planning the revolution

yuletide 2021, whoop whoop!

2021-10-17T09:56:46Z

dear yule writer, hello, i love you. please do come in and take a seat; i'm delighted you're here.

every year yuletide creeps up on me unexpectedly... except not this year! growth.gif

all my previous letters are under my yuletide tag, and these should give you an idea of what i do or don't like. as before, my tumblr is linked in some of those, but i am not great at tagging? i will share tags where i think they're appropriate but i suspect you'll just see the same gifsets over and over again.

first rule is the most rule: please have fun! if you have a plotbunny, chase it where it may lead. as long as it doesn't hit my DNWs, i promise you, i will be ecstatic. i'm just grateful you're here! thank you. did i say that yet? thank you!

( general likes/dislikes. )

( fandom specifics )

( fandom specifics for things you could watch/catch up with more quickly )

whoo, that was a LOT. optional details are optional, dear yuletide friend. i'm excited! i hope you are too. i can't wait to talk to you when this is done.

<3 delga

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yuletide 2020, whaaaaat!

2020-10-19T19:34:37Z

~~it's coming, i promise.~~
~~eta 28 Oct: this weekend! i swear!~~ HERE IT IS!

dear yuletide writer, i am so excited you got matched with me! you can see all my previous letters at my yuletide tag, and maybe that will give you an indication of what i like. my tumblr is linked in some of those - it's almost definitely not going to be useful to you, if only because i've been on an 18-month star trek bender. oops.

that said, i'm back for yuletide after a year away, and my first rule applies: please have fun! if you have a plotbunny, chase it down that rabbithole. as long as it doesn't hit my DNWs, i promise you i will love it.

(i always try to include a couple of films so if we didn't match on those, but what we did match on doesn't appeal to you all that much, those might be quick to get up to speed on?)

( general likes/dislikes )

( fandom specifics )

thanks so much, friend! look forward to chatting to you in the after; have fun!

delga <3

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the gift of gifts tbh.

2018-12-28T18:03:59Z

despite good intentions, i fell behind on keeping my dw up-to-date. i write a lot of letters, so a lot of what would once have gone into a post goes into those instead now.

that said, i must share the absolutely brilliant gift i got for yuletide. my prompts tend to be pretty vague which can't be much fun to write, but my yulegoat did so, so well and wrote me the justified partner fic of my dreams. i've read it several times already, and recced it amongst my little circle, but you must take a look too. IT'S SO GOOD.

Who Comes and Never Leaves Your Side. a fic about being on the job, and having someone at your back. guys. GUYS. it's so good. so good! i'm ecstatic. i'mma read it again.

at some point i will get around to reading the rest of the fic available. christmas felt like it zipped the hell past this year. we had a quiet one - the first christmas in 30+ years where the only people around the table were my parents and my sister. i'm back in the city now, sorting out some life admin and wondering which knitting and crochet projects i can get in before 2nd january when i go back to the office and into a "new" job. (it's not new, but it's also not entirely what i've been doing to date. i don't have high hopes for it, which is NOT the attitude, i know, but i can't change how i feel. i do get paid by someone different to do the work now, though.)

before then, though: end of year music mix. need to buckle down and get that together.

i hope you all had a peaceful break!

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yuletide 2018!!

2018-10-15T01:08:43Z

~~Yuletide placeholder for when i get my act together and finish my sign-up~~

~~Edit 31 Oct: still pending I AM SORRY I KNOW MY SIGN UP WASN'T HELPFUL ILU YULE GOAT I PROMISE I'LL HAVE A LETTER SOON~~

OK HERE WE GO.

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dear yuletide writer: thank you so, so, so much for being patient with me! please don't take my (extreme!) tardiness as a lack of enthusiasm or gratitude; i'm so pleased that you're writing for me <3

you can find my tumblr here and my previous yt letters here; i don't think my tumblr is going to be any help to you at all these days but for the most part my previous letters are legit.

( general y/n )

( specifics )

thank you again, friend; have fun!

delga ex-oh ex-oh

comments

delga @ 2018-09-11T22:35:00

2018-09-11T21:45:57Z

i am back in the fen for the week because my rents are on holiday and my sister didn't want to be home alone. we came to a compromise because i can't stay here for two weeks, so i'm here until sunday. that said, i have to go to the office on thursday to talk to some people and also to participate in a 5k. (i will be walking.) it's a little weird to be here but also not easily comparable to when i lived here because my rents are away. my sister and i are getting on ok. a strange new world.

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on friday i saw a rock musical about the brontës, which says it all really.

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a newsletter led me to looking up my natal chart again. i've done this a few times and so i'm fairly in the know about my chart and i've read a lot about the rashi chart we use, but for some reason i'd never looked up whether there's a word for when you're very aligned with a particular sign. for example, if you look up the moon and planets on my chart, five of them fall in virgo. this is known as a stellium.
i take horoscopes with a pinch of salt but i like when traits align, and i do like reading people's charts. to me it's like the language of flowers or something similar. i have an easily remembered lunar birthday (we have a split gregorian/gujarati panchat calendar which makes it even easier to work out when my lunar birthday falls) and i also know the exact time of my birth so i've always been kind of interested in what that looks like on my chart.

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beginning to see yuletide posts go up. do i play this year?

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hope you're well, dw.

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no, it's good; i'm still here

2018-09-01T18:17:54Z

spent ten days in canada and, having committed to having a positive outlook, i had a great time! i don't want to be back! i mean, it was a fucktonne of people all in the same space, but everyone was so happy and so kind that you couldn't really get that mad about anything. the wedding was a goddamn delight, as were all of the cousins, and honestly? send me back. let's do it again.

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you ever meet someone where it's like, you don't have a single decent opinion in your entire body. no? just me then.

lort, i am trying not to be this person, but they make it so damn hard.

