Instead, I’m gloved up, with the ugliest towel I could find wrapped around my shoulders and vaselined up to the nines round my hairline. Of course, I’m box dyeing my hair. I’m performing the ritual of achieving the jet black glossy look that lasts a solid 2 weeks if I use the special conditioner that comes with it. I wish they sold that separately.

I do have the funds to go to an actual salon and have my hair dyed properly. At 27, I think that’s what you do. I’ve only been to a salon a mere handful of times in my life. Once when I was 15, which left me with thick blonde X-tina style highlights and a great mistrust in hairdressers. Another time at 22 when I went for the ‘big chop’ but inherited questionable layers that left my ponytail game extremely weak.

So I opt for DIY. Maybe thats the eldest daughter in me. I’ll do it myself. Or maybe it’s something I’ve never really grown out of. Something that reminds me I’m only £10.99 away from a new me.

It’s not just the hair I’m refreshing though, applying a gloss over and feeling brand new. The 30 minute makeover is never planned. It comes more as an impulsive urge, a course correction, a day where you wake up decide you’re a bit sick of yourself. Breakups, unemployment, long winters - the fresh lick of paint over fading 3 month old dye patches up my ills like no other.

When many parts of this complex thing called life start to feel like they don’t fit you anymore, it’s an ammonia smelling reset button. When messy feelings require untangling, or the urgent need to re-brand everything about yourself - your job, your mind, your environment - an identity refresh in a box.

It’s the faux fix for the avoidant. The long list of things I promised myself to do sitting on the desk of my mind. Gathering dust. But at least I’ll have new hair.

I find so much salve in the act of the box dye. In fact, I’m getting the urge to go to Superdrug now.

“I’m nervous for this, I dunno why”.

Me and two friends are getting ready to head to a party where we know absolutely everyone. And it’s downstairs. In our own front room.

“What????? You know everyone!! And you’re the best at social interactions. It’s effortless for you, no?”

My rebuttal comes as an admission of how painfully blank my mind goes when it’s my turn to steer conversation to a nice destination. My friends laugh, and think I’m joking. “If anyone can hold a room, it’s you.”

“Put me in a room of strangers and I’ll thrive” I joke, but say with complete belief.

Why is it easier to be charming, funny, and effortless with strangers, but the opposite with people you know?

Put me in a party (with the support of strong cocktail, I must admit) and I am the blueprint of confidence, social lubrication on tap and the ringleader of the small talk matineé. I thrive knowing there’s a blank slate. Put me in a hostel room and you’ll find me out for dinner with the bunkmates and plans in under an hour. Job interviews? An hour to present my best, most attractive employability after I’ve rehearsed STAR answers? Oh go on then.

Jesus, sometimes it extends to the morbidly uncomfortable. I don’t mind asking a massage lady where she completed her qualifications mid rub(?!) - the normal reaction to a stranger touching your naked back.

It feels light, effortless and I don’t have an image to preserve. I am whoever I want to be at that time, and I don’t have to wrestle with the archives of myself. It’s a small act of reinvention every time, and a brief escape from the depths of who I actually am.

But when it’s time to bring up something that hurt my feelings 3 weeks ago to someone who’s seen the worst parts of myself - I’m tongue tied. A far cry from the girl at the party telling well timed, funny stories. I’m clunky, nervous, sweating palms and a complete fall from grace. The sudden spotlight in my eyes makes me squint - of being not only perceived, not only known but someone else being invested in loving very uncomfortable jigsaw pieces of myself.

Meeting a long term friend for coffee sends more chills down my spine than a very chatty uber driver. The sum of our history spanning 3 friendship groups, 2 boyfriends, 4 cities and thousands of interactions that lead us right to this moment suddenly bears weight on my chest. Not because I don’t adore her - because I’ll fumble my words, contradict myself and she’ll remind me of a past version of myself I’ve forgotten about.

I’ve taken time recently to muse on why I thrive around those that don’t know me, and struggle with those that do - is it the thousands of versions they’ve witnessed that even I’ve forgotten? Is it a self erected shield to protect me from feeling vulnerable, not digestible or not accepted? Or is it the freedom of having nothing to lose around strangers? How I can abandon the bits I don’t really want to bring to the party and they are none the wiser?

Perhaps. But I think, more honestly, it’s to do with what I don’t say - what would cause the crowds at a party to disperse.

Nervousness that what people witness of me - my faults, my shortcomings - over a long time of me doesn’t add up. That I deem myself more acceptable in well meaning, quickly passing chunks of interactions. It’s opting for fast, easy high of ego-stroking in a slick exchange, a reinforcement of social aptness but a complete cheap thrill - compared with the slow burn, clumsy but real, nervous system sustaining vulnerable reality of a slow reveal of self - long-term knowing, learning and loving. And the latter takes a whole lot more vulnerability.

Out in the world, you get to give a performance. You get to present the self you’d like others to witness. But real knowing and loving doesn’t care about the final edit. The people in your life you’ve bared your soul to, and they’ve been brave enough to do the same, don’t really give a shit about how slick your interactions are. They demand you to remove the Instagram filters of your self. They see the crumpled drafts, messy scripts that don’t really make sense, and your forever developing iterations, and still find you just as fascinating as when you met at that party.

