dirty little whirlwind, i'm pinned to the heart of your swirl.
DISCLAIMER: this is a personal blog (i just want to write about my life 😭) and does not necessarily reflect the views, opinions or perspectives of my employer or church.
life’s been up in the air lately. distraction in the shape of uncertainty. paths form and collapse and form again.
on tuesday, ally and i watched “kiki’s delivery service” at the bfi imax. they showed it in its original japanese, so i didn’t quite get the gut punch of nostalgia i was hoping for, but it was still nice.
i had ramen for dinner, breaking the day’s fast, and decided to walk home from finsbury park because all of the transport links i needed were kind of messed up.
as i was walking down a near-empty street, i saw a guy turn to stare at me as he biked past. he stopped a little ahead of me on the sidewalk so i took my airpods out of my ears, readying myself for impending contact.
he started talking to me while i walked by. it was dark and we were alone and i think he saw me tense up and draw back. i honestly thought he was going to mug me.
“hey, why are you scared? i just like you.”
i walked on and he started to bike at pace beside me.
“where are you going?” “home,” i said. “can i come with you?” “no, i’m not looking for sex tonight, maybe another time.”
i’m not sure why i said this. i think maybe i thought that flat-out rejecting him would make him mad and things would escalate.
and then he said, “why? we can go slow, i’ll show you good love.” and i said no and he said, “can i kiss you?” and i said no, and finally, after biking next to me for a few seconds, he said, “okay, okay.” and sped away.
i exhaled and my shoulders relaxed, grateful to be alone again, without the threat of violence. you never know what might happen when a strange man tries to talk to you, on an empty street, in the dark, but you always brace for the worst.
–
but tonight, walking home from a solo dinner, i thought the sky looked so beautiful. i looked up and thought about how above and beyond all human systems and bureaucracy, all petty concerns, the world existed and would continue to exist, turning on its axis long after we’re all gone.
my little troubles were nothing in the face of such a dwarfing reality – that great expanse of burning, pleasantly indifferent sky – and that made me feel better.
i’m at vauxhall station waiting for a train that will take me to epsom to meet felix. he wants to go for a long walk and then maybe go to the gym, and then we’re going to watch spiderman brand new day. honestly, it sounds like a cute day.
we talked for a bit yesterday, while i was wasting away hungover in bed. my sorry state dashed our tentative plans to hang out that day. i called him after a nap, after getting home from church where i played keys for worship, to let him know i wouldn’t make it. i told him about the festival i went to on saturday, meeting james norton (who was a winning combination of handsome and kind), and seeing lorde play ribs again to a fawning crowd.
the festival itself was really fun. i wore an oversized baseball jersey(?), the one i wore to civil liberties once with megan and camilla, that’s so large it sometimes makes it look like i’m not wearing shorts from the back. was going for a bit of an effortless vibe, but i ended up not wearing the top for a good chunk of the time anyway.
saw erin lecount (though i wish she’d had a live band), the tiniest bit of audrey hobart, sienna spiro (astonishing voice), zara larsson (so fun), surprisingly a little bit of djo, and of course lorde, who was once again incredible.
while we were waiting for erin lecount to start, i spotted a guy in the crowd wearing a custom melodrama denim jacket, with the album cover art stitched onto the back. i told him i loved it and he said he bought it off of someone who made it on etsy but no longer wanted it. it seemed like he was there with is boyfriend, and the conversation kind of petered out, though they seemed nice enough. i took it as typical british reticence revealing itself again.
we got relatively good spots for lorde, though we somehow ended up behind a forest of tall people. they’d all been sitting down when we’d staked out our spots, their full heights only revealed when everyone stood up closer to the start of the set. there was a girl with her boyfriend right behind us and we made jokes about how small we all were in comparison.
she was nice. apparently she didn’t really know much of lorde’s new stuff, but she had a good vibe and willingly danced along to every song. lorde played all her bangers – what was that, supercut, green light. i ascended during david and came back to earth to dance my ass off to ribs.
i’d been drinking throughout the day and i kind of regret it. started with rose, but by zara larsson’s set i’d switched to rum and cokes, and by the time lorde was set to play, i’d moved on to doubles. the beginning spells of a great doom.
after the festival, we headed to a pub nearby the park to wait out the crowd for public transit. it was there, with sam and a couple of girls we randomly met, that an intention formed in me to go to fire nightclub, with or without them.
i ended up packing sam into a cab so he could go home, and somehow finding my way to fire nightclub, all alone and not altogether there myself. i paid the extortionate entrance fee and entered to an almost empty dance floor. i don’t quite remember how i kept myself busy. getting another drink every time i found mine empty, sporadically talking to people, making friends, spending some time on the dance floor when it got a little busier. it’s all a blur.
