In youth group talking about living in the countryside vs the city and thinking about that time I looked out of the window and there were a bunch of cows in the garden and we had no idea who they belonged to or how they had got there. I took pictures of them on my digital camera but got bored quickly because cows just stand around. Eventually farmer came to shoo them back down the river. Someone said their dad had worked in a hotel for thirty years which is longer than I have been alive. Feel like people don’t stay in jobs their whole lives so much anymore. Would probably be tedious but tedium isn’t always a bad thing and it would be nice not to worry about looking for work. Debate about best food to get pre-cinema. I am a firm Five Guys believer though am partial to a Nandos. Conversation moves onto how good it is going out with someone who gets good discounts through work and shares them with you. When M worked in a coffee shop I used to get free coffee and cake on the reg, which is so much better than when he was at Screwfix (don’t care about tools) or his current job at the guitar shop (can’t play guitar).

Someone’s birthday so MM sneaks off to get a cake which she decorates with a wobbly 18 and sprinkles. Girl whose birthday it is say she’s old as hell now and has wrinkles already and everyone shouts nooooooo. Group in the room next to us listening to Dolly Parton and everywhere in the hub people talking about her. Her demographic was the whole world! MM says the had a cardboard cutout of her in the office at her old job.

28th August (defo screwed up the dates here)

Got rejected for a job I really wanted but cheered up on the train reading my book. Novels are a great place to hide. We sung 9-5 and Jolene at music group in honour of Dolly and I wanted to do Islands in the Stream too but general consensus was that we do Ghetto Superstar by Pras (including rap) instead. Finished with Angels which is everyone’s favourite - something about the tune just fills the soul with feeling. Nice that even though monoculture is dead everyone can agree on one thing: Robbie Williams is class

Talk to M (poet) about songwriting. She says you can get away with corny stuff in songs that would never fly poetry-wise.

M (so many M’s in my life) getting a haircut so I wait for him on a bench and write some rubbish in my notes app then he takes me out for a pizza and a schooner to cheer me up about job. Genuinely works too.

Every-time I apply for a job I convince myself I’ve already got it and start planning what I’m going to wear/whose going to look after the animals/how I will be different and better when I am a working woman.

Leftovers for dinner and we watch Reservoir Dogs which was really good though I wish I could have seen it when it came out and not known anything about Tarantino yet - he’s one of those where his career overshadows his work sometimes. Love Steve Buscemi.

29th August

Woke up feeling and skipped my workout which always puts me in a Rotten mood. M takes Pig to the vet for blood tests and they say all his results are very good for such an old dog. Well done Piggy - must be all the shit he licks off the pavement giving him super powers. We go to Asda and I get hangry and start being annoying. M says if I didn’t have 30 quids worth of shopping in my backpack he’d push me in front of a car. I agree that it would be such a waste, especially because I’m the one with the two exotic beers and the fancy pepperonis. At home I get an aura that makes me confused and stupid - M reminds me I need lunch, water, etc. It’s a crazy feeling, like disassociation when I was a teenager. Everything about me feels lethargic and my neck goes tight. Lie down for a while and later I make cookies on a whim and they end up being almost too delicious considering it was a bog-standard recipe. Suspicious.

Meet mum and dad for lunch at Tabac – good portions and cheap bc of a deal. Ask waiter what a Guinness float is and they say, ‘it’s just a Guinness float’. Dad gives me a second-hand laptop and says if I need any help setting it up I should ‘ask M’ which infuriates me even though I probably will have to ask him.

Food shop arrives and I help the guy carry the crates up the stairs. I say ‘wow this is so heavy’ and he says ‘probably the beers.’

Meet K, C for drinks at Tabac in the evening because everywhere else is busy and I worry that the waitstaff are going to think I’m a Tabac super-fan which demonstrates my narcissistic tendancies. M joins on his way home from work and it gets noisy fast and we’re sitting next to DJ decks, so more noise seems imminent so we all go back to ours with a brief stop at sainos to buy: white wine, rosé, manchego, crackers, crisps, olives, hummus, tzatziki (which we thought was feta dip) and a loaf of boujee bread on a yellow sticker deal. J + E join back at the flat and then another different J and R arrive. Impromptu party! Very hip although probably made less so by the fact I keep saying ‘impromptu party!’ all the time. We talk quite extensively about chemical castration for both dogs and humans. J says that when she moved into her new house she reached into the dishwasher for the first time and pulled out a handful of meat.

23rd August

Sleep late because we were up until 2. Minor debrief in the groupchat. I get up and clean the kitchen and read a bit of Running Wild by JG Ballard which hasn’t hooked me yet. We walk the dog and I write all afternoon and make burger tacos (which is embarrassingly a tik tok recipe) for dinner and then magnums. Hannibal is becoming truly ridiculous.

24^th August

E handed in her dissertation after a sleepless night and months of stress. She did it!!! C and I take goodies round and guy in Key Store judges my early cava purchase. We toast her and talk about being 27; one of those conversations that seems deep at the time but will probably become stupid with hindsight. Guillermo Del Toro said being in your twenties is a time of ‘sublime confusion’ and that he ‘never felt more done and old than in my twenties’. I think about that all the time and find it comforting though I feel the opposite of old; I feel young and scared that everyone else is getting older without me. E said she thinks I seem ‘evolved’ now, whereas I feel like I’m regressing, not necessarily in a bad way, more that I’m being honest about how inept I am instead of feigning maturity.

Started The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides and had that oh !!!!! Feeling. A mixture of ‘this is so my kind of thing’ and ‘how haven’t I read this before?!’ It’s comforting and overwhelming to know that there are so many books out there just waiting for me to read them. Protagonist called Maddy who develops an obsession with A Lover’s Discourse by Barthes which happened to me during postgrad. Spooky.

25^th August

Nothingy day. Woke up with a very stiff neck which is a sign a migraine is coming. Do find it amusing how ‘un-woo woo’ I am in my everyday life because auras and prodromes are essentially bad omens, and my biggest trigger is weather changes, so I’m constantly like ‘i sense a bad wind coming…’ Migraine too bad to read which I find tough. Just cannot get into audiobooks or podcasts if I’m lying still. Threw up a few times which helped alleviate some pressure but feels so gross obviously. Made some manuscript edits and watched Andrew Callahan interview Louis Theroux. They were talking about conspiracy spaces (flat earth conventions etc.) and the crossover with right-wing groups. The seduction lies in constant affirmation – they attract people by promising never to criticize. Is that why people like Chat GPT? I have used it obviously but find the sycophantic tone unbearable. A life without pushback or challenge sounds alienating to me, lonelier than being alone.

Showed youth group how to make mini zines and made an example cartoon about Pinky called ‘Evil Pickle’ and Co-facilitator ended up storing it to use as an example for future sessions. Mortifying. My favourite zine was Monsters Inc themed with the character names adjusted to avoid copyright – Roz was Rizz, and Mike Wazowski was Little Creature. Cracked me up.

We had a meandering conversation while we made the zines, talked about Pokémon and Club Penguin and serial killers, then quite extensively about horror films, specifically ones based on serial killers so Silence of the Lambs, Se7en etc. So much discourse about the ‘current moment’ seems to rely on the understanding that culture is entirely fragmented (which I agree with to some extent) but it seems like sad teenagers now are consuming the same stuff I was ten years ago when I was a sad teenager. Which is quite wholesome! Creativity and an obsession with media and art seems like an obvious foil to isolation and misery - it certainly helps me to be able to ‘go somewhere else’ when my real life is difficult. Read something, somewhere, that said weird kids used to make bands but now they get indoctrinated into radical groups.

Everyone laughed at me because I didn’t know what ‘glaze’ meant, and then got shy when I asked for a definition. Apparently just means to ‘overpraise’ but it sounds obscene to me.

I told them I had tentatively extracted myself from social media and most of them were shocked. When I was their age the idea of not having a thing other people had was intensely stressful. Every difference was a potential for ridicule, and it’s hard to remove yourself that way of thinking even when you grow up and move into the ‘real world’. I tend to go too far in the other direction these days i.e. engage in a sort of performative rejection of popular things to highlight my own uniqueness which is just as, if not more, lame than going along with the general consensus.

20^th August

Good turnout at music group and a great vibe. Everyone inspired and engaging and laughing. During the break X started playing something by Tchaikovsky on the keyboard and everyone stopped to listen. Ate a vegan sausage roll in central station and read my book waiting for the train. Somehow my bra fell off (?!) between Central and Queen St station which is so Bridget Jones-ish. Went to the pub with C and talked about work. She feels like she’s at a crossroads. Poured with rain on the walk home and I finished a job application waiting for M to get home from his own pub trip. Got a Chinese and mucked about all evening.

21st August

Can feel myself becoming more and more nostalgic against my will. Lost to memories constantly and becoming misty-eyed about rogue things that weren’t even that fun at the time eg. my S1 hockey trip to Barcelona. I think I’m feeling unmoored and therefore envious of the fresh start feeling that adolescence and very early adulthood is full of. Feels like the sort of mad state of mind where people decide to move to France or (God forbid) have a baby.

Listened to Digable Planets whilst writing. Made cheese naan (amazing) and honey-roasted nuts and heated up freezer curry for dinner.

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Migraine all day that ebbs and flows. Feel intermittently out of and trapped inside my body. Pain makes everything feel dramatic and high stakes which is a good mindset for the new Phoebe Bridgers album. Take medicine and have a brief cleaning frenzy before collapsing on sofa and dozing for a while. Watch M play video games with my cold cap on and listen to PB and feel like I’m watching a music video. Recognise Cameron Winters voice in a dreamlike state. I spend so much time trying to ignore the fact that something hurts.

15^th August

M surprise birthday pub crawl! Jarring tonal shift from previous day. We go to The 78 (our first date spot), and eat vegan Mexican food and engage in general nostalgia, then pick up road beers and walk into town to Drury st, another classic M haunt. Meet E, R + S, and M is very surprised even though I thought he had twigged since I had been texting E a lot and am generally bad at keeping secrets from him.

Unplanned stop at The Amsterdam where my tequila shots are poorly received, then Bar Home where M used to work. Unpleasant vibe (loud in a bad way like a school canteen) and M talks about how much he hated working here. S sees a nurse who recently saw his penis (in a professional context) and they wave at each other.

Drinking hooch in Wetherspoons and talking about school. E buys me and S Innis and Gun t-shirts for charity. Talk to S (who is a Real Beatles fan and knows all the lore) about the song Maxwell’s Silver Hammer because I can’t shut up about it apparently and he says everyone except Paul McCartney hated it. I can see it being used in an American Psycho style killing montage.

