Blue Dress Hot Mess

29/04/25:

I know the shade of grey which means the clouds are about to rain fat raindrops. It means the elderflower is out, and the Earth smells like crushed apples and horse manure, or hot cross buns with the butter running off, or wet dog. The raindrops taste like nothing. They land flatly, fatly, on the winter wheat – all yellow-green-green-yellow against the gunmetal sky. The clouds have baby blue lining, not silver. I wonder what that means for my future; the horizon is blue. It means it is April: and an April shower. It does not mean – does not have to mean – any more.

After all, I am young. I will write again (I am feeling the lack; I miss the pencil; the notebook; the view of Paris out of my window. Inspiration is a stream, not a sea. It has no regular tides; curse it). I may fall in love, if I let myself, and if someone chooses to love me.

04/05/25:

I used to believe that love was not a choice. You were struck down by it – what the French call a coup de coeur – a razor-sharp Cupid’s arrow which no wind could blow off course. The arrow’s path was a highway to the heart or to the loins. There was nothing in between.

I think now that loving is a choice.

Being in love is not natural; it is primal. It is the basest instinct which rebels against all the other instincts, and it always, always wins. (Love is a Petulant child. The youngest (like me). Cupid sits fatly on a high-chair in a white kitchen, licking a spoon covered in chocolate-cake batter. He is about 2 and a half, and glows like his milk was heaven-sent. The raw mix is making his chubby cheeks look like mud. His fingers are sticky as he draws his arrow from its quiver, and places it carefully, with all the concentration of a young child learning a new skill, onto his bow. I stand behind the camera, taking the mental picture. The baby looks up, and concentrates his little eyes on me).

The rebels rule the heart. But their coup, which rages just as the arrow strikes home (the baby sticks his tongue out; aims; releases) can be suppressed by a presence of mind. It takes all your force, all your inner strength to choose love (perhaps that is why, globally, Nations are so bad at it), and frankly, personally, I don’t think it’s worth fighting. Even now, even so many years after that first uprising in my own heart, so long after my own heart became the landing zone for the sharpest, cruelest of Cupid’s shots (an arrow with just a taste of sticky chocolate cake on its tip; a hint of romantic sweetness before a bombardment of bitterness), I would choose to host those rebels again. The problem is, once they are welcomed, they are extremely reluctant to leave. They set up camp, light great bonfires on which they toast marshmallows with their friends (mmm, a blissful mix; chocolate cake and marshmallows), and attract a million more rebels day by day, the more one falls in love (more chocolate-covered kisses. More champagne and strawberries. More sex). By the end of a love affair, the camp is so busy your heart positively heaves. It is almost like a festival; tents, yurts – the rich and the poor mix with no distinction – noise, constant noise, and the tang of burnt marshmallow floating in the air like a drug; that is the Love Camp, the one they searched for in the 60s. And above it all, behind it all, within it all, there is this omnipresent, irrepressible throb; there is no other way to describe it. It beat-beat. beat-beats.

It is the noise of your heart.

10/05/25:

It is a sun-through-closed-eyelids day, the very best we have had so far. It feels like Spring and sweet white wine. I am sitting on a green-striped deckchair angled towards the morning sun, which keeps getting caught in a steady traffic-flow of fluffy clouds. I wear dungarees like a toddler, and a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up (I intend to tan this year; if I can’t find myself a job, I can at least try to look good searching). A small black fly is floundering in the suncream oil on my knee, either committing suicide by drowning or enjoying an enormous bath. The dog sits under the deckchair, hot.

I was roused from the depths of the Marais in Paris – I am reading a novel about an art gallery off the Place des Vosges – to the sound of a lap, lap, lapping. I looked up. Was the swimming pool leaking? No, it’s not even on yet. Were some birds playing a bizarre kind of mating game, calling to one another in voices thick with lust which sounded like ice cream caught in their throats? No, I could see nothing but black crows collecting the final wisps of horse hair I’d brushed off their backs this morning. I looked down: Gabriel (the dog) was lapping my empty glass, which lay on its side in the mown grass, a tribe of black ants performing the conga around its rim. Banana smoothie: dates; chia seeds; peanut butter. A delicious concoction. Surely not good for dogs?

The dog is now under the deckchair again, scratching. His uppity-downy movements are giving me a back massage, pummeling my flesh through green-striped fabric and denim dungarees.

If this is Spring in England, I am fortunate to be living it.