summer over

i am working at fabulous magazine and have been for the past six months, and i love it. apart from that, things are trundling along. the above book is my life. the crimson petal and the white by michael faber has taken me months to read (900 pages!) but i'm almost done. i'm quite distraught at what i'll do when i'm done with it.

summer is done. i have been to four festivals (the big chill, bestival, parklife and aeon) and i am all festivalled out. i have seen kanye west and the cure. i don't think i want to see the inside of a tent for about ten years, seriously.

it is my birthday soon and i want an amazing leather bomber jacket and to go to paris. that's about it (either/or).

chop & change

Since I last blogged, fifteen thousand years ago, I have been sunning myself in India (above), spending all my cash on nail art stuff from Peckham, going to Manchester a lot, getting into the dirty old perve that is Charles Bukowski, reading seven newspapers every day from cover to cover for work (literally! THE EXPRESS IS THE WORST EVER BY THE WAY), drinking lots of tequila, and getting well and truly into The Only Way is Essex.

Need to read more (specifically Thomas Hardy). Need to blog more. Need to write more. I have stopped writing which is the worst: I was always going to write a book and that's more or less gone out of the window. Must do, must do, must stop watching shit on TV and actually be creative. It's hard to write when I write all day for work. It's hard to put stuff into MY turn of phrase when I have a certain way of writing for work, and I am so heavily influenced by the tabloids.

I am working at Fabulous magazine, the Sunday supplement that comes with The News of the World, and I am having a ball. I get to write about TV, film, staying in, going out and everything in between. Plus I got to interview Shaggy on the phone which was one of the highlights of my life. I love being an intern there, and I hope I get to stay on for as long as I can. I am happy with work and it is great but there is always an eeny bit of me that is unsure what will happen next, and that scares me a bit.

Graduating from Leeds seems like a million years ago and it really lays heavy on my heart when I think about it. I miss everyone there. All my boys, all my girls. All my special special kids. I'd give anything to go back to this time last year. I miss Leeds like crazy and I dream about running back up there for good one day. A part of me thinks I'll move back north one day. If the kind of job I want so fiercly was on offer up there, I'd be north like a flash, but the sad truth is that I can't really do what I want to do in Leeds. It's really hard and I don't like it as a truth, but it's true. There are so many people I miss so badly in Leeds though. It's always been hard being so torn in half.

That being said, I don't think I will be able to stay in London forever and ever. I would like an adventure soon and a change of scene. Leeds or Brighton. One of the two. It's always in my head. I would like to live somewhere else for a while in the not so distant future for sure. I am not really fussed about holidays for a while, more consumed with thoughts of a flat that I can make my own, big rooms, space for my stuff, and a place to write and think. Though I am a positive girl, I think there's always a little bit of melancholy inside me. Maybe I read too much Thomas Hardy. I probably should have been born in 1870. Though there was no such thing as cheap flights to Kerala and Joey Essex in 1870.

India, revisited

I last went to India in 2007. I went to Goa with a revolving door of friends (about eight of us came and went to the same ramshackle house in Baga over a period of five months). We spent most of our time on the beach and at the markets. It was pretty much a dream six weeks.

This time next week I will on a plane to Kochi in Kerala to meet my best friend and blogger/makeup artist extraordinaire, Lucy. We're venturing further south than Goa to Kerala, which is at the southernmost tip of India. I don't know how my milkbottle complexion is going to take it (badly at first, but then it will adjust) but I'm basically going to drink mango juice, go on backwater boat rides, and eat garlic naan for three weeks straight. I haven't been out of the country since Croatia 2009 and I need sun!

Something to reflect on

'Electric Louis' chair and 'Low Voltage' mirror by Lee Broom.

If I had a spare £2,900 hanging around I'd buy the mirror. The chair is £4,300. I think they are amazing.

Or maybe I'd do a postgrad journalism course.

Either/or.

Baroque and roll

This reclaimed bespoke baroque mirror is my favourite thing in the world, ever, full stop. It's by Squint and is covered in velvet and scraps of Liberty fabric. This year I'm getting my own flat, and (in my dreams) this mirror will hang over my fireplace. Oh and I'm getting a kitten called Rio Ferdinand too (this part will actually happen).

