sick she asked, ‘Is somebody going to look after you at home?’ and I was offended and said, ‘I don’t need anybody to look after me,’ and then she sighed and said, ‘Oh yes. I forgot that your life is a sitcom.’ MY LIFE IS A SITCOM. What a simultaneously hilarious and horrifying observation. Do I self-sabotage because it’s funnier that way? OHMYGOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME WHY AM I NOT JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE AND DOES EVERYONE FEEL THIS WAY? I BET EVERYONE FEELS THIS WAY. IT’S OKAY. I’LL BE OKAY. Breathe. Then I remembered that last week I blew my nose on my bright pink lacy thong in

My brother recently sent me a message on Skype that I can't for the life of me find again, because he has crazy privacy settings on that shit. He is weird about social media and the Internet and not telling the world every single little thing about himself in the history of being like, for example, by blogging on the daily- hi, Jack!- but it essentially, in paraphrasing, said something like this: 'You go here and there, forever on the outskirts of every friendship group you have ever made, never quite belonging and always with one foot out of the door. Other people don't like this, but you don't know any other way to be. It's like you are weird and not normal and a bit broken.' And at first I was like, MEANIE! but then the last bit said, 'But this doesn't make you broken. It makes you a writer' and then I was a bit more like AWWWWW. He sent me this because he has had the same core friends for ten years and although a traveller- I have 11 different ce

So basically, what I'm wondering is: how do other people do it? Function, I mean. Because I struggle. Trying to fulfil my potential and all that other wacky shit I promised myself on January 1st sees me with really limited wanking time and most certainly short on minutes for Googling naked celebrities on the daily. I'm out of the house for twelve hours writing and getting pissed off by Italian parents , barely managing a run down the river when I get in, and then I take a shower where most of the time I don't shave my legs before collapsing into bed with half an episode of Downton Abbey or a Skype call home before I suddenly just- Yup. Out like a light. My friend Alma knows me to be so incapable of the small things that in order to get me to come visit her she went on ahead and booked a plane ticket for me, calling only to confirm that I wasn't somehow due to live in Istanbul that day and to instruct me to text her confirmation that I was actually at the airport for th

Dear The Mothers of Rome, Please find outlined important notes on child rearing, for your immediate attention. 1.      Your 7 year-old should not be interrupting my lesson to say, ‘Teacher, I really need to make a poo but when there is no bidet my mother normally wipes for me.’ Should this situation arise, your child will return home with either a dirty arsehole because he can’t clean himself, or a dirty arsehole because he shat himself from trying to hold it in. As an English teacher and not a Shit Attendant, neither of these is my problem. 2.      If your 3 year-old cannot aim for the toilet bowl with over 75% accuracy then do not let him use my bathroom unattended. I am not responsible for mopping the floor, wiping down the sink, and cleaning the OUTSIDE OF THE CISTERN any more than you are responsible for changing my tampons. 3.      If your child has a bad flatulence problem, CHANGE HIS DIET. Those smells are not natural, no matter how silently they are omitted. When the kid who e