Onto the Laurieston where I see a girl I went to school with and wave. Think I might like stouts now or at least Murphys. Taxi driver corrects me with great disdain when I confuse Tommy Lee Jones (Men in Black) with Tommy Lee (Mötley Crüe). Minnesota Fats 4 a final Tennents. We talk about having or not having kids then buy oven pizzas and go home and M gets the hiccups which is the only thing in the world that makes him truly angry.

17^th August

Another bad sleep but no hangover. M feels worse which inspires sympathy but also smugness. Read The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer on the couch for a while. Walk Pig and go to the shop and voicenote R. Take a gummy and make toasties and watch Alan Partridge, then dance in the kitchen while stoned M slowly does the dishes. Write for a few hours and make chilli and watch Hannibal which is only getting more ridiculous (complimentary).

18^th August

Ran 10k listening to 3 Feet and Rising by De La Soul and felt really good. Dad had a meeting in Glasgow and was supposed to come through for a coffee at 11. Called me at half 10 and said, ‘there’s been a work emergency: I haven’t done any.’ Showed up around 12 and we talked about applying for jobs. I said it made me feel insecure about my personality and he said ‘well, I’m happy with who you are.’ One of those things you don’t know you need to hear until you hear it. He left for his 1pm meeting at 1.15. Writing curtailed by an afternoon headache.

19^th August

Migraine almost as soon as I wake up from the barometric pressure, so I take a gummy and lie on the sofa in my pyjamas. Look at some NHS forums on migraine just to see if I’m missing any new tips and tricks – nada. Google my symptoms and they say: brain aneurysm, meningitis, stroke. Realised I’ve had migraines for almost half my life, though for vast periods of that I was ignoring the facts and pretending everything was normal.

In uni I was so lazy without feeling guilty. I used to think my life’s purpose was to hang out and I’d spend all day in bed reading or watching Peep Show or listening to Graceland and then I’d go out and get drunk and talk to people. I felt so content doing that. Now I always feel like I should be using my time ‘productively’, even though that time was spent ‘gathering material’ that would eventually spawn my first novel, so it was productive in a way. GT felt so easy to write and came very naturally – probably because I wasn’t constantly analysing where I was in my life and if it was good enough. Also probably found it easier to relax because I was eighteen and being entirely financially supported by my parents.

Obsessed with Caroline Calloway again which seems to occur during times of personal unrest.

Pie and Otbot wake us up at 7 by standing in the doorway and laughing creepily. Otbot copies everything Pie does and is generally obsessed with her big sister - those ancient texts! Otbot’s birthday so we watch her open presents with bleary eyes (us not the two year old). Pie gets OtBot a fluffy cat-shaped handbag complete with fake credit cards, a watch, and a set of keys. I think about how I don’t have a watch or a credit card.

Pie guessing where her parents are taking them for surprise birthday day out (safari park in Stirling) and M and I try to convince her she’s going to The Toilet Museum. Kind of want to go there myself by the time I’m finished. Read G the Wikipedia page for spontaneous combustion while she makes breakfast and then she lets me have a pair of trainers I have been coveting for years. No correlation between these events but I do enjoy both of them.

Dad drives us back to Glasgow and we talk about Studio Ghibli, the song Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, whether Fleetwood Mac was better before or after Pete Green. Dad preferred their bluesy sound. We walk the three dogs and Barney obsessed with his tennis ball as usual. Peggy hunts Barney whilst Pig snuffles around, sporadically possessed by bursts of puppy-ish energy. He runs around like a rocking horse then sleeps on the sofa all afternoon while I read Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood which is good in a way that makes me feel Angry and Jealous. Watch more Hannibal and eat leftovers. Show has insane sets and everyone talks in riddles. Feels like it was designed in a lab for Tumblr people.

11^th August

MIGRAINE. Reading American Psycho which is amazing. Eat beans on toast.

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12^th August

Played tennis with M and we felt self-conscious because the guys next to us were so much better than we were. At one point they hit our ball over and I got confused and hit it back to them again and they laughed. Deep shame.

All the youth group members love anime. I can tell they think I’m old because they explain things to me in the same way I explain things to my dad. In contrast to this all the people who work at the hub where we run the group think that I am a ‘young person’ attendee not a facilitator. Someone hands me a leaflet on employability, but I don’t say anything because I honestly kind of need it.

Went to Wingstop for the first time (not bad but out of milkshakes) and then saw Spiderman. Not doing anything to dispel the young person rumours. Film got better as it went on – rare! – and there was a classic Spiderman moment at the end which I teared up at. I think of myself as an ex-superhero fan, but I have seen every major superhero movie released over the last decade; most of them in the cinema, some of them twice. Not proud of this.

13^th August

Listen to De La Soul on my walk through town bopping along. Bump into C who I’m always happy 2 see. New percussionist in music group with loud voice to match drumming style. Told X to listen to Boards of Canada and we talk about ambient music and the harpsichord and then he plays me the Goldberg Variations from memory.

Eight-year anniversary with M – whose love is the great boon of my life. He bought flowers and special dinner ingredients (including ricotta-pistachio ice cream + vinho verde), but I had a migraine so couldn’t eat any of them except the ice cream. He brings me ice packs and tablets and refreshments instead.

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Debate at charity youth group about whether The Rock is ‘ethnic’. Non-white members of group vote no and white people submit immediately. Someone says, ‘but how would The Rock himself identify?’ and someone replies, ‘Bro is Californian.’ Later I suggest putting music on but I am too afraid to follow through. Nobody knows who Kacey Musgraves is and she was my only idea for relaxing music teenagers might like. Cede the responsibility to one of the younger members who says, ‘I’ll just put on rave, or maybe…’ (looking at me) ‘…millennial rave.’ I’m 27?!

Rejection for a job I didn’t want but application took me FOREVER. Don’t want any job that can’t be done whilst drinking beers in my house. Scrolling through goodmoves on the train next to a guy talking on the phone but he’s just listing vegetables like: ‘red pepper? ok, okra? how about a sweet potato. Buy wine to soften the blow of rejection, just like a real grown-up. Feel like I am in the song ‘For the First Time,’ by The Script. M bolsters me in the kitchen while he cooks pesto pasta, proving that men can multi-task.

6^th August

Someone at music group said they thought Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen was ‘weird,’ which I found personally offensive but when I tried to explain why I liked it I sounded so earnest I gave myself the ick and stopped talking. One of the new members was playing Steely Dan-ish piano and I said he should watch the behind-the-scenes video of them making Peg where they put the bass player behind a screen because they find his bass-slapping annoying and he says, ‘on account of me being a player… i kept slapping the bass'.’ Told everyone I’ve decided I like The Beatles and someone said they’d been in John Lennon and Paul Mccartney’s childhood home. I said, ‘did you break in,’ and they said, solemnly, ‘no, it was a tour’. Not arsed about going to John Lennon’s old house. Don’t believe that genius can rub off on you if you touch the geniuses belongings.

Walked Ted with M when I got home and felt tired. Applied for a job, ate cake, and moped around. Survival kind of week.

7^th August

Went for a run with M and plotted out a psychological thriller we’ve been wanting to write for ages. Talked about it too much and now we don’t want to do it anymore.

Decanting brown rice into plastic container and it doesn’t fit and starts overflowing. Gripped by rage I cannot explain – probably hormonal. Want to scream. Spend two hours editing and make the manuscript noticeably worse. Get pizza and watch The Matrix which is really good though a character says, ‘the ship has one purpose; to search and destroy,’ and I’m like… that’s two things.

8^th August

Ran a banger 10k and listened to a podcast that made me feel guilty for making jokes about Sheryl Sandberg. I was generally productive but didn’t write which made me feel unproductive. Pub with E, worked on my opening which I know I’m overthinking but cannot stop messing about with. Watched first few episodes of Hannibal on TV because I liked Red Dragon so much I want to consume more Will Graham Content. M said ‘bet you fancied him,’ about Hugh Dancy and I was like what do you mean past tense. I’m still there. I love damage.

9^th August

M 30^th birthday! Made a fry-up and we catch the train to WL for a rainy BBQ. M makes Pinky a mannequin of clothes so he doesn’t get lonely but it’s creepy and I worry it’s going to freak out our neighbour. Dad thinks Mads Mikkelsen is called Max Michaelson. Mum doesn’t feel well but puts on an exceptional spread as usual. Dad roasts SB, saying he is unlucky bc he’s losing hair ‘from both ends’, meaning back and front. Everyone shocked then laughing. Dad (who is bald as hell) says ‘what?! I’m commiserating.’ I promise SB that I will tell him when it’s time to shave his head. Dad says he used to have long blonde hair and get dodgy perms from his friend’s mum at her house. I say maybe that’s why you’ve been bald as long as I’ve been alive. M wishes on his birthday candle not to go bald.

Later we’re all taking turns to lie down and stand up without using our hands, which is apparently a way to determine level of youthful mobility. G has to put shorts on under her dress to keep things PG. Everyone can do it though girls better than boys. J tries to do it and we all scream because she has brittle bones + one million pins in her foot.

I tell Pie (who is 5) I wish I could see her more and she replies, ‘well, that’s just life.’ Momentarily speechless (rare). I ask who taught her that phrase and she shrugs and says, ‘you.’

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Did a leg workout with M listening to the new Charli XCX album (really good). I am too vain (and poor) to go to the gym because I look ugly when I work out and sweat SO much. Walked Pig in warmish weather then came home and watched Alan Partridge with bacon and toast and leftover Spanish tortilla.

Listened to Abbey Road for the first time while I made granola which takes forever but is low effort and quite satisfying (I make a sort of witch’s brew of wet ingredients and use it to soak the oats). Album was great; interesting and weird. Spiritual experience hearing I Want You (She’s so Heavy) for the first time. Texted my dad about it and he said a group of friends saw the Beatles in Edinburgh but it ‘didn’t seem like a big deal at the time’, so he didn’t go. Regrets it now obviously though it seems he saw everyone else. Fleetwood Mac, The Who and Linda Ronstadt (his favourite). He saw Neil Young in Glasgow in the early 70s with Eagles as the support. He said nobody knew who they were, but they came out and played Desperado and were better than Neil Young who was drunk.

Watched the first part of Get Back which was good. Ringo Starr is so hot. Don’t know much about The Beatles except their big tunes because people who like them are so annoying about it. Shrek 2 with dinner. Watched more television today than I have in years. Perfect Sunday.

