Blog

London

7th October 2019 ·

It seemed important to reclaim London. London – the city antithesis to my country life. London had become to me a place of uncertainty. Nestled just an hour or so from here, but so full of ‘other’ that visiting was somewhat traumatic. London had featured in my professional life; I associate it with early morning trains and high-heeled walks to a monolithic office. Heart palpitating presentations to an auditorium full of executives; progressing my ‘career’, when I had a career. Now, London is a whole different thing. London is stylish, messy-haired millennials with anxiety, and weary-looking men, who commute back to their lives. Or not.

In search of yet more education (dare I say, direction?) I signed up for a life writing course at Faber, and so last week, London took on a fresh guise. I wouldn’t say I strolled through Bloomsbury to the regency building that would house my latest educational jaunt, I virtually ran. I was late, clutching my phone for directions on ‘Citymapper’. Like a tourist. The room was full of writing peers, I sidled in and off we went again. Throw-back to the first day of my Masters a few years ago. I found myself thinking that writing is something that I should just do, rather than incessantly learn about. Yet something about the sitting with others, when you have a self-imposed profession of solitude and thought, is heartening. You learn, but then you also absorb. You challenge and reframe. Heaven knows that’s what my life is all about right now. Take only what you need from it.

After, with the glimpse of new friends and confidantes on the horizon, I found a new route through the city, the faceless, nameless, forget-it-all bustle of workers and commerce and money-making. So far away from the dog walks and rural seasons of Sussex. A million people’s lives; the good and the bad. Countless indulgences. All the promise, but none of the substance. So no wonder. After participating in some self-mutilation with my daughter, who met me, at Maria Tash in Liberty’s, we made our way back home, the train pulling up in the dusky light of another weekday. We have a new puppy called Doris, who’d been dog-sat by my sister in law. Rushing to collect her, I was reminded of those heady days of being a working mother, when each day was bookended by the pick up and drop off from nursery. That slightly grubby feeling of collecting your offspring from someone, and bundling them in the car to go home, relieved you made it through. Only to do it again the next day.

Funny how it goes. Funny how you think you know how things will turn out, but then they don’t, and there’s a whole different route to explore. London, you’re not so scary after all.

Photo by Jack Finnigan on Unsplash

The Future (Capital ‘F’)

20th September 2019 · Leave a Comment

This week marks the fruition of a journey many parents embarked upon years ago. About fourteen years ago to be precise. It is the week that British kids start university. Who would have thought, when my daughter enrolled in reception (pigtails, mary-jane shoes, bookbag in hand) aged four, that I’d be here, as she is eighteen, facing ‘The Future’? For me, there is a respite before the eventuality of the ubiquitous empty nest; my daughter is taking a ‘gap yah’ which is a term described in the urban dictionary here, and for which I am supremely grateful. She is the best company, and I am not ready to watch ‘The Kardashians’ alone. But for many of my friends in the extravaganza that is parenthood, ‘X’ marks the spot. This is it. Off they go.

So much shit has gone down of late (see previous post) that we now look to ‘The Future’ with interest. The Future is an unknown. The Future is what we have to hold on to. For those of us whose future is unknown, I recommend applying for a job that would be wildly life-changing. I applied for this job in the Maldives (because that is how I roll).

But for the friends whose kids are going to Uni, this heralds the end of having a child living at home. This is the point where your credit card statement includes the Über rides at 4am from nightclubs in Freshers Week. There are the halls of residence where sinks are shared, and meals are rudimentary. There are first day nerves. There is the route down the motorway, the car laden with IKEA sundries, and an edgy teen at your side. There is the countdown to Christmas holidays, when you welcome them home, smother them with love, let them know they are the best thing ever.

For my friends whose children leave this week, I would say: stay strong. Life throws curve balls. In the words of Nora Ephron; who is social commentator of the millennia, “When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”

Think laterally. Glastonbury tickets go on sale in less than a month. There is always the island of Holbox in the Gulf of Mexico which could be explored. Tattoos and personal style changes. Pursuits. Changes. Facing up. There is always post-university. Standing at the door to your daughter’s future, and knowing that you did your absolute best. A million milestones, small and large. Life goes on.

