travel

Friday, 6 January 2017 / travel

New Years Eve in Ireland

I've had this feeling for a while that I must go to Ireland. I'm not sure what sparked it, but I found myself reading Irish literature almost exclusively, in what I can only assume was an attempt to vicariously absorb a sort of Irishness through the pages. John Banville, Caitriona Lally and Kevin Barry all found their way to the top of my reading list, pushing in front of perfectly good authors who lacked the decency to be born on the Emerald Isle. Naturally then, when my friend Steph - who I've seen only once since she moved to Paris seven years ago - invited me on the New Years Eve trip she and her friends were taking to Dublin, I said yes instantly.

I came across an incredible vintage shop in Dublin, run by the fantastically colourful Dandelion. She was a Sixties groupie goddess, decked out in a psychedelic mini dress and huge, drawn-on eyelashes. An hour later, and I was 100€ poorer. It was definitely worth it for my new 1930s tea dress, the black caped chiffon mini of Stevie Nicks' dreams, and a 1960s green velvet mini dress (apt, no?). I like to pick up vintage whenever I travel to a new place.

I spent time not only in Dublin, but in Connemara, Galway and Cong too. The serene beauty of Connemara was startling, and almost impossible to do justice to with an iPhone. The wild landscape was like something out of Middle-earth. It's the kind of place that makes you glad to be alive.

Cong is a quaint village in the West of Ireland. It's very proud of its role in the 1952 romantic-comedy, The Quiet Man. There's a beautiful statue of the film's stars, John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, near Cong Abbey. Galway was lovely, of course. It was a beautiful day, and the town was packed for the bank holiday. There's nothing better than chips on the seafront, is there?

Our actual New Years Eve plans got scuppered. I got on so well with one of my hostelmates, Luisa, that I ended up celebrating with her instead of Steph and her friends. It was raining heavily, but we wanted to see the city firework display from the bridge. Unfortunately, it got cancelled at 23.58pm due to the weather, so we ended up limping into 2017, thoroughly sodden and drinking cheap champagne out of plastic cups with an angry Irish couple.

Happy 2017!

Monday, 19 December 2016 / music, travel

The Top Five Moments of Desert Trip*

It was probably a little extreme, having never been to a festival or even gone camping before. I should have started small, maybe a little campsite in Aberdovey or something. But no, I decided to fly halfway across the world to sleep alone in the middle of the desert for my first experience - during tarantula mating season at that. I think my camping inexperience really came to light when I started confidently bashing something into the ground that was supposed to go into the canopy. Maybe it was when I brought literally nothing to sleep in but a tent and a child's sleeping bag.

A blanket would have been nice to offset that hard, hard ground beneath the tent. Oh, and one of those little gazebo things that campers smarter than me were utilising might have allowed me to stay in my tent after the sun started working its evil magic at around 6.30am, when it suddenly went from unbearably cold to surface-of-the-sun hot. But this post isn't about my camping mishaps - if it was, I'd mention how many times I tripped over the neon orange guylines and landed flat on my face in front of my attractive Norwegian neighbours. So, without further ado, I present to you my top five moments from the inaugural Desert Trip.

1. Neil Young performing Harvest Moon under the full moon

Of the acts I was most excited to see at Desert Trip, Neil Young fell somewhere around fourth. He's written some of the most glorious songs of the last century, but I was never mad to see him. He turned out to be an absolute lunatic, in the best possible way. A true outlaw. His performance of the classic 'Harvest Moon' ended up being the most beautiful and poetic musical experience of my life.

Picture the scene: A hundred thousand people gathered in the middle of the desert, bonded by their mutual love for music, fall silent. Neil Young has begun to sing. As the gorgeous melody of Harvest Moon starts up, an actual full moon begins to rise. In fact, many quietly acknowledge that it's the fastest they've ever seen the moon move. As he croons the lyric, 'there's a full moon rising...' and the screens switch to spectacular shots of the one rapidly ascending above us, the crowd whoops softly. When Neil strums his guitar for the final time, the moon is hanging huge and bright immediately over him. Around me, people are crying at the ethereal beauty of what they've just witnessed. Goosebumps. Incidentally, Paul McCartney was also quite excited by the moon and repeatedly led the audience in mass werewolf howls during his set.