3^rd July

E came round to co-work. She’s in a bad mindset with dissertation and experiencing subsequent writer’s block; ouroboros situation of feeling like shit so can’t work then can’t work so feeling like shit. Did manage to get a few hours of work done though mostly talked about Game of Thrones which she is watching with R. She said anyone who claims Ringo Starr as favourite Beatle is obviously lying which I took offence to. Also moaned about the fact that every time I post one of these diary entries on Substack (meta!) about five people unfollow me.

Dinner too salty. House of the Dragon quality varying wildly in third season after very good first season and very bad second. I love to bitch about other people’s art because it’s so easy to identify and ‘fix’ problems from the outside. So many moving parts with telly and film – how are you supposed to know if it’s going to be any good while you’re making it? The idea of collaborating on a creative project is so scary to me because I’m a control freak. Novel-writing is great because you do it all yourself, but I would love to work on a script one day. M makes being in a band sound fun, but he’s known the boys forever – does that make it better or worse? Certainly seemed to be some tension with the Beatles in Get Back doc and I worry I would be Paul McCartney in that kind of situation ie. being dismissive of George Harrison due to self-importance instead of projecting a calm Ringo-ish vibe. Linda McCartney said she felt most comfortable with Ringo. Asked M which Beatle he identified with most and he said him and his friends don’t fit into Beatles archetypes. Boring.

4^th August

Pressure dropped overnight and weird humid air so a headache-y day. Bought Pie rollerblades for her birthday and made OtBot a photobook of our recent holiday which took me FOREVER and now Snapfish will not stop emailing me. I feel like I’m getting less competent with technology as I age but surely late twenties is still young and cutting edge??? E said if her and R get married he isn’t allowed to invite all fourteen cousins but can have a few of his favourites.

Took a weed gummy and went for a run which felt good mentally but made headache much worse. Being ill is constantly weighing up options and choosing wrong no matter which one you pick. Literally no winning.

Texted C saying I missed her and sorry for dropping off face of the earth. She replied saying no prob and she had been briefly considering moving to Inverness but decided not to in the end. Seems like everyone I know is going through it right now. Wish astrology was real so I could blame it on planets.

Worried about how much I love the Below Deck franchise. Is it a sign of low intelligence? Recent online IQ test confirmed I am almost smart enough to apply for Mensa, but results undermined by the fact I signed up to the dodgy IQ test website in the first place AND gave them my card details for a supposed free trial which ended up NOT being free. When I told M this he looked at me like I was a gentle but stupid farm animal that he was about to put down.

K sent me pictures of an Italian POW camp she visited on an island off Orkney. They were there for years and did everything they could to make the place feel like home. They put on plays and built a chapel. In the pictures the walls of the chapel looked tiled or like mosaics but it’s all paint – so intricate. A quote from one of the prisoners:

‘it was the wish to show oneself first and to the world then, that in spite of being trapped in a barbed wire camp, down in spirit, physically and morally deprived of many things, one could still find something inside that could be set free.’

A fuck you to their capturers and a saving grace at the same time. K said it was a ‘very profound space where you can feel the feverish devotion and longing for home’. Want 2 go.

Made a lentil lasagne with cashew cream béchamel. Sort-of a success. Cashew cream formed a not unpleasant crust, but I have a nostalgic fondness for weird vegan stuff. M wasn’t entirely convinced.

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30^th July

Too lazy 2 workout. M anxious before driving lesson and said, ‘I cannot think about this right now,’ when I asked him what he wanted about lunch. He came back triumphant and full of having done the thing he was dreading. Made breakfast burritos for lunch with gochujang ketchup. Very good!

Lounged around watching Alan Partridge (who we have both begun to think of as not only a real person but an old friend) but managed to rouse ourselves to tidy up and write for a few hours before E + R came round for a drink before their dinner res. M made amaretto sours and we toasted E’s promotion and debated whether it’s normal to know exactly what is in your fridge at any given moment. E, R and M all said no and ganged up against me. After they left, we watched Supergirl which was crap.

31^st July

Went 4 a run with M and ranted for close to forty minutes about personal branding + optimisation culture + how everyone is boring now. M listened patiently and then said ‘do you think the job applying is getting to you’. Mic drop…

Walked Piggy and he frolicked joyfully around on the grass doing roly polys and yipping at dogs. He slept all day after on his side on the rug like he’d fallen from the sky. Had to get an emergency prescription which stressed me out. Always feel on the back-foot with medical professionals, as if I’m going to get in trouble, though the pharmacy staff were nice. M put cream in my coffee as a reward.

K round for dinner. Made a Spanish tortilla with red onion, kale salad (which turned out bland) and crusty baguette. Would have been an unbelievably frugal menu if I hadn’t gone to the boujee wine shop at the last minute to buy aioli crisps and white wine with a pig label that reminded me of Pig. K brought the vinho verde I <3 and her signature biscuits. Talking about creative process and I said I like myself best when I’m writing bc it highlights my best instincts and smooths over the bad ones. She said that was a lot of pressure to put on an activity.

1^st August

Tried and failed to download photos on M’s laptop for his birthday picture album. Despite my claims in job applications, I am technologically illiterate. Ran past church hall to try and catch E + C coming out of boxing but instead waved at, shouted, and then approached two random (and honestly, middle-aged) women and then instead of explaining my mistake I ran away for some reason ?!

Drank a lot of coffee and wrote a bit but mostly fucked around watching concerts on YouTube.

Went on a run with M and told him about an epiphany I’ve had with a manuscript I’ve been ignoring with the eventual intention of applying for a PhD. He liked the idea so came home feeling fired up. I am consistently the most productive when I’m doing something I shouldn’t be, cleaning my flat to procrastinate writing etc.

Pub with girls early evening and sat outside ooh la la. We talked about derogatory words and whether it was ok for me to keep saying pleb (probably not).

C brought her new puppy Frankie (!!!) who sat on my lap and fell asleep and also proved to be an attention magnet 4 sexy people to come over and talk to us. Put away an impressive (read: excessive) amount of wine because I felt joyful to be alive which always happens after I’ve had a migrainey time.

Got home at 11ish and bothered M who was trying to sleep. Drew him a cartoon as penance and left it in the kitchen for him to find when he wakes up.

27th July

Started reading Flowers for Algernon which is interesting on language + memory + interesting metaphor depicting life with an intellectual difference as looking through a keyhole into a busy room full of light. Wrote all afternoon but mainly playing around with stuff then finished a job application I’ve been working on all week. At one point my draft doc was 6000 words long (?!). Is there a way to apply for jobs that isn’t soul sucking????? Asked M to acquire emotional support chocolate.

28th July

Ran a 10k and was hoping to straighten some writing things out in my mind but instead spent the majority planning cinema snacks for later. Settled on what M called: Mega Sandwiches, which is essentially a sub with various deli meat and pickled accoutrements.

Finished Flowers for Algernon and felt sad. It was moving - I liked the psychological aspects and there was more doubling (hi freud again!). The novel seems to posit intelligence as a concept uninterested in ego or adherence to norms and motivated by a desire to learn + expand. But also a thing that brings detachment and lack of affect. There was not much joy in the novel except in this sort of manic passage which made me laugh and reminded me of writing:

‘I sense it… I’m living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed… in the moments before I pass off to sleep - ideas explode into my head like fireworks. There is no greater joy than the burst of solution to a problem… life and work are the most wonderful things a man can have.’

Perfectly captures the spontaneous thrill of creation, but also when I start feeling like this it’s usually a sign of impending stir craziness and I should go for a walk or do something social.

Saw the Odyssey with M (finally using my free cinema ticket!). It was very entertaining and didn’t feel long. Cyclops and Circe were scary as fuck but felt like the film didn’t really ‘get’ the sirens or Calypso. Had a small war-based epiphany during the sacking of Troy that made me want to give For Whom the Bell Tolls another go. Sound design was really immersive and kept catching myself with my jaw-dropped. Also had an overwhelming desire to clap at the end which might be due to weed gummy and smuggled cinema beer. Talked about the film all the way home. As Harry Styles would say… it was a movie that really felt like a movie.

Share one good egg

E asked R + S (best friends and flatmates) if they would have sex if they were each other’s physical types and they both said yes. E and I both think it’s shallow to not have sex if that’s the only thing that’s stopping them. Got me thinking about attractiveness, which is intangible 4 me and rooted in a sense of mystery and curiosity. Have actively fancied people I thought were stupid or bad people in the past because they were intriguing to me… thank goodness that I ended up fancying M who is hot and kind but still interesting.

G has influenced me + mum to get Monzo perks and I am now consumed by thoughts of claiming my weekly free greggs treat and monthly cinema ticket. Have done neither thus far but am thinking about it a lot. Also SKINT so shouldn’t be spending money on monthly subscriptions designed to increase my savings WHICH DON’T EXIST.

Watching M stand at the window watching for his driving instructor to turn onto the street like a kid waiting to be picked up by a divorced parent to go to McDonalds.

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24th July

Read Ode to a Nightingale and felt emotional, especially at the lines: Now more than ever it seems rich to die / To cease upon the midnight with no pain. Probably because I have a migraine which causes my emotions to bob closer to the surface.

Keats was 23 when he wrote Ode and he died at 27 after a lifetime of illness. In one of his final letters he wrote: Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering.

I read the poem first at 20 when I was ignoring my own illness and turning away from anything I found confronting (like Keats, who I deemed mopey). Now I have accepted being sick but still find it difficult to think of hard periods in my life where I was struggling with the existential questions of pain and how it shaped (and shapes) my life. I still find it hard to quantify which traits are mine alone and which belong to my illness, and I still lust after a version of myself that was never ill. How different I would be, and not necessarily for the better. Read To His Coy Mistress (another old friend from uni!) which is a funny poem that pretends to be about sex but is actually (like everything) about death. What a palate cleanser!

25th July

Reading about ‘the uncanny’ which Freud calls ‘all that arouses dead and creeping horror.’ A key element of the uncanny is doppelgängers and an idea of ‘doubling’. Reminded me of when Pie started referring to herself as Double Pie out of nowhere. Double Pie was, in a way, herself, but also not. She would talk on the phone to Double Pie for example but also sometimes I would call her by her given name and she’d say ‘no, I’m not her, I’m Double Pie.’ It was spooky!

According to Freud doubles are uncanny because they function as a simultaneous promise of immortality and harbinger of Death - the presence of a double undermines the logic of reality. In Pie’s case I suspect the inspiration behind this conjured doppelgänger was having a scapegoat to blame for naughty things that the Real Pie had done… though maybe Double Pie is an omen of doom….

Romanticising my migraine by wearing my silk robe. Sort of working.

