Saturday 31 March 2012

Notes from a trainride


I take a train 'up' to London every so often, for work, for play.
And though I've seen it dozens of times before, the landscape always looks beautiful to me. There's nothing particularly dramatic. No high cliffsides or turquoise sea, no mountains or villages of stark white houses. Someone in the paper today wrote about "bog standard rural England" and capped it by saying, "...and it's wonderful". That's what this is like.

The train is called The Evening Star. I can't think of a more beautiful name. I can't think why it was used, but that it was used adds some beauty to the stained carpet and the overfull wastebins. I agree with whoever took the photo above and said " a warm smile spread over my whole body when I saw the name of the train".

Yesterday, standing by the door and peeping out of the open window (my favourite way to travel), I saw:
A ginger cat sitting in a field of young wheat. At least I think it was wheat.
A raptor gliding low over another field and landing in a tree.
Clouds of starlings.
And beautiful spring blossoms: cherry trees and plum trees. The oaks haven't got their foliage back yet, but here and there are wisps of green starting to cloud everything.

The platform at Shenfield station was empty except for a couple kissing on a bench and the railway officer who whistled the train off.
I bought a coffee from the cafe bar and pulled the window up against the slight chill and watched Essex race by.




Thursday 29 March 2012

An idea from my mother, which I remembered after a reading a similar idea on Gala Darling's gorgeous blog:

If you can't face the outside world without makeup on, you need to practice doing so.

I'm in a pretty made-up place at the moment. I've been sleeping late, rising early. Stress-eating and starving by turns. It's not a pretty place.

The day before yesterday though, a cab driver who was driving me to University gave me a compliment. He said I had a lovely face. And my reaction surprised me. Without a pause, I said, "That's just makeup and dark glasses". He laughed. I did not.

I thought about going in to work today without any on. It turns out I can work from home today, so I'm cheating a bit and just nipping to the grocery store and back with a bare, clean face. I'm not sure why this is difficult. I'm sure it 'shouldn't' be hard at all though, so here's to freeing up my face, and showing it as it really is.

I'm helping to organise a conference in April, and playing around with what to wear


Shoes: ASOS / Dress: Topshop

Monday 26 March 2012

Thoughts on the morning bus.

Time does not heal all wounds.


Time covers all wounds. Love heals them.