and then one thing led to another messy thing and i and got kicked out. i incoherently tried to reason with the staff, though i had no business at that point trying to hold any form of civil conversation. i walked around and tried to get back in from the front and they didn’t let me. and honestly, this was a blessing because i really should’ve been on my way home.
according to my bank account, i actually didn’t spend as much as i thought at fire – maybe 5 doubles in addition to the cover charge. still a disaster, and for what? to barely remember my time there, to be a liability making messes and wreaking havoc and being ignominiously thrown out? to wipe myself out for the whole of the next day?
it really is such a trap, one that i need to stop falling into. and then the next day, slipping back into my own worse habits, razing all the groundwork, digging myself a hole.
i’m still waiting for a decision on my visa. i’m praying it comes in in the next couple of days so i can be cleared to go to greece with alex. i’m hoping i’m allowed to stay, and if i am, i want it to mean something. i want my time here to matter. i’ve often felt here that i’m on the brink of some great transformation. when i look back on the last few years, i can see i’ve changed in many little ways.
but there is a change i’m still chasing that continues to elude me. it will be the one, i think, that matters, that will show me i am capable of great things. i always talk about shifts in perspective, the value of just looking at things the right way. i want to be able to take the things i’ve learned and really put them into practice instead of letting myself be caught in a too-familiar tide that hurls me against those too-familiar rocks.
let that tide come and wash over me, and i will stand firm and resolute. i will emerge on the breakwater cleansed, shining and new.
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10:57PM – TRAIN TO VAUXHALL
had a nice day with felix. he picked me up from the train station and then we went to his place to drop my stuff off. sat in his room for a while exploring his book collection. cozy and subdued in a nice way.
instead of going to the gym like we’d originally planned, we decided to go for a run around epsom common, a place he hasn’t really explored yet, to see the area a little bit. better than traveling all the way there just to be confined to an enclosed space so similar to spaces i’ve been in before. can’t really imagine much variety in gyms after all.
the run was long-ish: 7.8 km in about an hour (we kept our pace relatively slow). epsom common was very green, seemed much greener than london – with london’s dead grass and dying trees, a sad sea of depressing browns. you walk around there and find the pavement strewn with dead leaves as though autumn’s come early. it was nice to run through tunnels of vibrant trees.
after the run, we stretched in a parking lot across from his flat. he’s very thorough with his stretches.
“i think you’re supposed to hold position for 30 seconds,” when i’m typically satisfied with ten. and then we went back to his place to shower and change before heading to spoons.
i had a curry (and later, a brownie with a scoop of ice cream for dessert) and he had a healthy meal of chicken, peas, and tenderstem broccoli. as we were leaving the spoons, an older man sitting by himself at a table near us got up from his chair and stopped me. i’d actually noticed him earlier and wondered why he was drinking alone. it made me think about how older people must appreciate any time spent out of the house, immersed in the world – to have a drink alone but among others might be a strange comfort.
“excuse me,” he said. i leaned in closer because i couldn’t quite hear him, “i just have to say, i love your, um, your feminism,” and by that, i took him to mean my femininity, “you look very lovely.”
it was totally unexpected and actually very cute. i shook his hand and wished him a good night. when we left, felix commented on how surprised he was.
“i honestly would’ve expected the opposite in spoons.”
it did make me wonder how many people see me out in the wild and think i look lovely and simply don’t say anything. i’d like to think it’s scores of people, straight-seeming men sneaking second glances, girls who think i’m cute. i’d like to think it’s almost everyone. being delulu is the solulu!
we walked past a lloyds bank with a pride logo in the window and i pointed at it and joked to felix that it seems like epsom’s actually a gay village. he laughed.
when we got to the theatre, we realized we had the whole screeen to ourselves. felix posed in the middle of the sea of empty seats and i took photos of him. the theatre stayed empty save for us the whole time. it was like we had our own private screening.
a run, dinner, a movie: anyone watching would call it a date. when i posted photos from the day, a couple of friends almost immediately commented, saying surely we must be dating by now. i told them that we have a fun and affectionate friendship, which is the truth. i do have a habit of framing him on social media in a more intimate way, and i’m sure that’s me subconsciously pushing a narrative. i’m going to try to stop doing that though because i think it’s actually making him uncomfortable.
but to one of my friends, i admitted that while it’s all fun and games in the moment, it’s going to be annoying (read: sad) when he eventually gets a girlfriend and has less time for me. an old tale and familiar wound by now, but one that stings nonetheless.