Dispatches

5th September 2019 · Leave a Comment

Those waking moments, half in and out of sleep, seem like they have a tone-setting influence to my day. I reach for my phone (who doesn’t?) and review overnight messages. Instagram plays too-important a role, but accounts like this one help. I saw a deceptively clever art installation at Glastonbury by Notes to Strangers. Something about it; the rawness, the humour and the honesty made me smile, to nod in appreciation. I tell anyone I meet about it. I ordered a print (you can pick from any that he publishes on his feed). Mine says ‘there’s a whole lot of muddling through’, which pretty much sums it up right now.

I started watching ‘Euphoria‘, which to a parent of teens is a bit like riding a terrifying amusement park ride; slick, heart-bumping, grinding and will unsettle you to your core, until you get off, and then it’s all great. When the adrenaline seeps away, you feel kinda dirty, but in a good way. Like when you eat Kentucky Fried Chicken.

So many things seems to refer to the Maldives at the moment; a place I went when I was a different person, just eight months ago. It crops up in all places, what I read and what I see. Or maybe I just notice because it was a screen saver to my dreams, in another life.

We collect a new puppy this weekend, a fact that I struggle to believe, but nonetheless the breeder diligently sends me photos of the gorgeous growing fur ball that will become ours. Our existing dog regards me with curiosity. My daughter messages me constantly in a state of abject excitement.

A crop of new books are delivered; a reading list for an endeavour I start in October. Nothing quite like that feeling of possibility; of pristine unread books.

The shells from Thailand still grace my dressing table, one in particular, a small stingray-shaped creamy arc, which I found on a deserted, untouched white island, somewhere in the waters beyond Koh Pha-Ngan. The shell reminds me of the place, bathing in the lukewarm waters off the shore, sifting the sand through our fingers, incredulous at the beauty. Still incredulous that such a place exists, right now. The world is large.

The kindness of strangers and friends floors me at this time of need, and I take deep, cleansing breaths of it, when I can. I roll the words grace and humility around in my mind, like you would a hold a sweet on your tongue. Feeling the weight of them and then they dissolve.

Building flat pack furniture, I slice my finger. My son says ‘are you going to faint, mummy?’ reminiscent of the time I sliced my hand delving in the dish washer and span out. I shake my head, and we go night time skateboarding down by the water, a wad of kitchen roll wrapped around my index finger. Children store up what they’ve experienced before, and it forms their expectations. Maybe it’s a good thing that this time, I remain conscious.

Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash

Fine

28th August 2019 · 1 Comment

If you saw me and asked, I’d say I was fine. For as long as I remember, writing here was a normal, somewhat quiet pursuit for me. People would enquire if I wrote and re-wrote, or heavily edited what I published, and the answer was usually ‘no’. I wrote about my life, and later, about my studies, and writing books. My personal circumstances were in the foreground; no one writes on the internet and maintains absolute secrecy, it comes with the territory to be open. I realise now that writing in this way was all fine, as long as I was fine. If the ebb and flow of my life made me introspective, there was always something to write about to bridge the gap. As such, lots of people read along for years, and many of them have become my good and precious friends.

Of late though, I’d say that some shit has gone down in my life, and it’s caused everything to tilt on its axis. I realise how opaque that sentence sounds, and how irritating it is when those of us who curate an online presence clam up, and won’t share. The unspoken contract in social media is that honesty should prevail. But I have come to see that when life deals you a blow, you abruptly become aware that there’s a big audience watching. Something in human nature provokes us to lean in to the lives of others, and watch closely, especially when something bad has happened. I’ve done it before, for sure. But then I was part of the audience, whereas now I am an unwitting actress, in the main act.

Therefore, I might not write here so much, for a while. Let’s not be overdramatic, this revelation is hardly going to break the internet, but for those who wondered or who are interested, I am still here, still writing. The novel I previously wrote, in conjunction with the concept I’ve been carrying around in my head, has now been pumped full of oxygen, and I see that I have a book to write by Christmas. This feels as if it has been building, and my hesitation and inaction is turning to an urgent need to get what’s happened down on paper (or on screen at least). It was Hemingway who said; ‘write hard and clear about what hurts.’

