A Fulfilling Breakfast

I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a small cup of green tea in front of me. He knows I prefer coffee but insists that we should only drink herbal teas. I butter some toast and take a bite. While I’m chewing I admire the grooves that my teeth have left in the butter.

The digital clock on the oven reads 7.42. His alarm will go off in three minutes and he will press snooze, sleep until eight, then get up and go to the bathroom to pee. Shortly after, he will arrive in the kitchen in search of his camomile tea, which I will have prepared for him.

Sure enough, 23 minutes later he emerges, his hair bent at awkward angles and his eyes filled with sleep. I push his tea towards him and he ruffles my hair in a pitiful attempt of affection. I roll my eyes under my now tousled fringe.

“You eaten?” he asks, as he stares into the cereal cupboard.

“Yeah,” I respond, in what I hope sounds like a disinterested voice.

“What did you eat?” he asks, still with his back to me.

Ironically he manages to make me feel so small; exactly the opposite of his intentions.

“Toast,” I reply, not looking up from my lukewarm green water.

I feel him turn, but I do not look up. I let his disappointment linger in the air between us.

He measures two handfuls of muesli into a bowl and followed by a splash of skimmed milk. The thought of eating those dusty nuts with the watery milk is enough to make me throw up my two slices of buttery toast. Maybe then he’d be satisfied.

He drops himself into a seat and grabs the section of the paper I have discarded. It’s the sports pages. Neither of us like sports, it’s the only thing we have in common, but he has to read it because he is too annoyed to make conversation. I read and re-read the same paragraph, trying to focus on the words rather than the sound of his spoon scooping up dry nuts.

He stares idly at the paper and starts cheerfully humming a Cheryl Cole song. He is trying to get under my skin. It shouldn’t be too hard either, as according to him there’s so much of it.

He finishes his soggy rabbit food and lets his spoon clatter loudly into the bowl. I look up and he’s smiling at me, making his big stupid mouth stretch right across his face. His lips shine with fat free milk. I feel something coming up, for a moment I think I’m going to vomit.

“I want you to move out.”

Silence fills the room and gives me time to realise what I’ve said. He only shows his surprise for a split second, and then continues smiling at me.

“Do you?” he asks, his eyes resting on me. He knows I’ll struggle to pay the rent without him but I have gone past caring, I need him gone.

“How will you pay the rent?” his smile is now an honest smirk.

“Well, once I sell that ugly treadmill you forced me to buy, I’ll have a couple of months rent to survive off until I find a real bloke to move in. Perhaps if I’m lucky, this time I’ll find one who doesn’t spend all his time counting the calories in basmati rice.”

Family Values

“It should have snow drops growing underneath it,” my mother called after us, as we hunted the park for our Grandparent’s tree. My mum, brother and I were with my aunty, my Dad’s sister.

My father had passed away a few months before and we had made the trip to bury his ashes under the tree. My aunty had been up since 7am drinking white wine. My dad’s side of the family had been heavy drinkers, which explained why three quarters of them were to be buried under a memorial tree together. I did feel sorry for my aunty. She was the only one left of their small family, and she was the youngest and most emotional.

“There it is!” my brother yelled, and we ran over to it like we were children again.

“Oh look, the snowdrops survived!” said Mum. She was pleased. It was she who had planted the oak tree and the snowdrops nearly ten years before. We agreed that the two small snowdrops growing under the tree were representations of my grandparent’s children, my aunty and my dad.

Mum rooted through her bag and pulled out a small trowel, some grass seed and a box containing the ashes. She dug a hole at the base of the tree and stirred the ashes into the earth. I watched her as she put her lover into the earth, so he could go on living and grow into something new.

I photographed the small oak tree and then bent down to capture the snowdrops. Their modest flower heads bowed respectfully towards the earth. Their tiny white petals were almost too pure for the occasion. My aunty staggered around the tree, lurching in unexpected directions, and offering us a tribute sip of whiskey she’d brought in a hip flask.

“Careful,” I said, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice, “You’ll step on the snow drops.”