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what have i even been up to that wasn't that wedding? i'm still ripping through my books; i went out for a friend's birthday and started chatting with a couple of people she knows who are now my buds; i went to a couple of knit nights and also had to deal with A Dead Bird (drama). i have a list of yarn-based projects that i am determined to get through this month, especially a twinset of dolls i've been making for a friend. i'm so close to being done! i want to be done this week, but who knows.

work also has some hefty deadlines coming up: two that are self-imposed but critical to operations, and one which is external but is likely to be gdpr-like in weight and coverage. that latter one i wish was not my problem but that's not how it works.

i need to update my linkedin page and my cv because i know that once i land my project i'm going to start looking at listings for real, but it's so boring! i'll get it done because it's a necessity, but man. someone else do it, i beg you.

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to all the boys i've loved before is one of the cutest films i've seen in a long damn time and i think i'm probably going to watch it again tonight. at some point i also have to get up and cook but, meh. i have batch cook done; i just need to get up and defrost it.

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some seriously varying takes on my dash re: a star is born and it's not even out yet.

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i saw the spy who dumped me earlier this week and whilst it's definitely uneven, it's a lot of fun.

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today i put together a new floor lamp (that corner of the room gets so dark) and a new shoe rack (the existing one was useless), and then i put up some posters and cards on my wall. i still want to move my bed so that it's the other way around, but i'm going to have to empty the room if i want to be able to manoeuvre it, so that's going to have to wait for a while. i need to sort out the surplus of books i have and finish some damn yarn projects but otherwise: yeah. the room is getting some colour.

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i have so many messages to reply to. i went away for just over a week and completely failed to reply to people about anything that wasn't related to the wedding. john mccain died, did you hear? because i... did not, until 10 minutes ago. yeah.

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i need to eat but i also don’t want to get up to cook. take-out is not on the table (geddit?)

2018-07-25T19:54:41Z

there was a bereavement this week, and i’ve talked about it about as much as i can bear elsewhere but it’s casting a pall over all goings-on. the internet has brought me a lot of good things in my life; i don’t take it for granted.

pour one out on friday. i definitely will.

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i was out all weekend, and as mentioned it’s been A Week so i haven’t made a lot of progress on my latest book. it’s an elmore leonard novel and sometimes rolls into the passive voice in a way that i’m really enjoying. it’s just taking some time.

on sunday i’m going to the first meeting of a new book club. i want to take a cake or something but it’s been so hot that i think going near an oven is a mistake. maybe cheesecake?

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the reason it was so busy this weekend was that i spent all of it with my cousins. on saturday some of us went shopping for indian formal wear for the wedding in canada. it was damn hot, and we spent more than we were planning to, but at least that’s one less thing to worry about. i do still need to buy bangles for my outfit.

on sunday i took the train to bedford where one of my older cousins was hosting a barbecue. that was a complete riot; everyone was so chilled out and sun-blissed. i brought some veggie fritters/cutlets that went down a treat, and one of my cousins brought a hundred cakes. wins all round.

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i’ve been walking first thing in the morning before it gets too hot to think. we really need it to cool down, but i also need it to be dry the first weekend of august. i don’t want the raft race to be a washout.

i haven’t made a costume this year. i’m considering using the sewing machines at knit night this weekend, though that does put me in a different room to everyone else.

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it’s been A Week, and i’m exhausted already. i’ve had headaches since i heard the news, and i keep spacing out. it was a full-body shock; at one point i thought i was triggering a panic attack. i sat on the staircase at work and messaged my sister, then began the unkind process of notifying the few people in our circle who definitely hadn’t heard. i wanted to leave but i also knew that work at least would occupy me. i got nothing done but at least i wasn’t at home thinking about it in circles.

i have a philosophy that you should text people as soon as you think ‘i really need to text so-and-so’ instead of putting it off, but despite that on this occasion i didn’t do that, and now i can’t anymore. it’s a whole thing. i know i wasn’t the only one, but it’s sitting on me a bit.

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one of my pocketfriends shared a poem with me like half an hour ago. i am so grateful for my people!

2018-07-18T21:38:13Z

anyway i bought those gig tickets.

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in terms of tv i have enjoyed this past year, both killjoys and wynonna earp are back this weekend, which means it’s that time of summer where i hide from spoilers so i can binge-watch the shows once they’ve aired. i am no longer into the wait-a-week thing, and i’ve never watched kj that way. earp is a new addition to the list this year.

my least favourite part of this particular song and dance is having to ask people what their tumblr vanity tags are. before tumblr had built-in filtering (all my tumblring is done via the app these days) i just had to unfollow someone for the tail end of summer last year. i could just go offline, i guess.

ha!

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(yes, of course i have a tech dependency; all of my people live far from me. this is how i keep up with them.)

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i started walking in the mornings, which is definitely the best way to go about it. i’ve been listening to welcome to night vale like i tripped and fell into 2012. i’m 6 episodes in, and i love it.

the road i walk down is direct, which is why it’s the route i take, but it’s a very long main road and the traffic and the general state of chaos is off putting, even at 6am. i’m going to hit up walkit.com but i know i will probably resent the extra time it takes to walk a route that keeps me off the main one. i like efficient routes, ok! it matters!

i’m forever messing up my feet because of bad shoes and the past few weeks i’ve been wearing flat-flats because i killed the heels on my court shoes. it has really dicked with my heels and kicked off some long-term plantar fasciitis. between that, flat feet, weak ankles and hallux rigidis, i know the long-term effects on my back are going to be a mare. i do some stretching, but probably not enough. really i just need to suck it up and pay a lump sum for good shoes, with built in support. the best pair of shoes i have are a pair of padded flip flops. oh god, they’re so good for my feet. i definitely need a pair of work shoes, a pair of boots, and maybe some casual shoes in a similar design, but they’re all so fucking expensive. but if i’m going to pay money for gigs and concerts that last a couple of hours, i can buy some decent shoes ffs.

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i’m feeling a lot better than i did, which, like, thank fuck. i think i was just having a rough time and was ill on top of that. i feel more in control of things now, and less anxious on the whole. walking is helping. i still need to sort out my employment and other things, and i wish my progesterone would quit dicking about and just drop already, but i don’t feel so much like there’s this weight dragging around my ankles. everything has stopped being so heavy. ( Read more... )

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it got dark early this evening, which is both a product of the season and the clouds. i’m going to miss watching the sun set at 10pm once we get deep into august.

comments

let's try again.