Know that meanwhile, there are the dog days of summer, travel and reflections, teenagers and exam results (she smashed it). Bare feet, a fading tan from Thailand, white-washing my house. Amsterdam nights. A new puppy, arriving soon. There’s a crumpled linen feel, good and true but not perfect, as my children and I forge towards September; an impending sense of there being a new season ahead.

Photograph by Yoann Siloine on Unsplash

Tectonic Plates

10th June 2019 · 1 Comment

My daughter sits on my unmade bed, cross-legged, and asks me to test her A-level Geography. This is the third week of exams, the somewhat hellish and rigorous academic process on which access to university is granted, or denied. A future dangled, but not delivered, unless she can recount every type and characteristic of volcanic lava, should it be required. The maddening need to learn everything just in case something comes up in the exam. We cover tectonic plates and I think of a place deep, deep down, envisaging a hinterworld of this earth, dark and mysterious.

My own tectonic plates have shifted, and that accounts for my absence from writing for a couple of months. The tremors that threatened at Christmas eventually featured on our own personal Richter scale, and life shifted into something alternate. It’s only now that I am surfacing.

Sleep eludes me, and I lie awake listening for the dawn chorus. Early summer, and the birds are vocal as light threatens, a lone car passes and I wonder who is driving anywhere at 4.02am? I pad downstairs and see the two shady Adirondack chairs in the garden – twinning – they look back at me, at the house, reproachfully.

In recent months I’ve taken to the water, in a way that makes sense, given my coastal proximity. So drawn to it that I make a daily pilgrimage there, to walk and watch the tides. It’s an age-old salve. I am learning to sail, I’ve kayaked and yesterday, paddle-boarded, all with friends who offer me their equipment and their time. As I stood on the grainy board, toes clenched, calves shivering with balance, I looked under the water at the seaweed fanned out, just beneath, and willed myself not to fall in. My love for the water is all very well, but I don’t want to be strangled in green weed. Afterwards, my hips ache and bruise from carrying the paddle board, my protective layer of fat gone.

My children look at me sidewards, and raise an eyebrow. Dinner is late. The house disordered. Certain songs are off-limits and we now have sanctioned playlists. Life goes on.

The thing with tectonic plates is that we imagine they are static; that they’ll hold, as they’ve been there so damn long, surely they won’t move? But they do, sometimes imperceptibly and sometimes with force. Nature asserting itself. And the landscape changes, and we get used to the new normal, wondering if the old normal ever really existed after all.

I find myself in coffee shop queues, making friends with strangers. Human life takes on new possibilities when continents collide. But yet, everyone is still here, the days keep coming, and as I tell my daughter as she stands poised at the door of her own future; ‘the world will keep on spinning, no matter what happens.’ The same applies to me.

Photo via Unsplash

Portfolio Career

27th March 2019 · 1 Comment

If I were to characterise my occupation right now, I’d say I was striving to make a ‘portfolio career’ work. By that I mean I do a bit of everything. I write, I clean the house. I write, I have coffee with my friends. I write, I manage the smallness and the greatness of family, both up close and extended. This is the part that sucks time like nothing else. My writing is invariably interrupted, and so as payback, it interrupts me, forming paragraphs as I try to drift off to sleep, or as I am doing a yoga class. I tell myself there will be time to properly focus, at some point in the future, when things ‘calm down’. I think of my Masters degree, and of the high hopes I had for after graduation, and as I type this, graduation was nearly two years ago. Insert shocked emoji face. Owing to my deliberate efforts not to beat myself up, I skip over this, as after all, who said the measure of success was world domination? Slow and steady? The eco book was a start…

There used to be a need to write a round-up of the week here, as a breezy, chatty bulletin. As if providing a public service. Blog being short for ‘web log’; the diarist in me would count the days between posts. Feed the appetite of your readers. But times have changed, and now we have insta stories for that. I shy away, as the need for privacy wraps around me. A highly curated front feels false, and I note that my contemporaries either post all the time, or not at all.

I am working on a project that is taking me through a creative process ranging from excitement, to fear, and back again. I muse whether it is good enough, whether I am good enough. My daughter earnestly looks back at me, and says ‘you must do your best’, and I feel like I have might have taught her well. There’s the slightest hint of spring and when I run in the mornings, the chill is gone, in favour of a tepid breeze, and there are green buds on trees. This makes me happy. I point this out to my son as we drive, and he looks up from his phone.

