commencing 4th may 2026
make salad, eat salad, puke
writing this feeling kinda queasy if i’m honest. post-train croissant, but also yesterday i suffered the consequences of my actions: i haven’t made tons of salad before, but last week alekka made me a greek salad so good i made it again the day after with way too much onion, left some onions marinading in my fridge in an open bowl to add more vegetables to later, ate a single onion, and then proceeded to have what felt like an allergic reaction. one of my worse ones as well, for it to have lasted overnight! turns out you’re not supposed to do that. this is why i never cook lol.
i feel like the past week has been kinda floaty because i didn’t claim my days back at work and nothing significant in my life has changed. i don’t have a new job or a new lease on life or a new project this week. a lot of old stuff is returning, though, and i feel like maybe the thread running through all of it has been belonging. or history. or trying to work out what it means to build a life somewhere after realising some places were never really built for you at all.
this said, my local ward’s council has changed to be majority green - i hope our two new councillors do us proud. i’m interested to see what they make happen in islington. i’ve been reflecting a lot on local politics - my hometown, grimsby, has voted solidly reform (unsurprising; it was also an extremely pro-brexit region in 2016). and yet, weirdly, i don’t really feel doomed. i can’t explain why, especially in the face of results like this. it’s not forced optimism or me trying to reassure myself because the alternative is too frightening; i know what denial feels like. something somewhere in me just genuinely believes the future will be better than this. not magically fixed - but brighter. more connected. maybe it’s because i spend so much of my life around people trying very hard to care for one another and to build. maybe that distorts my perspective. but i don’t think it’s fake. i really do feel it.
i think a lot about grimsby, and how i grew up there knowing and loving basically no one, and perhaps i was just wrong for the place and it was wrong for me. it’s one thing to come back somewhere and feel it differently and another to look back on it as somewhere that was just never yours. and i guess though i don’t look back at it that often at all, maybe that’s because it never really was for me. i was showing a friend houses there recently because they’re so cheap (£140k for a 5 bed, 3 living room, 3 bath) and thinking about how there’s nothing for me there anymore.
nicole often goes to grimsby now, which is a weird thing to think about, because she has a long-term project curating the earl of brocklesby’s collection. she finally went into grimsby town from the estate last week after about a year and a half on the project and texted that she wasn’t impressed with freshney place, our town mall - and i guess who would be? i remember going there in 2014 looking for boyfriend jeans and only finding one pair. grimsby will never have a uniqlo. i hope that one day it has a council that cares about its people.
with those thoughts on home, i’ve also been reflecting a fair bit on old friendships. i don’t have any! like, that’s not true - i have friends that are as old as my london life. but the only childhood friend from my hometown just gets my annual birthday message (not even sure i remembered to do that last year). i don’t mind being new in a sense. maybe i even prefer it.
at ifti’s 30th a week ago and then merri’s hen do this week, when the roasts and toasts and the age old stories go round i often don’t have much to say. part of this is that i don’t think very top-down about anything - i remember fragments and feelings more than defining anecdotes, and am prompted more so than remembering in abstract - but part of it is also just that i’m very rarely the person people got wildly drunk with on holiday, or the housemate they lived with for six years, or the friend who witnessed every breakup in realtime. i very often know people one-on-one, outside the mythology of them. and honestly, though i do like being in larger community, i quite like that way of things too. there’s something really intimate to me about getting to know someone outside the established narrative of who they’ve always been. sometimes at these events i feel like i’m watching people become caricatures of themselves through affection - everyone repeating the same stories, the same traits, the same bits. meanwhile i’m sitting there like, huh. i never even knew that version of you.
fun things i did last week:
alekka visited us!!! god it was sooooo good to have her in town. she is a salve, such an easy person to have around and endlessly curious about everything.
had a columbo night, introducing the series to some pals. i’m enjoying doing more screenings these days - we have the room for it and it’s a lot of fun to do them!
went to st john’s with alex. we have resolved to try one fancy restaurant every couple of months so this was on the agenda. the food and the service were both excellent but i can’t help but feel i’d rather eat a burger and be on my way. i find modern british cuisine so confusing as well - i swear down i’m not a picky eater but when my options are things like lemon sole and sweetmeats i’m a little confused and alarmed. nonetheless it was a delicious meal!
took both alekka and olivia on the charity shop crawl. i just like having a fun area to stomp around. i met one of the owners of udderlicious (the only time i have ever fangirled irl a little bit hopefully) and asked them a bunch of questions about how it worked. and then promptly ordered an ice cream maker. is this going to be my life? i made mango lassi ice cream with vizor on saturday. i think i want to have an ice cream concept party.
went to strut! i do really enjoy the line dance but i don’t have tons booked in because they only book one month at once and i am often not free. so i’m gonna try and learn at home this month to keep up! let’s see how we go. i like the learning element for sure.
alekka and michael and i went up hampstead heath - it was her first time up there despite living in the city for five years back in the day. it was so nice! i love the heath! i’m so glad to have broken the seal on going there for the year! many more heath trips!
alekka and i went to cambridge to visit jacob. we had a pretty nice time and inexplicably ended up naming 129 harry potter characters on the train down for entertainment. i also ran into yaam there, which was quite funny - i had deliberately not reached out because of how last minute us deciding to go was, and we still got to hang out a little bit!
found a great dim sum place i can actually eat at without worrying about my nut allergy. i am WINNINGGGGG
screened paris is burning for chlo and some mutual pals, i quite enjoyed it but estella stopped by halfway through and didn’t wanna watch it so i missed twenty minutes in the middle
went to go see sheep detectives with will and vizor. it is my solemn sworn duty to go see every original ip that graces my cinema and isn’t a drama or a horror. i must take this seriously. it is my cross to bear. also i thought it was honestly very cute and charming and there were only three children in the cinema so it was definitely for or at least adjacent to being for adults.
went to noor’s house to eat a pie she has literally been saving us for about three months in her freezer. i appreciate being held in mind in this way. i only wish i had felt less unwell due to my dumb saladgate.
let’s hope i haven’t developed a perma-allergy to onions or tomatoes. godspeed! xxx