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description= A place for everyday creativity + life-documenting. There ll be paper, stripes + plenty of tales. And if you laugh along the way then all the better.;
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Text of the page (random words):
tely to an occasion i ve been eagerly anticipating my body has previous form because this is the story of how the day i was going to see benedict cumberbatch in hamlet my body decided to offer me an additional accompaniment to seeing one of my favourite actors in my favourite role the gift of an unexpected period oh body you had one job and while you may have left almost a decade in between your earlier primate inspired opening salvo and this bloody coup d état i ve got to give you credit for your innate nay shakespearean sense of dramatic timing but at least the appearance of this gift in the toilets of the tate modern art gallery no jackson pollock jokes please explained the dizziness i d been feeling for the previous couple of days until that point i d been putting it down to the headiness of being a naive north easterner set loose in the big smoke for a few days a north easterner with a front row ticket to the biggest show in town in her clammy little hand ok so it was the front row of the upper circle from where i couldn t see all of stage and where admittedly the altitude was slightly thinner but a front row seat with an unobscured view of benny s sweat and tears as he recited some of my most beloved lines in all of the english language is still a front row seat and no wonder i d felt so at home in the dimly lit womblike magnificence of the tate s dedicated rothko room surrounded as it is on all sides by the artist s huge deep red maroon and black paintings the mark rothko seagram murals the explanatory notes to the exhibition read mark rothko saw these paintings as objects of contemplation demanding the viewer s complete absorption and my uterus clearly took this as a call to action so there i was in a tate modern toilet cubicle genuine tate modern bathroomselfie facing up to the inescapable fact that in a matter of hours when the curtain went up on cumberbatch i d have to sit in one spot for several hours it s shakespeare s longest play wearing the dress i d picked out so carefully beforehand hoping that the only bodily fluids i d be leaking on it would be tears yes i cried of course i cried unlike the majority of the play s characters would my lovely dress come out of this alive my lovely dress my lovely vintage dress my lovely off white vintage dress the dress waiting for me expectantly back in the hotel room today body really i didn t need to panic straight away though i m a grown woman and this wasn t my first time at the menstruation rodeo is that a thing i bet it is a thing somewhere imagine and i had some emergency tampons in my bag i always do tampons cos you just never know tissues need you ask biscuits cos biscuits and a pen and paper cos when things like this happen you know i ll be writing it all down but i had only come prepared with the light variety and quite frankly for the sake of the dress and my dignity i d have much preferred to have had the back up of the whoah there these will suck so much moisture out of you you d better have a drink handy sort but life doesn t always check what kind of sanitary protection you re packing before it gives you bloody lemons does it ladies i suppose i could have gone out and bought something more reassuringly absorbent but we didn t have a great deal of time to go wandering we needed to eat go back to the hotel shower and change and then find the theatre on the other side of the city which neither i nor james had ever been to before plus truth be told i hadn t the first idea about where one would go to buy such dreary essentials in london i mean i was only in town for a total of around 70 hours yet i could have told you a dozen places on the south bank where you could pick up organic rhubarb juice or anything you could ask for served up in a brioche bun but i wouldn t have known where to begin to track down anything practical is there such a thing as a pack of regular tampons and a pint of semi skimmed in all of the capital so i just made do with what i had and i refused to change my wardrobe plans if that doesn t tell you about my dedication to wearing the right thing for the right occasion then nothing will and i headed to the barbican in the clothes i d always intended and you can forget about carefree teenagers rollerblading in white shorts what those feminine hygiene advertisers really ought to be filming is a stubborn woman who s had her outfit picked out for weeks speed walking in wedges across london in a light drizzle who gets to the theatre on time all while successfully not bleeding on a stone coloured 1970s vintage dress because hamlet doesn t stop when your period starts i know i look so relaxed don t i long story short everything behaved as it should including benny c and there was no untoward gushing don t which was just as well really as i had an eagle eyed usher sitting inches away from me throughout facing into the audience to prevent anyone taking photos of the stage you might remember this post where i talked all about it so if i had bled on the upholstery the chances of me casually sneaking out afterwards would have been very slim right then so now we ve got hamlet cleanly out of the way let s leap to the next morning where i d arranged to meet up with kirsty the loveliest of longtime best friends but who until that morning i d only ever spoken to online again i had my outfit planned in advance and again as it was yet another light coloured dress it was biologically inappropriate one look at my wardrobe choices could tell you i really hadn t been anticipating being anywhere near any blood at that particular moment in time me in the frock on the way to meet kirsty here again i decided not to change my outfit plans not least because as we d never met in real life before i d told her to keep a look out beneath the london eye for someone wearing a white dress with black pinstripes if you re going to be unromantic about it yes we did have each other s phone numbers and yes i could have phoned her to warn her of the change but i generally don t make a massacre of my clothing and so i thought i d be ok that there was no real need to be extra careful by dressing head to toe in black it would be fine sticking with the white dress wouldn t it after more criss crossing of london chatting taking photos visiting an exhibition at royal academy all while wearing white those advertisers were missing another trick we settled in fortnum mason s ice cream parlour because if anything is going to seal this momentous meeting in real life stage of our friendship it was eating expensive ice cream together although apparently there was an even greater friendship testing moment still to come on a visit to the fortnum mason s toilets which contained a glittering glinting chandelier poshestloosever it turned out that i seriously and swiftly needed to change my protection and no that doesn t mean i needed a new bodyguard although bodyform maybe and also possibly if a little belatedly i could have done with a reassessment of my dress choice without going into graphic detail there had been a mere hair s breadth between where i d halted the situation and where it could soon have ended up ie on the back of my dress so i got myself straight sorted things out and headed back out beneath the fancy chandelier where i was then faced with a decision as to whether or not to say something truly