So what is my ideal solo birthday, I think to myself. I (obviously) go straight to SkyScanner and look at cheap flights. A solo trip for 27 - how grown. I instantly look at Spanish cities that would bless my English withered skin with some vitamin D, and opt for Valencia. I’ve been a few times before and completely fell in love with the orange tree lined streets and big open beach. I can fulfil my secret introvert birthday dreams of drinking thick, hot coffee on white plastic chairs in the morning, reading, and spending hours interrupted in jewellery shops. I can eat paella, drink sangria and speak the 6 sentences of Spanish I’ve memorised. Heaven.

So as I sit writing this in my airbnb in Valencia, on the final day of the trip, things didn’t go as quiet as I planned. But I think I got my quiet, reflective 27th birthday wishes.

Dreams of wondering the streets and eating pinchos to my hearts’ content died as soon as I stepped on the plane - I felt a hot, prickly sensation burn down my neck. As I sat on the metro on the other side to my airbnb, it had developed into a full blown stupor that I recognised as tonsillitis. You know when you’re so ill you fantasise about 2 days ago when you could breathe and swallow properly? Them ones.

There is often that pressure and expectation sitting behind you for big events, like birthdays, or when you take a trip. You feel like you need to wring the itinerary dry to say you’ve been there, done that (and got the throat infection). Our days away are purchased, quantified by how many experiences you had within them, and on them ride a promise of an escape from our mundane lives to experience something worth talking and posting about. But what I realised was my few days abroad became like any other mundane day when you’re unwell. You let go of having to ‘do’ anything.

Once I managed to sit upright, my next mission was to locate the nearest chemist and Mercadona for supplies. I’d booked a cheap Airbnb, but didn’t realise how far I was from the centre. I was staying in a neighbourhood that wasn’t well versed with tourists. Half asleep, I walked the aisles and heard the babble of a language I don’t fully understand around me.

I scanned the shelves, recognising words for different fruits, vegetables and crisp brands that remind me of summer holidays as a kid. I learned new ones - aubergine (berenjena) was my favourite. I saw equally as tired looking mums do their weekly foodshop, old wrinkled men balanced on walking sticks hobble through the aisles. It was just another day in the life for everyone in this neighbourhood. But not for me. I found myself in the perfumeria trying on 5 euro perfumes, I bought a face mask to do in bed and discovered how good Mercadona’s skincare range was.

Don’t even get me started on the bakery section - individually packaged chocolate covered donuts, little sugar-crusted pastries, and little serrano ham and manchego croissants. I was a kid in a sweet shop.

I found the chemist thanks to the incredibly capturing graphics of the European pharmacy sign. The glass door slid open and introduced me this incredible refreshing smell. I feel like Spanish shops and pharmacies smell amazing. A women greeted me and instantly lifted my mood.

“Me gargantua” I pointed. Throat.

She didn’t speak English, so I told her I only know a bit of Spanish and we went from there. 2 minutes later she was recommending me all different types of throat sprays, painkillers, and I noted that they were strong doses compared to the UK. She laughed. I said just like the measures here in bars. She laughed again. Then a man rolled in with a shopping stroller, and she greeted him. He handed her a banana and left.

“Todos las dias’ (everyday he comes in, she told me.)

This interaction left me feeling so much better. Every little interaction, new word and new street was still a hit of dopamine for me. But for the chemist, it was probably just another day at work. I walked back to my airbnb with supplies. It was rainy and grey - not the sun bathed streets I imagined - and I watched a school kid scuff his shoes along the floor, his hair a mess after a day of education. I saw a lady lock up her café, keys jangling as she slammed the shutters and sighed. I felt the sense that mundane of our everyday lives is only mundane for ourselves. We are so used to our everyday that we forget it holds tiny differences to other people’s.

Anyway, I feel ill again, I’m running out of steam. I also haven’t posted in a while, so please drink up my half finished reflective essay like I wish I could drink a big glass of agua de Valencia.

“Shit weather isn’t it”

“Yeah”

“I can’t remember the last time I saw sun. I wonder how many hours of sun we’ve had this year” I say.

He picks up his phone to google it - as he often does, and I wonder if he Googles things in his sleep.

“We’ve had 24 hours of sunlight this year.”

I go about my day, auto piloting onto the train, into the office and look out the window to the driving rain onto concrete. 50 shades of grey.

I think everyone in the UK is under the same impression that we haven’t seen daylight in a while. And yes - this is completely normal for the end of January - I start to try and recall the last sunny day. I just can’t. I then think start to think - is this the greyest winter we’ve had? Is it just me that feels like the sky has remained a thick, dark, unforgiving grey for what feels like forever?

Everyone who endures the what feels like never-ending winter, especially up North in the UK, knows you have to work with it, not against it. As I get older, I become increasingly on-board with the mass romanticisation of the long, dark days. SAD lamps on amazon for 20 quid at the ready. Adopting a ‘walk whatever the weather’ mindset to hit your step count. Perfecting the immune boosting chicken soup recipes. Succumbing to British stereotypes of having never ending cups of tea in one single day. You forward plan pub meet ups, preferably ones with big log burners to crowd round, you keep moving, you put the towels on the heating racks for a slightly less painful exit from the shower. We’re making it through, and with every day that arrives, we’re a few minutes closer to a balmy summer evening where you shave your legs ‘just because’ and you leave the office not in total darkness, but fly out the door and into a pub garden.