2018-07-17T19:16:50Z

i turned my laptop on to sort out some paperwork for the raft race and now here i am, three hours later, completely derailed by updates and programme-uninstalls and photo back-ups. oof.

oh hey, so PRIDE WAS SO GOOD! i have a friend who thinks of halloween as 'come as you aren't and i always feel like pride is very much come as you are. i went in rainbows and glitter and it was SO MUCH of what i needed, i can't even tell you.

i kind of hid away the day after because, shit, this cold i've had on and off for a month (it's two colds) burst into something else for a day. i spent the week after hacking up a lung. i'm finally, finally at the tail end of it and feeling up to doing things that aren't just going to work and coming home to sleep.

it's been hot in the uk, kind of endlessly so. i wish it were, like, 3 degrees cooler, with a breeze, but in the meantime i've been walking part-way to work in the morning. only part-way because the full trek is just shy of 2 hours and i don't got that kind of time, even leaving at 6am.

i've not been sleeping well for the past few weeks - part heat, part aforementioned hacking up of lungs - and i'm pretty certain my hormones are ticking over, so i've been waking up at 5-5:30 on the regular. this isn't out of the ordinary in terms of my previous schedule, but is now that i don't actually have to wake up at that time. i know it will sort itself out in september but, like, jeez.

on thursday evening i went to knit night then met my dad and my sister at king's cross to take the train home with them. they'd been at wimbledon that day watching the women's semis, and it was kind of nice to meet up with them at king's cross. london doesn't really feel like their thing, even though my sister was one of my temps for a while and dad used to live here.

i had friday off and took the train to manchester where i met up with my bff. we went to macron stadium to see the killers play the second of two stadium gigs they'd boked as part of their european summer tour. it. was. a. maz. ing. i love them! i love watching them live. they have enough albums now to really run a crowd and the last half hour was back-to-back slammers. it's always such an intense experience.

speaking of intense experiences: i'm considering getting tickets to chvrches for feb 2019, and metric announced an end of november gig at the forum in kentish town. that is a great venue for them - very intimate - and i'm very tempted. but: i'm also being better with money. maybe i just say no. idk.

i've been watching the alienist and ooh, boy, i don't know y'all.

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a new icon to boot

2018-07-01T08:41:13Z

that new florence album!! oh boy.

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i don’t know that i’m doing that much better but i started telling people irl that i am feeling low and. idk. does that help? it’s not a method i’ve ever used. much like my anxiety, i only ever bring it up after the fact. my cousin asked me how i was on friday and i just couldn’t muster up a lie. yesterday i met with another cousin and if she hadn’t suggested doing that i would have stayed in the flat all day until i was due to go to the theatre. i wrote some letters the other day - national writing day in the uk! - and one was to my best friend, and that turned into going to visit her today. i’m going to head out in a couple of hours, spend the day with her, then come back in the evening.

it’s a beautiful day. i hate being sad in the summer.

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sea wall at the old vic was fantastic, and ruined by people not silencing their fucking phones. it’s a 45 minutes continuous monologue that somehow seamlessly cuts back and forth between context and climax, and i wish everyone’s phones had been confiscated because it was a performance predicated on tension. it reminded me very much of girls & boys which i saw at royal court earlier this year. i can see a comparison of the two being a good lit exam essay.

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i’m going to try and knit a couple more rows of this cardigan before i head out today. i have my window open because it’s hot but the woman in the flat downstairs is definitely indian and definitely about to start cooking, so i’ll have to close the window if i don’t want everything in my room to smell. (i am indian; i have to seal everything up when i cook too.)

yesterday morning someone was cooking bacon and i had to close the window then too. it’s the one true downside of this room, but otherwise the flat stays fairly cool. we had a bird get in last week, but even that found its way out.

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remind me to do a book ‘review’ post. i’ve got through a few this year.

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i started knitting a cardigan this weekend. i think it’s going to be my knit night project

2018-06-10T17:17:15Z

today i managed to go food shopping and also forget to buy a potato. this would be a problem if i planned on cooking tonight - which is typically what i do on a sunday evening (i.e. cook properly) but then i realised that i had food leftover from friday so no cooking and, in theory, a break in the routine.

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speaking of broken routines, i gave up on zumba a couple of weeks ago. i wasn’t enjoying the new place as much as i did my old one back home, and i missed the feeling of working out without actually feeling like i was working out. in the meantime i’ve been compensating with the pilates challenge (that i am now also behind on! well done me!) and with walking, but i can’t do that the whole time because i have seriously messed up my feet.

these are all excuses, of course. i have to get back on the zumba. my housemate will be away for a couple of weeks so i’m hoping to follow a youtube playlist i found where the programme is more like what i used to do back home. the whole thing is making me sad, tbh, which is a symptom of being stressed about it, but also not doing anything to resolve the situation.

you can’t fix everything at once: you have to start small. but i do feel a bit like i’m dropping the ball right now.

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i finished abdurraqib’s they can’t kill us until they kill us which i am struggling to talk about. not because i don’t have a lot to say, but because it’s difficult to pinpoint what the collection is about without being reductionist. the essays talk about music, and the history of different genres, but also about those histories in relation to the author, and then from the author out into the space he occupies, and how he occupies that space as a black man in america, and how the context of his experiences define the way he speaks about music and politics and the amplification of violence against black bodies in the past few years, or rather, how that violence has become visible in ways that before were more of an implication or an echo of violence already past.

it isn’t a secret that i love abdurraqib’s poetry, nor is it a secret that i love the poetry of his prose, but the collation of these essays - the care that had gone into separating them into different sections, and how it makes sense to me that you’d start with springsteen and jepson and then segue into the heavier topics - the simple, careful thought that’s gone into the composition of this book is affecting. i appreciate the craft of it, and i was thrown so many times by the rhetoric! i felt every bit a spectator when reading the book, even when there were parts that spoke to my own experiences, both as a person of colour and a person who loves music, because it isn’t written to me, necessarily. and that’s really the gift of it; that it isn’t written to those of us outside the experience, but it’s also for us, and not for us, and we’re not owed anything, but we’re given the window anyway.

i gasped reading it. i couldn’t help myself. i think it says a lot about your place in the world when you remember where you were when news broke of one tragedy, but not of another. there’s something shameful about it, and then again, something human.

it’s a fantastic collections.