She looked down at her misplaced feet and with great effort and concentration, managed to take a step back. I watched her Converse shoes carefully out of the corner of my eye. She’d massively exaggerated the drama about that day, embellishing each ounce of pain we all felt. She had craved the outlets it would give her. A reason to talk, cry and drink, a reason to be miserable.

I could hear her slurring words to herself as she hovered above me. She relished those deep and meaningful conversations about love and family that made the rest of us squirm. Her body lurched forward again and her feet, quickly trying to accommodate her, crushed one of the snowdrops.

The Lovely Bones

"Rush to the sink, I felt like saying to her, stare down the hole and look into the earth. I'm down there waiting; I'm up here watching."

"She asked for a coffee and toast in a restaurant and buttered it with tears."

I'm going undercover...

... as a hipstr.

Hello old friend...

I am eager to start taking photos again. I think it is something to do with the sun coming out and making the world look beautiful again. Also, it is more fun than the stack of submissions I should be working on.

Premature Summer

The Wise Little Girl

"... the strongest and fastest thing in the world is the wind, the fattest is the earth, for she feeds everything that grows and lives; the softest of all is the hand, for whatever a man may lie on, he puts his hand under his head; and there is nothing lovlier in the world than sleep."

...

I feel empathy for inanimate objects. The chairs that get sat on, the teaspoons that get burned, the nails that get hammered and the wood that they wound.

Pink fluffy love. The sort you see once a year.

Hearts, cupcakes, me-to-you teddy bears, rose petals, red thongs, preorganised shagging, pink fluff, boquets of flowers and Hallmark flavoured love. What is real and true about that? The only genuine emotions I can identify on Valentines Day are insecurity, jealousy and neediness. To me, the day splits people down the middle rather than bringing them together and reminding them to love. It tries to force couples into spending money to prove their love, and it pressurises single people to go out in same sex groups to show that they don't care.
I feel that Valentines Day can bring out the worst in people. Everyone knows cheesy couples or cringy, needy singles but Valentines Day works as a steroid to these people. Bringing them out in heart shaped (or broken heart shaped) rashes all over their clothes and Facebook.
I feel bad on the single people who can't say they don't like Valentines Day without everyone assuming it's just because they haven't got a partner to share it with.
I believe that people who have the energy to make such a huge song and dance about Valentines Day are in love with the idea of love, not their partners.

Birthday Times

Cornwall with Josh, Gid and Adam to celebrate with Sam, Chris, Jenni, Louis, Eliot and Mama. Chilli followed by rum brownies.

Hello stranger...

It's been a while. Before I immediately start rabbiting on about myself I feel it would be rude not to make an announcement of my new baby, Ron.


I found Ron in Park Pets pet shop in Oldfield Park, Bath. I brought him home on the 19th of November 2010. He was about 11 weeks old but the pet shop people couldn't be entirely sure of his age as he was the last one left of the litter. All his brothers and sisters had been quickly sold and for some reason he was not. I loved him immediately (even before I knew of his lonely pet shop life.) I'd poked my head in a few other pet shops to look at rabbits but none I'd decided were my bunny. Ron was sitting in his hutch squashing his two small guinea pig friends. He wasn't very friendly and didn't like being handled, in fact he still doesn't to this day. He prefers to come to you.
I have grown to quite like this trait of his though, it reminds me of myself when I was a little girl. Very cross when disturbed and quite capable of entertaining myself. He is a lot more confident now, he runs and leaps about the room and likes to lick people, but he will not tolerate being picked up. I am covered in deep scratches from my attempts. I can't help but love him though, particularly when he flops on his side and flashes his white tummy.

I'm sure all of that is very uninteresting to most of you. It's kind of (exactly) like listening to soppy parents go on and on about how well their children are doing in finger painting class. But this is my blog so be it. So now you know about Ron, and his round delicious chubbiness.

What's new with me? My second year of university is really stressful because I actually need to do more than just scrape by on a 40% pass this year. Good news though: Josh is moving to Bath next year. We are currently in the process of house hunting. We talk excitedly about buying mug trees and spice racks. I shall keep you posted on our latest property discoveries and try to be much more current with my blog posts, particularly now that my housemate Vicky has joined the Blogspot elite. Welcome darling.