i wonder if i can ever adequately prepare myself for that small heartbreak. i will take the loss as it comes and let things fizzle out. time is mysterious and leaves room for all sorts of surprises, but i’m truly not holding my breath. who knows, maybe i’ll get deported anyway and it’ll all be a moot point. everyone has a good feeling about my visa situation, but i’m not quite holding my breath for that either. need to prepare for the worst, after all, though i still have hope i’ll stay.
i was playing with the ‘random’ button on my blog and it brought me to a post from 2010 when i posted the song “heart skipped a beat” by the xx.
i lay in bed and played the song; closed my eyes and breathed deeply while i listened.
and before i knew it, i was that 17-year-old boy again, wandering the 2am streets of toronto, alone in the night and battling my demons. full to bursting with a kind of love i fought to stamp down, and even then, i had a sense that the world was somehow still full of possibility – the golden promise of my fleeting youth. that a life existed on the other side of my silly fight, and i would wake up, bruised and battered, to the light of a new day, somewhere far away from there. i just had to make it through.
i lay in bed and listened to the song and saw my younger self so clearly: wearing too-tight jeans and the oversized brown plaid shirt i stole from yodit that still hangs in my room today. lost and wandering in the cold comfort of the near-deserted night, aching in a lonely way but knowing it wouldn’t last forever. overthinking, always, caught in a tangled forest of my own competing wants. troubled to the point of a restlessness that pushed me into the yawning dark.
i miss how big everything felt back then, deep heartache but so alive, a kind of romantic masochism. i open my eyes and realize i’m crying. i take the oversized brown plaid shirt from its hook on the door and put it on. i think about all of the nights its seen me through, all of the times i’ve pulled it tight around me.
there’s a friend i miss from back home who would wander the streets with me, a saving grace pulling me from the mire. we don’t talk anymore, but i miss her, and i’ve always had faith that one day we’ll reconnect.
maybe next time i’m in toronto i’ll reach out to her. we can have a coffee and catch up on all the bygone, wasted years and maybe start to heal what’s broken, patch up all the little cracks. would that be weird, so out of the blue? would it be selfish? crossing a boundary?
this is the first trip i took my new freewrite traveler on and these are some curated journal entries from it.
07.22.26 – WEDNESDAY – BRISTOL
we’re in cameron’s house now, about to go to bed. ally and i are sharing a room, our beds touching side by side. we had dinner at a really cute hand-pulled noodle place. called ahead and got there basically when they were closing, but they didn’t seem at all annoyed to serve us. they were warm and accommodating, inviting us in with genuine smiles.
a couple got up to leave and as they were paying their bill, i heard them tell the waitress that they used to live in bristol and always make a point of returning to eat here whenever they’re back. it’s nice to catch these random snippets of kindness – people saying things for no other reason than to be nice.
07.23.26 – THURSDAY – 9:23AM – TIVERTON
we woke up early this morning and cameron made some coffee in his french press for us to have before we started the drive. i really do love calm, quiet mornings – time to rest in stillness, mentally prepare for the day ahead over bits of casually cheerful chatter.
i’m looking forward to the whole trip, to the sense of reverential calm, worshipful quiet – time in nature, in creation, pondering the depth and breadth of God’s love and power. i’m hoping for a kind of transformation, a reorientation, a spark of some new conviction that i can carry with me back to london, to the rest of my life. and maybe these are high and lofty hopes, but nobody’s done anything that truly matters without first having an impossible dream.
and now “what’s up?” by 4 non blondes has come on the car stereo and cameron’s singing along in his screeching, what he calls his ‘acdc voice’ while flora films and laughs along. cam says it should be his karaoke song and we both agree.
4:30PM – LEE ABBEY
we’re at the tea cottage at lee abbey on one more pit stop before we head out on the first true leg of our pilgrimage – a short-ish (6-7 mile) walk to the inn we’re going to stay at tonight.
lee abbey itself is beautiful. from the main building, you can see rolling fields, cliff faces hanging over the sea. flowers bloom all over the property, apparently all tended to by one dedicated, incredibly knowledgeable woman.
we had some tea and muffins with members of the community here, during their break time that they call “elevensies”. got to talk to a few of them and get a sense of how they felt about living in community. they talked it up, describing how wonderful and formative it is. ally and the rest of them say they can see me living here for a year. so can i.
later, we visited the library and other sites, and i thought about how nice it would be to wake up to these beautiful views, read at a window looking out onto the cliffs and the sea. the serenity of it all. truly quiet rhythms. and the whole day a practice of learning how to be with others, how to love. how beautiful.
now we are sitting at a small stony beach – ally and flora have just taken a dip, did a bit of a wild swim. we haven’t done much walking before stopping for lunch here, but it’s been such a lovely start to everything.