Meanwhile, I receive a terse, unsolicited email from a reader. The intimation being that I am narrow-minded. It strikes me that writing any sort of social commentary now is fraught with the accusation of not having a wide enough point of reference. Should I caveat every possible opinion, and state every possible viewpoint? Quite dull to do so. A bit like taking broad-spectrum antibiotics. You smother the good bugs and the bad bugs too. And maybe you never needed the meds in the first place. I can’t extrapolate the metaphor any further.

I buy a leopard print dress online, because, y’know, that’s what (narrow-minded) women like me do.

My daughter’s friends, the teenage girls, come round and sit at my table. I serve them vegetables (always) and they battle through plates of butternut squash, broccoli and avocado with a lime and tahini dressing. They silently wonder where the fish fingers have gone? We talk about society, and life, university, and whether they should cut their lustrous long hair short. I find myself cautioning against doing so, as all haircutting is, generally speaking – not wanting to derail the objectors here – a way to combat boredom. I’d apply the same logic to getting tattoos, which I become obsessed with, periodically. We discuss stress, and exams, and whether the line up at Glastonbury is going to be any good. I imagine myself this June, jumping, my middle-aged hands in the air, wellies sticking in the Somerset mud, screaming ‘Mr Brightside’ like it’s 2003.

When I speak to other women my age, they talk a lot about what they want and how they can’t have it, and I wonder if this is just the stage we are at? Experience tells me nothing comes easy, and right now, there isn’t time to get important stuff done. Everything feels like an effort, and I can think of a million reasons not to try. But there’s an ambition and a tenacity and we all soldier on with the perpetual list of things that need doing (‘I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier’). There’s a steeliness to this ambition, and I see as I get older, the less I need to say it out loud. Is this the midlife wisdom that they speak of? When you know, you know. It’s an inner knowledge; a confidence I suppose, that we are all playing a long game and if not now, then later. I write, I wait.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The World as I Know It

14th March 2019 · 1 Comment

A flurry of new followers arrive, maybe because I was kindly referred to in my friend Amanda’s blog post, or maybe because the book I wrote might have sold a copy or two, or maybe because someone was absent-mindedly scrolling #writersmind or #midlife and found an Instagram musing of mine. It’s mind-blowing to think of the ways that paths might cross. I wonder what it’s like to not have an online presence, to exist only in the real world (or should I say: ‘irl’. That’s ‘in real life’ to the uninitiated). After swearing off Instagram recently – Facebook is pretty much dead to me – I’ve looked closely at my social media use. I am more a silent observer than an active participant. So indoctrinated am I, that I find it natural to voyeuristically scan the Instagram stories of people I don’t know, in their beds and bathrooms, in their pyjamas, in a state of undress. I wouldn’t answer the door to the postman in that! How curious that online we are so embracing and accepting of the sharing mentality. We can’t get enough sharing. Or maybe that’s just me?

In this constant state of human observation, the writer in me gets overloaded. There’s just so much to think about. Whilst out running by the water one morning this week, catching the glorious deep blue, high tide before 8am, I was so full of words that I considered stopping to type them into my phone. This would have messed with my Strava statistics, so I carried on, storing the words in my mind like nuggets. I wish they’d design an app that could automatically capture my thoughts for me, and convert them into text. That would be cool (and terrifying). Instead I give myself mental bullet points and run faster so I don’t forget. Then I forget. Is it possible that the brain fog associated with midlife is conspiring to keep me from getting that key piece of social commentary down on paper? If I were to characterise my writer’s mind it would have two distinct halves. The romantic notion of writing as a whimsical, pleasurable activity (writer’s shed in the garden, anyone?), and the fact that writing can be an up-at-dawn siege on the brain.

Meanwhile, I buy new spectacles, and idly wonder whether that will make sitting in front of a screen for hours easier.