2. Waking up to the actual Roger Waters singing Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Sounds bizarre, doesn't it? Unfortunately, desert dust and contact lenses aren't exactly cosy bedfellows, and by the final day of the festival, I was basically temporarily blinded. I was in agony. I had to get my eyes flushed in the medical tent. I had no choice but to remove the lenses, which is unfortunate because I'm severely myopic. Long story (kind of) short, the fact that I made it to the venue, back to the campsite in the dark, travelled to LAX, navigated one of the world's busiest airport on a day they experienced technical issues and changed terminals, then made it through Heathrow arrivals while alone and unable to see a foot in front of my face is probably my life's greatest achievement. Only casualty: my favourite hat, accidentally abandoned in the airport bathroom post-wee.

Anyway, the point is that due to my blindness, I missed Roger Waters' set. This was really upsetting because I'd heard how incredible it was from Weekend One folks, and just about anyone who has ever seen him perform. I've seen footage since and it's stupendous. Miraculously, I managed to get back to my tent in one piece after the Who, and fell asleep feeling sorry for myself before he even came on stage. A while later, I faded into consciousness to the sound of Roger Waters performing Shine on You Crazy Diamond. Not through my earphones or my gramophone - the actual Roger Waters actually singing the actual classic Shine on You Crazy Diamond for real. Even though I didn't get to see him, lying in my tent alone in the desert and taking that in - still dazed with sleep - ended up being one of the most surreal and incredible experiences I could have hoped for.

3. Paul McCartney's entire set

I was kind of nervous seeing Paul. The Beatles have meant so much to me in my life. I have made some of my closest friends because of The Beatles, and at times The Beatles have been my closest friends. Even though John's my favourite, it was Paul who wrote the majority of the songs that have touched my life the most. My nerves came from the bad press he's received in recent years for his vocals, mainly from the scourge of humanity itself, the Daily Mail - but were these criticisms well founded? Would the pedestal I put him on be kicked down, my adoration tainted? As much as I have defended him over the years, it can't be denied that his voice hasn't aged as well as, say, Mick Jagger or Tom Jones.

It's worth saying that I was in extraordinary amounts of contact lens-related pain and had limited vision - and it was still one of the greatest nights of my life. I'm usually one of those infuriating people who doesn't move much during a concert. But I was singing, dancing, swaying, crying, yelling, clapping, screaming and generally behaving like an absolutely lunatic. I found a note in my phone recently, composed on the night of the concert, which simply read: Paul McCartney is a god amongst men. My standouts were Maybe I'm Amazed (his live version is always better than the recorded one), Helter Skelter, Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite (yeah, I know), the Abbey Road Medley, Jet (accompanied by an actual jet flying over) and A Day in the Life/Give Peace a Chance/Why Don't We Do It In The Road with Neil Young. Then again, I did miss my favourite Wings song - Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five - while trying to fix my lenses in the toilet.

4. All the cool people

I wasn't concerned about travelling alone because it makes you more approachable. I find that you tend to meet more interesting people when you're not already moving in tribes. Most of the fantastic, unusual, well-travelled people I met were considerably older than me. Minus the music, my Desert Trip experience seemed to happen in vignettes. In minutes, I'd meet and get to know people on a deeper level than I'd known anyone before and then we'd part like strangers. I'd discover what moves them, what brought them here, the parts of the world they'd travelled to, their feelings on the current political situation in the US, how they'd dressed in their youth. Small talk didn't exist for a weekend. I felt more interesting by default that these people thought I was worth conversing with. It helps that Americans are so much less reserved. I encountered such incredible generosity, from JR who sincerely offered me both money and guidance 20 minutes into our friendship after learning I was travelling with very little, to the Peruvians with the free pot, to the group of Australians who invited me to stay with them in their tent. So to everyone I met - Alex from Chile, JR from the Bronx, Bob from Northern California, the Aussies, the Peruvians, Ben, Jessica, Gabriel etc - thank you for making the experience what it was. You made Desert Trip.