My favourite paintings

Self Portrait by Picasso (1901), Girl in a Chemise by Picasso (1905), Starry Night Over the Rhone by Van Gogh (1888), Peach Tree in Blossom by Van Gogh (1888), Branches with Almond Blossom by Van Gogh (1890), The Kiss by Gustav Klimt (1907) The Lady of Shallot by J.W. Waterhouse (1888)

I've wanted to write a blog post about my favourite art for a while. I finally sat down today and made a little list, which you will have seen above.

What I didn't realise, or at least had forgotten from the hazy days of A-level art, is that my favourite paintings all seem to be of the 1880 - 1907 period, which is (no, you've probably not guessed it, unless you did English with me at Leeds), coincidentally, the fin de siècle, i.e. my favourite literary period too. I'm pretty spooked by this. Maybe I have forgotten a lot of my art knowledge (which I like to think is at least reasonable - my parents are both artists, I loved art at school, and I did History of Art in my first year of university), but I think this is massively odd - I wasn't as into literature when I was at school as I am now, and when I went to university, I didn't have as much time for art - so I honestly haven't connected the two in much of a way until now.

As I've already gone into, the fin de siècle is the bit at the end of the eighteenth century when people got frightened about the passing of time and basically freaked out about things like illness, religion, disease, crime, decadence, and the general downwards spiral of society. Literature took a creepy, dark turn, resulting in some of the best gothic books ever written (think Oscar Wilde and Thomas Hardy). And in terms of my favourite paintings, I can see the same themes! There are depressed, blue tones in Picasso and Van Gogh, there are tragic women in Waterhouse and Picasso, and there is tons of gold and opulence in Klimpt. My favourite things in art, be it literature or painting, are all present - women with a story to tell, the eery gothic, and the extravagance of gold and jewels. I LOVE WEIRD, DEPRESSING STUFF.

Top 5 things for September

This is my obligatory 'i am a bad blogger' post. Well, I am. I have been lazy. I haven't gone anywhere, I've just been a bit busy. Summer is almost finished, and I have been working hard and playing hard. These are my current top things, memories, and obsessions for September so far.

1. I am half way through Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and of course, I love it. Give me angry, feisty girls, gothic ghoulishness, sexual repression, and tall dark handsome men and I'm pretty much happy. Especially if you mix this in with the Victorian and the weird. I am impressed with Jane herself, and I am excited about the horror and fear which I know is to come. I know the storyline vaguely (though not completely, this is my first time reading, so please don't spoil it for me or I will have to lock you in an attic) and I am already comparing it in my mind to The Yellow Wallpaper, as well as other books featuring dissolute rakes by the Brontës, such as The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and of course Wuthering Heights. Can you tell I'm jealous of all the freshers who are starting their English degrees?

2. Fry's Peppermint Cream. I'm having one of these in a minute.

3. My internship at mydeco.com. It's going really well so far and I am very happy there. The offices are lovely, the people are lovely, the website is lovely. Interior design is new to me, but is something I am getting very excited about already. I have been getting to grips with CMS for the website and have even been trusted to blog already! Next week I get to go and check out and blog about London Design Week for the website. It's all very exciting.

4. Notting Hill. I'm not about to get all cliched Hugh-Grant-and-Julia-Roberts on you but it's a thoroughly lovely place to work. My office is on the eleventh floor of a very tall building and the views are incredible - pastel townhouses, Wembley stadium, and miles and miles in every direction of every bit of London you could think. It is even looks good in the rain. I am loving working in West London and getting accustomed to a new tube route: I worked for years and years in London Bridge and was getting sick to death of it so I really feel like a new woman right now on the Circle line. Notting Hill has tons of vintage shops, cafes, and things to keep me entertained on my lunch break. I'm happy. Change is good.

5. BESTIVAL. The last festival of the summer. A complete pain in the arse to get from and to. About twenty of my friends from Leeds and London. The sign off of an amazing summer.

Next weekend: I am back up north for a weekend of proper high jinks (see above: Leeds). Bring. It. On.