But then comes February - and it’s been a 3 month long stint of 4pm sunsets. You’ve absolutely had enough. You know you’re through the worst of it, and people start asking what festivals you’re thinking of doing this summer, but you’re sick to death of staying inside, and those festivals feel like a fever dream. Pictures from summer picnics pop up on your phone’s photo library (thanks Apple) and you can’t remember what it feels like to feel like warm sun on your back whilst you drift off in the garden.

I theorised the other day that maybe that collective mania we all experience in a British summer is because we spend all winter so thirsty for sun - suppressing our desires and parched for a sunny pint. The constant corner shop trips for cans when it’s above 15 degrees, the shirtless boys on bikes, the dizzying excitement of the first pub garden outings, carrying blankets round in work bags for after work picnics that end up as 3ammers. I wonder if we lived somewhere with a more balanced climate, would we be more balanced Brits?

I believe more and more in the ironic dichotomy of life. The yin and yang. You can’t have this without that, you need dark to see light, you need bad to see good - all of that, I agree with. I think of the summer in London where I was desperate for it to cool down. It was so hot for so long, you could fry an egg on the floor. The relentless sticky sweaty heat where tubes were inhumane and trying to sleep with a shit fan chucking back gammy warm air onto you was the best it was going to get. I remember wishing for a 10 minute breeze.

But the physical yearning my body feels for warmth now can’t fathom it ever being too warm. I’m desperately longing for my pale translucent skin to start recharging with a healthy glow and to see the world in colour again.

I feel a mounting sense of claustrophobia when I look up at the sky. Like it’s too low down and I can’t really get a feel for where I am on the earth, like they (the government?) need to raise the ceiling a bit more otherwise I’ll hit my head.

I feel like an abandoned paint by numbers in greyscale, missing its vibrant blocks of colours and character. I’ve done a good 4 month stint of wrestling with the gray, and now I’m starting to get tired.

I know that first day the sun breaks through on the 1st of March and I see the first few glimpses of a prettier colour palette - emerald greens, velvety purples, brilliant blue backdrop with marshmallow clouds - I’ll feel human again. It reminds me that were are all just mammals waiting for hibernation to finish so we can come out our homes and recharge again. That is, if we get a good summer this year.

Only thing is, I can’t really remember the last time I used a laundrette. My washing machine is broken. I wear my nonchalance like a neon suit. The slightly unfriendly couple glance as I squinted to read the instructions on the wall and start to work out the social norms of the brightly lit, linen smelling room.

I scan the differing drums looking for a free one, and organise my pound coins ready to throw them into the slot, faintly remembering days on the pier at the claw machine, but instead of winning a cuddly toy, I get clean clothes!

It say’s £6 for a medium wash. I feel red crawl across my cheeks as I’m rifling through my pants in public. But panic fills my throat when I realise the privilege of usually having a washing machine at home has left me stranded without the key ingredient - detergent. I feel way too stupid to ask the couple next to me, and as beads of sweat gather on my forehead, I spot a woman in her kitchen in the house opposite.

I rap on the door and mentally rehearse coming across not as a clueless disorganised woman, but as a friendly, quirky stranger who simply did not consider she needed detergent to wash her clothes in a laundrette.

The woman opens the door and I over enthusiastically ask her how she is, and then demand I need some detergent.

She nods and comes back with a small glass receptacle full of milky white liquid. Her swift nod lead me to wonder if she often cosplays as the laundrette’s customer service living in such a close proximity. She returns quickly with some detergent, tells me to keep the glass, probably because she doesn’t really want to encounter me again and it’s freezing cold, and I head back in with a cup of questionable looking liquid. The couple stare.

I chuck the liquid into the drum and remind myself to breathe. I sit down and start to follow the hamster wheel of clothes in front of me, counting down the minutes. I wonder why no water has been introduced so far. Dry wash? Then I realise I’ve put my dirty clothes in a dryer, doused in detergent.

My neck is covered in prickles and I can’t quite laugh it off yet. I grab the damp sticky lump of fabric and shove it in a washer next to me. I’ve got exactly enough change left to do this spin. I shove the coins in and slam the door. The once calming sounds of rushing water around me start to sound like the Niagara Falls.

I start wrestling with the door lock, fighting with it, pressing my body up against the drum and starting to feel heat rise in behind my ears. My nervous system is in the state a gazelle’s would be being hunted by a lion. I’m just a 26 year old girl trying to do her laundry, I tell myself. But the door won’t lock, I need to go to the cinema, I need to reply to my mum because I said I’d ring her last week and I haven’t, and there’s obviously a reason I’m delaying it but I can’t be arsed to think about it, and why can’t things to smoothly for me? I can’t continue the nonchalance in this state. I can’t mask that I’m now visibly upset about the very stiff door, and tears start pooling in the back of my retinas. I’m definitely crying about not knowing how to work a washing machine.

I’m definitely not crying about the days frustrations. Not crying about the mental fog that’s been plaguing my brain since I woke. Nope, it’s not the work call that didn’t quite go to plan, or the feeling that I’m wasting my life, or the pang in my stomach when I look at my bank account. It’s also not the conversation I need to have that I’ve been ignoring. It’s not accidentally reading a really disturbing account on the Epstein files reddit thread. It’s not that I haven’t felt close to them in ages. It’s all been brewing in my brain throughout the day like a bubbling slow cooker of dread. And, as I fight with the door, I’m not only unable to physically shut it - but struggling to keep the slow cooker’s contents from bubbling and spilling all over the floor.