I procrastinate and internet shop. Some of the clothing brands I follow have changed their models; they’re now multi-faceted, multi-racial, multi-everything, and look like model versions of the real women I might see on the street. There are larger models and ones whose bodies don’t resemble the stereotypical clothes-horse versions I am used to seeing. I notice this, and react to it, even. Sometimes, I feel the clothes look less appealing – I am ashamed to admit this – and have to check myself. A fantasy exploded. I am sufficiently ‘woke’, so why do I not embrace this shift? Real women, selling real clothes?

I consider that I was brought up on a 1990’s media diet of supermodels. As a teenager, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford graced my bedroom walls. One of the first things I did when I earned my own money was buy a copy of Vogue, just to see what high fashion was all about. Tatjana Patiitz, swimsuit-clad, on a black-sand beach was the exotic counterpoint to my rural, mud-splattered fourteen year old self. Back then, I bought glossy magazines and pulled out pages to collage my bedroom wall. Surely, it’s no different to what my teenage children do now when they curate their feeds? They scroll Instagram, I worry it’s going to rot their brains, yet I did the same exact thing back then, but without the technological immediacy. The issue with instagram is that it never runs out of wall space.

Models from the past were unobtainable in their beauty, they were as relatable to me, in my suburban British life, as an alien might be, from another planet. Only when Kate Moss was discovered, and it transpired she came from Croydon (a mere fifty miles from where I lived) did I acknowledge that beautiful people might exist in the real world. So what is there to make of ‘real women’ models? It’s good, necessary and about time. But it does make me question the extent to which social conditioning has affected my perceptions. The myriad ways that my generation were raised to think certain things were attractive or unattractive. I can hope that future generations of women can view beauty differently, and won’t have been so conditioned. After all, this is the whole point of change, the paradigm shift that over time takes the abnormal to normal, or back again.

I took my daughter for an offer day at the university of her choice (just the small matter now, of getting the grades to get in) and decided there is nothing more sobering that imagining your first born living on their own for the first time. Recollections of my own university life spiral back at me, Scooby-Do style, and I simply can’t articulate how recently that phase of my life seems. How can it be that I now have a child who will go instead, and I will be the sobbing, greying mother who will have to drive away and reconcile the empty house when I get home. My husband and I might look at each other, full of the knowledge that by then, years will have passed since this happy camper came bombasting into our lives. Our daughter turns eighteen this summer, and the prospect is at once surreal and awe-inspiring. We raised an adult! Look what we did! She remains the most beautiful girl I know, biased as I am. My memories of her flit back to her baby days, when the 2000’s had just started and the 90’s were a recent decade. Meanwhile, March now takes hold. It was my 45th birthday this week. What is it they say? Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.

Photo by Unsplash

Millennials and Me

27th February 2019 · Leave a Comment

The hiatus from writing builds up, until I find myself awake in the small hours, furtively typing misspelled notes on my phone, afraid I’ll lose the gist before daylight. Notes which turn out to be jumbled expressions of my half-asleep brain. Not much use for anything, and yet I still dodge writing in the daytime. Last night, I decided I needed a writing shed. In our garden there is a disused shed; I say disused, I mean it’s full of the kind of family detritus that assembles when your children peddle through the stages of toddler to child to teen. Redundant pieces of sports equipment, boogie boards, bike helmets (out-grown), the polystyrene edges nibbled by mice, unused barbecue briquettes from long lost summers. There are pieces of furniture which we’d felt we couldn’t part with, so instead relegated them to the shed and now, years later, they’ve moulded, veneers lifting away with damp. There are vestiges of the failed beauty business I once embarked on. A broken kite.

So this shed, I think, could be the answer. I could renovate it, Scandi-style, and sit out there with the dog and write. What an idea! I look on Pinterest for ‘writer’s shed’ (by this time it is 2.08am; the brain is awake) and note Roald Dahl had one. By 2.10am I am my own version of Virginia Woolf in a room of one’s own. A whimsical notion of old fashioned type writers and battered note books. The romantic, cinematic version of what it is to write a book.

