It was the combination of a free Saturday and an imminent trip to Afghanistan which made me finally respond to Mum’s persistent and increasingly stressed requests to come home and sort out all my abandoned stuff. Less stuff, more life, right? I’ve moved out yet again with everything I need for both practical and aesthetic…
It’s been a busy month with no time to write, so I’m migrating some old posts across from another blog that I thought I’d have the capacity to write as well. That was optimistic. This one was originally published on Breathe, a Christian network for simpler living. Enjoy! It started off so well. Two…
A photo of light reflected in a river. Like stars on a dark night. Glimpses and fragments of wonder. Glimpses and fragments of wonder. This is the phrase that’s wandering round my mind this arvo. I’ve just binged on Brian Draper’s daily advent reflection emails which have been accumulating in my inbox. Better late…
“Are you really ok, Milly?” Hannah asked me last Saturday; a question which stemmed from her reading of my blog. To be fair, if you judged me solely on my blog you’d think I was a lonely moaner who did nothing but ponder life in a melancholy kind of a way. Perhaps I need some more posts which…
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…
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…
Six years to the day since I arrived in Oxford, I rush back in my lunch break to hand over my keys to the letting agent and bring the Howard Street era to an end. A few weeks ago I was loving the liminality. (One of my new words of the moment, slightly misapplied to describe…
Coming downstairs and finding a typically unexpected pot of food on the kitchen side with a note from one of my housemates: ‘Random Pakistani pudding (contains nuts). Please eat some!’ Bumping into a young African refugee who, in the three years I’ve known him, has changed from an insecure and anxious teenager into a…
We sauntered down Cowley Road, full of Rice Box noodles and spicy spare ribs, to enjoy the milder, lighter evening and see who we’d bump into. I hadn’t realised there were so many Indians in Oxford. At any rate, most of them were out last night, euphorically celebrating their World Cup win. From groups…
Two weeks ago I was literally speechless. I had totally lost my voice. After a day of thwarted communication, of ‘conversations’ in which all I could do was listen, I set off to youth group with a slight sense of trepidation. It shouldn’t have surprised me that running a youth group with no voice wouldn’t…
emilyintheworld 