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yesterday i saw translations which, at its heart, is also about violence. i thought it was a brilliant production, and the whole cast was on form.

in the evening i saw julie, the tragedy of which, as i mentioned to my friend, was that its cast was superlative. i say tragedy, because that play was terrible.

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look at us, rushing to midsummer! it was bright outside at half 8 a few nights ago and i was so happy! give me more daylight, please!

comments

this is a gip plus because i have a post to go with it

2018-06-03T21:09:02Z

today i got up and walked to the heath, which is about 45 minutes away because despite how things look on maps, london is bloody small.

it was gorgeous! so much sun! i lingered on the way back, not really wanting to go back to the flat but also knowing that if i got back after midday i’d feel like i’d lost too much time to the outing.

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this afternoon i watched the post which is not really about what the trailer suggests it’s about, which was something of a relief? maybe?

there was a lot of softening of the frame that i am not sure i appreciated, but otherwise another pretty great story about an american news institution pursuing A Story.

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i picked up fresh bagels on the way back to the flat, and this evening i roasted red onions, a bell pepper, and a potato, cooked some halloumi, grilled a bagel, and ate them all together IT WAS SO GOOD. i feel like i’ll pay for that at some point but like whatever it was fantastic 10/10 would nom again.

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need to invest in some new userpics

2018-05-30T21:04:42Z

in an effort to establish a workable routine, i’ve been coming home and following a youtube series called the 30 days pilates challenge. so far each one has only been about 10 minutes long so i’ve been topping them up with warm-up stretches, planks and then other videos, but i know what i really need to do is not skip another zumba class.

fitness continues to be very boring to talk about, but also talking about it is kind of the thing that makes me do it more, so here we are. you drew the short straw.

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four-day week which thus far has been all report-generation with a heavy side dose of being vaguely irritated with people. this is a leftover from the rush to deadline last week and also general confusion around what my job is.

with that in mind i started looking at some job listings today. I won’t start applying probably but stage one is typically a couple of months of browsing.

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so many people having babies right now.

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one of the weird side benefits of leaving home is that my sister will now sometimes text me with Vital Television Updates. yesterday i messaged her five minutes before the end of the split because of A Thing That Happened and today she whatsapped to say the second season of queer eye is launching next month. what a gift!

i knew distance would help a lot of things between us, but still. it’s nice.

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i have also been reading books! i finished the essex serpent which i LOVED. hard rec.

2018-05-27T15:04:38Z

anyway, at the top of the month i took a train and then another train to a town in yorkshire called halifax, which is this tiny podunk place that has a great view of the hills but very little else going for it from what i could tell, and then i queued for an hour outside their regional theatre so i could watch the first promotional gig for florence + the machine’s new album and it was a solidly excellent gig that covered off a heap of excellent tracks and some new material but then she came out for the encore and sang shake it out and i almost cried in public i was so overwhelmed.

that song came out in 2011 and it followed me around for four years, waiting for me to get my shit together. we sang it as a crowd, and my lungs were full and my chest was tight and we all of us screamed and sang and exalted in it.

and then we had to go home.

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it was a weird night! i left the venue, made a pit stop at mcdonald’s for a drink, met this sweet hungarian girl at the bus stop and then escorted her back to mcdonald’s to get a bottle of water, went back to the bus station where this woman was absolutely smashed, sitting on the ground, beating the floor; helped another woman, a motherly type, to help the drunk woman get on a bus to bradford, then helped the motherly woman convince the coach driver to let the hungarian girl get on our coach even though her ticket was for the next one out.

it was mad. i got into london at 6am; walked from marble arch to bond street to catch a tube back to my flat, and crashed for five hours before heading out to south bank to spend the later afternoon / evening with my cousins in lieu of the birthday party i’d skipped in order to go to the gig in halifax.

on the monday i met up with a couple of them at regent’s park and made the most of the lovely weather.

—

that was three weeks ago.

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the gdpr deadline finally passed on friday, and whilst we’re not compliant on all fronts, we have a plan in place to ensure that we will be. my boss handed me this task and then immediately set about rearranging my expectations which is a thing i wish he wouldn’t do. i wish i’d been able to get us into a better position because we’ve put off some stuff with good reason, but there’s other things we could have been better about and despite leading the change programme, i wasn’t allowed to sort them out.

it’s been kind of a frustrating month! it’s a four-day week leading us into june and i’m going to use it to test the accounting system we’ve been building, and catch up on the financial reports i was supposed to do last month. all my tasks got deprioritised, which i understand the reasoning behind, but considering i then wasn’t able to give my all to this change programme is really kind of irritating.

i figured it would be this way, but: this is the year i try to find my next job, i think. i want to see this accountancy service through to implementation, set up a backlog of improvements, and then find the next challenge.

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my plan to walk everywhere went really well and then i blistered the hell out of my feet so i took a week off. i still did the half-trek to work on friday morning, and at pace, but that particular habit has become about taking in the morning at the end of the week. i don’t think it helps friday productivity at all, but it’s otherwise very centring.

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here are some things i have watched recently:

bron | broen 4x01 but nothing beyond that because i keep forgetting it’s airing on friday. i have two episodes geared up for today.

the split which has been pleasantly easy viewing if not particularly groundbreaking. whatever; not everything has to be.

killing eve WHICH HAS BEEN SO SATISFYING. i love everyone! sandra oh! jodie comer! fiona motherfucking shaw! get this in your eyeballs; hard rec; would and will watch again.

an episode of steven universe that went exactly where i thought it was going right until it did a sudden right turn and holy shit the narrative pacing in this show is something else entirely. imagine sitting on that reveal for five years what the actual fuck.

i love westworld so much. i’ve been a thandie newton fan for years, and i enjoy complex timey-wimey narratives, and i love stories about robots. i find the show very satisfying 90% of the time.

i had about seven episodes of critical role to catch up on and i finally did it. i’m enjoying so much about campaign two, but - surprising to no-one - jester’s general everything is my favourite.

john mulaney’s kid gorgeous at radio city had this weird quality of being hilariously funny but also oddly tone neutral where mulaney is definitely still very, very funny, but also actively, visibly performing his voice. this is not a criticism, just something that came up whilst i watched it.

still on my list: the second season of the expanse; the terror; a new season of hap and leonard, which i knew would be a thing but also was completely unprepared for. amazing.