There is some normality to restore now, after a couple of months of upheaval. I revert to where I left off, but have lost my rhythm. The writer’s shed idea is undoubtably a ploy. Like the part in ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ where Liz Gilbert tries to meditate but instead her thoughts turn to what her meditation room might look like should she design one. I listen to podcasts to distract myself and realise I have fallen into a groove of listening to clever, millennial journalists who have, in their cleverness, nailed the podcast medium with alacrity. For example, the eloquence and self-awareness with which Dolly Alderton articulated herself on Emma Gannon‘s ‘Control, Alt, Delete’ was so impressive, it was, quite frankly, disarming. I was not like that at thirty years old. Far from. There’s an openness that is so refreshing. And don’t get me started on the impossibly good commentary of Pandora Sykes. Elizabeth Day is another. Her podcast asks the profound question: how to fail?

I ask myself, were I to answer that question: what would my failures have been?

I flunked my A-levels. I thought I had put this one to bed, but actually it remains the single defining moment of my education and led me down a path that I might not otherwise have taken. It wasn’t catastrophic, but it was sub-par and I wish I’d done better. I wish I’d worked more. The fact was that at 17 years of age, the last thing I wanted to do was revise history. Entirely not interested. I suspect I relied on the possibility that I might be a genius and snag ‘A’ grades regardless, simply from my intellect. Turns out that doesn’t happen (at least not for me) and the only way to get those grades is solid hard work.

I landed a job when I graduated university, in the marketing department of a large publishing house. This was a gift of a job and was exactly what I should have excelled at. I had a three month contract and fully expected to be extended to permanency. But then, when the three months came to an end, they let me go. On reflection, years later, when I was adept at hiring gradates myself, in an other career, I realised I’d been too sure of myself, and it had concerned my superiors. I could not comprehend it at the time, but after I saw that I had breezed in, newly qualified with my degree, and thought I have arrived. Turns out that professional arrival is not about turning up; it’s about time, energy, humility and graft. But most of all, time.

The difference for me and my generation was that there was no constant analysis of these failings. These failings were the natural stepping stones to building a career, to maturing as an adult. There were no ready-made reassurances that I would survive and thrive again, there were no life-affirming quotes on Instagram. I did not, as it happened, look inward to assess whether I was suffering from depression or burnout. I did not cross-reference whether I was exhibiting anxiety symptoms, and I did not reach for a self-help book on managing said anxiety. Life just went on, and not much happened other than I eventually worked it out and continued on my way. Of course the preoccupation we now all have with our own psychological landscape is good; we check our emotional pulse on a daily basis. But I can’t help questioning whether this self-regard might be detrimental. I spend a lot of time level-setting things with my teenage children, helping them to see that the world will keep spinning even in they fail that test or fall out with that friend. It will all be OK. Even during the darkest days, evidence bears out that in time, it will be all OK.

My most potent sense of failure was in early motherhood – when my days were punctuated by the small successes (she sleeps!) and the small failures (she cries!). These moments would linger like a haze as I learned to come to terms with the complete lack of control I had for my own life, and that of this new human we had created.

So whilst the millennial fixation with self-care, self-analysis and self-knowledge makes for great podcasts, articles, essay and novels, the pressure must be immense. Like so many comparisons of past and present, was my being unaware an explanation for my experience? I am a member of Generation X. I came of age in the late 1980’s, was at university in the early 1990’s. I am the slacker generation. I didn’t know to douse myself in self-regard, so instead forged into adulthood feeling untethered. This led to years of stumbling with the lights out. I couldn’t have been less self-aware. But the result is that now, when self-awareness has arrived at the door, it is a revelation. This is why women in their forties these days exude an aura of zero fucks given. We’ve worked it out and I sense that will only continue. Millennials speak of having it all and I am struck by the consideration they give to life choices – but are almost paralysed by choice. Whether to get married and have a family. Or not get married. Their liberal sensibilities untested as life lays ahead of them, rather than behind. ‘Quarterlife’ and the early milestones of a passing decade denotes the transition of youth, but crucially, not the loss of it. They talk of having babies, but they haven’t decided yet. Career jostles with fertility. Can we have it all?

I have yet to read millennial-favourite Sally Rooney‘s second novel ‘Normal People’. My mum did and remarked ‘…there’s a lot of not much happening; they get together, they break up. It’s not really my thing.’ Her generation need substance in their fiction; the minutaea is not enough. After all, they grew up post-war. They really knew about people losing their shit.