5. The Photography Experience

Watching footage of Desert Trip has been weird because the energy of the show doesn't come through at all. Many people were so amazed by the festival that they walked around in a daze afterwards (though some of that was probably due to 'other' variables ;)), but on video the whole thing looked and sounded a little lacklustre. I once read an interview with famed rock photographer Bob Gruen on the subject. He said that "video hardly captured the excitement of rock and roll at all. To capture one peak moment in a still photograph that says so much about the energy and excitement, the mood of an artist - you can only do that in a photograph."

Gruen was one of the contributing photographers to the Photography Experience, which always seemed to have a large queue of people waiting to enter. Some of these people were inevitably mainly interested in gaining access to the only air conditioned building onsite, but everyone was blown away by the exhibition. It didn't matter that some of the photographs were already well-known to rock fans - nothing beats seeing over 200 of them together in an environment like this. I've never wanted to be a Stone more. Brilliant.

Honorary mentions: delicious vegan food, great vintage market, nice merch selection.

* from the POV of someone who was blind during The Who and missed Roger Waters completely.

Wednesday, 2 November 2016 / personal, travel

Los Angeles

LA. LA. I've been avoiding writing about it because I didn't want to turn it into 'work'. Silly, non? But I had such an incredible time, and I was scared I wouldn't be able to express that wonder in words. Especially as I have very few photographs to back them up.

It's hard to eloquently put into words why I loved LA so much. Had I been to Marrakesh, I could have talked about the chaos of the colourful markets, abuzz with mad collective energy and magical trinkets. A visit to Siem Reap and its ancient temples would have provided endless paragraphs on the sort of spiritual electricity that burns down the back of your neck and travels over your skin in such historic holy places.

But Los Angeles? It smells quite bad (though my sense of smell is mercifully dull). It's the dirtiest Western city I have ever been to, and I'm from Wolverhampton. There's no strong sense of culture or history beyond the entertainment industry, and even that stretches back only to the last century. I experienced more street harassment in my first half-hour in LA than I previously had in my entire life - and I've been to Paris. My favourite was the guy in the Spiderman costume who ran across Sunset Boulevard to catch me. Having stroked my arm while hitting on me for several minutes as I tried to enter a supermarket, I finally managed to escape, but not before he finished with this charming line: "Thanks for letting me touch you. I hope you'll let me taste you." And that's the story of how I was sexually harassed by Spiderman on my way to buy donuts. What a charmer.

So why did I love LA? Forgive the cliché, but I felt free. I had been concerned that travelling alone would reduce any avenues for adventure, but it only heightened my experiences. I'd never felt so instantly at home before, like my spirit was at rest. Maybe I lived there in a past life.

I kept being overwhelmed by the distinct sensation that I'd discovered what happiness felt like. For a long time, I've been convinced that it doesn't exist. Certainly not for me, anyway, and probably not for anyone else either. That at best, it's an illusion only a few of us had seen for what it truly is. But I certainly felt like I was happy in LA, and excited, too, at the realisation that it was finally my turn. I had never been happy before. My head felt clear. It is usually muddled, filled with cotton wool. But I knew what I would have to do when I got home, and it no longer seemed as intimidating. I was restored.

Perhaps I should elaborate on the things I got up to in California. I'm saving Desert Trip for a separate post, and there's going to be a "California Haul" post, as well. Los Angeles is home to some incredible vintage, which I wish I'd bought more of. It was 32c, which for a pasty Brit like me is pretty hot. It was too sweaty to wear my hat, which is a real bummer because I ended up leaving it in an airport restroom. On the first day, I decided to go for a wander around the neighbourhood, really get a feel for Hollywood. I always forget how long American avenues are, so I got lost quite easily - you can be on the right avenue yet miles away from your destination. In the UK, even if you're on the wrong end of the avenue, you're usually still only a few doors away.