Bunch of golden-haired, bronzed young people with posh accents holding up the line in Marvin’s. Obviously unaware of unspoken etiquette rules of Marvin’s such as don’t umm and ahh for ages and don’t eventually order five freddo cappuccinos then hang around in everyone’s way looking coltish and pouty. Greek man in his-vis vest had to wait ten minutes to get two pastries and no drinks and shared a knowing look with barista. M and I tutted and ordered efficiently in an attempt at solidarity with weary locals though our obvious sunburn and inability to speak Greek worked against us.

Finally finished The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. Beautiful writing and erotic and occasionally funny on sex and cocaine and class. Made me feel stupid for not having read any Henry James except In the Cage at uni which I can’t remember. Picked it back up at the perfect time because there’s a hot holiday section though it did make me aware of the comparative lack of glamour. M and I drinking tins and shooting nieces with water guns and going to Marvin’s constantly to look at the dusty beach chairs and fridge-magnets…

M and I went to a wine bar for a pre-dinner drink and intense but awkwardly charming owner brought us hand foraged mushrooms. Weird that he just drove up a hill and rooted around in the dirt for mushrooms that he put in a jar and declared a delicacy for some reason. Although I suppose that’s all food. Also they were delicious.

Everyone drunk at dinner and Dad asked restaurant owner to put the rugby on the big TV in the corner. Mum, G, and I all yelled at him, but owner agreed enthusiastically. Resultant camaraderie formed based on what they saw as men banding together to watch sports in spite of ball and chain interference and we saw as being rude. Couldn’t get the rugby so settled on the golf. Owner told us a Greek idiom: ‘I woke up feeling awful but then I realised I was a woman,’ which is almost definitely sexist but I don’t know why because of language barrier.

Told Pie when she was big she could come and stay with me in Glasgow and I’d take her out for cocktails. Said we could wear lipstick and gossip and she said ‘what about Uncle Bobo’ immediately. I said he could also wear lipstick and gossip and she shook her head and said, almost sadly, ‘silly.’

G and I stressed throughout dinner that we had accidentally ordered an expensive bottle of white wine instead of a very cheap rosé. Playing the blame game – I said it was her fault because she ordered, she said it was mine because I tried the wine and accepted. I countered that I was too stressed by the necessary performance of wine-tasting (smelling the glass, swishing wine around, sipping and then taking a long pause before saying… ‘yes that’s lovely’) to remember what G had ordered initially. Worries assuaged when the bill came and the bottle was fifteen quid.

19^th July

Had iced coffee at Marvin’s made up of chocolate milk, espresso, and whipped cream. Also tried to find Greek slogan t-shirt but all of Marvin’s adult t-shirts weirdly chic and expensive. All cool t-shirts were for children and therefore too small. Found a leopard print bucket had that said fuck off on it but I already have a leopard print (furry) bucket hat that E panic-bought me for my twentieth birthday. M finished Wolf Hall and loved it.

Went to mushroom foraging wine bar for dinner and the owner looked offended when I ordered rosé with lamb chops. Think he felt bad though because he later complimented me eating a chop with my fingers in a well-intentioned but awkward way.

After food came Pie and OtBot went insane (potentially due to sleep deprivation) and kept unbuttoning Dad’s shirt. Everyone laughed a lot the first time Pie said ‘look at Papa’s nipples’ but less and less as the phrase was repeated. OtBot was pushing her sister and saying ‘no, my papa!’ and Dad was loving the attention too much to tell anyone off.

Pie pointing at restaurants on the way home: ‘that’s where mummy broke a glass, and that’s where I had my unicorn balloon, and that’s where I got my bunny hat.’

20^th July

Went to Pilos and had breakfast in the square with Mum, Dad and M. So hot. A woman approached with a young son and an empty cup, asking for money. I felt guilty – I was eating pancakes like Augustus Gloop or something which made me feel worse – but I didn’t have any money to give her. I could have gone to a cashpoint, but I didn’t for some reason, embarrassment maybe. She could tell we were uncomfortable. Her son looked tired. I felt lucky afterwards in a way that held no happiness, only shame, because I have not worked particularly hard or earned the majority of privileges I live with. The only difference between us was circumstance really.

After dinner playing a game with Pie that we call ‘I’m a character’, but is basically twenty questions. I told Pie that I was a man (I was Santa) and her next three guesses were: Taylor Swift, Auntie Joanna and a sausage.

21^st July

Sad to say goodbye to Marvin’s, which is staffed almost exclusively by beautiful Greek teenagers with sculpted eyebrows and perfect noses. Got breakfast and coffee and sandwiches for later. Forgot to buy a fridgey I’ve been coveting with a black cat on it.

In airport to go home and overheard a father scolding his son for biting his brother. He said: ‘you should never ever bite someone and if you do it again I will bite you.’

Give the girl doing handstands in front of us in very crowded small airport terminal a pass because she looks about sixteen. Sandwich from Marvin’s one of the best of my life despite (or maybe due to) being in a plastic bag in a hot car and then an airport for several hours. Proscuitto, mozzarella, sliced tomatoes, rocket and pesto.

Bored on plane and M a tenner to put on seatmate’s cardigan while she was in toilet. He offered me same amount to eat a red floor-sweetie that might have been a skittle or an m&m. Both offers declined. I said I’d eat the sweetie for two hundred quid though I probably would have done it for fifty.

Landed and checked my emails to find a form rejection for a job I’d quite wanted. Immediately after have to take off my bandana for an airport scanner and my hair underneath was the flattest and greasiest it has ever been. Especially depressing after a week of amazing curly hair on holiday. Then a headache on the train and ANOTHER job rejection (this one by post?!) when we get back. Texted E: fuck my life.

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22^st July

Couldn’t sleep due to headache and feeling hot and itchy all over my body. Woke congested and puffy with a migraine aura. Ate off-brand Weetabix so I could have painkillers and went back to bed with my cold cap. M went to work but I could tell he felt bad leaving. Cancelled work stuff and felt guilty. Ordered extra-strength antihistamines that someone on Reddit recommended for migraines caused by pressure increases. Another Redditor suggested moving away from Glasgow’s horrible humid climate – like in Little Women when Beth goes to the seaside although maybe not a good comparison because obviously RIP Beth. Feel like I’m in an abusive relationship with my city that I luv so much but obviously does not luv me back.

Drink coffee and take more medicine and manage to find a position that doesn’t actively worsen headache. Lie very still and manage to work a little. I haven’t really been cataloguing migraine stuff here, but it is part of my life I suppose so dishonest to omit. It’s easier to dress pain up in fiction when I can make it allegorical or at least for something when in reality pain is entirely meaningless and without reason.

Asda so fucking annoying about pretending products are in stock when they aren’t. Swear to god I’ve ordered chorizo sausages three times and no dice. Starting to believe in conspiracy ie. these items weren’t ever in stock to begin with and are potentially fake so as to draw people to shop at Asda. Saw a new boujee brand of greek yoghurt and just thought it’s not even worth getting my hopes up. Will continue to shop there though because love the pizza counter.

Flat white and pastry and Greek yoghurt from Marvin’s for breakfast. Played with Pie in the pool and had an extended water pistol fight. SB carried her around on his shoulders while she poured water from a watering can that was also a duck wearing headphones and shouted ‘nobody shoot my taxi!’ OtBot was being very wholesome this whole time smiling and plucking flowers from bushes like a tiny Princess Diana. Cleaner pointed at her yesterday and said ‘look at that beautiful baby!’

Enjoying No Country for Old Men. Another book where women exist to represent a vague idea of goodness/domesticity/the ‘good’ life. It’s very much a novel about men which is obviously fine but can’t help but wonder if he as a person was able to see women clearly. It’s flattening – good wives and mothers or bad whores – and so boring to talk/think about because it’s already been covered a million times. Also makes me feel guilty in my own life when I play into the stereotype and do traditionally ‘female’ eg. enjoy cooking or wait impatiently for M to get home from the pub. In those moments I’m like omg they were right about us.

Late lunch by the beach with delicious suncreamy pina coladas. I feel lucky that M likes to read through meals. Is it prejudiced that I wouldn’t want to go out with someone who didn’t like novels? Too full for ice cream and also sunburnt. Mum and Dad fuming about wordle word (PSHAW) but I defend it because I got it weirdly quickly.

My earring fell out at dinner and Pie found it on the floor with her torch then woman in the bathroom helped me screw it back in when it was too fiddly to do myself. Felt like the Margot Robbie in Barbie meme when she’s clasping her hands together and smiling about the power of female solidarity.

Man in restaurant watching football on his phone propped up against a salt or pepper shaker while partner fed crying child. Dad said it was fine because it was a big game (England Argentina world cup semi-finals) but not ok to do otherwise.

Sunburnt woman from Lanark heard our accents and engaged Mum in conversation. Mum quick to point out she is Welsh not Scottish which is an important distinction though both cultures are similarly sheep-oriented. Mum told woman M and I lived in the south side of Glasgow and she said ‘of course you do’ which haunted M bc he couldn’t figure out what it meant.

16^th July

Beach day. Water sparkling green, blue, turquoise. Swam and had a beer at the sunbeds. Pie orchestrated a game of pretending to fall asleep and G had to be a spider crawling up her arm. Pie would ‘wake up’ at intervals and shout ‘spider!’ G has endless patience for this kind of malarky.

M and I went to look around Methoni Castle, a thirteenth century Venetian structure (had to look that up even though M told me at the time). Imagined transporting one of the people who worked on its construction to the present day and being like, ‘look, it’s still here! I just paid five euros to look around something you built eight hundred years ago!’ Met a Canadian woman who said she wished she could bring her children to Greece every year but it’s so expensive. Felt lucky!!!

17^th July

Relishing waking up in the pitch dark, cool room with nothing to do and no guilt. At home of course minimal things to do but maximum guilt always. Hard to write what I’m up to because days have no shape here and I meander from one thing to the next guided by my whims aka what I want to eat.

Did Pie’s sticker book with her by the pool She was sweet and careful with every sticker, saying ‘that’s ok’ to herself and me when we couldn’t line things up perfectly. My favourite scene was the Russian Princess, but she liked Japanese Garden.

Pie loves the digital camera I gave her and keeps asking everyone to do the peace sign in photos. We can’t figure out where she discovered the gesture, G thought it was my doing but now she thinks potentially a Trollz sticker. Pie asked me what’s the point in having boobies if I don’t have a baby and I was like….. I don’t actually know.

Cleaner disappointed but not surprised by M and I’s sunburn. Her face said she’d seen it a thousand times before. Looked at my arm and said ‘you’re…’ searching for the word and I said ‘pale?’ and she nodded emphatically.