I refuse to accept that this laundrette is showing me gentle signs of please leave and I don’t want to wash your clothes today. I wrestle and shove and twist the lock and it clicks shut, and the lights ping on, and I sigh.

I sit down under the luminescent lights in front of the machines, and my eyes start to circle the drum, picking up on the point where the clothes reach the very limit of their upwards journey and plummet back down again, and again, and again. I can’t help but feel like I’m looking at a cross section of my brain. The rhythmic, robotic repetition of worries from yesterday, the day before and the day before that being chucked against the side of my cranium. Lily Allen - play ruminating, ruminating. I start imagining the red pants I spot during their fun-fair ride in the dryer as a one of those prickly thoughts, hoping with every spin it just slowly disintegrates into the water. I’m so so due on my period.

I let the melting pot of dread marinating in my mind spin around and around and around like my clothes. Then, the spin stops. The room is silent. My brain’s spin cycle is done. It feels peaceful. Shit, I’m late for the cinema.

*Edit - I did make it to Marty Supreme xoxox

Sorry, I know. Bit depressing. Not the new year 2026 energy year of the horse I’m embodying here. In fact, I’d say I’d describe myself as a mostly positive person? But there’s something about the corporate facade, the complete and utter performance that really drains my soul. So to ease this cold plunge back into surgically lit offices and piles of unanswered emails, on one of my work from home days (which I am VERY grateful for) I opted to finish up my days work in a cafe.

I’ve been cafe crawling of recent after moving from a big city into a tiny village. In a way, I do miss the noise of city life. The countryside is peaceful and perfect for regulating your nervous system, but I find the myriad of cityscape sounds comforting, almost as if you can blend into the noise. You stand out more in a village as people start to wonder who the new girl is. So - I retreat to a cafe, as I like the white noise of the coffee machines and chatters around me.

Flat white, one sugar please.

While I wait I scan the menu. I’m opposite the espresso bench, and I watch a barista crank the handles on a coffee machine whilst taking orders. A pen sits behind her ear, coffee stains cascade down her apron. She lifts a sliver jug to the sky and a jet of hot white milk lands into the cup, her wrist flicking as she seals the latte off. I find myself jealous of the beautiful cup of coffee she birthed. Perhaps because I’m waiting for my own.

I glance to my laptop screen and sigh. Why do i feel jealous of her? I hear her laughter cut through the sound of the milk steamer. She’s in her element. Ok - of course she might have dreams bigger than working in a coffee shop. Who knows. Or maybe it is her dream? She dons a big smile and she bops along to the jazz music playing, spoons clinking and dancing round her fellow baristas like a well choreographed routine.

But after a few more moments listening to the low chatter around me, I start to realise why I’m jealous. I’ve girl bossed myself into a stupor.

I have malaise from punching in numbers into spreadsheets, and signing off emails seems on autopilot. The constant fight or flight and unplanned teams calls have deep fried my nervous system. After too long staring at a screen, the fact all my work is based in this foldable screen starts to feel a bit existential.

I really miss when I used my hands at work. When I carried hot plates, hugged people, and scrubbed tables.

When I came home from a with sore legs, not a headache, and a wad of cash in my pocket, money I could run my fingers over and feel the reimbursement for my time in the flesh. I remember how incredibly satisfying it was to forget the passage of time when you’re in a hospitality flow state.

But I never thought I’d be on this side of the fence. I remember working in a bar at uni, the clock hitting 1am, my hands thick with sticky liquer remnants and no end in sight. I’d dread seeing the bookings system chocca-bloc with bottomless brunch tables. And most shifts would end with me smoking outside, squatting on the floor trying to find an uber. I told myself this was all part of the master plan - that in a couple years id be sat at a desk in central london, overlooking bbc studios, with a shiny name badge and a fat salary doing creative fulfilling work. And that when I’d get interviewed by a glossy mag, that I’d refer to the bar work as the Marty Supreme-esque working my arse off for minimum wage before my dreams came true.

I didn’t quite get to the magazine interview stage (yet?). But I’ve been a slave to corporate for a few years now. I’m well versed in circling back. I’ve become fluent in corporate-ese - manoeuvring through long meetings and facial expressions that appear that I’m extremely invested when my brains elsewhere. I can rustle up a killer of a comms plan in about 20 minutes.

But I don’t actually feel like I’m working for my money. I crave being physically tired from a day’s work - and feeling the flow of balance from clocking in, working hard and leaving it all at the door when I’m home. My workload hangs over my conscience like a cardigan of unease. Did I action that thing? Did I schedule that post? I think I need to find some time with X to discuss X. I’ve never finished a day at my corporate role and thought - ah, I’m actually finished. My days melt into one another, like one long work day, split up intermittently by sleep and mild socialising. My front room doubles up as my office, and I don’t go for work drinks. I have, through the eyes of many, a dream job that allows flexibility, work from home and pays me enough.

My flat white arrives from the barista. She slides it onto the table and asks me if I’d like any sugar. She glances at my laptop and my notebook and turns away. Is she wishing she worked on a laptop, able to sit in a cafe and not be the one serving drinks? I wonder if we’re just wanting what the other one has.