bloodily corporeal that could test our hitherto virtual friendship do i say something about my near miss do i break into this day of delightful culture and violet petal ice cream sundaes with some casual menstruation chat do i ask her to keep a look out through the rest of the day for further thrills and spills because while i doubted it would have ended up as something akin to that scene in carrie i could have easily come away from the situation looking like i d sat on and crushed to death an unfortunate mouse and because i m a grown up and because i couldn t live with the possibility that i d end up walking around the country s capitol with a blood stain on my airy summer linen i decided that i would say something surely a small mortification in an extremely posh shop was better than the leaky alternative and so i announced i ve had a bit of an incident the kind you don t want to have while you re wearing a white dress and without hesitation kirsty turned to me and asked are you alright but it was more than that in those 3 words she wasn t just asking if i was ok she was asking have you got what you need she was asking can i do anything can i help you out and as tests of friendships go her response was quite the clincher in fact i consider our molly hooper and sherlock moment well i would wouldn t i but seriously bear with me in season 2 ep 3 the reichenbach falls episode sherlock knowing he s got to get himself out of a tricky situation goes to see molly and says no not molly i ve just leaked blood everywhere help but i think i m going to die and just like kirsty did to me molly responds immediately with what do you need that s a true friend right and i and my light coloured dresses consider myself fortunate to have found myself a friend in the molly hooper mould another woman defiantly wearing a white frock portrait of marguerite kelsey by meredith frampton tate modern someone who understands someone who is totally there for you in the moment and who doesn t ask too many awkward follow up questions someone who keeps my secret and even comes up with the perfect euphemistic title for the whole situation which we both still use when referring to the incident what happens under the fancy chandelier stays under the fancy chandelier she s even someone who despite having kept it to herself for a year has now stuck with me when i decided that you know what even though it s still awkward i actually quite fancy sharing the entire story with all and sundry online her encouraging reaction when i told hr made me think that maybe other people would like to hear it too and it s during moments like those i ve shared today where female friendship and solidarity means so much because this kind event between women doesn t get talked about very often in public even though it s happening all the time all the time everywhere always no pun intended at any given moment there s someone in light coloured clothing worrying that she s carrying around with her the potential for public embarrassment and if she s lucky like i was she too will have a kirsty or a molly who in an unflinching instant will offer her support someone who in the face of unpredictable bodily functions has got her back someone who she can rely on to always be on red alert literally someone who will be prepared to act as her wing woman or maybe in this instance her with wings woman couldn t resist forgive me i usually say feel free to join in the conversation in the comments or catch me on social media but in this case don t feel obliged if you re anything like me maybe it ll take you a year to get around to feeling brave enough whatever i m sure i ll be around to chat somewhere online in 2017 but if you do feel happy sharing any similarly life affirming female friendship tales to tell then you re very welcome to this was scary to put out there i hope it finds the audience it was intended for julie posted by julie kirk at 16 19 8 comments labels periods honest blogging life documenting story telling london email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest wednesday 10 august 2016 is life too short to eat a surprise trout a fishy meditation on adult responsibilities are you sure this is cod i asked already doubtful of its true nature it was easter weekend and we d eaten all the lamb and chocolate we could and should feasibly digest so we made the mature decision to have something lighter for tea which is how a so called cod of mysterious origins came to be defrosting by the sink its origins were open to debate as neither james nor i had bought it james had brought it home but he couldn t even remember if it was something someone had caught themselves then passed on to or off on him or if it was one of the random fish he occasionally returns home with after visiting his parents although quite what it is about him that makes any number of people feel they need to offer him donations of fish i m not too sure perhaps he was a performing seal in a past life either way this creature had been wrapped in a carrier bag and buried in the bottom of our freezer for months during which it had developed a rigor mortis curl as if one day while minding its own business it had been frozen on the spot while curving its dappled body around an eddy but was it a cod i d hoped so it s white flesh offering a cleansing freshness after all that rich easter fayre and yet as it finally began to soften after many hours defrosting on the draining board i began to have my doubts it can t be cod i said prodding it with the back of a spoon not wanting to transfer the metallic penny like tang of fish skin on to my own it can t be cod because look its flesh is pink it must be salmon which was fine salmon s fine more than fine everything s fine so it s not cod it s salmon swings and roundabouts i like them both and yet once the not cod had warmed up enough to become pliant to the blade allowing james to decapitate it ready for roasting i then began to lose faith in its salmonliness is it even salmon though i asked i don t know if it is you know cut a bit off microwave it and taste it which is when it turned out that the cod that was a salmon wasn t even a salmon it was a trout and frankly neither of us much like trout so now what as an adult what is the right thing to do in this situation what would you do do you eat it because waste not want not or do you abandon it because yolo that disappointing trout confirming mouthful had suddenly presented a raw oozing fishy conundrum is life too short to eat a trout you weren t expecting we ve all asked that at some point in our lives haven t we haven t we as an adult it s a tricky decision but when you re younger everything is a bit more cut and dried for a start you rarely have to decapitate your own food in fact it s positively discouraged as a child when you re faced with a decision over whether or not you re going to have to eat something you really don t fancy your thinking isn t so woolly back then the situation would tend to resolve itself in one of two ways unwanted trout handling method 1 refuse point blank to eat it with a dietrich esque turn of the head and a dictatorially defiant confidence you d dig in your heels while writhing and wriggling to avoid the offending plate fork parental control you d boldly declare i m not eating that which is a feat in itself through watertight sealed lips or else unwanted trout handling method 2 you d have to eat it no arguments you d begrudgingly eat it because your parents were the kind of people who d simply insist that you did there are children in africa who d...
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