Pie fell on the evening walk into town and cried so I carried her and sung her a song M made up about Ted and Pinky. Lyrics are ‘blobby one and blobby two, what will we blobby do with you’ and she loved it, so I took credit for the composition. We are all possessive over the babies affection/attention except M who can take it or leave it. As a result both babies obviously obsessed with M in the same way a cat always wants to lie on someone who is allergic to cats. OtBot can even say Bobo (Pie’s nickname for M) though when I ask her to say my name she still says ‘meh’ most of the time.

Everyone on great form at dinner. Waitress thought SB had ordered three alcoholic drinks and teased him for it. SB mortified and blushing. Pie became enchanted by a hat on display in a shop over the road (hard to explain but the hat was a pink bunny with ears that moved when you squeezed the legs which were actually two pumps full of air) so Mum took her to get it midway through dinner. When Pie returned to the restaurant wearing the hat every child in the place stared in open mouthed wonder. Cue everyone trying on the hat and general hilarity and lots of pictures on Pie’s digital camera. After dinner we saw one of the families from the restaurant in the shop wearily buying all three of their own children the hats. We were in the shop because Mum was buying OtBot a yellow version that looked like a Pikachu. It was like Pie was an influencer. The shopkeeper was laughing a lot - laughing all way to the bank probably.

Discovered Marvin’s sells novelty condoms that say things like ‘best lover in Gialova’ and weirdly ‘100% authentic gyros.’ Don’t even know what that’s trying to imply. It’s like the tardis in there – we also found impressive selection of British and American novels and cute foil-lined patterned lunchboxes.

Stayed up too late and drank too much wine at book club. Felt almost euphoric talking around the table as night fell. Talked about whether humans would keep making art if there was no struggle, then fell into a tangent about what even counts as ‘struggle.’ One of those winey conversations. K said she thought of herself as being ‘raised on diet coke’ which made me laugh so much for some reason. R showed up and I could tell E was happy to see him after ten days of dissertation hell and monk-like living conditions. Looked at pictures of R’s boujee bathroom. He’s renovated the whole flat with his dad’s help which I find so impressive bc I still mostly think of him someone who sleeps all day and orders milkshakes for breakfast even though that was eight (!) years ago now. Hard 2 grow up in the minds of friends! Though E says he still sleeps a lot. I wonder if he still has that lilac leavers hoodie that we used to make fun of.

Past midnight the conversation took on a confessional slant. Body image and weight and what a waste of time the whole thing is. K said she’d won awards for her work so why did her appearance still matter to her? Girls are good at these roundtable discussions – M said later he would never talk like that with his friends - though of course there’s a flip-side. Women (or at least me) get so bogged down in thinking that it’s hard to do anything … Werner Herzog, who is anti-therapy or as old people call it psychoanalysis, said:

“If you harshly light every last corner of a house, the house will be uninhabitable. It’s like that with your soul; if you light it up, shadows and darkness and all, people will become ‘uninhabitable.’”

M and I say that quote all the time (mostly because it’s fun to do impressions of Werner Herzog) but now I feel like I’ve repeated it so many times I half-agree. I find my self-therapising tendencies very irritating but it’s nice to feel the camaraderie of women and the sense that solving each others problems is not only possible but a group effort.

12^th July

Dancing in the kitchen with M and I try to rile him up by saying that Pinegrove have two perfect songs but the rest are lame. It works – he takes Mega Umbrage and starts angrily counting out good Pinegrove songs on his fingers. I concede defeat but still feel like I’ve won somehow.

Had coffee and K’s hangover biscuits. M took a pic of a skin thing on his leg, but the pic made it look like a pic of his butt crack. I thought it was probably ringworm but google said eczema. Watched a video about the making of boiled sweets and genuinely found it interesting… what does all of this say about my life?

13^th July

Packing for holidays and getting the flat ready for E and R to pet-sit Ted and Pinky. Made way too much pasta salad for book club and finishing it before we leave has become a millstone around my neck. M won’t eat the tuna kind but willingly finished the pesto. I hate wasting food to an extent that is irritating to other people. In the lakes I’m always making famous five-ish packed lunches the morning we leave; boiled eggs and cheese sandwiches etc. and E is like… ok but when are you going to clean the bathroom.

Told R that he’s not allowed to talk shit about my shower (needs regrouting so looks dirty) and he immediately replies that if he had known in advance, he would have been happy to re-grout it for me. He is so un-gossipy and useful as opposed to me, a huge bitch who doesn’t know how to do anything except make pasta salad.

Dad picked us up from the station because we’re flying early next morning. He wants to watch an old Jack Ryan film to prove they’re good after we decreed the John Krasinski remake charmless and uncompelling. JK (whose name I instinctively spell Kaczynski in homage to my brief but all-consuming obsession with the Unabomber) is unconvincing as an intellectual and Sienna Miller pissed me off by smoking fags in an unrealistic way. Patriot Games with Harrison Ford p. good.

14^th July

Davy Small (West Linton’s best and only taxi driver) picked us up at 3am. SB once got a lift back from town with Davy after the rugby and drunk-texted G ‘I’m in Davy’s smallest taxi’ so that’s how we refer to the taxi which is actually huge. Had breakfast in All Bar One and Pie cried because she wanted fish and chips at 4am but had to settle for yoghurt and fruit.

On the plane the literal pilot budged in front of me in the bathroom queue. I was surprised he was using the pleb bathroom with the rest of us but don’t know what the alternative would be. Maybe peeing in bottles in the cockpit but that wouldn’t work for everyone.

Dad drove us to an apartment in Gialova in the hot hot car. Brown brush and dead grass and row after row of olive trees that shimmered in the heat. Looked for a corner shop to get supplies and ended finding a supermarket/coffee shop/boulangerie/beachwear supplier/booze and jeg wonderland called Martin’s ( immediately misremembered/rechristened as Marvin’s).

Man stacking water laughed at me in a leery way and I felt grumpy (tired and hungry) despite the wonder of Marvin’s. M and I ditched the rest of the fam to drink beer and swim. Both of us on the verge of being enraptured by good books (me Cormac McCarthy and him Hilary Mantel).

Out for dinner and walked past a bar playing the build of Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead – she looks like the real thing - and felt imbued with feeling!!

At dinner explained that some words that have more than one meaning to Pie after M said he was a fan of her fan. She thought for a second and said, ‘bare like my bottom and also a bear’ which was clever although her bottom was, mercifully, covered in the restaurant.

Ate salty pistachio ice cream and played a game walking back to the hotel in the dark where we came up with rhyming couplets. Mum said ‘we’re going back to Thanos Village (name of apartments) to rape and pillage’ which was good but inappropriate for small ears.

R texted me cute pics of Pinky including one captioned ‘diplodocus mode’. He said E didn’t know what a diplodocus was and I texted back ‘women’ with a rolling eyes emoji and then immediately asked M what a diplodocus was.

Got the subway into the west end to take the youth group to see the Barbie exhibition at Kelvingrove. Being on Dumbarton Road made me think of my first nannying job at the beginning of 2020 when I would meet N in the west end on her lunch break so she could breastfeed. I didn’t like catching the bus across town with a buggy and a baby (I was 20 and scared of everything) but teeny F’s helplessness was bolstering. I had to figure things out for the both of us.

The young people were very into Barbie as a cultural icon as opposed to ‘just’ a doll which is how I thought of her growing up. Mattel apparently introduced ‘Midge’ as an alternative to Barbie for parents who thought Barbie was too ‘mature’. Midge had mumsy hair and was dowdy compared to sexy Barbie in her striped swimsuit. Later they released a pregnant version of Midge to give children a ‘suitable introduction to growing a family’. Reading that bit felt bleak bc A. why are swimsuits inappropriate? and B. why can’t mum’s be sexy?

We looked at the modern ‘empowered’ Barbie’s: president, paramedic, army (?) etc. I got the idea but much preferred the dolls with chic unrealistic outfits. For example what child - boy girl or other - would want a doll wearing jeans and a white sweatshirt with a sticker saying ‘I voted’ when they could have nurse Barbie from the 60s wearing a navy cape, cat eye sunnies and open-toed stilettos?

Pointed out a photograph of Andy Warhol in his ridiculous wig next to a Barbie print but none of the kids knew who he was or thought it was funny. Reminded me of when Med (my oldest niece) took a photo of me with her elf bar for her BeReal and captioned it ‘grandma in her vape era’.

9th July

Arm workout and making lentil bolognese like a trad wife while M has a driving lesson. E voice-noting from the dissertation trenches and I’m half sympathetic half jealous - I miss being a student desperately though I (like E) have a tendency to become distracted by the pursuit of academic validation. I cared so much about what the tutors thought of me and viewed intelligence as something I could win and keep forever. During the masters P.E used to tell me to shut up about grades and I was like… grades are the point. But obviously the climb is the point even though the summit always moves when you get there. Felt briefly proud of this metaphor before realising I stole it from a Miley Cyrus song.

Dog walk with M talking about Groundskeeping which he is reading on my recomendation. I said I hope writing will be a developing relationship I maintain throughout my life. I want to measure my success as a writer through consistency and my own ideas of progress instead of by traditional metrics (money, fame, awards etc.) which are largely worthless and often inaccurate. Eg. I find a lot of bestselling novels unreadable or unsuccessful in their aims. In my (limited) opinion, writing for money has diluted both the pleasure and quality I find in the work. Obviously that way of thinking means that I need to have other things in my life that I use to generate income which is more than a bit tricky as I hate working (lol) and my health is too bad for most full-time jobs but too good to qualify for government assistance.

Probably all of this can be explained by the fact that I’m doing job applications at the moment which always sends me into a mild state of existential despair. I never feel like I’m representing myself accurately and I look at my CV and think simultaneously, wow did I really do all of this? and is this all I have to show for the last ten years of my life?

10th July

G’s birthday. 34, older than Jesus. Took E a lemon muffin and some dinner then got so sweaty on my run that my arms and legs were gleaming.

Saw Mamma Mia outside at the bandstand in the evening. It was heaving and felt Londonish because it was sunny, and everyone was wearing ‘cool’ outfits and drinking pints. Talked about work with Em who has just got a ‘big girl’ job. Both of us feeling the dichotomy between wanting to work flexibly and make art and fuck around versus the seduction of the boring job and steady pay cheque… she wants a mortgage, I want a savings account, we both want to do PhD’s in poorly funded subjects. C’s friend B is a doctor, and I asked her if she found our moaning frivolous and she said no, she didn’t envy us because she likes having a job where someone is always telling her what to do. I totally got what she meant even though I would be the most useless doctor on the planet (and it’s a low bar).