After bingeing old X factor auditions, doing a mandatory tea round with respective tea recipes memorised, climbing into the rabbit hole that is checking our old Facebook posts and sharing some dodgy easter chocolates, it dawned on me that I might not always have the luxury of living with with my friends forever.

Somewhere between getting off from work, chucking our trackies on and all squishing onto the sofa like tired sardines, our melting pot of mid twenties worries seemed to slowly bubble away into insignificance. We had a chosen family, residing in a Manchester townhouse that asks for too much of a percentage of our incomes. We were all juggling our dreams and our council tax bills, riding into the blizzard that is adulthood.

Riding through this time together under one roof made the ill fitting parts of our twenties feel not so ugly.

The 9 - 5 that is slowly grating away at our souls and nagging at our imagined potential transforms when we mute our corporate calls and make each other laugh over the top of the laptop screen.

The hilarity that one of us saved lives for a living - and another of us saved spreadsheets - showed us how different our fig-tree paths were. One of us, a trainee doctor, would return from an afternoon of appointments, preserving anonymity of patients, of course, but detailing stomach churning ailments that we’d Google pictures of and say it looks like our ex’s toe. Freelance housemate would announce her new escapade - most recently tasked with reviewing kids menus in posh London restaurants. Trainee doctor can’t believe that’s in a day’s work, but says she looks forward to the review of the children’s chicken nuggets.

The daily work of to do lists - of cleaning, cooking and sorting your shit out could be made bearable through the company of each other. The onerous yet incredibly privileged, first world dilemma of what to feed ourselves for tea turns into a busy shift at a kitchen, pots bubbling and pans dancing as broccoli heads crisp up over a recount of a really hard day. One of us brought his non conventional cooking skills to this village - so we made an Instagram account of his creations. He refers to his signature dish of chocolate squares on white crusty bread as a ‘French delicacy’.

It wasn’t all rose tinted - don’t get me wrong - the audible shagging, the sorry I lost my key at 4am and the splitwise scandals - when one of us would add a £10 toilet roll because they couldn’t be arsed to walk to big Aldi. A price to pay, a natural friction of cohabiting with humans.

But we witnessed the ebbs and flows of each others relationships as we stumbled through them, often hosting ‘Am I the Asshole’ seminars after heated disagreements after too many spicy margs. The new recruits got grilled on first arrival, like a protective mother lion protecting her young, and after receiving the seal of approval, slowly let them into our pack. The darker days where one of us would retreat to our rooms would be cured by a ‘do you want a sweet treat’ text and a much needed cry on a shoulder.

We had built in, on call 24 hour support to dating disasters, 4 different flavours of break up support available, just up the stairs. We learned that the sound of the key in the lock gave away who was entering in and how their onstage walk was about to go - if it was slow and clunky, a day they’d rather not recount. An excited scrape and jangle and one of us has news to broadcast urgently.

I can’t put a price on how special it was that we had so much to share despite seeing each other every day - we’d linger on the stairs past midnight excitedly whispering our thoughts and dreams. Adulthood starts to sink in when you stop having so much to linger on a stair for. Opening my door on a Sunday and hearing singing coming from the bathroom reassured me that, despite sometimes feeling it, I wasn’t alone.

Hangovers didn’t hang as bad together! We’d bring blankets downstairs and watch old Wife Swap episodes - specifically the one where the woman’s signed off work for a month and gets placed into a family that demands she does a public gymnast performance in the town square. Laughter tears streaming, messy buns, burnt out vapes and yellow sticker Tesco finds consumed, the doom that so often reared its head on a Sunday evening, a faint memory.

As the summer evenings became darker, and our tenancy end date loomed, it all dawned on us. That what we created was a little bus shelter in the madness of our twenties, one that we’d soon be departing from off to the next stop.

If you want to, Buy me a coffee!

(This one’s for all of us at finders queef, love u all) x

I asked my mum what she did for a job, and she said she was a personal assistant in London. I imagined her as one of the rushing, busy, important and glamorous Londonites I saw trickle out the train station, coffee in hand and phone tucked under the ear.

Whenever I could hear her downstairs, I’d put on my best hoodie, scrape mascara over my lashes and slather my lips in see through gloss. Looking back, she must have known I’d glammed up for her presence, as all I was doing was eating a pizza and watching films. I’d slunk downstairs and casually ‘oh, hi’ her. But of course, I was secretly completely obsessed with her. I thought she was the coolest person I’d ever met. I really wanted her to like me. She took me to London one day, and I watched her smoked a cigarette, flicking the butt to the pavement with crimson red almond nails. I returned home and started re-branding myself, using her as my blueprint.

I think she was my inspiration for the years that followed. Aged 16, I’d pranced around London in my mums’ leather jacket, cosplaying adulthood, wearing heels way too high for me and smug that I had slunk into the Sushi Bar in the train station and managed to buy a glass of cheap wine. Me and my friends sent gig links in our group chat, orchestrated when we could get away with smoking weed at one our houses and became pros at memorising fake ID details.

I’d fast-tracked the rest of my youth, and swapped it for sticky dance floors, vodka from water bottles in fields and well thought out lies to feed back to my parents about where I was. I was fearless, I didn’t take no for an answer and I believed anything was possible. I’d ridden on the back of a motorbike at 3am, I’d frequented places I was too young to be in, or I’d tell boys that I knew exactly what I wanted because I was ‘mature for my age’. I’d walk into a room full of lights and music and not even consider what others might think if me, I’d cold email the BBC asking them if I could pop along to shadow someone, I’d go on dates with men too old for me and see it as a compliment to my old head on young shoulders (ew). I was into underground house music, I’d watched trainspotting 10 times, and I signed my friends up to ‘illegal rave’ postcode text lines. I was the type of girl you’d meet and think ‘has she ever shut and just read a book in silence?”.

