Hello! I’m so, so happy I can finally share with you my photos and thoughts from Japan! I’ve spent the last month with a dead laptop – huge and endless thanks go to this guy for extracting the contents, replacing the hard drive, re-installing everything and saving me multiple and expensive trips to the Genius bar!
I went to Tokyo last month – we timed it for the world-famous Sakura festivals. The sakura last for just a couple of weeks – a few days where the blossoms are at peak bloom, with a couple of days either side of buds appearing and shedding. We arrived just as the blooms were opening and caught the full wonder of the season – from seeing the tiny unfurled buds everywhere and anticipating the first full trees to blossom, to the wonderful days (and it was really just a couple of days) where we woke up and all the trees were in full bloom, not a single petal out of place. By the time we left they were starting to shed – the falling petals looked like soft snow and carpeted the roads in baby pink velvet.
These pictures are predominantly from Yoyogi Park. There’s something about the pastel pink against the clear blue sky that just seemed so whimsical and dreamlike to me – like the parks and roads had been dusted with candyfloss and pastel clouds. I’m already feeling wistful about returning. More from Japan very soon – yay!
Happy birthday to me! I absolutely love birthdays! Parties, presents, being the centre of attention and getting older; I love it all. My Mum made me some gluten-free granola and some vegan peanut butter snaps which was the best start to the day and also got me such a gorgeous card. My Dad paid for my car to get serviced which was my main present but also loaned me his amazing Canon camera for the day for all these photos! On my actual birthday I met some of my best friends and we spent the day at the Natural History Museum before going to the pub. I wrote a song about dugongs last year hence all the photos with the dugongs!
I also went out the week before with all my friends and was honoured that the lovely Jess from Jessthetics could come too! It was such a fun (and particularly bleary) night and it felt like Jess had been part of our gang for ages. I felt very loved by the amount of birthday gestures I received this year; flowers (in the photos!) and cake from the charity shop, more flowers and cake from my theatre group, cake and wine from work, homemade vegan birthday cake from Jess, cuddly wolves, polkadot dresses, posh glittery things, LUSH goodies and headdresses from my friends and an animal safari t-shirt (!!!!!!) (amongst other things) from James.
It sounds cheesy but the nice thing about growing older is having people to grow older with! I don’t have much family or many friends from childhood so it’s fairly recently I’ve been able to appreciate how wonderful it is having close friends who you’ve known through multiple stages of your life. Pete (the tall ginger one) for example has been at every single birthday I’ve had since we met and we’ve gone from being two awkward teens to being two successful musicians running creative businesses (although still awkward every now and then!). I’m very grateful to grow up surrounded by inspiring and brilliant people every day and so lucky to call them my friends. :)
Happy New Year everyone! I came back to London on the 2nd and have been “back at work” since then. I’ve not really documented anything as I’ve been working hard on my upcoming WOLF PACK concerts, hence the lack of posts. These photos are really just to show you my new favourite necklace, and were taken during my “lunch hour” (25 minutes).
Blouse – vintage, £3.50. Necklace – Tatty Devine, gift. Dungaree pinafore dress thing – vintage, £17. Trainers – New Look, £6 (sale). Mouse ring – Camden Market, £2. Socks – ???, christmas present.
This post was supposed to show you my coat (new) but as I was editing the photos I found I was blurry in nearly all of them. My camera had decided instead to focus on the trees around me. I think this may have been a conspiracy between the trees and the camera; I was using another tree branch as a camera stand so there was plenty of time for them to plot whilst I had my back turned). At first I was a bit annoyed, but then I realised my camera had the right idea as focusing on the immense natural beauty in these photos is far more interesting than my coat. Just look in the first photo – the irregular pattern of the cracks in the tree closest to the camera and the myriad shades of green are far more exciting and dramatic than an item of clothing could ever be!
Recently I’ve spent lots of time outdoors marvelling at the beauty of nature (especially at this time of year) and it makes me think how impossible it is to capture those moments. You can’t paint those colours, or photograph the crisp feeling of a leaf under your shoe, or sketch the smell of the rotting conkers and leaves in the wet grass. The colours on my computer seem so dull and uninspiring in comparison. If you read this post, go for a walk today and admire the leaves. Tell me what your trees are like.
So, this is my new coat from Greece – leave it to me to go on a beach holiday and return with a winter coat! I wore it on the plane home along with a wide-brimmed black hat; when James collected me from the airport he just said “Hello Snufkin“. I was so happy; as I child I always felt a sense of kinship with Snufkin as he was an outdoorsy, rebellious, loner musician like me. I much prefer owning clothing that looks like it belongs to my favourite characters rather than just featuring them! I love my Moomin skirt but if I wore it in Moominvalley, I’d just look weird whereas with this I would fit in. I’ve got lots of coats, but I spend so much time running around between rehearsals and gigs in the cold I feel it’s justified!
I was casually walking up the road when my neighbour stopped me to tell me I looked exactly like the girls from his youth in the sixties. He’s Brazilian, and apparently all the most fashionable, daring girls wore dresses in a similar style to this one with matching sandals. “Do you know the song The Girl From Ipanema?” he asked, “you look like her today!”.
TAPE PARADE 