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i sure did see a star war on friday!

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last weekend i met up with my older cousin brothers and a group of friends at the o2 arena, and we went to see trevor noah live. it was a great evening, and i had fun being out of the flat despite not really knowing people in that group.

the week before that, esther and i went to the almeida to see romola garai in the writer which was this angry metatextual production that i have since decided i fucking loved. at the time it was a lot to process, but i couldn’t stop thinking about it which is the marker of...something. romola garai was fantastic.

i had to cross london to get to the play because i discovered that anis mojgani was doing a reading in whitechapel and i’d missed the opportunity to see him on previous occasions. who knew when he’d be back? he performed some of his classics, as well as work from his newer books, and this time i actually did cry, which is a thing i never do in public, mostly out of self preservation. but i was listening to him speak these intimate poems, and remembering where i had been when i had first read them, and i felt overfull. that’s how things get when i feel them deeply; i brim up with them. they sit in my chest. i didn’t want to leave, and i had to anyway, and it was a lot to take in on one night, both that reading and then the play.

—

it’s a three-day weekend, and this one has been about crochet and netflix, which sounds like every weekend, but is especially true this time around. i am determined to finish this blue thing! determined! but also i have run out of t-shirt yarn for my laundry basket project and whilst the whole point of that project was to use up that yarn, i don’t want to get into this cycle where i buy more jersey yarn and then it ends up in my stash. my stats is big enough. i do not need to add to it, holy shit.

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it’s the most wonderful time of the year don’t @ me

2018-05-12T16:08:33Z

i have zero qualms about using the living room. i tend not to because i have to lug my stuff there if i want to use it, and it’s just a lot of hassle unless i’m going to binge something. and i have done that whilst my housemate was away, but it seems a little weird to do it whilst she’s here, in part because i don’t want to disturb her rest, and in part because i have a tv that i can stream to in my room.

but. but!

guys, it is eurovision tonight, most hallowed of events. i want to watch it on the tv instead of streaming it! so... i’m going to use the living room. which is allowed! but maybe i do have qualms about it.

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i can’t believe it’s been a whole week since i saw florence + the machine and i didn’t do a post about it.

this isn’t that post either; i’m just saying.

—

baking cookies tomorrow, y/y?

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this icon represents my exact reaction to seeing my cousin’s text message

2018-05-01T21:37:48Z

you know that feeling when you do a bunch of dumbfuck things in a row? you know, just basic, nbd mistakes that would normally be a vague embarrassment that you just have to suck up? except you get a whole bag of them at the same time?

i cancelled on my cousin because i worked out that his thing would have cost me £70 anyway, and it costs about as much to get me to yorkshire except after i booked my travel he messaged everyone to say that he’s booked the lunch venue (oh my god - so expensive, i can’t believe i agreed in the first place) and cancellations cost half the price. so now i owe him £25 on top of the rest of this nonsense THIS GIG BETTER BE FUCKING WORTH IT I AM SO DONE WITH MYSELF RIGHT NOW FFS.

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my critical role catch-up continues apace too.

2018-05-01T16:36:37Z

oh, it’s been a lot longer than i was anticipating.

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hi i’m trying to work out the cheapest way to get to yorkshire this weekend because i accidentally booked tickets to the wrong florence + the machine gig, and not only can i not return the tickets (even without a refund!) but the more local show is sold out. so. i guess i’m going north?

i am so flipping mad at myself oh my god.

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things have been a-go-go. last weekend was lost to family things. i went out for drinks in the sun on the friday, and then introduced my cousins to fisherman’s wharf’s gourmet pizza. after much debate i ended up going to zumba on saturday morning before coming back to the flat to try to shower, do laundry and pack for the party before having to rush to an appointment with my cousin in canary wharf. from there the two of us went to east london to check in and get some food, before getting ready for the party.

the party was so much fun and seemed to end really early? no trouble - we relocated back to the hotel and proceeded to drink for about 4 hours IT WAS SO MUCH I DRANK SO MUCH STRAIGHT JAEGER. thank goodness drunk me knows what’s what because i hobbled to the vending machine before going to sleep - worked my way through a bottle of water and two packets of crisps before crashing out at 3am.

so of course i woke up at 7:30am.

—

sunday was the marathon and another cousin was running in it so i gave in to the inevitable and just got up and left the hotel with a view to going back to my flat and dumping my stuff. i’m so glad i did because if i’d had to lug my crap around all day i would not have been happy. toasted and ate a crumpet, drank so. much. water., grabbed my sunnies and ran out the door for south of the river to see if i could spot my cousin as she did her ~26 miles.

i honestly don’t know how she did it - it must have been 25C out there and she did the route in 4 hours and 20. she was amazing! we saw her three times: deptford, bermondsey and shadwell. i also managed to get video of my colleague but i didn’t actually spot him at the time, which is a shame because i really wanted to cheer him on.

i hit my limit at around 4pm so abandoned the fam and headed back to the flat where i sat down in front of the tv and watched every episode of the city and the city and order by innocence that i hadn’t seen yet. and then i went tf to sleep.

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there’s a new girl at work and idk if i’m ofay with her or not. i’m trying to work through my feelings on the matter and i’m still undecided.

—

thursday night i took a train back to the fen, and friday i had to be in lincoln which is always An Experience. the rest of the weekend was very lazy. i completely failed to submit the event paperwork that i am responsible for so it looks like that’s a task for the bank holiday. on saturday night we went to see infinity war which i unabashedly enjoyed the hell out of. what a coherent film, considering the number of characters, and really good choices about who was carrying the narrative.

sunday was equally lazy, and i eventually got dressed and took the train home in the evening.