I had long, keyboard clacking nails in a square shape, big stern eyebrows that made me look angry and a boyfriend who had a car. I went out for dinner at places I couldn’t afford and owned a Prada purse. I went on Holiday to Malia, climbed up onto the bar and ran across it to neck a shot, the cheers from my friends like speed through my veins. I felt the most confident I’d ever felt, leaving all the coming of age lessons in a rucksack back at home, because ‘I’d already grown up.’ But it was all, quite obviously in retrospect, a huge facade, and of course 16 year old self had left that rucksack because she didn’t think she could carry it anywhere. It was too heavy.

As I write this, I’m sitting in a fleece I got on offer from Go Outdoors. It’s a Saturday night, I’m sofabound and the malty waft of Guinness Cake fills my house. I’m living in the Yorkshire countryside, with a man. He isn’t a famous rapper or footballer. He’s my best friend. I used to date someone who thought he was one of those. I don’t have a cool job. I used to, one where I ran round London with a tucked my phone under my ear and drank lots of coffee but…I didn’t like it. I don’t wear big hoops anymore, just lots of rings, one made out of a teaspoon. I have short nails. Well, at the moment. I do like a long acrylic every now and then. When I walk in a room, sometimes I purposefully avoid eye contact. I don’t drink that much anymore? I went home at 12.10pm on New Years eve because my feet hurt. I have an unhealthy obsession with watching plane videos on YouTube. I love listening to Sade and writing, getting massages and swimming in the sea.

16 year old me would be yawwwwwnning. But 10 year old me would be breathing a very long sigh of relief.

10 year old me - imagine jam jar glasses, a very obvious autistic gaze into the distance and a scratchy flamenco dress from a Spanish supermarket would be looking at 26 year old me thinking, thank fuck you came back to us.

You really were quite insufferable at 16.

No offence, but I wouldn’t have wanted to hang round with you at 16. Glitter tips and square?! You abandoned our love for reading and writing as soon as you got that fake ID. Thank god we got back to it. We used to know how to play the guitar like you saw in Spain. We like lying on the grass in summer, scrunching up earthy tufts of grass in our palms and humming in unison with the bees. We like swimming, making bracelets, making music videos with mates. We loved being really silly and hated wearing pink. We really liked dancing and singing doing performances, just not in the presence of strange men, and we didn’t care about how we looked. We didn’t have to pretend to be anything other than who were were.

But I think the crux of this article is that maybe, 16 year old self really longed to join 26 year old self, but couldn’t because she feared she’d look like a loser herself.

She would have felt a whole lot safer with 26 year old self. What 16 year old self doesn’t know about 26 year old Go Outdoors fleece wearing, boring job working, short nail wearing, slow walks loving self is that she loves to do a shot of baileys on Christmas Day, feeling the warmth in her chest and crashing into the icy waves of the sea. She still rides on the back on a motorcycle, when she went to Thailand on her own for a month. She was nervous clinging onto the driver in a very hot sticky awkward hug, but she felt so alive. She might have gone home early on New Years, but she prank called someone on the sofa before her kebab arrived with her mate, both of them cackling and delirious. She did jump the fence to get into an Oasis gig (see, I still got it). She still loves underground house music. She just doesn’t have to lie about her age anymore to go and see it. Her boyfriend does in fact have a car (but that’s not really a flex anymore) .She loves laughing until her stomach aches with people who don’t care about where she works. She doesn’t tuck her phone under her ear to seem busier, she’s regulated her nervous system and does downward dog poses. She also doesn’t pretend to be anything she isn’t anymore, and allows ridiculous to take over until tears stream. She doesn’t value the currency of external validation anymore, having spent it all when she was 16.

Maybe all ages of me co-exist in the 26 year old me, taking turns to have a go. I feel a lot more like the 10 year old me most of the time as my days aren’t brimming with exciting outrageous stories that I may have had at 16. But every time 16 year old self knocks on the door, tired from sleeping on the sofa with hair like a bee’s nest, smelling of cigarettes, confused and a bit teary, I’ll put a fleece on her and make her a tea and we watch plane videos on YouTube together.And when she rocks up with a bottle of wine, we’ll go to a gig together.

If you liked this, and you fancy it, Buy Me a Pint

She describes that it’s so in to be a goth, but to be a gym rat. Or a Pilates teacher who loves EDM. To me, it sounded like she was calling to reject a pristine, polished aesthetic that we often see on our feeds, and ripping up personal branding each Instagram square at a time. But it got me thinking about the C word.

In that moment, Emma had verbalised something I wholeheartedly could finally get on board with. A trend I could not resist. Something I specialise in, consistently.

Contradiction. Finally, I feel seen.

My curriculum vitae of contradiction is impressive. My self-proclaimed love for living in a city because limebikes and late night shops to then move to somewhere that constantly smells of cowshit. My stint in the music industry with glam invites to events to then working in a street lighting depot with tradies and being a bit happier. My solo travel trip to Thailand where I swore I’d do hostels, but ended up in a 4 star hotel (this isn’t a good example, this was just me being a princess). My (also self proclaimed) good taste in music but physically unable to skip a Venga Boys song. My absolute spectrum of a wardrobe that features both cardigans and catsuits. Me sat in Soho House with my old friend talking about the time I shat myself on a bus.