3:13PM – MARTINHOE
we’ve been walking for the last hour or so and now we’re in martinhoe church. ally read a plaque detailing its illustrious history. this church is so old. we marveled at the fact that this town is now just a hamlet when it was once a bustling center of life.
cameron found a plaque on one wall commemorating the men and women of the parish who served in world war ii, and sadly a lot of men listed were brothers, sharing the same family name. imagine, a whole generation of men wiped out by senseless violence, the misguided pursuits of men.
he’s just finished doing a reading from the “pilgrim places, holy lives” booklet and there’s a deep sense of reverence and connection. it’s nice that these churches can act as spaces of rest and refuge on our journey, spaces of encounter and presence.
we sit here, in the quiet, and i get a little bit of what i came here for.
we sat for a while, in the silence, and i pondered the transformative power of God’s boundless love. how, if we were to really live in the reality of it, everything could change. if we could harness the truth of ourselves as conduits of God’s love, our very beings mountaintop encounters where people could experience God’s love, how might that change how we exist in the world – how we relate to each other, the stories we tell ourselves, how we live our lives? perhaps life itself could simply be a practice of love. what else could possibly matter more?
8:46PM – HEDDON VALLEY – HUNTER’S INN
we’ve finished the first true leg of our pilgrimage and now we’re relaxing in the guest lounge of the hunter’s inn in the heddon valley. we’ve eaten dinner and it was an experience.
three of us had meat pies and it took forever to order and for our food to arrive because all of the servers and runners were incredibly green young men.
cameron’s just read some evening prayers and it ends the day on another meditative, contemplative and reverential note. i’m glad to be doing this with these people – friends who take the faith and spiritual side of this seriously.
we’re here, in a beautiful inn, surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation, and it’s wonderful. this was a beautiful day, and i will sleep peacefully tonight. i will will the flat white i just drank to have minimal effect and not get in the way of deep slumber. and in the morning, we go again.
07.24.26 – FRIDAY – TRENTISHOE
we had breakfast at hunter’s inn – i had poached haddock with poached eggs, which was an odd but traditional choice – apparently very english.
after, we started the big walk, leg 2 of our journey. this included a very big hill – hopefully the biggest hill we’ll encounter on this walk. apparently a short cut so we could visit st. peter’s church, trentishoe.
we opened the big door and it creaked open to reveal a bit of a cave – dark and musty and overrun with bats. one flew across the space and we looked up and found so many of them sleeping in the eaves and rafters. cute little things, with all their droppings on the floor.
we couldn’t sit in the pews because of the filth, but after exploring a bit, reading about the church, we stopped to sit down and rest in a shady spot of the graveyard right outside. i’m looking at the three of them sitting or lying on their backpacks, talking about politics and faith – “mobilizing the christian network to be part of the anti-fascist state” – and a bit beyond them, i can see a collapsed bench against a large, wise-looking tree.
it’s peaceful here, the countryside is beautiful.
4:00PM – COMBE MARTIN
we’ve completed the most difficult and treacherous part of today’s big walk and now we’re resting and eating lunch at a beach in combe martin. not as nice as lee abbey’s magical beach, but still nice.
we conquered a really big what i’d call a mountain pass called “the great hangman”, saw some incredible veiws, and then visited a church called st. peter ad vuncula run by cam’s friend sophie, who is a new curate there.
she showed us around, and told us about her story. she finished residential training and requested a rural parish to serve in, which isn’t very typical at all. she has a lot of vision, hoping to harness the potential of the church in her parish to really make a difference in the lives of those who need it most, and it was exciting to hear about – made me think about how we need to be intentional and active to not miss opportunities.
later, she led a moment of daily prayer, which was very beautiful. she opened up the lady chapel for us and it was calm, still and quiet.
and now we’re at the beach, resting in the shade. cameron’s been very impressed with how effective our lidl haul from yesterday has been. we’ve been able to milk it for a second lunch of hummus, cheese and mackerel sandwiches for all of us, as well as snacks and fruit. honestly, we’re all full and it feels like a well-balanced diet – enough to sustain us for the next leg of the walk.