By chance, I came upon the Hollywood Forever Cemetery without looking for it. Like most cemeteries, it's very peaceful. I've never understood why people don't like graveyards - they're just about the most serene places you could visit. The visitors are quiet and respectful, and the dead aren't saying anything either. Of course, it didn't look much like a regular cemetery. Hollywood Forever was beautiful. There wasn't another soul around. I could almost feel the hopeful energy of the young starlets who arrived in Hollywood to make it in the movies during the Golden Age.

The next day, I walked to Los Feliz. My destination was Squaresville, a vintage store famed for its eclectic, low-priced goods. I like to pick up vintage clothes when I travel. It's interesting to see how location influences styles from the same era, and it's nice to have travel memories attached to your clothes. The shop was populated by groups of well-dressed young women when I arrived (one of whom, an Australian, was wearing the most perfect silver tutu), though they sell menswear as well. The range was incredible - old band tees, dusty Edwardian jackets, exquisite 1930s lingerie and ridiculous 1970s platforms all occupied the same space, and at fantastic prices, too. I could have bought half the shop, but I was trying to be conservative about my spending so early on in the trip. I ended up with a 1970s Gunne Sax maxi ($28), a cute frilly maroon dress ($25), a pink lace blouse ($18) and a beautiful tooled leather bag ($28). I also picked up some cracking items of clothing in thrift stores around LA, but I'll save that for the haul post. For a sneak peak of the Gunne Sax and the bag, check out the picture at the top of the post.

I took a trip to Universal Studios, mainly to visit Hogwarts. I didn't enjoy the Wizarding World in Hollywood as much as Orlando, which I wrote about here. Either the Forbidden Journey was different between parks, or it just wasn't as good as I remembered it. At least I had time to explore the rest of the park this time. I particularly enjoyed the Studio Tour, which reaffirmed why I love filmmaking. Watching the pink sunset over the San Fernando Valley was magical. Getting stuck under a waterfall on the Jurassic Park ride was not.

The rest of my days in LA were a blur of yard sales, exploring neighbourhoods, following the Walk of Fame, watching films, shopping for camping equipment, writing by the pool and hiding from scientologists. Yes, you read that correctly. Long story short, I was sorta kinda tricked into going into their church, watching a propaganda film, and undergoing an interrogation before managing to escape. When I tried to leave, she kept saying I didn't really want to - I only thought I did - and that I
subconsciously wanted to be there. It felt like hypnotism. It was incredibly creepy, and now I'm considering changing my name/getting facial reconstruction surgery/moving to Namibia. I sort of want to write a blog post about the incident, but I'm still unnerved, especially as they have my contact details (major doh! moment).

So to summarise, I was sexually harassed by Spiderman, nearly abducted by scientologists, had my eyeballs attacked by angry desert dust (one for another post) and lost my favourite hat, but it was the most incredible adventure. Classic rock fans, ~~turn on~~ tune in ~~drop out~~ on Monday to read about my Desert Trip experience. Happy November!

Tuesday, 17 May 2016 / life, music, outfit, personal, travel

I'd rather be a forest than a street

I'm starting a new job on Monday. Marketing. Eek. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, a nine-to-five gives me evenings and weekends free, and it comes with perks like actually getting to sit down and a break. I'll also get paid to write, as there's a focus on copywriting, incidentally making me feel a little bit Peggy Olson. On the other, I've always kind of looked down on the profession. Like Peggy's ex, Abe, I suppose. Why is my life starting to resemble an episode of Mad Men (I wish)? I've already started thinking about Joan's wardrobe... I feel like manipulating people's emotions to get them to buy stuff they potentially don't need is way out of line with my values. It's something I said I'd never do. Yet it's an independent, family-run business selling internet access and network solutions, not a pharmaceutical giant trying to pawn off expensive anti-wrinkle cream onto insecure women, you know? But that doesn't change the fact that I want to do something more meaningful, honest, spiritually satisfying.

