October 2021
This month was one thousand years long - but not in a long and painful slog kind of way, in a bursting at the seams with newness kind of way. I went back to university and spent full and fascinating hours across the libraries and classrooms and coffee shops of Bloomsbury for the first weeks of my MSc in Digital Anthropology at UCL. I enjoyed magic moments in the Yorkshire countryside on an attempted Big Gay Weekend to Hebden Bridge, and my regular Big Gay Weekends in the landscapes and bodies of water of Sussex with the person I love. I cycled endlessly across the city on my new bike, feeling self-sufficient and independent and only falling off the one time after one too many too strong pints with ex-colleagues. I went back to my old workplace, and my old school, and did an incredibly fun portrait commission which ended with a TikTok takedown to an audience of 1.5 million. And I write this from a hotel in Istanbul where my job has taken me, ending a month of stimulating professional projects and interactions.
Really good! Really a very good month.
favourite film: Garage People, a charming documentary about the wildly diverse hobbies carried out on a street of garages in northernmost Russia
favourite book: finished nothing, but very much enjoyed Rebecca Tamás’s Essays on the Human and Nonhuman
favourite TV: The North Water, another horrible show about the horrible sea that I hated and yet couldn’t not finish
favourite art: bold colours and homosexuality in Israeli artist Doran Langberg’s portraits and landscapes at Victoria Miro
favourite theatre: returning to The Yard to see Athena on press night, their first live play in two years and a true joy