07.25.26 – SATURDAY – 8:40AM – ILFRACOMBE
the trip is done for me and now i’m on the bus to barnstaple, where i’ll take a train to exeter and from there head to london.
finished the last leg of the big walk yesterday – it was mostly easy going, more casual and calmly paced, tunnels of green that reminded me of parkland walk in london, paths through campsites that were ripe for anthropological study – all sorts of people, mish-mashed in an unusual and fascinating combination. none of the massive highs of the first leg of the walk – no truly stunning views – but also no massive lows – as in, all of the hills were very manageable.
coming into ilfracombe, we headed to our lodgings for the night – had trouble finding it for a bit and weathered, rough-looking locals kept trying to help us. the kind of easy, open kindness one finds in the countryside.
eventually we found our lodgings, settled in and showered before quickly heading back out to get some dinner. we tried to go to a cozy italian place called giovanni & luca (how can you get more italian than that?!) – walked in and it was bustling, older patrons gathered in 2s and 4s over softly lit tables, enjoying themselves, a picture that reminded me of my time in florence with bram – but they were all booked up for the night.
we ended up at a wetherspoons and i ordered a chicken pomodoro. they were all excited to get some drinks, and it made me think of that book i read, “the naked mind”, that said that we condition ourselves to get giddy at even the mention of alcohol, at the idea of relaxation and release that it will bring, and how this feeds into minor alcohol dependency.
i went in at one point to get a refillable mug of coffee and the inside was much busier than the outside. i thought it was a bit of a shame that we weren’t inside. it would’ve been better for all sorts of attention, flowing in and out – better for soaking it in, but also for people watching. i always love wandering around these small towns, where people aren’t used to seeing people like me. i imagine myself to be more beautiful, an elusive little nymph that the locals covet and admire. the reality is likely much more mundane than that, but isn’t it more fun to tell yourself an embellished story?
at our table, the conversation turned to fatherhood – what kind of fathers we want to be, didn’t want to be, what we loved about our own fathers, what we wished was different.
fathers who love us but can only express that through acts of service, no words, physical affection or signs of tenderness unless we initiate, and even then. fathers who are open and patient and kind, and do not pressure us with the hard shape of an identity they’ve chosen for us. fathers who sacrifice everything but remain a mystery, their own story and agency lying hidden behind an only occasionally porous wall. fathers who are quick to anger, who don’t know how to properly regulate their emotions and so turn on their children at the slights of others.
as adults, we can pick these things apart, turn an analytical lens on them to guess at how they’ve shaped us, try to understand what we carry, what we leave behind. but as children, we are simply at the mercy of these forces, and it’s amazing to even start to understand the legacy our fathers leave in our bones, in the ways we experience and exist in the world.
after we were finished eating, everyone started getting very sleepy, so even though we had high ambitions to maybe go out that night, we decided to wrap things up and head home.
9:30AM – BARNSTAPLE
it’s about an hour later and i’m at barnstaple train station waiting for my train, which is in about an hour. i’ve ordered a flat white and an almond croissant, heated up, and i’ve sat down at a table in the station cafe, kind of hidden and tucked away from the people in the main space.
i’m trying to think about what i’ve gotten from this trip, what i can take away and bring home with me to london. all of the rest stops were welcome and moving. stopping at the old churches, thinking about the historically vibrant communities they used to serve. i’d imagine the pews full of people living simpler, perhaps more joyful lives. we bloat our days with so many unnecessary things; there is a joy to stripping it back to basics, and it’s a shame that these ways of life continue to vanish. things have in many ways gotten better, but in many other ways they’ve gotten worse.
but i loved the quiet and stillness of those moments. sitting in the cool space of a very old church, letting myself imagine days gone by, the generations of people who filled the space before me, a sense of God’s presence there with us, lingering in the stale but sacred air.
whenever i stepped into one of those old churches, it was like i was stepping into a slice of history, taking part in something bigger than myself, something that would outlast me. it was expansive and allowed me to let go of myself a little bit, remember that there are forces and realities beyond my limited experience of the present moment. i became a single thread in the broader tapestry of humanity, of all the lives and stories that came before me, that are to come – the endless, ever-shifting sea of voices.
12:20PM – TRAIN TO LONDON
i’m reading katabasis by r.f. kuang and there’s a passage from the book that resonates with me:
They struck a deep nostalgia in her just the same, the nostalgia you got just looking inside brightly lit windows along the street at night; peeking into lives you might just have had. Someone else’s comfort. A warm couch, an old movie humming along on the television. And then your wife or mother or friend joining you from the kitchen, steaming mugs of hot toddies in both hands.
this sense of other worlds only feet away from you. other realities unfolding constantly, other truths revealing themselves in the night. i understand sonder to be the acute awareness that other people have histories and lives as infinitely complex as your own, and suddenly the earth is small but explosive, the universe always expanding with not only matter, but also inner worlds. the immaterial becoming just as substantial as solid, liquid and gas.
