"Sirius was too busy being a big rebel to get married."
J. K. Rowling

After much intense and nerdy thought I've decided to cast the inevitable Marauders Era movies J. K will write once the recession rattles her magical fortunes.

I've probably done this before sixty times, BUT OH WELL.

( I miss these guys. )

"He always made me feel like he was going to walk away from me."
Mum

My mum said that about my dad today. But she said it as though it were a positive thing. She voiced it as a beloved quality rather than a flaw. It lured me into thinking about our priorities and our perspectives. About how the flaws we try to conceal can occasionally be the things people find most attractive. It's the relationship equivalent of one man's trash/another man's treasure. But it also triggered this minute, squirming part of my brain that's obsessed with the idea of escape. That feeling's coming up a lot in this new story I'm writing. All it is is a boy who escapes, and disconnects, and adores it. But then reconnects on a different path. Like these flowers I remember reading about, the ones you can pull up by the roots and place somewhere else and they'll just set up home there instead. Hook their selves into the Earth. Because they need the nutrients. The survival instinct.

A lot of that seems to apply to relationships in general.

Take some of my favourite things of the evening.

The photography of flashtaste



( 'There is more than one kind of freedom...Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.' - The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. )

"Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed."
Wayne Dyer

Visit Finland



I need to see a concert in Helsinki. I need to sip vodka from a bar deep in the heart of Turku. I need to practice rolling my R's. I need to sauna for unhealthy hours only to throw myself into the snow, naked as the day I was born. I need to work as a porter at Ruisrock. I need to see the Aurora Borealis from Lapland. I need to smell leather in the grind of an underground nightclub. Even if it's for a weekend, I need to be there.

Camp Counseling



Being on summer camps as a kid are some of the most exquisite memories of my entire fucking life, and I'd love to be a part of making those memories for someone else.

Work In Australia



Teach English In China



As young Chinese nannies come to England to teach children in Kensington the complexities of Mandarin, young British students are going to China to teach children in Beijing the warm tones and furls of English. I like that synchrony.

Visit Utah



I want to see my missionaries. I want to experience a Utahn Mormon church service on a Sunday.
I want to climb the mountains. I want to camp in the greenery. I want to drive through the deserts for miles. I want to see the Hare Krishna temple, and the Latter-Day Saint temple, and I want to hear The Tabernacle sing.


The more I think about what I want out of my life, the more I realise there are two contrasting paths that eliminate each other, and to follow one I would have to obliterate the other. There's the insecure side of me that longs to be a doctor. The side that needs to leave an imprint while wrapped in the security of a job that defies recession; a job that will provide consistency, a beautiful big house, a flashy car, and above all that, some form of meaning. I will have achieved, and in that achievement I would be saving lives.

Then there's the other side of me. The side that can't take the workload, the stress, the pressure and the hours. Signing up to medicine is an absolute lifetime commitment. Doctors in this country work anything from a 48 hour week to a 58 hour week. There is no respite. There would be a minute window of opportunity for me to have children. And even if I did, would I be able to dedicate the necessary time to them? To be the parent I want to be? Would I have the space to do what I to do with my life? I want to stay at home for some point. I want to create the stability I have never had. I want to orchestrate my children's sleepovers and be the embarrassing mother. I want to be the floaty old lady with the long hair and the longer skirts who wears dungarees while traveling the world; smelling of cake and spice and lime water.

I want adventure. I want to love and I want to experience. Will I get that in a clinical, disciplined world of certificates and instruments? Sure, there is inevitable satisfaction, but is it satisfaction that compliments me or satisfaction that compliments the 'idea' of what I am expected to be?

I don't know what I want anymore. And my first university applications are in 8 months. In 8 months I must decide which path to follow, and which to ignore forever. Because if I choose medicine it will last me forever; and if I don't, my youth is the only chance I will have to execute it.

"So it's sort of social. Demented and sad, but social, right?"
John Bender



Best movie ever. Effortlessly. Hands down.

I had my interview today. I never want to think about it ever again. I want it erased from my mind. I've never screwed up so badly. I will never discuss it. I will never mention it. It will simply fester in a darkened corner of my conscience until I'm ready, willing and able to handle it in a satisfactory and non-volatile manner. If I do not write about it, if I do not tell anyone else about it, then the moment will exist purely between myself and four teachers. And if it exists between us five, then it shall die with us five. And if it dies with us five, it shall have never technically existed. This something with no record, no trace and no memory has technically never occurred.

Now, to find their notes and a gallon of kerosene...