I could use the money, anyway. Why, I hear absolutely nobody ask? Because I just bought myself a ticket to Desert Trip. I'm knocking a few items off my bucket list in one swoop: see Paul McCartney, see the Rolling Stones, and go to California. I got my tickets last week, and I'm starting to realise how reckless it was. What kind of person impulsively throws away their life savings to follow a bunch of ageing musicians halfway across the world? What kind of person goes camping alone in a desert, surrounded by scorpions, tarantulas and who knows what else, having never even camped in her back garden? Note: I just Googled the spiders - seriously considering selling my ticket.

I've dreamed of California my whole life. I'm thinking seven days in Los Angeles, followed by the festival in the Coachella Valley. I could go back to Hogsmeade, this time via Hollywood instead of Orlando, and make my life great again by going back on the Forbidden Journey ride. I only had enough time to ride it once in Florida. I don't know if I've complained about that enough. Speaking of Harry Potter, as luck would have it, I could only get Desert Trip tickets for weekend two. You know what else is taking place on weekend two, continents away? The performance of Cursed Child I have tickets for. Damn it. The West End will have to wait.

outfit details:

blouse, skirt - vintage

waistcoat - charity shop

bolo - Ark

title lyric: El Condor Pasa - Simon & Garfunkel

Monday, 1 February 2016 / harry potter, london, outfit, travel

Harry Potter Studio Tour, London

The young audience of today have One Direction. For kids coming of age in the swinging sixties, it was The Beatles. Back when my grandparents were but wee nippers, the hysteria-inducing, scream-generating sensation weakening the knees of girls worldwide was Frank Sinatra. Every era has that one band the youth lose their minds over, which got me thinking. What would it be for my generation, the teens of the 2000s? The likes of Busted and Mcfly come close, but the frenzy that followed wasn't quite feverish enough. Then I realised, my era's defining pop culture phenomenon wasn't musical at all. For us, it was Harry Potter.

I can't think of another time in which literature dominated over pop music. That's pretty special. People of all ages love Harry Potter (there are kids going on nine who weren't even born when Deathly Hallows was published), but I feel like children around my age got it the best. The kids old enough to have seen - and remember seeing - Philosopher's Stone when it hit the cinemas back in 2001, but young enough to be utterly wonderstruck by it. Imagine seeing quidditch for the first time on the big screen as a seven year old! Imagine being the coolest cat in year six because your mom got you a copy of Order of the Phoenix on release night! Imagine fights breaking out between eight-year-olds in the library because one beat the other to the last copy of a 900-page book.

Getting to the point, Harry Potter still means a lot to me, all these years later. Kind of like how your Dad still gets excited when Ferris Bueller's Day Off plays on TV, I suppose. If thirteen-year-old me had realised her future self would get to chill in the Gryffindor boys' bedrooms, pose at platform 9 3/4 and swig butterbeer in the very studios that the spells were cast in... I can't believe it took me this long to get to the Warner Bros Studio Tour! I even made it to the Orlando theme park - 4,000 miles away! - before I ended up at Leavesden.

We were taken to a screening room to watch a short film about Pottermania before the screen rose to reveal huge ornate doors, which obviously got everyone excited because we all knew what was behind them. Nonetheless, there was an audible gasp when they parted, and the Great Hall came into sight, all decked up for the holidays. It looked exactly like it did in the movies. The tables were laid out for the feast, and little witches circled the tops of the Christmas trees.

Sadly, the ceiling was a regular studio roof and nothing like the night sky. The house points hour glasses were on display behind the teachers, and of course, Gryffindor were in the lead ;)

I loved seeing all the costumes and wigs and makeup. All the girls were absolutely tiny, especially Katie Leung! My favourite costume was Luna's from the Slug Club Christmas party. I remember it being described in the book as 'spangly' and like a Christmas tree, and thinking it sounded fantastic.