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the main issue with this gig being this weekend is that it’s on a saturday, which makes everything unnecessarily expensive, and i am also supposed to be going to my cousin’s birthday celebrations. yes, another cousin. there are a lot of us.

but even if i didn’t have that prior obligation, the logistics are messing with me. it’s about £70 to hire a car, and £30 on top of that for train tickets back to the fen. but if i don’t go, that’s £60 down the drain and no guarantee of getting tickets to another gig. the whole point of trying to get the tickets in the first place was that the venue is only a couple of tube journeys away from my flat, and now i’ve really fucked it.

why the hell can’t i return the tickets, though? some truly anal restrictions in place. the show is sold out. someone is going to want to go but the tickets are ineligible for cancellation, resale or refund. what a goddamn mess.

—

zumba tonight, and then the second episode of abi morgan’s new show, the split. i’ve also been watching killing eve, which i love, and the second season of westworld which continues to have great pacing. am all caught up with steven universe too. yesterday, for kicks, i went back and rewatched giant woman from season 1, which holds up so damn well, holy crap. i love that show.

—

did you know snow patrol is still a thing??

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the thing about being proactive about laundry is then i have to hang it up

2018-04-15T10:29:21Z

family parties continue to be the best parties but a quick mental once-over - repeated over the course of last night - we realised the last big family do was probably at the end of 2014. what the hell? i mean, as cousins we meet up more than that, but to not have had a full get-together since then is nuts.

my aunt and uncle, who are complete darlings, celebrated their 50th anniversary last night, which coincided neatly with their granddaughter/my niece’s 18th birthday, so they put on a huge party. my niece is kind of amazing; she’s had health problems throughout her teens, and last year she had a heart transplant. she’s been working her way back to level since then, but it’s been tough. it was so cool to see all of them yesterday, and really moving at times.

the rest of the party was a household classic: gossip, food, group photos and dancing. it wouldn’t be a family party if someone didn’t start doing garba to dholi taro dhol baaje. i joked with another cousin that his party next weekend (another family party!) was just going to be six hours of raas. honestly, i believe it.

that track is a banger by the way.

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i went back to the fen on friday night because all of my indian clothes are still in the house. i timed it well in other ways, too, because i picked up my other set of bedsheets in time for my calendar reminder today. putting that reminder in my phone 14 months ago has changed my life vastly for the better.

mum and i made some chickpea and veg burgers on friday night, and then i took it hella easy yesterday until it was time to start getting ready, in part because it turns out i didn’t leave a useful number of clothes at home, so i only had my pyjamas. i unearthed an old nexus 7 which i’m going to try to keep charged so i can use it whilst i’m at home - i hate lugging stuff around so i only took my phone back with me, but i don’t have any of my extension leads, so i couldn’t read on it and charge it at the same time (i’m reading a book on the kindle app at the moment).

that did give me the chance to read two of the first issues of comics i bought whilst in the states last year - moonstruck which is a delight, and hi-fi fight club which was a riot. i should probably look up trades.

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laundry sounds like it’s done, so need to sort that out, and then i’m heading into central to meet up with the cousins for lunch. my cousin is having his big bash next weekend, but his actual birthday is today, so he put together a last minute get-together. forty! he’s one of my favourite people, and the party next weekend is going to be so damn good. my phone has been blowing up with text notifications since 9am as people wake up and share photos from last night. <3

—

i really need to sort out my missing tooth issue. it’s making taking photos a complete mare, and i don’t want to be in this position when i go to canada for the wedding in august. there has got to be a solution that will work for now, surely.

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despite attempts to the contrary, it’s been a week

2018-04-10T16:09:37Z

i had my first formal review today - bear in mind it’s been two years since i started this job. i kept expecting to feel chastised, but really all i feel is a world of ‘that’s fair’ coupled with a tinge of irritation that i could have been working on some of the points for longer if we’d had this conversation sooner. but... my boss acknowledged that, and the whole thing was positive.

then i went into a VERY strange meeting about how the project i work on needs improving that is not at all what i think my boss thought it was going to be (he wasn’t in the meeting) and was also not super productive? i’m in a weird place because i came to this company with my boss, and everyone else who came joined a new tech company. the product i work on belongs to my company, not the tech company. so it’s a bit of, well, what does it even have to do with the people in the tech group outside of shared resource? it was a very weird meeting.

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this weekend i went to the penultimate performance of summer and smoke at the almeida. oh my goodness, what a lovely production! the set was practically threadbare - an open space framed by a number of bar room pianos - but the direction made the room hot and heavy, like we were experiencing the summer of the play. as soon as it was over, i tried to book a seat at the final performance, but i had no chance. ugh! what a great production!

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love, simon is a fairly average teen flick, made joyous more by its topic than anything else, but i was thoroughly charmed - and sometimes heartbroken! - by the whole thing. it has a lovely cast, and a fantastic soundtrack. i’m glad i went to see it. plus, i went on a discount day, which meant it was only a fiver. get in!

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because life is strange, i accidentally watched about 5 hours of doctor who on sunday. i don’t have any additional comments beyond what i put into some tumblr tags, but, like. yeah? that happened.

—

have booked and paid for zumba to make sure i go this evening. last week i also started my walking campaign again. time to download some podcasts and let my feet go, but also time to probably get better footwear for all occasions.

i hate buying new shoes! i really resent the price, because i feel like often i am not paying for quality but for brand. why are a pair of work shoes over £40? why? and why can’t i find a decent mid heel that won’t fall off my foot? buying shoes has become like buying jeans, except it’s such a necessity that i can’t just stop buying them which, incidentally, is how i solved the jeans-buying issue.

i probably just need to suck it up and head to dichmann already.

—

heading home to the fen on friday night because we’re going to a family party on saturday and my move to the city didn’t include packing indian formalwear. this month is a little nuts for plans - a party on saturday, a birthday lunch on sunday, another family party the weekend after, and then home for the committee meeting the weekend after that. and that’s the end of april pretty much.