Movie was good; struck me as being very much about nostalgia which I hadn’t noticed on previous watches. The storylines of the older people were more compelling because it felt like the stakes were higher. Do children understand nostalgia? Until I was about thirteen, I felt like I had no past at all, and I woke up every morning a brand new person. Now I feel nostalgic about everything and attribute uncomplicated joy to memories that I’m sure I didn’t feel at the time. I’m always trying to archive things as they’re happening which sort of prevents the happening itself. Halfway through the film there was an intermission and the MC (or as wordle would say EMCEE) called for volunteers to get up on the stage and do a crowd-judged dance off. We were all talking about how much money we’d need to be paid to volunteer. Suggestions were anywhere between one and five grand. E said she’d rather have sex for the money than do a dance off.

Came home and talked about Groundskeeping more because M had just finished it. He said writing can be a way of colonising experience and centring a specific version of events, vocalising something I’ve been dancing around for ages in my own work. Narrative can justify a person’s worse urges or bring life-changing clarity but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between those two things. Might even be both at once. Much 2 think about….

5th July

Left J’s laden with gifts as usual and started the long drive home, me in the passenger seat, obviously. Dad told me about going on a cruise to Norway as a school trip when he was 13. He climbed a glacier and worried about sliding all the way down then wrote his name in a book in a church. He’d like to go back again to write his name in the same book.

Petrol station bathroom with tropical fish mural covering the walls. Thought it was weird then maybe nice that someone had taken the time to spice up the gross bathroom decor then maybe actually quite sad and poignant which is where I end up with everything.

Got stuck in a jam because of an accident and had to listen to Jellicle Cats in its entirely on the radio in case there were traffic updates. Highly irritating song. When we passed the accident I saw a burnt out car - just the skeleton - sopping wet. Like something out of a film.

Passed a side of the road sex shop selling toys and lingerie which posed the question of whether a sex shop sells anything so vital that it necessitates a side of the road location for ease of purchase. There was one on the other side of the road too presumably so one could stock up on anal beads etc. on outward and return legs of journey.

Passed a sign for ‘Billy Button Lane’. Got chicken nuggets, chips and a diet coke at a service station and M texted me Burger King :O when he got the notification on the joint account. Also why is it that the services you stop at are guaranteed to immediately precede an obviously superior services ie. has a Pret and an M&S.

Disagreement with Dad about whether ChatGPT could have written Wuthering Heights which thankfully fizzled out before it ruined our easygoing roadtrip vibe.

I chose the music and Dad liked the sound of the Mountain Goats and Maggie Rogers. I thought he’d be keen on Noah Kahan but no comment. We’re both still on our Dire Straits hype so there was a lot of guitar soloing in the Porsche, which dad is obsessed with but I think is too low down and awkward to climb in and out of.

Always get a warm feeling when I see the first sign for Glasgow. Caledonia playing in my heart etc. Home around half seven and it was cold and raining which made me feel stupid in shorts. Teddy was happier to see Dad than me, licking his shin and being very waggy. Presented M with the lemon drizzle cake leftovers that J had carefully packaged on a paper plate with foil and an ice pack.

6th July

Anxious day. Made granola, did an online food shop, spent three hours on a job application in which I pretended to be both capable and interested in gainful employment. Cheered myself up by habit-stacking joy: run and a podcast, beer in the shower, weed gummy and reading and ice cream.

7th July

Hormonal which probably explains yesterday. E too - we’ve been cycle-synced for years now and both have matching mirena coils. Blood brothers, or I suppose blood-less sisters. Spotty and tired and generally pessimistic about my face/body/personality so solved this by booking an emergency haircut and getting a fringe even though I’ve been thinking about growing my hair out. M so fatigued by this cycle that last time I said I wanted long hair he said ‘I cannot talk to you about this anymore.’

Woman in the salon was watching Handmaid’s Tale loudly and without headphones. Lot’s of screaming and someone saying ‘he raped me,’ loud and clear. In response woman watching said ‘that’s intense!’ but didn’t lower the volume or god forbid turn it off.

Deliberated putting on a bra for the Asda delivery man but didn’t in the end. Googled how much sweat normal. Hate the AI response tool at the top of search results - so patronising! But too lazy to turn it off.

Wrote all afternoon with Pickle sitting behind me on the back of the sofa, purring so loudly I could hear him over the music. Thought about how the creative process is most enjoyable for me when I’m intensely secretive and superstitious about it, as opposed to the other areas of my life where I am generally oversharey and slapdash. Maybe the dichotomy is the pleasure for me - the feeling of satisfaction that comes from working something out is more concentrated when it’s private.

At the moment I feel creatively blocked unless I have the curtains closed and Dire Straits Live 1978-92 turned up very loud in my headphones. Before Dire Straits it was Aja by Steely Dan which I still love but now makes me think of doing mushrooms in the lake district with E when we kept going into the garden to see if the grass looked different (it didn’t).

Went early to community hub to join in the music quiz. I didn’t get any right but someone got How You Remind Me by Nickelback unbelievably quickly then looked embarrassed. Did wordle with youth group, word was demur. Told them it wasn’t a good introduction to the format. X asked the name of my book so he could buy it for a friend and I warned him that it’s a bummer.

Walked into town with X who teaches me the word qishloqi, a Uzbec derogatory word for someone who grew up rurally. Translates literally to villager, sort of like teuchter maybe. I teach him the word ‘chav’ but tell him not to use it. We talk about dialect and prejudice against certain accents. He thinks it’s funny that we say fag to mean cigarette.

2nd July

In the taxi on the way to see M play a gig, E and I talk about removing words that stigmatize mental illness from our vocabulary. We are both crap at it because we love the words mental, crazy, nuts etc. The only non-stigmatizing word for wildness seems to be ‘bananas’, or maybe ‘bonkers’ (though I bet the etymology of that one is offensive somehow) and they just don’t have the same gravitas.

At gig I threw my bag onto the bar so I could dance and accidentally knocked a bunch of things over. Apologised to bartender and said as a joke I was moved by the power of live music and she replied very solemnly - it happens.

Went to Spoons afterwards for a pint and it was the first time I’d been there in maybe 6 years? Used to go all the time, with A in Peebles and then later in Glasgow when we lived just off Sauchiehall St. The opening of the Peebles Wetherspoons felt monumental at the time. I was underage and tried to get served with a borrowed ID which didn’t work because the bartender was the actual ID holders ex-boyfriend. He slid the Glasgow uni library card - which I used to use everywhere and did actually work most of the time - across the sticky bar and whispered… I know you aren’t [redacted], but he didn’t throw me out or snitch and years later we ended up at an afters together where he showed me pictures of his Japanese knife collection on his phone.

On our way home M and I got cheesy chips - another novelty. On the train we talked again about going to Japan one day and at home we watched the new Phoebe Bridgers music video and argued benevolently about what it was about.

3rd July

Train to St Neots with Dad so he can lease a Porsche from S. I decided to keep him company as haven’t seen Med or Pip (nieces) in years A million delays and very hot and I was a teeny bit hungover. Dad dropped a currant from his fruitcake on the train seat and ate it so he’s probably got diptheria now.

We played musical chairs a bit on the train so we could sit together and at one point as we were moving Dad said ‘this is where we leave you,’ to a lady we hadn’t spoken to at all. She was like… ok. He kept me entertained by talking loudly about breaking the law at his old jobs which apparently he did a lot.

Pizza Express for dinner with the family and I had unwittingly dressed like one of the waiters which was bound to happen at some point due to the high concentration of striped t-shirts in my possession. I remember when G first started going out with S she said, ‘he doesn’t like stripes’ and we were both incredulous and somehow personally offended.

Pip’s birthday and she was combing her fringe (which she had cut herself at school when unsupervised) and showing me the things in her backpack. I asked everyone if they had ever met a famous person and Dad and S both had different tangential connections to Mel C but the best was Med’s boyfriend J who is a sparky and does work for Danny Dyer’s caravan park. Apparently DD very nice and the same on and off camera, very hello geezer-ish to everyone.

Every-time I meet someone with a grown up job (usually a trade of some kind), I feel inadequate because I don’t know how to do anything except write and even that’s a bit wishy-washy as skills go.

4th July

Dad dropped me off at J’s AKA land of plenty. My auntie feeds people like she’s trying to fatten them up to make human foie gras. Lemon cake with lemon curd and buttercream icing topped with actual cream, sausage rolls, salmon en croute, beers, tiramisu and chardonnay. After she’s finished eating (or sometimes during) J puts her plate on the floor for Mabel (dog) to finish. J says I have to write about her single-use napkins, which are floral and have little ladybugs on them.

J said we had to watch In Bruges because I had never seen it. Had that feeling of annoyance I get whenever I enjoy a globally recognised ‘good’ thing. I just want to be unique and contrary. I was wondering what the film would have looked like without the flashbacks, if we never left Bruges (which functions as a sort of purgatory) at all. Maybe even without the final farcical chase and shootout. It would be a film about the precursor and aftermath of violence, an impasse, a film about cycles. But maybe I’m seeing things that aren’t there because of my own writing. My favourite scenes were the two main characters talking and wandering around, though I liked the bit at the end where Colin Farrell decides to fight for his life and starts running. We talked about whether he dies or not at the end.

After the film we had a night gap in the garden under the pink sky - finally cool enough to sit out at half past ten which felt apocalyptic but also nice. J had brought back roasted pistachio liqueur from Sardinia which was delicious. She even gave Mabel some of that. We sat on the patio swing and talked about happy endings in children’s media and the first time you realise as a child that bad things are allowed to happen in films and therefore maybe life. Mine was the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas; I locked myself in the bathroom afterwards and cried until I felt sick. J said C’s was when the clone-troopers kill the Jedi in Star Wars. She also said they took C (my cousin) to Bruges when he was fifteen and he disliked it so much he made his lock screen a picture that said I FUCKING HATE BRUGES.

At music group and X talking about a ‘special’ song he had listened to in Reykjavik. He can’t remember the name but describes watching a beautiful sunset and feeling moved. Eventually realise the song is Hello by Adele. We all sing Nothing Compares 2 U which I usually sing in the shower and I tear up at the line ‘all the flowers that you planted mama, in the backyard, all died when you went away.’

