what he said

"...The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing."

This, and much more wisdom, belongs in a speech given by David Foster Wallace to a graduating class. That someone with so much to say, and that so many of us need to hear, is gone, is a tragedy for us all...

Call an old friend and tell them every tiny thing you remember about a day you spent together. Go on, dare you.

ode to my socks

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Originally uploaded by Nodoyuna

there is such a thing as having a talent for present giving. a kind, sweet, surprising man i know bought me new socks and gave them to me the day i left for a muddy festival in the country, with strict instructions not to put them on until the final day.

pablo, i get it...

Ode to My Socks
by Pablo Neruda (translated by Robert Bly)

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.

oh, now it all makes perfect sense

There’s little point even in attempting to shoehorn what follows into any kind of sensible diatribe.

Basically, when the inimitable Rach was without internet for a week, the resourceful scamp and her equally handy pals at Hi-ReS! decided to make their own internet, out of gifs, bits and pieces they had on their hard drives, and the cardboard toilet roll inners.

When they got the real internet back, they uploaded part of their homemade internet. Following? I had a play and ended up on the following screen.



And what follows is Rach’s oh-so-matter-of-fact explanation of the weirdness.



I think their internet is easily my favourite thing on the internet. Thank goodness for nonsense, weirdos and flashing gifs shouting ‘YEAH!”

the answer is simple.

"Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that."
- Michael Leunig

art club

Brits are famed for an obsession with the weather. Small talk on buses, sunburn worn as badges of achievement, weather reports littered with historical comparisons. When I first pitched up in London nearly six years ago, I took it all a bit personally. Am I that boring to speak to that we’re musing about the weather?

I apologise. I get it now.

I’ve endured some pretty miserable summers here. One, two years ago, was referred to afterwards as The Year Summer Never Came, and discussions about it ended solemnly, with people crossing themselves afterwards to ward off similar misfortunes in future.

It was in vain. Hello, “Summer” of 2008. Optimism was maintained throughout July. “It’s always this wet in July! It means August will be scorching.” Early August – when the South East received a month’s worth of rainfall in 12 hours just 3 days in – sparked concern, but we reassured each other, saying that if it had rained this much it couldn’t possibly continue. It’s still worth buying those sandals, you’ll get plenty of wear out of them yet.

Look at the forecast up there. That’s actually one of the better ones of the past 2 months – see, it’s topped 20°C! There’s a chance we’ll get one dry day! My high summer wardrobe has consisted of jeans, boots, cardigans, and a coat. The only bit of my winter clothing that’s had a sabbatical is scarves, and yesterday I was so cold at my desk I wished I’d worn one.

I’ve tried to be nonchalant. I’ve tried to be optimistic. Mostly I’ve just been futilely, aimlessly fucking angry. I feel like I ordered an ice cream sundae and the waitress dished up a meatshake and then spat in it for good measure. There’s only one thing for it: hole up indoors to eat pizza and draw things, AKA Art Club.

There was intricate, beautiful drawing by Rach (it's a tree, with clouds for foliage), and a selection of beards, drawn by me:



Fun with stamps:



Lots of lovely mess:



And much-needed pep talks:




Now scram, pretend it’s winter and have cheese on toast for tea.

progress + motion

cromer pier
Originally uploaded by lomoD.xx

It seems I’m accidentally making progress on the list – maybe just the process of scrawling them in my journal has helped them come about, or, at the very least, subconsciously spurred me into action.

(Disclaimer: the list existed in my journal for a good month or so before posting it on the interweb, so i haven’t been quite as much of a superachiever as it might first appear...)

2. Grow tomatoes and runner beans
I might be getting ahead of myself here, since there’s plenty of summer left for me to murder them, but at the moment I’m proud dirtmother of a trough of tomatoes and a tangle of bean vines spilling up from a tub of marigolds, and dotted with scarlet flowers. If the sun holds, and I remember to douse them every so often, the day might come when I get to pick a tomato off the vine, rub it against the leg of my shorts, and site on the decking to eat it, with sticky warm juice running down my arms.

14. Send Elsa a surprise in the post
I found the surprise in a vintage fabric shop on Cheshire Street on Saturday. Yip! I just need to photograph it, wrap it and post it.

18. Stay overnight by the sea & 19. Go on a weekend away somewhere with Sooz
It was actually Sooz who made this happen; I can’t take the credit. She texted me one Thursday, saying ‘I have to get out of London this weekend. Can you come?’, and two days later, we, plus Jems, Nadja and Sara, piled into Nadja’s tiny, decrepit hatchback and hotfooted it out to a tiny coastal town in Norfolk called Cromer. We screeched to a halt at a roadside stall to buy the reddest, sherbetiest strawberries I’ve ever tasted in my life, ate local crab, looked at the sea, gorged ourselves on fish and chips, and were all tucked in bed by midnight. It was just the tonic, and if you can escape for even a night to somewhere that puts a different backdrop behind your friendships and your mood, do it…

20. Master the mise en ventre en roulet on trapeze
I’m getting there. It’s slow, shoulder-wrenching work. This one was quite ambitious… maybe ‘master’ should have been ‘look less pudding-y while attempting…’

22. Take Kate for a lazy picnic
At Kate’s suggestion (again, no credit here) we traipsed up to Kenwood House yesterday afternoon. It was the hottest day of the year so far, and we sat in the velvety green grass, watched swans in the lake and people playing Frisbee, and lazed luxuriantly. To say I ‘took’ her is grossly misleading, though, given that she drove and mustered up goats’ cheese and roasted tomato tart, and all I managed to bring was beer and a bag of sausages. All glamour, me.

That’s it, so far, but it feels like something, motion, sneaked pleasures and delicious surprises…which is enough, really.

retox redux

So, it’s done. 21 days of deprivation detox is over. Naturally, to celebrate, I went out with my wonderful housemate Badam to eat an insanely rich meal and got so drunk on red wine I had hiccups for about 4 hours. (Hic! Kill me. Hic! Kill me.)

Detoxes are almost as boring to talk about as they are to do, but I brought it up here so I should probably put it to bed. I was surprised how ordinary I felt at the end of three weeks of avoiding things that usually make up the better part of my diet. At first I wondered how come I wasn’t jumping out of my skin, until I realised that consistent okayness was probably the best I HAD felt in a long time. Weekends were a totally bizarre experience – awake while the day was still young, not stumbling from hangover to pub to hangover, hearing my housemate and seeing The Boy come home at 4:30AM and thinking, with genuine surprise, ‘I’m so glad that’s not me’.

So I’ve been joyfully reunited with bread and cheese, but I am still caffeine free. I’m going to keep avoiding sugar, stick to raw foods for snacks, and be mindful of how much fish I’m eating. And I want to keep a lid on the boozing. I love wine, I love a cold beer on a blue-skied day, I love a gin and tonic in a cold, beaded glass. But I found out that I can have fun, and be fun, even when I’m not drinking and everyone else is. It’s also a freaking load cheaper…

So there you have it. Detox: part sham, part revelation.

Now two treasures to relish:


I adore the Little People project – quirky, making you look askance at the world, full of dark humour and wonder…


Phillip Toledano’s Days With My Father photo series made me hold my breath. How do we continue to live when death is so close? Beautiful.

Happy Thursday. Go get yourself an ice cream.