2:01PM – ON THE TRAIN
i’ve just woken up from a bit of a nap and i think i’m going to stay awake for the last little leg of this journey. i filled in the last couple of entries of my five year journal and it made me realize that we actually did walk so far over the last couple of days. i think i walked more yesterday than ever before, on any other day in my entire life. by the end of the day, my step count was 36,004, which is about quadruple my average daily step count.
i remember turning back on various points of the walk to see vast distances stretched before us, hills and valleys, peaks and dips – all of the terrain we’d covered – and being completely shocked. you can actually cover more ground than you think in a few hours. now i will look at distances in a different way. hopefully walking in a city with limited baggage will now feel like nothing.
i’m proud of myself, actually, for coming along and doing it. for doing the big walk with my friends. now it’s something else i’ve put under my belt, an experience to tuck away into the folds of my life to look back on, to share. i’ve been to the heddon valley, stayed at hunter’s inn where we waited so long for dinner served by handsome but terribly inefficient young men. i’ve conquered the great hangman, where ally stood on top of a pile of inexplicable rocks and we marvelled at the incredible 360 view all around us and flora said that actually, she wasn’t very impressed. and i’ve stayed in ilfracombe, in a little hidden, tucked-away lodging where we slept to the sound of older men blaring on in a live rock cover band and woke up to the sounds of sea birds and a gentle breeze. i’ve done all these things, and i marvel at it.
people say that parisians are snobby and rude, but i actually found them to be quite kind. in the metro, people actually let others get out of the train before trying to get on, and when everyone’s getting on, they try to accommodate each other, moving out of the way, making room, saying, “pardon, pardon.” it seemed like people actually cared about being a good citizen of the world.
we got there very early on july 13th and had only that day to explore, so we dumped our stuff in the hotel lobby (the room wasn’t available to check in yet) and then got some lunch and explored a cute market nearby.
then went back to the hotel, checked into our room, showered and changed and headed back out to do some sightseeing. everything in paris is so beautiful and romantic. i can see why people call it the city of love. it was actually my second time there, but i was solo the first time and it’s definitely more fun to share the experience. we walked across a bridge above the seine, we passed notre dame and then went to shakespeare and company, a famous bookshop.
inside was sprawling and whimsical, book-lined corridors leading to book-lined rooms, basically the prototype for your most charming, rustic, kind of zany bookshop. there was a reading room upstairs with a window that looked onto the most beautiful view. i think i could die happy if i could read and write there every day. i saw a boy approach another boy and start talking about the books they were reading. later, i saw them leave together, smiling. a meet-cute in the wild! love in the air! paris!
we tried to go to a sandwich place that bre recommended for dinner but it was closed. in our venturing, we ended up at what i assume to be their gay village and had a nice dinner at a restaurant that had a mural of a few gay icons: george michael, freddie mercury, elton john, and cher.
coincidentally, we were in town for the bastille day celebrations because they were having them a day early for some reason. we staked out a spot to watch the fireworks against the eiffel tower. so magical. and the metro ride home wasn’t as bad as i thought it would be considering how crowded the streets were.
early the next day, we headed to provence.
–
our airbnb in provence was so stunning, and we had a pool to ourselves. this would be one of my favourite parts of the trip: coming back after a day of exploring in the heat, having a relaxing swim in the evening cool, and catching up with my sister.
on day 1, we went for an afternoon swim after grabbing some lunch and had a poolside photoshoot. got to take advantage of the picturesque amenities.
then we hopped on a bus to explore aix-en-provence. the city was small enough that we became quite familiar with the sights over the next couple of days. we had coffee at the hotel de caumont and saw its beautiful garden, strolled along and admired the cute shops and squares, and then eventually had dinner at jacquou le croquant, a place that our airbnb host recommended. i foolishly ordered their famous cassoulet even though it was so hot, and orpah ordered a whole fish, which was insane but delicious. truly, we should’ve just shared and split both dishes, but we didn’t. now i can’t help but think of those people who go to dim sum and each have a dish for themselves – strange and crazy!
day 2 started with a wine tour, visiting a couple of wineries, sampling the wine. we were with a cute american couple and our funny french guide. at one point he told me i had a good palette and i felt proud. my favourite part was seeing the strange egg-looking contraptions that one of the wineries stored some of their wine in. made me think of aliens.
upon returning to aix, we decided to go on a train tour through the city that also went up to a spot where cezanne famously painted. to its credit, the view of montagne sainte-victoire (that cezanne often sketched and painted) was very beautiful.
apparently there was a world cup game france was playing in that evening. when we arrived back in aix, we got a bunch of picky bits for girl dinner and skedaddled before the game began. we did not want to be there for the chaos. we would later learn that france had lost the game.
day 3 was lavender fields tour day. sadly, most of the lavender had already been harvested and what lavender remained was quite pale because of the heat, so it was a bit of a bust. but the tour included stops at some old villages and our guide even stopped at a place where we could get a nice view of gourdes, the beautiful hilltop village.
we only stopped because there was an older woman on our tour (who was actually very fun and apparently worked as a lawyer in the pentagon) who seemed kind of underwhelmed by everything else and had mentioned something about gourdes, but she ended up not even getting out of the car, which was hilarious. we got to talking to her at one of the villages and apparently she thought orpah and i were a couple.
