The odd thing about writing a blog is that it is all too easy to pour your heart out and forget that someone -someone you know- could be reading it. At the moment my head is a whirl of petty anxieties, but then something happened this morning to make me realise that life is too short, and that you should always appreciate the moment. I took these photos when I visited my mum last week. She lives in the sort of tiny village that I grew up in, and although I choose to live in a city now, I miss the balm of quiet days when nothing happens and nothing much changes.

I stayed in London last night, and as usually totally overestimated how long it would take me to get to work in the morning. So I just spent about an hour wandering the streets, flaneuring, amazed as ever as how streets just kept on unfolding all around me. I love the always slightly tatty cafes and kebab shops and newsagents of Shoreditch, the way trendy types in skinny jeans and sunglasses loiter alongside clumps of schoolgirls in bottle green and older African ladies in flamboyant turbans. But I also fancy myself as a Bloomsbury lady of leisure, patrolling the smoky columns of the British Museum, the wide paths and grand squares that open out of the shabbiest alley. I wrote my university dissertation about the streets of London in Virginia Woolf's novels - how they gave her female characters license to be free. Eighty years or so on from Mrs Dalloway, I still find something exciting in being able to walk and explore, to hop on and off buses, to find colour in details: the faded Victorian adverts still blazoned on sooty brick walls, a girl's bright pink shoes, jumbles of fruit sold on the street as they must have been for centuries, the rather sweetly old-fashioned sex-line postcards in very Britishly red phone boxes. 

Of course, I meant 'commuter' not 'consumer'. But of course you noticed that x

Thoughts on knitting

Today I received in the post my lovely new (second-hand) copy of Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Domesticity, after months of ogling it in bookshops and feeling tempted to hand over £25 for a copy. It is a little remorse-inducing that it arrived the day after my rent payment annihilated my overdraft, but who cares, it's like a big sticky tray of cupcakes that I know will cheer me up, despite the guilt.

Jane's blog, yarnstorm, is one of the reasons I wanted a blog, it's so bright and colourful and I love the delight she takes in knitting and baking and creating things. My own attempts at cooking are farcical, but I have always enjoyed making things. As a teenager, when most girls were probably in Claire's Accessories, I loved nothing more than perusing glue guns or glow-in-the-dark Fimo. Since then, living in rented accommodation has somewhat curbed my collections of yarn and buttons and 'useful' bits of cardboard, and I have found knitting to be a helpfully compact and transportable craft (although I did liberate some enormous lidless glass sweet jars from someone's recycling box and these are now full of the burgeoning squares for my patchwork). 

I can't help but be a bit defensive about it, although another hero of mine, Debbie Stoller (founder of Stitch n Bitch and the amazing Bust magazine) has probably revolutionised the concept of knitting and other crafts as something for grannies or '70s throwbacks macrameing their own muesli. It still seems to baffle people, but I could argue its eco-friendly, anti-consumerist, possibly punky ethos all day (and probably have at some point - don't even get me started on the retro/feminist issues).

On a similar note, I was knitting on the train today, poring over my p1,k1s, and became aware of a glassy-eyed consumer glancing repeatedly at it over my shoulder, possibly thinking it was an alien copy of the Metro. I am used to people eye-balling my knitting, so I ignored him. The girl next to me was deep in her copy of what seemed to be some kind of Islamic text. And I couldn't help but feel a little jolt of affinity with her; just two people doing their own thing. 

Springy

There is a strange sense of 'give' in the air today. Standing at the train station wasn't like being whipped around the face for once, and everywhere there seem to be tulips and hyacinths and suddenly magnolia trees as extravagant as wedding dresses. Snow is forecast for Sunday, but perhaps at last spring is on its way...

I have been listening obsessively to P J Harvey, whose otherworldy pagan carolling seems to fit the underground rumblings.

Sweaty

I went to a lindy hop club night last night, and am still in a fit of pique about it. I am finding learning lindy really hard. Having been jiving for about two years, I am now back to lurking around the edges of dance floors, wanting to get on there but also being scared of making an arse of myself. That said, I am sick of certain people asking me to dance. I always seem to attract the more bullying - and sweaty - minority. These are the sort of chaps (and I'm sure it's not always intentional) who seem to think it's a manly and impressive move to spin you round four times or simply force you the way they want you to go or -sometimes- involve some kind of pelvis/chest grinding. Of course there are lots of lovely leaders out there, but there are a slight minority (usually of the older generation) who think I won't notice they're looking down my frock.