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m’s ongoing adventures with zumba

2018-04-03T16:11:39Z

the thing i worked out about this working-out malarkey last year is that there’s no point saying i’ll start fresh next week - i just have to go when it’s in my brain, and make myself do it. i was going to go to a pilates class this evening, but i can’t get hold of anyone at the leisure centre, and there’s no other phone numbers listed, so i decided to look at local zumba classes instead.

there’s one fairly near me tonight, at 19:15, but there’s one slightly further away at 18:30, which would be better. i want to see what both instructors are like (the 19:15 one seems to have a saturday class that i would be willing to try) but i’m also wary about booking in advance when i don’t know what somewhere is like.

so i’m kind of mad at myself about this whole thing because when i went to the states and canada last year, i managed to attend classes out there - completely random and full of strangers. admittedly one of the ones i tried to go to was a bust, but the other two went really well. if i can do it out there, i can damn well do it up the road from me.

pull yer finger out, lass.

—

edit: i booked the 18:15 class and paid for it. time to go!

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i took my own lunch to work on tuesday which sounds basic but isn’t something i’ve done since school

2018-04-02T11:20:39Z

i am not really sure how my building connects to the one next to me, so i’m not sure whether the people i can hear speaking are in the flat below me, or in a flat next to me. it’s something i’ve been worrying about in the abstract - this is the first time i’ve heard anyone - because i don’t want my music, or even my current netflix binge to disturb anyone.

i keep meaning to look at an aerial view of the building to work it out, and i keep forgetting.

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here is a song i have been obsessed with this weekend. enjoy.

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current netflix binge: the second season of a series of unfortunate events. the very first time i tried to watch this show i got bogged down by how sad i felt for the characters, and gave up pretty early. then, for whatever reason, the second try clicked and i watched all of s1. i haven’t exercised any patience with s2 at all. i’ve only got a couple of episodes left. all the new additions to the cast have been delightful.

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rome was fantastic, even with the incessant rain at the top of the week. ( rome )

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i spent last monday in a meeting about gdpr (new eu data protection legislation) which honestly went on all day, and then, after a couple of hours on tuesday, suddenly left me with nothing to do. ( work )

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we won our quiz! our team was called Fred the Duck, and we won by a margin of 7 points. it was actually a really good evening, especially after a such a slow day. everyone contributed, too, and we won by more of a margin than the differences between other teams. huzzah!

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on thursday night i came home from work, ate, cleaned up, packed and then headed out at 10pm to catch a train north to chesterfield to see the (ex-) flatmate. ( chesterfield )

i kind of want to make cake now.

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( bfi )

—

today: groceries have been bought, vacuuming has been done, remaining clothes have been put away. i’m going to finish my netflix binge, and hopefully some knitting, then i need to make dinner this evening. back to work tomorrow.

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i was supposed to write a post last week but there was a lot going on

2018-03-19T21:36:04Z

hi i’m in rome!

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i spent my first week in london luxuriating in my new commute (half an hour! reading time!) and going to a heap of events. poetry readings! theatre! crochet class! i hit some kind of hormones-meet-cabin-fever-meets-change-is-weird high on wednesday and spent the whole day in a terrible wreck of sadness. not anxious, which is new; just heavy and miserable and fucking sad, which i thought was maybe homesickness, but a call home made things worse by just being incredibly irritating (we’re really bad at having conversations; it’s embarrassing). i don’t know if it’s a heap of malcontent but i did not dig it at all.

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thursday was a heap of fun! there was a different cast this time - fewer understudies; more primary cast - and we were in the dress circle, which was a better view than the last time. the dude playing king george is bloody funny, in a way that i really wasn’t expecting, and the guy playing hamilton is tall af. taking esther was a trip too; i love other people’s excitement for the show.

afterwards we went to the real greek in marylebone. damn, the food there is so good!

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macbeth was honestly kind of a mess, and it started snowing that morning which threw the rest of our plans into a tailspin. ruthy headed home earlier than anticipated, and my sister and i ended up taking the tube to heathrow to then take a shuttle to our hotel for the night.

getting up at 4am was a pain, especially when the snow delayed our bus, but it sounds like we were lucky to get on a flight at all, and once we were at t5, it was a breeze.

rome so far has been vast and rainy. tomorrow we’re going to the capitoline museum to see some goddamn sculptures and i’m already losing my mind over it.

—

i signed out of slack on my phone but forgot to do it on the ipad and accidentally looked through work messages. oops. i’ve sorted that out now. no working on vacation! it’s bullshit, and i am against it. leave is leave, and i’m on it.

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in the course of writing that last post i ended up leaving my glasses at home that days

2018-03-11T10:08:34Z

hey, so: i moved house yesterday!

during the snow shenanigans i sorted out my offer, deposit and contract, and yesterday i hauled my stuff to the new place and i’ve been unpacking since. well, no, not since. dad and i dropped off my stuff before going to visit one of my aunts who lives 15 minutes away. i knew she was close, but i didn’t know by how much. i’m far enough away to not have an helicopter adults in my life, but close enough that i can pop in on a sunday, and potentially see my cousins and their families on occasion. these are cousins that are older by a stretch so I don’t see them as often as the others, so it’s a good move.

dad dropped me back just after 4, and i spent a couple of hours putting clothes away, and sheets on the bed etc. put a shoe rack together! found my make-up! tried and failed to move the bed! in between, i started the task of letting people know i’ve relocated. some people knew already, but i get a little paranoid when new things happen and i hold off sharing news. i’m the same with new jobs; often i don’t tell people until i’ve started.

this morning i’ve been sorting through the remainder of my stuff, organising things to my liking whilst waiting for sainsbury’s to open so i can pick up some food. i’m living with the landlady, but she’s away this week, so it’s just me for now.

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for my first night in london i... went to the theatre, obviously. i’d had it booked for a long time, but only recently realised what it was i was going to see (it was helpfully listed in my calendar as ‘play’).

i went to royal court theatre to see girls and boys, a 90-minute performance by carey mulligan that flips between the story of the narrator’s marriage and memories of the narrator interacting with her children. it’s anecdotal and funny, and sometimes absolutely shocking. mulligan, who is in general Very Good, is fantastic. the character has this sort of cockney/estuary mix, and she’s centre stage for most of the telling, hip-cocked, hand in pocket, other hand gesturing as she tells this story. pointed, and jokey, and absorbing. i don’t know if i was on board with where the story went, but it was very, very good.