“it’s nice that you two get along so well!”
when we’re just siblings who don’t hate each other???
when we got back to aix we had dinner at a cute tapas place, and then perused one of the street markets that stayed open late into the night. it was the first time we’d been in the city centre after sunset, and it was so beautiful, really a different kind of charm.
we decided to go to a nice hotel for some oysters and champagne because it was our last night. and then, for some reason, we decided to find a place to go out.
ended up at karaoke at what seemed like a grunge-themed pub, met a cute girl, drank too much beer, and when we got back to our airbnb, it was chaos. drunk packing, no sleep, and then a disgustingly early train back to paris. we napped on the train and napped again in the hotel in paris.
i was leaving for london that same day, so all we really had time to do was grab some food at a cute diner called bouillon pigalle (we were lucky because apparently there’s usually a line), and then find a vintage-y photobooth near the sacre-coeur that my sister heard about from instagram or something.
and so that was paris and provence! whimsical and dreamy and full of life.
if my visa to stay past september ends up getting approved (fingers crossed), i would like to go back to paris and spend more time there. stroll those romantic winding streets, maybe meet a charming man, maybe fall in love.
my sister and i were in cornwall from july 5 to july 8.
a little note on how the trip started: with me, hungover and nauseous on a train. i’d been so good about not drinking, but i went into central the night before to drop my sister off at a dinner and we stumbled into pride.
and instead of heading home, i thought i might as well soak in the atmosphere, find a place to take it all in. so i went to a simmons by myself and sat there drinking a coke, and then a girl asked if she could sit with me and i said yes. she said her friend was coming to meet her, and we ended up talking and hanging out.
“you’re so cute, you should come out with us tonight!”
and one thing led to another, and before i knew it, i was swept up in their orbit, taking celebratory shots, stumbling to bars, getting lost in the hazy buzz of the summer night. i remember a dance floor, and kissing a boy, heat and sweat, and then heading home on the tube in a daze.
so much of a daze that i left my phone on the train, and by the time it disconnected from my airpods and i let out an “oh shit” of sudden realization, the train was out of sight, disappeared into the next tunnel, leaving me stunned on the platform.
thankfully, it ended up with a good samaritan, and after church the next day (for which i was so unfortunately hungover, which was a shame because it was the service following the excitement of our summer fair and it would’ve been nice to be on my a-game), my sister went to south kensington to retrieve it before we had to hop on the train to cornwall.
upon getting my phone back, i looked through the most recent photos – always the most damning evidence of my state of being whenever these things happen. i found a bunch of messy bathroom mirror selfies with strangers spanning from about 1am – 2am, and the last photo was a shirtless picture of me in an empty club at about 5am.
after church, i had a bit of a much-needed rest. i hadn’t gotten any sleep because of the phone fiasco and i was fading fast. and then, at the very last minute, i threw a bunch of clothes and supplies into my new travel backpack and whipped off to paddington to meet my sister.
we agreed to meet at the paddington bear statue, but apparently they move it around all the time and i was having trouble finding it. thankfully, by some miracle, she noticed me aimlessly wandering around and i saw her waving as she beelined over.
she was well-equipped with snacks, and over the course of the train ride, as my stomach settled and i started to feel better, i was grateful for them. and so our cornwall adventures began.
i remember it being around 8pm-ish when we got into hayle, where we’d be staying. our airbnb host, daniel, graciously picked us up from the train station and drove us the less than 10 minutes to the house. his wife, sylvia, greeted us when we came in. they gave us the lay of the land, house rules and arrangements, and showed us to our cozy room.
we put our stuff down and freshened up a bit and then headed out to grab some dinner. the sun was setting and everything was settling into deep greys and blues. it was quiet and serene and i remember thinking it all felt like a liminal space, a bit of a dreamscape.
we found a bangladeshi restaurant called grameen tandoori and everything we ate there was delicious. i starkly remember the grumpy tall ginger man who took our drinks order. but our main servers were a couple of bangladeshi men who bonded with us the way fellow immigrants do – with tales of home and travels, harkening to different aspects of our cultures.
it was darker out by the time we left the restaurant, which shone like an oasis in looming night. even more of a dreamscape, then.
we headed back for some sleep, planning to wake up at the crack of dawn to go surfing.
