back up blog

I’m a culture bully. If there’s something in my life that’s touched me, or made me laugh, something that’s forced me to think or change or puts into words the whatsitmabob I’ve always cloudily considered but couldn’t verbalise myself, then I will peer-pressure the fuck out of you until you love it too. See: the Lean In movement , Brixton Market on a Sunday, Marina Abramović , Whitney Houston's everything , power ballad club nights , extended critical analysis of GIRLS and butter . It’s an isolating trait. At school we once went on a class trip to see a performance of Electra and guys. The set! The production! The layers that unfurled themselves to you if only you paid attention! THAT GUY WHO PLAYED THE BROTHER! It truly rocked my world, and I needed to talk about it. But the day after the trip nobody had anything to say. It was largely the teacher and me who dissected the magic in class feedback. At the lesson’s end I picked up a crumpled piece of paper on the desk beside mine ...

I believe the world will change only when we change ourselves. And that starts with finding ourselves. And that starts with listening to ourselves, learning to quiet the clamour in our minds and the voices of everyone around us and moving towards what feels right. It means taking a spectacular and terrifying and ultimately mind-blowing adventure. I could’ve written those words myself. That’s how closely I identify with them. I’m living them. Everything I believe to be true is summed up in the blurb to Kelly Cutrone’s If You Have To Cry Go Outside. That’s why it breaks my heart that from the cover you’d presume it to be teen-girl wanky shite. Marketing fail, HarperCollins. Her words are my gold dust. (Unless my version of gold dust is teen-girl wanky shite. In which case, wow. That’s a paradigm shift in the way I see myself in the relation to my entire world, ever. No big deal.) I’ve had a surprising foray into my made-up version of spiritualism. I wasn’t actively looking for answers, o...

So I read on Austin Kleon’s Tumblr this thing about Book Tossers. These are my favourite of All The People- the somebody who “casually tosses a book at you” says Kleon, and it changes your entire being. Before said book you were probably in a world of unknown darkness and ignorance that truths and beauty could exist in a cold, hard world like as ours. Then BOOM! 300 or so pages later and suddenly everything is bathed in the multi-coloured understanding of just how exquisite living and being and words are. LIFE IS THE BESTEST FOREVER THE END. In these circumstances, Kleon says, it is accepted wisdom that “if it weren’t for the toss, there wouldn’t be a catch” i.e. without the thrilling entrance of said Book Tosser, your life would’ve remained unchanged and that would’ve been at best unfortunate, but realistically a much worse, WHAT IS THE POINT OF LIVING IF IT ISN’T TO HAVE CONSUMED THE GIFT OF LETTERS AND SENTENCES THIS ARTIST JUST FED ME LIKE HONIED WATER TO A DYING CHILD I DON’T EV...

I sat on the beach and looked around surreptitiously from under my twenty Euro shades. It was truly a phenomenon. Not one person here has my body type, I thought to myself. I squinted, twisting my body to look at the twentysomethings rolling their cigarettes beside me; the mother playing with her toddler down by the waves; the group of students behind me. Every woman’s legs go straight up-and-down, with no bulging at the tops of the thighs, I thought. All of them have necks like swans, and they all accentuate them by wearing their beach hair piled, carelessly but faultlessly, on the tops of their pretty heads, I marvelled. Nobody has belly fat; they all have 2-dimensional tummies that manage to be flat and soft at the exact same time, I gawped, head shaking. Going to the beach in Italy is about as much fun as a frontal-lobotomy performed by Ozzy Osbourne on a good day, and enough to push a girl to three rounds of therapeutic gelato whilst resolving never to eat pasta again on a bad one...

Darby & Joan  are the quintessential middle-aged British couple, characterised by knitwear, hours of scrabble, and a penchant for staying in on Saturday nights. Darby and Joan are, in fact,  @calummcswiggan  and me. See what we look like when we finally do go out? TERRIBLE.  Darby. I’ve gone a bit mental again . Four days ago you emailed me to say SWITZERLAND CALLED AND WANT ME TO WORK FOR THEM! to which I replied WELL, WHAT DID YOU SAY? And you were all WELL D’UH! I BOOKED A FLIGHT FOR TOMORROW NIGHT! You were already in the arse-end of Italy someplace, working for the company I told you about, and when I asked the name of the place you’d be going to so that I could do Googling you didn’t know. Your flight was practically booked, and yet you didn’t know where from or where to. So then, when BIG GAY CAL! flashed up on my phone as I was walking to buy tampons and white chocolate yesterday, and you were safe and sound and well, I demanded to know all the things, an...

To say that I am a fat bitch is an understatement. I think it started when I was 16, and got my first waitressing job at the gastronomic wonderland in the next village. Four nights a week I’d hand out dishes of amuse-bouche and petits fours; dishes laced with saffron, truffle oil and homemade vinegars. The head chef would indulge my questions about why this went with that, entertaining my inquisitions on how to butterfly a salmon fillet and how much lemon was too much for a tarte au citron, because none of the other waitresses cared. By the time I left school I’d bought my first bible- a hardback copy of Larousse Gastronomique - worked full-time as a front of house restaurant manager, and saw Julie and Julia three times back-to-back when it was released. Related : Hellman’s Mayonnaise is also my middle name. Further related rhetorical question : is there anyone that Meryl Streep cannot play? By the time I rolled into Italy last May, my appetite was unrivalled . From rice balls to de...