one hundred and nineteen

old, but good:

I like the length of the dresses. Perhaps the time of the miniskirt has passed (I've been in them since 16).

one hundred and eighteen

I'm going to Paris in three weeks (for the first time). Eeeeee!

one hundred and seventeen

I had a big post planned, about gender brainwashing and how and where gendered rules are made and reinforced; instead, I watched Masterchef (it's not even very good! argh.)

So in the meantime, here are some shoes I really, really want.

They are vegan, and handmade from recycled cotton and tyres. The company claims to be sweat-shop free and worker driven. Also, cats.

I made a promise at the start of the year to stop buying from high street shops (and to not buy anything first-hand if I could avoid it). Footwear is difficult for me: I have big feet and charity shops have an abundance of size 6 shoes and little else. So these are probably perfect, except i probably can't afford them. Sigh.

one hundred and sixteen

Another to add to the songs that make you want to pick up a book list:

First love, Emmy the Great

 

in other news, today i look like this:

one hundred and fifteen

The Museum of London has made me want to buy an iphone.

They've launched an app, StreetMuseum, which guides users to various points in London where, via the iphone screen, historical images of the city appear.

Like this.

 

The word palimpsest describes a manuscript page from which text has been scraped off, so that it can be used again. These images are reverse palimpsests, then: the past refound and layered again on the surface.

one hundred and fourteen

The first, and so far only, time was when I was seventeen.

I stood in the hallway outside my classics classroom, feeling sick and alone, trying to remember when exactly my period was meant to have started. Had it been just over four weeks since the last, or five? I never thought much about it. My nausea was only nerves - had to only be nerves.

Until then, I had not realised what a joy it was to bleed.

I have never wanted children - even less when still a child. Never been able to imagine myself a mother, nuturing a little being that was part-me and not-me at all.

But I saw pictures of him when young, and he told me things he had made and done. And I wondered what our children would look like, what my son's hand would feel like in mine.

'and i would have liked to,
to have something above you
to have something to hold
and know i could choose to let it grow'

(Emmy the Great, We almost had a baby)

one hundred and thirteen

'Westron wynde, when wilt thou blow,

The small raine down can raine.

Cryst, if my love were in my armes

And I in my bedde again!'

Some things don't change, no matter how many hundreds of years go by.