we woke up early and sylvia was already making breakfast. they would treat us to breakfast for the entirety of our stay – butter croissants, cereal, fruit – little mugs of coffee from their french press.
we took a bus to penzance and then another bus to land’s end for the surfing lesson. the morning was overcast, grey and misty, a striking mood for the day. surfing was fun. i liked the way i looked in the wetsuit. our instructor, jessica, much like many of the locals we would see, looked tanned and wind-swept and i thought her life must feel so free down by the coast. i actually managed to stand on the board for a little bit and i was proud. at the end of the lesson, she gave me and my sister cornish pasties, vegetarian and delicious.
jessica lived in penzance and offered us a ride back so we packed ourselves into her car (already cramped with surfboards) and she gave us recommendations for things to see and places to eat while she drove.
we decided to head over to st. michael’s mount, to walk along the causeway before it submerged under a rising tide, and roam the gardens of the castle. the gardens were filled with all sorts of colourful flowers and plantlife, rising in tiers and levels along winding paths that led upwards to the castle looming above. the day was hot and beautiful and everything made for a pretty picture.
that evening, back in penzance, we had dinner at a place called mackerel sky seafood bar, a tapas place jessica recommended. everything we ordered was delicious, and i remember being particularly blown away by the scallops. i’m always blown away by scallops, to be fair.
took the bus back to hayle, and we stopped at the big lidl on the way to the airbnb to pick up some snacks, including a bucket of popcorn that looked like a cartoon. we watched the rom-com “voicemails for isabelle” before going to bed. it was decent.
the next morning, we made our way over to st. ives to do some exploring. stopped by a photography gallery run by a man who takes wistful, dreamy pictures of the coastal landscapes. he talked to us about the tricks he uses, how he only develops a limited number of prints per series. his photos were admittedly beautiful. his dog laid on the floor, inviting little pats and pets.
then we went to the tate modern and walked around peering at the art under conspicuously bad lighting. in the gift shop, i found a book called “hot victorians: meet your dream man from the past” full of, you guessed it, pictures and biographies of hot men from that time period. i was seriously tempted to buy it, but i was already struggling to fit all of my wares in my travel backpack and didn’t need anything else adding to the weight. i opted for taking photos of the hottest guys instead and posting them on my instagram story for posterity.
had fish and chips from a place a local recommended for lunch. we sat and ate at the beach, wary of any seagulls that might be patrolling on the sand. everyone told us to watch out for them, reminding me of the time a seagull stole three prawns from me as i innocently strolled on a beach in brighton a couple of years ago. viscous little creatures, but i respect the hustle. they stood around, pretending not to take any notice of us, inching ever closer, but we were vigilant and refused them an opening.
we spent the rest of the day idly exploring st. ives. we saw a structure on a hill in the distance, so we went up to it and came by one of the most beautiful views of the whole trip. so beautiful that we were compelled to film a dramatic lip-sync video set to jojo’s seminal classic, “too little, too late.”
on our way back down the hill, we stumbled across a more tucked-away beach. went for a swim and it was so relaxing, shielded from the bulk of the people. it was one of the best parts of the trip. and then we had a lovely dinner at the restaurant just up the beach.
when it was time to leave st. ives, we stopped by a cafe on the way to the bus stop for a late coffee. the barista was notably quite cute. and when we got off the bus at hayle, my sister almost immediately realized she’d left her phone on the bus, which had unfortunately already driven away.
small panic for a little bit, and to distract ourselves we went back to the lidl to get more snacks. a little later, when i checked her phone’s location on the “find my” app, it seemed to be stationary at a bus station, so we called the bus station and they said the phone was safe and sound and to pick it up in the morning. so that’s two phones lost and found in the course of one trip, one for me and one for her.
in the morning, on our last day in cornwall, we went to camborne to rescue her phone. when that was all sorted, we finally dropped by philps to sample their cornish pasties (delicious and filling), and then we went back to hayle and relaxed on hayle beach until it was time to go home. ended up getting on an earlier train thinking we had flex tickets, and then getting kicked off because it turns out we had advance single tickets, forcing us to spend some time truro until we could get onto the right train. honestly, it wasn’t the worst place to get stuck in.
it was a fun trip, full of beautiful scenery and relaxing beaches. i now romanticize life by the coast. it seems so peaceful, and i wonder what it’s like when the tourists are all gone. i imagine standing on the beach at night alone, in that liminal dreamscape from that first night, letting my thoughts wash away into the sea. i imagine a quiet love blooming – two men sitting on a bench close to shore, everything muted and protected and hushed – tenderness in deep blues, shared whispers against the sound of a gentle tide, and the moon, bashfully watching, giving her endless blessing.