(I know, I know. Maybe this is one war and peace style justification of a chronically indecisive 20 something with raging ADHD.)

But I implore you to hold that thought. Because humans are, in fact, one massive fat contradiction.

Come to think of it - it’s bizarre that we are so shameful of coming across as an inconsistency of ourselves. God forbid a girl change her mind!

Contradiction rightfully so raises the hairs on society’s back. It triggers a feeling of uncertainty and throws our feeling of control out the window. It’s also not particularly socially acceptable. It feels clunky and loud to spin around and admit you’re now really into pulled pork after years of veganism. It feels odd to admit that you love someone deeply but they’re really frustrating you, a lot. The incongruence on an emotional level feels like it demands more understanding, and on an Instagram feed for sure rejects a nice, neat and marketable aesthetic.

In spaces and systems that exist within capitalism, logic and reason are valued highly, leaving contradiction as the least attractive option. Western Society values stability, predictability and a clear answer. The business leader that promises the company one thing and delivers another is a bad PR campaign for contradiction. He might be labelled as incompetent, deceiving amongst other things. Perhaps, rightly so. But we may be applying this condemnation to contradict ourselves to things we don’t need to. In other settings where we aren’t on the clock to deliver on deadlines, contradiction might be a bit of a green flag.

Maybe it’s our social recognition system, our need for things to always make sense, and our desire for predictability that places a disapproving look upon contradiction. Maybe contradiction’s had a hard time.

Contradiction doesn’t consider the fact that beliefs aren’t permanent. You can indeed have a permission slip to change your mind, over and over again. The whole sunk cost fallacy of being into something sometimes makes you feel like choosing something when you’re 15 (like, I dunno, a career) is a lifelong contract with no break clause. Finally admitting that you don’t really like Wolf Alice after 5 years of them being your top Spotify Wrapped artist is - ok.

It’s like the great anonymous once said, “if you don’t look back to this time last year and don’t cringe at least one thing, you’re doing it wrong”.

Contradiction is proof that whilst time has passed, we have changed.Contradiction is evidence that we are in fact living our lives. It’s the proof that we’ve visited the corners of ourselves, albeit briefly, to then walk over to the other side to report back. It’s the proof that we sit within the tension of what we are now and who we could be later. It’s passport stamps logging different destinations we’ve been, once existed in, passed through and now reside elsewhere.

It’s evidence that we can be two things at once. That two truths can float around each other, not shoving each other out of the frame. That something can be both valuable and flawed at the same time. This tussle all happens in the space between certainty and uncertainty, in that tug of war that us humans rarely feel like we can face.

We’d prefer to call it out as a flaw than move towards it with curiosity, or even see it as a hallmark of depth and a signpost to honesty. So next time you meet someone who loves heavy metal but works as a florist, maybe they’re quite interesting indeed.

I watch a woman start cranking one of the locks open. I feel a different pathway of thought carve through my brain - a curious intrigue opposed to the usual morning under-the-covers mind that passively scrolls on TikTok until I need to log on. I didn’t usually give a shit about the mechanics of boat travel systems. But after my breakfast being fast-foodlike content, someone’s 5-9 becoming my 15 minutes before 9, and watching people get ready with them before I’ve even brushed my teeth, I suddenly wanted to know where the displaced water went, and then if I should help this woman who looked like she was trying to crank the lever on the lock bridge.

I went over and helped her push the big wooden beam ajar to sounds of water shooting through the gaps in the lock. Her husband sat on the end of the barge, taking up role of navigator as the slim boat slowly rose. We did a British classic - exchanging views on the weather. I asked if she lived on her barge, to which she said yes, then she told me about her cats and informed me she only had 17 more locks to un-lock today on their journey up the canal. Her cats bathed on the deck of the barge whilst smoke rose from the engine and sat on the water. I liked looking into her window of life for a few minutes. I left feeling connected, grounded, impressed with the strength of the retired little lady, and like I was in a mental-health educational video shown in schools on why going on a morning walk and staying off your phone was good for you.

It then clunked - just like the lever of the lock - that I stumbled upon what I wanted to write about. It made me think of book I read about 3 years ago, called ‘The Power of Strangers - The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World’ by Joe Keohane.

I remembered he explored how tiny micro-interactions with strangers were the ‘missing piece’ of modern society and the answer to our loneliness epidemic. I resonated so strongly with the book because I remember thinking, fuck, I am that person who speaks to strangers and actually enjoys it. I left my morning interaction bathed in rare British sunlight with something to finally write about.

Keohane delves into the collective societal fear of strangers that hinders connection, and showcases how interacting with strangers on a microlevel can massively transform your happiness, empathy and cognitive development whilst, on a greater scale, lead us to feel more belonging and that we are part of something bigger, ultimately making us happier than if we ignored strangers. I can’t help sounding like your nan when she’d tell you to ‘go make friends’ with the kids in the pool on your Spanish holidays.

But why do we avoid this with every cell in our body? Keohane explains that the answer is very much in our DNA, along with how we naturally take on the mindset that strangers are obstacles.