What would I have been like as a millennial? I am a full generation ahead of them; I am pre-internet for crissake. I have written before about the gulf between my generation and my daughter’s here, and this preoccupation endures. The canyon of life experience between thirty and forty five – the milestone I will reach next month – is vast. Motherhood a raging river. Career a river bank. Marriage a raft. It is these things that I muse over now, in readiness for my mid-forties.

Photo by Arno Smit on Unsplash

A Love Letter to the Planet

13th February 2019 · Leave a Comment

A few months ago, I got the opportunity to take a commission from a publisher, to write a non-fiction book about the environment. It was apt and timely, as I’d chartered further and further into the territory of eco-awareness, plastic-free shopping, and plant-based eating, and I found myself immersed in all things ecological for this project. I’d dabbled in ‘green’ living, and lamented plastic use, but I found it difficult to change my practices to create a new everyday reality. Conceptually, I knew what to do – reduce, reuse, recycle – but I was weighed down with the enormity of it all. Making changes seemed to require a disproportionate effort, which in turn led to my feeling ineffective and guilty, so I’d end up doing nothing instead.

I’d developed an interest in those who were able to make the changes, and followed Instagram accounts of delicious vegan food and minimal living. I would covet the lifestyle, but still struggled to emulate it. Somehow my home did not resemble the serene, less-is-more surroundings of those I saw online. But what I realised – consistent with so many things in modern life – is that what it looks like is not what counts! I found that instigating a few simple changes made a big difference to my resolve. I started composting, just by siphoning off waste that would biodegrade. I bought reusable cloths instead of kitchen roll. I got rid of aluminium foil and cling film, and started using beeswax covers. I became more interested in vintage clothes, and in the fabrics my clothes were made of. Cotton, linen and wool were in; polyester and viscose were out. But even then, there were myths to debunk. Cotton has a huge impact in chemical and water use. I started watching documentaries which enlightened me to this fact. Suddenly, things like Christmas wrapping paper and heavily packaged gift packs became undesirable. I bulk-bought food staples and decanted in to Mason jars. I became quite the larder enthusiast!The more I focused on habits, the more committed I became.

I am not saying it’s easy; sometimes it feels like there’s a conspiracy underway to ensure that every item I want to buy is swathed in plastic, but I guess the point is, I started trying, and it made me feel better. And as for how much meat we eat, it’s significantly less. My children are now used to bean chillis and lentil bologanise. I am at the point where I feel as if eating meat every day will become as non-sensical and socially unacceptable as smoking in restaurants or on aeroplanes once was.

In my research for this book, I found that minimal living goes hand in hand with thoughtful practices, and it’s good if there is a general impetus to slow the pace of daily habits, so that our care for the environment increases. After writing this book, my choices became more deliberate, as I simply grew more aware. So many of my decisions were made without thought; where my clothes originated from, how my food was packaged, how many miles an item had to travel to be delivered at my door. I didn’t consider how so many components of the modern, Westernised world have an unseen environmental impact. I wrote without manifesto – albeit this is a potent political issue – but as a lesson to myself, really. It was also a lesson in being open to writing projects that offer scope and breadth, rather than specialising in one thing, or accepting just one way of reaching the goal of being published.

I wanted to pare everything down, make it manageable, and real. The book is light and concise; part advice, part awareness, and in it, I cycle through a large array of every day considerations, many of which are presented in easy and practical ways.

The book is called ‘Save The World: There is No Planet B‘ (great title, hey!?) and is published by Summersdale Publishing. The book is published tomorrow, on Valentines Day, and is available to order/buy on Amazon here!

Finally, ‘The Independent’ have reviewed it here:

‘“The Plastic Problem”, as Louise Bradford dubs it, is just one chapter in a title that covers all the major issues our planet is currently facing. From water conservation to shopping more ethically, there are practical bullet point suggestions for ultimately living a more minimal life, and limiting your impact on the world as a result. In it she argues that we can’t wait for big corporations to clean up their acts. Instead, we all have a duty to do our bit to save the planet. If that sounds a little preachy, rest assured the book is clear that any effort is better than none, and that we can only do our best.’

Image via unsplash

Are you human?

8th February 2019 · Leave a Comment

When you haven’t logged on for a while, the software wants to check: are you human?