Train home full of goths (Metallica gig). I have a shower when I get back because 29 degrees and then make pina coladas in the blender and wear my silk robe which has creepy energy and makes me feel like Hugh Hefner but I still love it. Finish Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and happy to finally understand the origin of the titular quote. It’s Sappho - "Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man." Boo Boo writes it on the mirror. Does it mean that the groom is so happy on his wedding day that he grows a la the grinch’s heart growing three sizes? Or is marriage a restrictive structure? Or both or neither??

26 June

Cancel coffee with C and park beers with E because the storm has hit and brought a migraine with it. Feel depressed taking off my makeup. Send C a voice-note about M’s colleague being at a Glasgow uni party (Murano) and realising that everyone’s dad was called Nigel. Five or six of them - all Nigel!! It came out because they happened to be listening to Making Plans for Nigel by XTC. Impossible to think of a story like that and not cheer up a little.

27 June

Get stung by a nettle on my run then come home and crack an egg onto the counter instead of into a pan. Shout HELLO?! into the empty kitchen out of frustration and give myself the ick. Have a a writing idea (regarding POV) that might be genius or might waste three days of my life.

Feel annoyed that characters have to have external stakes. I want everything to be internal and thinky. Going out for noodles with K later.

Waiter obv pleased to see K, a certified regular, and she says after she feels like she’s seen him blossom in his career. Try K’s signature dish: thick noodles and scrambled egg and tomatoes. Sounds rogue but is amazing and decadent. Go to corner shop for white wine, fizzy water and chorizo crisps for M.

28 June

Quite hungover but have one of K’s favourite bakery biscuits dipped in milky coffee which makes me feel better and a bit chic. M and I hang about waiting for the food shop moaning that we can’t do anything until it comes even though we probably wouldn’t be doing much of anything anyway.

E texts saying: imagine if every-time you unlocked your phone face ID took a picture and one day apple texted you all the pictures without warning. Then she texts: Mass Homicide.

Listening to Joni Mitchell and having a hair of the dog Jubel. E and I think men don’t get Joni Mitchell. M says he does but feel like he just wants to be involved.

Try to read Money by Martin Amis but it makes me feel dirty. M noodling around on the guitar looking at the bookshelf.

29 June

Applying for a PhD is a joke!!! Not sure if it is actually confusing or if I’m just monumentally stupid. All I want is to earn 12 grand a year writing and teaching and going to the pub. Go for a run and make a Spanish tortilla. Pick up a package from corner shop and have to show the man my Railcard app bc I don’t have any ID. He says ‘ok dear.’

Mum and Dad not happy about wordle word which is EMCEE. Taking the piss to be honest but M and I guessed it because of the crossword. Dad texts: ‘absolute pants of a word 🤬’

E is cancelling her GP appointment because her coil strings have ‘made a reappearance.’

30 June

Wake up at 4am wracked with anxiety and spend 3 hours applying for jobs and pretending I know how to use Excel. Does anyone except my dad know how to use Excel???? Listen to David Sedaris on my run. DS spent his twenties (and thirties mayb??) fucking around and doing meth and now he’s written a dozen books and owns seven houses. I would settle for writing one more book and having a pension.

13 people signed up for my writing workshop and 2 people showed up. Does no-one care that I am a blazing new voice in Scottish fiction??? Bet this never happens to Franzen. Despite low numbers session is good and some beautiful writing. X writes that ten years on from her father’s death grief is more of a ‘glad you were alive feeling’. Other participant shows me a picture of a cartoon cat on her phone and says she wants to talk to him using AI. I say that’s probably possible and she’s silent for a minute and then goes….. ‘what’s AI.’ Said honestly I don’t even know.

Pub with E who is happy R has finally got a haircut. She’s been badgering him for weeks but this morning she told him he had a bob and he booked a haircut immediately. Pub was busy so we sit at a girl’s table outside so E can vape. Girl is chic, drinking a Guinness alone but is wearing one of those star acne patches which i just don’t ‘get’. Am I turning into my grampa who didn’t ‘get’ ripped jeans or sushi.

E doesn’t know how to use Excel either.

1 July

Mum texts: Got strong antibiotics for my fingers, it’s throbbing! Like my hair? And then a picture of her new haircut. She’s got a bob - which looks great - and makes me think of equivalent exchange like in fantasy novels eg. R got rid of his bob and now Mum needs to get a bob in return to keep the universe in balance.

This week I’m writing about Heart the Lover, by Lily King.

I just read this one, so it’s still fresh in my mind. Everyone has been talking about this book, but buzz often makes me less likely to read something, because I have a terminal uniqueness problem which hinders me from experiencing joy. Another reason I dilly-dallied around picking it up because I read an earlier novel of hers (Writers and Lovers), and wasn’t sure about it, although I loved the ending. Of course, when I did actually read Heart the Lover, I was like, woah! This is just as good as everyone is saying it is, maybe even better. I do this all the time, with so much stuff! I put off watching Breaking Bad for this very reason! So, I’m saying it here, I was wrong about Lily King and now I’m going to reread Writers and Lovers. And it’s so fun when you discover (or rediscover) an author with a big back catalogue and even as you’re reading you’re like, amazing, now I can read everything you have ever written.

Setting the scene for the reading experience: I was sitting on the sofa in the afternoon, feeling tired and not wanting to work. My current novel edits are going well on the whole, but I’m also really in the nitty gritty of pacing and story, and I’m learning some new things about my characters. This is good, this is the process, but it is a lot of work, lol. The previous evening, my friends had C + E come round for dinner and we drank negronis and ate pasta and sat gossiping on the sofa for hours about our families and Marian Keyes1 and people we know. It was one of those evenings that makes your heart feel very full, but the next day I was sleepy and I knew I had to perk up later to go to a pub quiz. I wanted to spend the afternoon working on the manuscript, but I was procrastinating; tidying up and scrolling on my phone and moaning. Not working, but not resting either, do you know what I mean? I’m still trying to learn that there is no prize to be won for battling with a blank page. Some days are creative write-offs, and that doesn’t mean I have to torture myself about it. So, in the end, I worked half-heartedly for thirty minutes and then I said, fuck it, I’m done!

M unfolded the big heavy blanket and had a nap and I lay next to my dog and read the first hundred pages of Heart the Lover. I was hooked straight away. Later, we played a bit of Disco Elysium2, a video game we’re replaying together, and all of the stuff I was getting from Heart the Lover seemed to be connected to the themes of the game, and I just felt so engaged with both works of art. I had given up on writing for the day, but I was so inspired by the novel and the game, and those things in tandem. My brain was firing on all cylinders! And maybe this is silly, comparing a murder mystery noir role playing game about an amnesiac detective to a coming-of-age literary love story, but as we were making decisions and deciding who we wanted our character to be, I couldn’t help thinking that this is how growing up feels, kind of. We pick personality traits that are attractive to us and some of them become suffocating and we let them go, but some of them stick. We construct building blocks from inside jokes and references and novels passed back and forth, and we climb on those blocks to find out who we are.

King is a beautiful writer, so attuned to the shifting dynamics of being young; the pretentious conversations you’re having that feel so real and immediate and also a little embarrassing. That immense confidence coupled with boundless insecurity. At its heart, this is a book about hanging out, and those are just the very very best books for me. There are so many immaculate details about children and loving someone who is sick and having a crush and wanting to be a writer. The kind of book where the author tells you just enough about a persons life, and then invites you to fill in the gaps. I love being surprised by a novel, and I love beautifully-written love stories, and I love when a character is drawn so well that you sort of develop a crush on them too.

I finished Heart the Lover the morning after I started it, very hungover from the pub quiz3 and I cried at the end, and then I went for a long walk in the cold with the sun shining. I texted E telling her she had to read it because I wanted to talk to her about it, and then we ended up having a long voice note conversation about a bunch of other stuff, and then I came home and showered and worked on my novel edits for a few hours. I found this book so inspiring, and it also unlocked a couple of thoughts about my manuscript that I had been struggling with. Good art can do that; so can conversation.

There you have it! Some of my favourite reading experiences of 2025. There are honestly a bunch more I could write about, but these were the ones that loomed largest in my mind. I originally had all three books in one post, but that was getting incredibly long. I just never know when to shut up!

Some other books I loved this year and haven’t written about yet:

Erasure by Pervical Everett

Harriet by Jilly Cooper

Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

The Death of Us by Abigail Dean

Oranges are not the only fruit by Jeanette Winterson

Wreck by Catherine Newman

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

Pls feel free to make requests if you want reviews of any of these!

As for my year more broadly, it’s kind of same as always. I wrote a lot, threw a lot out, wrote three quarters of a novel then put it away for another time, finished the first draft of a different novel in six weeks (?!) and spent the rest of the year editing with my new (and wonderful) agent. I read books, had a lot of migraines and suffered through several small meltdowns about my lack of talent and discipline. I caught a million trains, looked after my perfect, exhausting nieces, ran a lot of 5ks, spent too much time and money in the pub.

Bye 2025! Hello 2026! I hope I get a book deal this year!

In March, I was very sick. I had a migraine flare up, and for the first time, I was having migraines that lasted multiple days. It was unbearable; I have a hard won list of tricks and tips to help my pain and mental health when I have flare ups, and none of them were working. I had to try again and again to get used to this new way of living, and I was worrying (like I do every time I flare up), that the pain would never stop. In the end, I was lucky; it lasted less than a month. It felt like a year. Most of the time, I couldn’t read, which feels so cruel and unfair to me, like, I’m already having to opt out of my life, what do you mean I can’t engage in my number one coping method and source of comfort? We had houseguests, and I was sad to miss out on time with them, jealous of the fact that M could be with them when I couldn’t, lonely and confined to my bed for most of the time. Listening to the sound of laughter in the next room, made me feel like a sick kid again.

