back up blog

I’m shit with money. It’s not cute. Maybe in your early twenties living off baked beans for two months until the student loan comes through is worth the story it produces, but at 27? At 27 living off of £2.35 the week before payday is just a bit… sad. Let it be said that I’ve been financially independent since I was 18. I financed university by myself, and I’ve paid rental deposits, airfares, phone bills, the lot, all on my lonesome, my whole adult life. I know many a human who calls daddy when they get to zero, which, you know, no judgment, but I’d rather die than do that. I spend most conversations with my father telling him what an independent woman I am, desperately positioning myself as an adult in his eyes (tip: we’re never adults in our parents’ eyes). I can’t do that and then follow up with a, “So, any chance of five hundred quid…?” Thing is, I’ve never been a saver, either. I’ve never put money away for a rainy day. If I find a tenner in an old coat pocket I spend it; if I cra...

We’ve all done it, haven’t we? Sent a picture of our boobs to a man we’ve never met. Well. Actually. Until Friday night I hadn’t, actually. But I’m assured by the results of an informal poll amongst my more slutty friends ( Calum ) that it’s like, a totally normal thing to do. I was four drinks in. And eyeing-up a 21 year-old at the bar. And thinking inappropriate thoughts that no matter how many times I said to myself this is not real emotion, you are horny because your period is due and you always dry hump table legs when your period is due and just whilst I’m here, addressing this issue, SINGLE LADIES OF THE INTERNET! Does this happen to you, too? The pre-period horn? Because now I don’t do casual sex anymore I really don’t know how to control those urges and Too Much Information, readers? I HAVEN’T EVEN STARTED YET. I was drunk. Horny. Aware that I recently got the Tinder app and if I really wanted to, I could arrange a shag within about twenty minutes. So… I did. Tinder is basical...

On the first of September I was my mother’s bridesmaid. I wore the dress she’d donned back in 1983, when she married the same groom she stood beside thirty years later - my father . I had flowers in my hair and tissues up my sleeve because cry, I did. I joke that I’m Girl Most Likely to return from a two-week yoga retreat married to a man I met on the first night, photographs proving how a chap dressed as Elvis told us to solemnly treasure each other til death (or the first signs of general inconvenience) do us part. Because I’ve seen friends, cousins, bloggers I stalk like I’ve been trained by the mafia, chase that blood diamond like a hunting hound, changing their name and their character to get a joint bank account and somebody else to respond to my questions, I’ve not taken weddings, marriage, seriously. I just didn’t get it. Why get married, I often declared at parties and dinners, when there’s so much paperwork to file when you divorce? Girls like me dance in clubs with husbands...

The thing about putting up a “Housemate Wanted” ad on the Internet is that the first responses you get are always from Nikolas from Greece and Adriano from Sicily, both of whom declare that yes, it’s funny you mention making a house a home because they love nothing more than cosy nights in drinking wine on the sofa and chatting until it’s late. Winky emoticon. Urgh. Yes. You’re beautiful. But also? No. Dear All The Foreign Men: it’s a rubbish idea to shit where you eat, and the one thing The Barrister and I agreed on before we picked a housemate was that it couldn’t be a fit man because inevitably one of us would end up shagging said fit man. Probably, because we’d made the promise, we’d both end up shagging the fit man and then not mention it to the other because PROMISE BREAKERS ARE HORRIBLE PEOPLE and so for months, if not years, potentially we could be in a situation wherein three people live together in a sort of poly-amorous relationship except it’s quasi not proper because n...

‘What the fuck did you do?’ I said. I could hear the alarm ringing from somewhere in the house, and it felt like with every pulse it grew louder. NEE-NAW. NEE-NAW. ‘Seriously. What did you DO?’ I’d been stood in my parents’ bedroom, straightening my hair at the mirror. My visiting friend Vanilla Toes sat on the bed behind me, taking in the Derbyshire scenery with her American eyes. After a week in London and a jaunt up to Edinburgh for the festival, we were at my mum and dad’s for the weekend. I hadn’t noticed her stood beside me, and it took me a moment to realise that she’d been tapping my arm and saying my name, over and over. Laura. Laura. Laura. Tap. Tap. Tap. That’s when I heard it. NEE-NAW. NEE-NAW. ‘I… I thought it was a pedometer,’ she said to me, holding up Mama Janie’s safety bracelet. Mum wears it when she’s alone in the house because she’s unsteady on her feet. If she falls, she can press the red button and a speakerphone hooked up to the house can ask if she’s okay. If ...