Tick the box. Yes. Not an interloper, but the same old me. However slightly changed, as I haven’t written a single word for months, nor visited this place. The thing with writing a blog is that you have to be willing to share; that forms the basic premise. Some things happened in December and I was no longer willing to share, in so much as I went inwards, as humans do, I suppose, when they perceive threat. The threat I encountered was ordinary and everyday, but at the same time profound. I was scared and worried, and that made me vulnerable. My little life precarious; the people in it somehow at risk. It’s not right to explain here, but suffice to say some shit went down, of the personal variety, and it challenged everything I knew to be true, for a while. Christmas was ugly, but with a glittery, fake-smile wrapping to it, and new year passed in much the same way. January brought some respite, in its dark days and blustery corners, and then I welcomed February from far away, from the other side of the world, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. If you think that sounds like a cryptic explantation of the last couple of months, you’d be right.

There’s a curious contract I have made with myself when it comes to writing. And here on this blog, it’s a contract with my invisible, unknown audience. I write, you read. I share, you absorb. There’s usually a healthy tension to it – or at least there always has been for me – I share what I am comfortable with sharing, and I protect certain truths fiercely, so as not to expose my family or my friends. But as I think back to the nine years I have written this blog, of the myriad insights I have shared, I find it odd that I am compelled to do this. Taking time away from it was like enforcing a separation between two childhood friends; I only lasted so long, and I knew I’d come back.

Meanwhile, amongst my contemporaries, the debate rages on about whether Instagram has replaced blogging, or whether ‘stories’ have replaced curated photos. The term ‘influencer’ is now tinged with a toxicity, and I see fellow bloggers grapple with dull but necessary explanations of whether they have been #gifted or whether it’s an #ad. Yawn. It feels like when I used to work for the corporate, and we would get audited, and everyone had to have detailed process flows on their desks about self-explanatory things like how to switch on your computer. Are you human? The need for safeguards, for privacy, for honesty, for integrity, has rightly come to the forefront. Someone decided that there’s been an abuse, that we might have been duped, so we must now all be brutally honest about every little thing so as not to mislead anyone who happens to read what we write or post. It’s exhausting and complex, and I am not sure where it will lead. It takes away the shine, and rubs the face of things so hard, that it scours the sheen of what blogging and instagram are all about. There’s always the interplay between the truth and the veneer. It’s the construct we all create every time we have any interaction with anyone else. No one is ever quite what they seem, and that is part of how humans function. But it does pose the wider question; if everything everyone shares is vanilla and overstated, then what?

I said I’ve been away, after the tumult of the last couple of months, my husband and I booked a last minute trip to the Maldives. Place of honeymooners, rose-petal-scattered-pillows, and stilted water bungalow accommodation. White sand coral islands, which rear up out of the ocean like something in a cartoon. Impossibly – implausibly – beautiful. An Instagrammable dream. We had never, ever seen anything like it. The water so clear and perfectly, pristinely turquoise that I spent the entire week photographing it, swimming in it, wading in it, marvelling at it like the true Piscean I am. The perfect salt-water salve to everything that life had thrown at us. The privilege of being able to see a place like that weighed heavy though, and I was reluctant to share, because, well, because it just seemed self–indulgent. A self-consciousness has coloured my instincts to share online, and each word and image seems weighty.

But this self-consciousness serves little purpose, as we are bound to consume the experience of others, isn’t that what writing is all about?

Incidentally, I read ‘The Woman in The Window’ whilst I was away. A tetchy thriller that lacked plausibility. The kind of book publishers love. Cinematic from the first page; they’ll make a film of it starring a Hollywood actress who is willing to look dowdy. Lugged the hardback of Michelle Obama’s ‘Becoming’ all the way there and back again, so far untouched. Listened to the podcast ‘Love Stories’ with Dolly Alderton; the one with Emma Freud, when she describes her relationship with Richard Curtis (writer of screenplays to my twenties). It made me choke back tears and can I say: it’s hard to cry and run on a treadmill at the same time, whilst on a coral island in the Indian Ocean.

So I face the next item on the agenda now. I have a deadline for a submission competition at the end of March, giving me some time to write the essay that’s been building in my head for months.

Live. Write. Live. Write. When you know, you know.