One morning, M helped me get out of the flat for a walk around the recreational ground near our house. It was drizzling and I was in a horrible mood, in pain and snapping at him about nothing, even though he was being kind to me. We bumped into an acquaintance and I was initially like, oh no, now I have to have a conversation with someone I don’t really know and pretend that my brain isn’t melting into soup and leaking out of my eyes and ears. I find it so embarrassing to talk to people I don’t know well (or people I do know well, to be honest), about being ill, which might seem weird because I’m telling you now, but it’s easier in writing. Anyway, we were talking, and I remembered that this person liked the Hunger Games, so I asked them about the new prequel. After singing Suzanne Collins’s praise for a few minutes, we parted ways and M and I went home. I got back into bed, I think, and slept for a while, but at some point over the next few days, I picked up Sunrise on the Reaping. I read the whole thing in increments when I felt well enough; in the middle of the night and the first hour after I woke up and in fifteen minute bursts in between ice packs and sumatriptan injections. I would have loved this novel whenever it found me, but I really needed it in March. Revisiting art I loved as a child is so eternally comforting to me, and so it’s not surprising that I often find myself doing it when I’m unwell. Nora Ephron has a great quote (unsurprisingly), about great novels making you feel like you’ve been raptured, and this is genuinely how I felt when I was sick and reading Sunrise. It was written simply enough for me to understand it while I was in pain, gripping enough to take me out of myself and smart enough to have me thinking about it whenever I wasn’t reading it. It saved me! Here’s the Ephron quote:

“I’ve just surfaced from spending several days in a state of rapture: I was reading a book. I loved this book. I loved every second of it. I was transported into its world. I was reminded of all sorts of things in my own life. I was in anguish over the fate of its characters. I felt alive and engaged and positively brilliant, bursting with ideas, brimming with memories of other books I’ve loved. I composed a dozen imaginary letters to the author, letters I’ll never write, much less send—letters of praise, letters of entirely inappropriate personal information about my own experiences with the author’s subject matter, even a letter of recrimination when one of the characters died and I was grief-stricken. But mostly I composed imaginary letters of gratitude: The state of rapture that occurs when I read a wonderful book is one of the main reasons I read, but it doesn’t happen every time, or even every other time, and when it does, I’m truly beside myself with joy.”

I loved Sunrise on the Reaping because it felt more overtly political than the novels that came before (if that’s possible), and also more adult. The epigraphs are from Blake, Hume and Orwell; subtlety is off the table here, and it works. On this read, it’s much clearer to me the way Collins’s characters are devices to represent responses to war and oppression. They can seem one-dimensional at times, but that’s sort of the point. Reading Sunrise gave me a new appreciation for the books that came before; how much darkness Collins is able to infer without using explicit language. She’s such a clever writer.

After I felt better, E and I went to the Lake District for a few days, and we both reread my original copies of the Hunger Games trilogy and spent ages talking about them by the fire. We both found the novels more upsetting than we had as kids, maybe because we had more of an understanding of how young Katniss is this time. I remember thinking she was cool and grown-up, but she’s only sixteen! Rue is twelve! I read the first two books of the original trilogy on holiday one year when I was eleven or twelve, and I listened to the song Riverside by Agnes Obel on repeat1 and lay by the pool with our eyes closed, imagining we were actually in the games. Like I genuinely thought the whole thing was quite chic and romantic. What was wrong with me?! I genuinely don’t think I developed empathy until I was eighteen. But that’s beside the point.

The Hunger Games is one of those rare YA novels that have improved with age2 Reading them again as an adult, I was able to recognise themes and intricacies that I hadn’t been ready to see before. It was all there, waiting for me to pick it back up again! Isn’t that so nice! Also, my dad is currently listening to the audiobook of Sunrise, and he keeps calling Haymitch, Heimlich, which I find very funny. We don’t read many of the same books (he loves anything werewolves and vampires, like a teenage girl), but we both love the Hunger Games. Because they are bangers. See ya next week! xo

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I sat down to write some of my favourite reads of the year, and then I had an idea. In lieu of writing summaries and traditional reviews of a dozen or so books I enjoyed, I’m going to talk at length about my favourite reading experiences with a few specific novels. There’s a beautiful passage in Heart the Lover by Lily King (you might hear more about this one later), that articulates a feeling I’ve often felt about reading:

“A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you’re reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule.”

Books require you to engage with them; you have to follow the rules they give you and take their message in good faith, or they won’t work for you. I can passively watch a movie, or listen to music in the background of my life, but I cannot passively read a book. It’s a conversation, not a monologue.

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Because of this, there are books that I’ve read at a point in my life where I just wasn’t ready for them. I didn’t get what they were trying to give me at the time; I was closed off to the magic. There’s something very special about returning to these novels and realising that you’ve changed. Like coming back to an old friend you fell out with and saying, okay, I’m ready to love you now! Some of these novels have actually turned into favourites - Catcher in the Rye, East of Eden, The Road - although some others have remained flops for me. I started reading Anna Karenina (for maybe the third time) this year, flew through 300 pages, and then lost interest all of a sudden. I’m sure I’ll come back to it again and kick myself for giving up, but honestly, I was getting sick of Anna’s passages and skimming through them to find the Kitty and Levin bits. I don’t know if that’s a hot take or not. I guess I’m just not ready to finish it right now.

So, over the next few weeks, I’m going to be writing about books I read and loved this year; books that found me at the perfect moment of my life, when I was ready to absorb and understand them. Half-review, half-journal, all geeky sincerity! First up:

Dream State by Eric Puchner

I went to London in June because my first novel Gender Theory was shortlisted for the Betty Trask prize. When I first got my book deal, being shortlisted for a book prize was one of the things on my mental literary bucket list. Publication day came and went. Shortlist after shortlist came out and Gender Theory wasn’t on it, and I dealt with each small failure by trying to convince myself that I didn’t even care, actually, and book prizes were lame.1 I had given up on my book prize dream by the time the Betty Trask shortlist came out, so when I got the email about GT’s inclusion, I was shocked! And delighted! And sort of underwhelmed. I had put that goal to bed, and now, here it was, achieved! How did I feel about it? No idea!

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go to the prize ceremony or not. I’d already found out that Gender Theory hadn’t won2, so I wouldn’t be offending anybody if I didn’t turn up. In the end, I decided to go reasonably last minute, because it just seemed like one of those things I would regret missing out on. Whenever I’m on the fence about a certain experience, I usually try and make myself do it because even if I don’t like it, I might at least get an anecdote out of it that I can put in a book. I’m not sure if that’s healthy, but it certainly helps me go to things. M came with me, and I got a rare chance to see my editor, A, who I would love to live closer to. We had aperol spritz’s by the Thames and speed-walked to the prize ceremony, a little late and tipsy and sweaty. It was so hot the whole weekend, I kept excusing myself to go to the bathroom so I could pat my face dry with toilet paper. A pointed out the Globe theatre as we walked, and we made fun of people who drink Huel. That was my favourite part of the night, the moments before the ceremony itself. The event itself was surreal; it was held in a beautiful cathedral, and we were all standing around looking up at the ornate ceiling the whole night. Even though the setting was grand and special, everyone was wearing ugly laminated lanyards with their names on it, which gave everything a surreal corporate conference energy. I eschewed networking for messing around and drinking Prosecco and chasing the canapés down, and I don’t regret it.

The next morning, mildly hungover, M and I walked through Finsbury Park. All the grass looked dead and men were taking naps using their t-shirts as pillows. I don’t think I’m ever going to be the kind of person who can fall asleep in a public place, so I feel very baffled and envious when I encounter people who can. We met a friend from my masters degree, P3, another person I adore and wish lived closer to me. I love Glasgow so much that I don’t understand why anybody would leave it, and I wish I could transplant everyone I love here, so they are available to me whenever I want. We went to a café beside a reservoir, where she used to work and I couldn’t believe that we were still in Hackney. I looked out over the reservoir and watched the birds, and there were blocks of flats all around, but if you looked in a specific direction, you could kid yourself you were in the countryside. P’s ex-colleague was so happy to see her that she wouldn’t let her pay for anything, and she kept trying to give me my apple juice for free, even though I’d never met her before.

After breakfast we caught the train out of London to go to my auntie’s house, yet another wonderful person who unfortunately lives in England. This whole time it’s just getting hotter and hotter by the way, and my Uniqlo vest is starting to smell like a barnyard animal. We get to J’s and she makes us these amazing sandwiches and we sit in her garden and look into the field beside it at the animals. At the time, I was besotted with this one animal, but now I can’t remember if it was a cow or a horse or a sheep. Isn’t that so strange? Memory is weird.

We went to the their local for dinner and had a glass of wine and talked about my cousin, and my uncle’s job in Canada and how to pronounce Schrodinger’s Cat4 It was a perfect pub; everyone chatting to each other and making jokes about happenings in the village. On our walk home, their cat came to meet us, like a military escort. We slept in their spare room, which is gorgeous; decorated in ruffles and florals, with a low slanted ceiling so it feels like you’re sleeping in a dolls house. It was so hot that M and I lay on top of the sheets without touching at all. The noise of the fan made me dream about aeroplanes.

The next morning, we caught the train home, and I had to borrow a dress from my auntie because I had sweated through all my clothes. It’s white with black polka dot and too short to sit in on a train, but I love it and wear it all the time. I sat down, pepsi and coconut macaron on the table in front of me, and I started reading Dream State by Eric Puchner. I bet you’re reading this like, wow, she’s finally talking about the book! But I had to set the scene, you see. I read the whole journey home, and I didn’t even want to take breaks from the narrative to chat about nothing with M (one of our favourite pastimes), or look at my phone. The opening stretch of this novel is so unbelievably beautiful and gripping that it will take your breath away. The descriptions of Montana, the deceptively simple prose, the careering, ill-advised but compelling affair that takes up its opening pages. I felt like I had a bad-idea crush while I was reading it; giddy and terrified, and it also made me feel very alive in the way that listening to a perfect song can, or driving very fast (I can’t drive but you get me). It’s one of those books that is quite concerned with the passing of Time, and I was thinking about my weekend as I read it. This unexpected thing had happened (being shortlisted for a prize) and it felt like a natural bookending to another unexpected thing that had happened (getting a book deal), and I just had a moment of wow, I’m so lucky to have a job that lets me go on little trips and visit loved ones and have new experiences.

Dream State turns into something else as it continues, and I had a tiny mourning period because its opening is so perfect, but then it remains undeniably good; so fresh yet relatable and simple but intricate, that I stopped caring almost immediately. I love saga-type novels because it’s such a treat to witness the passing of time through the novels pages. I love seeing the characters change and reflect on dynamics and choices with the benefit of hindsight. In real life, you have to wait such a long time for that kind of clarity, and when it comes, you usually don’t need it anymore. Family saga novels are a chance to speed run that whole experience, good and bad but actually just good because it’s not your family, thank fuck. Dream State is like The Corrections but less depressing but also actually maybe more depressing????? One for the Fran-heads5. I liked all of the different POVs but Cece’s was my favourite. We start with her voice, so maybe I feel biased.

Our train ended up being delayed and I didn’t mind at all, and then we got back to Glasgow and our final train was cancelled while we were actually sitting on it, and I still didn’t mind at all. M was tired and moaning (another one of our favourite pastimes), and I was being so annoying and zen and like ‘this is our life’s path’, about the whole thing because my book was just so fucking good it made me feel cheerful about life. 450 pages and I read it in two sittings.

And there you have it! My first memorable reading experience from 2025 and a sort-of diary. See you next week for another. XO

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