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this week: kaveh akbar is in the uk to promote calling a wolf a wolf; teaching a colleague how to crochet; hamilton matinee on thursday; macbeth - which absolutely bombed in previews, so who even knows what that’s going to be like - matinee on Saturday; R O M E.

please don’t rain please don’t rain please don’t rain

—

right, a few more bits and pieces to put away, then out for some fresh air. then i can mooch around to my heart’s content the rest of the day.

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i worked late yesterday to do a demo that never happened and missed zumba.

2018-03-06T06:28:34Z

the thing about missing my ride in the morning is that not only could i then have slept for an extra hour, but it sets the whole day off to a bad start. the first bus doesn’t reach me until 6.40, and doesn’t reach town until 7, so i can’t be on the 7am, and the 7:20 is a seatless nightmare. and it’s one thing if i were late and missed my lift completely, but Nice Neighbour left early, and i was behind him in the street, which means if he’d checked his mirror, he would have seen me.

i’m so annoyed! up at 5 to get in for 9. aaaargh!

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i spent the weekend doing very little. i watched all of hard sun which was a terrible show, and all three aired episodes of collateral which was fairly solid but just boring. it’s a shame because both shows have a compelling cast - agyness deyn is brilliant and emotes really well, carey mulligan’s been doing trade in stoic and shrewd for a while, and both billie piper and nicola walker have parts in collateral which currently feels like david hare saw a nordic drama and decided he could do that too. except it’s four episodes, a lot of the characters are wasted, and it’s very, very boring.

then i watched about 10 episodes of wynonna earp which has been utterly delightful.

so that’s the kind of weekend it was.

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i also hurt my arm from doing too much crochet because i am nothing if not a winner.

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yesterday was my first day back in the office since being snowed in last week, and i was glad to be back, though i am still close to running out of things to do. the next few days will be fine because i will reconcile the accounts on one of our schemes and then put together the financial report, which always takes ages, but otherwise i have been trying to get more put on my plate. i have three projects that are now my responsibility, but one is waiting for information from a third party, the other needs to be divvied up, and i’m working on a third. today i need to get some marketing copy signed off by compliance too but that’s another job where i pass things on to someone else.

there is a box of paperwork sitting on my boss’ desk that contains statements and invoices for a scheme that is now closed, but from which we are due money. i think i’m going to try to pick that up next.

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in three weeks, i’ll be in rome! i’m going with my sister, who really needs to tell me what she needs me to book in terms of early access (skip-the-queue tickets etc) otherwise we’re going to get there and spend the whole time queuing. i’m also hopeful that the weather is dry and warmer than it’s been here. i need some sun!

the plan this year was to do this now, and then two weeks in australia in november, but now it looks like i have to put that second trip on hold again because my cousin in canada is getting married in august and i very much want to be there. it’s a time of year that i typically take time off, so i’m not starving for leave, but it means i can’t do another trip in autumn. i’m hoping we get as many of the cousins out to ottawa as possible. that one is going to be a blast!

—

okay, it’s 6:25am, and i have to leave the house again in about 8 minutes. normally when i take the bus i throw two fingers up and take the reduced slow-stop so that i can get a seat, but i want to be in by half 8, so i’m just going to have to stand in the vestibule of the fast service. everything is just a little bit too frustrating now.

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i’m a little worried about the horses in the field next door.

2018-03-01T17:47:10Z

okay, okay, okay, i’m making progress.

i have a bunch of craft projects in the go right now, all of which i need to buck up and sew together so that they can be crossed off the list. at the weekend i finished knitting the first of six cushion covers i need to do, so now that needs sewing up. i also need to sew together a dog i’ve been crocheting so my cousin can take it with her when she goes to india next week. i made another elephant with the first pattern i ever tried, and it turns out that the reason it didn’t work great is that i hate the pattern.

i have a number of makes on my to-do list, and i really need to make a physical list if i want any chance of keeping on top of this whole thing.

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i live in the east of england*, and my area has been one of the places hit by The Beast from The East (i still cannot believe that’s what we’re calling it). the cab i was in at 1am on wednesday morning was trying to get me home through snow that had been steadily accumulating for over 8 hours - snow that was still falling as we travelled - and nearly spun off the road at one point, so suffice it to say that i haven’t left the house since. today there’s been a lot of snowfall and sleet - huge waves of very, very small flakesss of snow. i am over it, guys. enough.

i’m hoping that i can get in and back out of work tomorrow, because i really don’t want to do another day in the house. there’s not a lot going on in the office, but i really want my dang laptop. when i left the bar on tuesday night, my boss was like, why are you coming in tomorrow? which, thanks, but at least let me pretend i should come in or i never will. as it was, i ended up slacking him on wednesday morning and telling him i wouldn’t be in. i appreciated knowing in advance that he had no bones about my not being there, but. idk. idk where i’m going with this.

it’s snowing; public transport in the area has ceased to function; wfh meant i managed to continue my slow, happy progress through the new series of queer eye and watch half of the latest critical role. silver linings.

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*) ‘east of england’ is actually a region of the country, as opposed to east england, which encompasses east of england. the whole area is a mix between a number of regions - not really north enough to be the midlands; not south enough to be london; just about west enough to not be east anglia. i don’t know why we’re like this, guys.

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here are some things i have spent money on (that i probably shouldn’t have spent money on, but whatever):

1. my bff and i (ex-flatmate) (oh man, it’s been a decade) are going to see brian friel’s translations at the nash in june!
2. i also bought a ticket to see julie at the nash on the same day because why not
3. i am going to miss most of bfi flare this year (the bfi’s lgbt film festival) but i did manage to book battle of the sexes and call me by your name which are showing on this ‘second chance’ day they do on the closing day of the festival. got in for some priority booking, too, which is always fun

i’m hoping to see lady bird soon as well, but it will have to be in london because it’s not screening at my local.

—

spotify rec’d me the new vance joy album this week and i have to say: well played.

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