“Our suspicion of strangers has a long history. Ever since people came together to live in settlements, we’ve seen outsiders as dangerous agents of treachery and chaos. This fear persisted right through the rise of villages, cities, and nations. Whole populations have suffered persecution for being different from the majority – for being other.”

Keohane includes research that shows we massively underestimate whether the stranger on the street will like us. How funny, that a key factor in why we don’t bother to speak to strangers, even when we’d like to, is we conclude with absolutely no evidence that the stranger will turn around and start pointing at us, saying we’re weird and a freak. People also become extremely surprised when, upon interaction, strangers turn out to kind and interesting. I also think living in cities full of people who have all signed a silent agreement to ignore each other (why would I have a conversation with a stranger when I can pretend to be on the phone) isn’t the most conducive to breaking this mould.

We as society, in this post-capitalistic and screen-powered time, exist mostly in closed circuit social groups, isolated bedrooms and rentals amongst nodding-terms neighbourhoods, where we say we want community but don’t really like (or can afford to) leave the house to find said community.

Maybe the gnawing, ever-present missing jigsaw piece of mid-twenties working from home life isn’t in the form of forcing yourself to join a run club or moving to Bali and starting your own business - maybe it’s saying hello to the postman, asking the girl next to you in the yoga class if she comes here often (don’t do this if you’re a man), or actually making eye contact with people in lifts instead of pretending they’re not in there, breathing on you.

Experiencing even minimal social interaction regularly can inject a colour into our modern lives we lost a while ago. We didn’t even realise that things became a bit grey. Menial exchanges and IRL connections are how we evolved to be in the first place. Grinning and bearing the initial friction in an encounter with a stranger is akin to the scraping of the match against a matchbox. Sometimes a spark emerges, quickly fizzling out. Sometimes a flame, and sometimes, when you protect the flame, a billowing, warming fire of a new friendship.

I’ve got to admit, there are times when I’d really rather not engage in a conversation. Normally, speaking to someone before 10am is something I’d only do if I got paid to do it. But strangers I’ve managed to spark the matchbox and bare the scraping sound of awkwardness and anticipation with then lead to free airport rides, offers for me to be on the radio, given me a job, become my best friend, watched me sing in the kitchen, held a mirror up to myself and showed me who I am, accompanied me in the darker times, and got a hotel with me on a backpacking trip because we were sick of the hostel toilets, and many many more. Because we were all strangers once.

This intro already annoys me because it’s not really getting to a point and it’s not even mildly relating to what I wanted to write about. It’s now just a train of thought that I can’t stop, so if you’d like to mind the gap and board the train, too late, you’re on it. I’m now physically cringing as I type, those two years of brain-rot turned rust do a verbal vomit on the page. My ADHD (yes, I have it too) brain decided to pretend to be an alarm clock this morning, and started reeling out loud, mean and jump-scared semi dream semi-awake thoughts this morning at 5.30am.

I’m writing this not at 5.30am, cause that’s fucking weird and keen, but at 8am (still a bit weird and keen) before work. I thought about scrolling on TikTok until I need to start work, but decided against it. I’m lying, sorry. I did it for a bit, then saw a hope-core TikTok that told me to go touch some grass, so here I am. The niche smell of a British morning (weed and tarmac) that shows signs of evolving into a warm day is glorious and one of the only reasons I stay in the country. Anyway, I’m balancing my laptop on my…lap…and here we are.

What’s in the Zeitgeist? What are people talking about? Quick scroll on Substack, quick browse of magazines. Natural wines? Quiet quitting? Musk and Trump (from the UK this just sounds like a pub toilet) Need for third spaces? Job economy is so bad it’s worth following your dreams?

When you stop creating and get stuck in the metaphorical mud of consuming over contributing, you don’t have a fucking clue where to begin. You also can’t tell people you ‘write’ anymore, because you don’t. It’s like being in a creative’s coma. What used to flow easily now comes out in a critical, mean voice. Maybe that’s how this sounds. I’ve not just got writers block, or have stumbled upon a bit of a ‘rut’ - I’ve not even formed a thought longer than my finger in really long time. Thank you TikTok.

My goal with this time round is to finally write because I WANT TO. Previously, my ‘passion’ for words looked more like I just wanted to be offered a column somewhere so I could put it in my instagram bio. I loved the way my name looked in a byline, even though I spent £100 on a train to interview a schizophrenic pub owner (he was really nice, I just couldn’t afford that). I felt a visceral shiver down my spine as I accepted my ‘dream job’ working in the music industry, even though it was below minimum wage and ended in a crash and burn. And any time I told someone I could ‘get them guest list’ and they suddenly wanted to hang out more (weird that), I felt external validation coursing through my veins oohhh yeehehhhhh bebe. So that wasn’t really going to last long.

So, here I am. Laptop balancing, sun squinting, looking for a hook, a nice polite little reintroduction piece to kickstart my journalistic career…-sorry- my fresh approach to writing for enjoyment, just-because. I’ll be back with you once I figure out what I want to write.

Hi, I wrote this sat at my desk whilst I watched people from the window on the first sunny day of the year x

Why why why

Do we sit like ducks

Back hunched over

Eyes glued to a screen

What does it all mean

To circle back and touch base

Gentle reminder, can you chase

For 8 hours a day

I just want to go and play

Eat some berries

Touch some grass

Instead I have shit posture and a numb arse

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