Doesn't the Gryffindor common room just look like home? I tried to kind of recreate my own mini version in my dressing room a while back with some souvenirs, Halloween decorations, and a threadbare maroon and gold antique-y armchair I spotted in the charity shop. But someone bought it literally seconds before I could and, not going to lie, I'm still fuming.

"By all means continue destroying my possessions. I daresay I have too many."

Dumbledore's office was the most gorgeous set I've ever seen, and I've seen a fair few. If only we were allowed closer to gaze upon all of his dreamy belongings. Cabinets lined with curios, huge tomes (actually telephone books covered in leather), brass telescopes, silver instruments, globes, and sneakoscopes, and of course, the Sorting Hat decorated the circular office to fine effect. The filmmakers said that steampunk was a strong influence.

If only my office looked like this! In fact, I'd settle for living quarters that looked like this.

I was taken aback by how many elements of the movies I'd mistakenly credited to CGI. The crew built a fully-functional entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, though it was operated by good old-fashioned science and not parseltongue. Didn't stop me trying, though, as you can see here!

By far the darkest set was this staging of the meeting at Malfoy Manor, in which Charity Burbage is suspended over the table and finally murdered. You can see Nagini waiting to devour her corpse. It was genuinely quite scary to see. The featureless dark-faced models were creepy in a horror movie way.

The potions classroom was cool. Occasionally cauldrons would stir by magic and emit acid-green fumes. Is it weird that I was mentally taking notes for future any future kitchens I may have? I really liked the jars of strange ingredients along the walls. Herbs and plants are very interesting to me, I like reading about them in a medicinal or culinary context (in fact, I've had my eye on this Cosmic Drifters Herbology skirt for a while).

I'd heard the model of Hogwarts castle was a stand out of the tour, but I wasn't prepared for how breathtaking it truly is. To make things even more magical, a man got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend in front of it, when the light changed to indicate night time had fallen over Hogwarts. What a man! Future spouse, take note.

I thought this was cool. It's the hallway of the Leaky Cauldron. It was built for the Prisoner of Azkaban, and uses a 'forced perspective' to appear much larger on film than it actually is. In reality, it was only around 10-12 feet long!

I think the Burrow set was my absolute favourite. It was just so homely. I'd love to recreate it and live there myself! Everything was cluttered and threadbare, and the self-cleaning kitchen that so impressed Harry back in the Chamber of Secrets worked its magic (heh) on me. A scarf self-knitted, knives chopped carrots, and the washing up did itself. If only! The walls of the set were constructed at a slight angle to add to the impoverished, ramshackle appearance of the Weasley family home.

New to the tour last year was the Hogwarts Express. I wasn't that fussed about going in to have a look, to be honest, because I'd already 'ridden' it in Florida. I'm glad I did, though, because each compartment was arranged to recall a pivotal scene from each film/book. I have to admit, I teared up a little when I peered into compartment one and saw Ron and Harry meeting for the first time.

If you're heading to the tour, I'd recommend spending a fiver on a handheld digital guide. Usually a waste of money (in most places), this one was incredibly informative with hundreds of exclusive videos and interviews with cast and crew about everything from schooling the young actors - both in the ways of the film industry and academically - right down to the fabrics used for the Hogwarts curtains. I consider myself a thoroughly researched diehard fan, yet there was so much information and detail I'd not heard before.

To be honest, even if I wasn't particularly into Harry Potter, I'd come here for the design inspiration alone. You should have seen the beautiful drapes on the beds in the Gryffindor dorms up close. They were a heavy maroon velvet with a gold celestial print. They were neither antique nor designed for the film - they were sourced in a local shop (look, Warner Bros, you're going to need to name names). And then you've got the patchwork quilts, intricate medieval tapestries, oil paintings, decorative antiques, and strange silverware.

These are examples of the fine work of MinaLima, the graphic designers, did for the series. Their quirky, Victorian-inspired designs so perfectly suit the Wizarding World.