I promised I'd blog, but my focus has been elsewhere and the words have not flown freely. I've been working on a creative project I'm hoping to get underway quite soon and have been happily consumed by that glorious phase of lofty idealising and brainstorming. I'll spare you the details because this project is (obviously) still in it's infancy and also because I like the idea of putting people in suspense.

Also consuming much of my time is my complete overhaul of the design of this blog. Even if you've only followed me for a matter of weeks, you'll probably have noticed that i have a weakness for tweaking the design little by little. Sometimes it's the header, sometimes the font, but over time the whole design has become completely unrecognisable to what it was before. Or before that. If you were an occasional reader you couldn't be blamed for assuming it was an entirely different blog. As the author, I'm constantly frustrated by the incomplete feeling of the space. How can it ever be finished if it never felt cohesive in the first place? So I've started from scratch, and I'm hoping that I'll end up with something that I'll like enough to stop pursuing that intangible perfect layout by making those irritatingly minute changes every. other. week.

In other news, that early morning ritual of ours that I have raved about (too) many times in the past is back and I'm very happy about it. It eroded into late, headachy rising when I stopped working in a coffee shop and Tom started finding himself working on his thesis more productively in the middle of the night. But! Tom's thesis is finished and he has completed Honours and I am back making coffee for early morning commuters. Early morning rising is back and I remember why I loved it so. I'm actually back at the same place I was earlier in the year, the two staff of our tiny shop had to be let off for five months due to nearby infrastructure works sending our customers elsewhere. I love being back and seeing all of my old favourite customers again. I am surprised to see that my memory has retained everyone's regular coffee orders and wondering if that might perhaps explain why I can never remember useful information.

Just some thoughts and updates. I have so much I want to say and so little patience to sit here and write it all down. Yet. I'll let you know when I unveil the new layout; I'm excited to say goodbye to this one.

ps. Royal Baby Boy Presented To Public In Traditional Manner (I laughed)

secrets and solitude

Here's a little something I wrote a long time ago. Time passes and she feels like an old lost friend, but this is a story about myself.



"I just think we should distance ourselves from her." She took a considered sip of her cappuccino, careful not to tamper with the perfect froth sitting on top, placed the cup back on it's saucer and turned to the group. "What do you think?" She was not looking for a consensus, rather daring someone to object.

And so it was that I lost every friend I had made at school, without my even knowing. 

I was seventeen years old when I suffered the worst of my bullying. The teasing of my Primary years proved to be nothing when I later encountered the ripple effect of a simple say-so from the leader of a crowd. 

I returned daily to the cafe where my ostracism was decided. It was a beautiful place to sit quietly. In the middle of the most commercial and plastic part of the city I had found a sanctuary. This place was a storey above the noise of it's surrounding shopping Mecca. High ceilings and white walls lined with furniture and an endless supply of caffeine and cake. I would nurse the same coffee for hours with a notebook balanced on my knee and a watchful eye looking out for those I still foolishly believed friends. I was not there for myself, I was there in the hope that I might bring back the days I had only glimpsed, of a friendship forged over coffee cups and ashtrays on a balcony above the hubbub of the city. Hindsight proves that a wide berth had been forged around this shop in the daily activities of these former friends. My presence rendered their once-regular a no-go zone. But I wasn't to learn of this for many months yet, and thus I created my new lonely home with company, not solitude, in mind. 

"I collect people." She nodded to the surrounding group of contrived eccentrics. "I have an artist friend, an actor, a singer, a couple of  dancers and now," she had looked to me, "I will have a writer." She rattled off the list like a proud mother, as if their creative achievements might in some way be attributed to her. Perhaps she wished herself their muse. Perhaps she was just like me, trying to prove to herself that she had value.