This time last year, I marked my birthday with a blog post entitled ‘Help! I’m older than Jesus’. Now, one year older and still here, I marked it with a decision to stop going to events aimed at people in their 20s/30s. Well, that, along with a fun birthday dinner with some quality people.…
“That must be so rewarding,” she said in response to my description of what I do for a living, her face reflecting both a glimmer of genuine interest and an absence of common ground within which to ask follow-up questions. Although I’ve heard that line a billion times, it always prompts an involuntary defensive shudder,…
Gig-branded from a fun and folky evening in Camden with friends, I’m on the bus home having one of those moments when the world seems really big and everyone seems really far away. Joyfully confident in the contented rightness of my here and now, I nevertheless feel downright sad that so many people who I’d…
I was so desperate to leave church by midday but couldn’t work out why. I sent round a flurry of texts hoping to find at least one friend who was actually in London. Someone who required minimal effort, who was fun to be with, who could cheer me up, and who got me. Thank goodness…
I like the second half of the week. It’s when I exchange the classrooms of SOAS for the College of Northwest London where I mentor an Afghan teenager. Just back from there now. I’m internally warm from cycling through the frostiness but my ears are bright red, icy and tingling. Must get one of those…
Crying on public transport is always a bit embarrassing and it had been a while since I’d done it. Nonetheless, as I curled up on the Oxford Tube earlier this evening and watched the snowy surrounds of the M40 whizzing past, I found the tears streaming uncontrollably down my face. It was dark, the coach…
Baroness Cox described herself as a nurse and social scientist by intention, and a baroness by astonishment. Beyond the fact that she’s a peer who speaks out for oppressed, persecuted and voiceless people around the world, I didn’t know all that much about her when I went to hear her speak this morning at ChristChurch…
I’m feeling the need to chart my culture shock. Partly because if it’s out there, I no longer have to carry it alone. I suppose this is a bit of a cry for help. And partly because I hope I’ll be able to look back in a couple of months and realise that I’ve moved on. Touch…
University is definitely less overwhelming second time around. Well, so far at least. You can remind me of that when I’m drowning in essays and reading books that I don’t understand. On Monday I arrived at SOAS with a bit of a temperature and a sore throat. Running late because I’d got my enrollment time…
Well exci(t)ed about my imminent move to London. Having never really planned to live there again, I am bizarrely warming to the prospect of return. Am not envisaging this voluntary resettlement becoming permanent, but one learns (reluctantly) to never say never. My hear(t) language, with i(t)s dropped ts and lazy grammar, bubbles to the surface and I…
emilyintheworld 