Detangling my hair on a December morning and being reminded that most of my hair is a dyed deep red. A modification I chose. One that has been slowly fading and growing out because the change happened in August.
The acknowledgement of my altered hair colour suddenly hit me with a memory of being 10 or 11. I had just come back from a holiday in Portugal (it was at a time when you could take your kid out of school for such a thing).
There had been sun and the sea and the beach. Sandcastles had been built and then destroyed. Fingers had gone wrinkly with immersion in salt water. My brother and I had finally learned to swim and so we were free of the routine of sitting on the floor waiting for our dad to blow up armbands and securing them on our arms. We could just go and float in the pool. Splash around unencumbered by whatever the hell armbands are made of that made it pinch against my upper arms.
I came back to London several shades darker and with sea salt dry hair that I didn’t know how to rehydrate (because one the knowledge just wasn’t there and two no ‘hydrating’ product actually did that on curly hair) that was also blonder than when I left.
It was noticeable in a way that a kid who had the range to be nice to me but was also one of my bullies asked why I dyed my hair. I said I hadn’t he got annoyed because my hair was clearly blonder. I said I hadn’t dyed it. He got more annoyed. I suggested that maybe the sun bleached it because I spent a lot of time in the sun. He got even more annoyed and told me that the sun couldn’t do that. I insisted that it was possible and then he got our teacher involved and was not too happy when the teacher sided with me.
The blonde eventually blended back in. I eventually got over the crush I had on that boy. Something in the back of my mind registered that my attraction to white boys was going to be exhausting.
2.
An Instagram story memory from 4 years ago pops up as I click through the memories some time in the final stretch of working days in 2023.
It’s a bath bomb going into a bath and the water is starting to turn purple. I’m celebrating the fact that I finished work for the year. I’d dedicated that Friday night and the weekend to my ex.
I didn’t go do my Friday night workout so I got to Kent much earlier than usual. He picked me up from the station and then we went straight to Sainsbury’s. We picked up pizzas and some kind of sweet treat although I don’t remember what (I assume it was mince pies because it was basically Christmas). We got back to his flat that he would be saying goodbye to soon because he was still barely working and was spending all his savings on staying in a flat just to hold on to his independence and that money had run out.
We had a whole conversation about when I would have a bath. A bath that I had a special bath bomb for. I decided I would have one after we’d eaten because I was hungry. He’d put the pizzas in the oven. While they cooked we exchanged presents.
I gave him a framed soundwave print of ‘our song’. The bumps of the music were printed in purple (because of course they were at that time). He gave me a white teddy bear that he then named for me and started playing out whole scenarios with this new bear he had gifted me and his own teddy bear that he insisted always be sat near us when we were watching TV.
He checked on the pizzas. The crusts were borderline burnt but the centre remained soft. Soggy. He tried to salvage pieces but they were both a lost cause. He looked through his freezer to see if there was anything he could rustle up from there. He checked the oven.
It was on grill. They were doomed from the start.
Eventually he realised that he was going to have to go back out. He went to Sainsbury’s. I had that bath with the purple water and listened to Fine Line - Harry Styles. By the time he came back, my fingers had pruned and as I heard him mooching around in the kitchen I got out of the bath, slathered myself in moisturiser and went back out to the other room. He was sat on the floor staring into the oven. Not trusting that he had put the oven on the right setting this time.
I joined him. He made a joke about grilling the pizzas. Then kept trying to make intense eye contact and I knew what was coming. I knew and then I also knew somewhere deep down in my bones that it wouldn’t last. Part of me started thinking about the way that he had pulled away the first time when he thought things were on the road to serious. This was an ‘I love you’. Would he say it and then take it back? In the end I was the one that did that.
3.
A Sunday in December. It’s grey and cloudy so the Christmas lights are already sparkling where they rest. A reminder that light can always be found even when your baseball cap is getting damp from the rain. Because it’s a Sunday in December everywhere is busy. Searching for somewhere to sit to eat a turkey sandwich and settling on a table outside Starbucks in Victoria station.
It’s not the first time I’ve been to Victoria in nearly 4 years, but is the first time I’ve been in the train station part. Hearing announcements for trains to Kent and watching them pull out of the platform and start their journey.
I’ve talked before about reclaiming the things that I associated with a relationship and I forgot that I had negative feelings associated with Victoria train station. It’s the day after my 27th birthday and I had to go to Kent to see my boyfriend (although he is not that anymore). He’d repeatedly said you come to me, we’ll have a nice day and I’ll drive you home.
I’ll drive you home. I’ll drive you.
I met his mother that day, the only time I ever met her. I met his dog. We went to a secondhand bookshop and he bought me a book about Shakespeare. He drove us to Bluewater. We had dinner. Then he started to complain about how tired he was.
It was late (it was 8:30). It was dark (this is true, one because it was 8:30 and two because it was January and darkness in January just hits different). He’d had a long day (I’m not saying that this wasn’t accurate, but I did have to make the near two hour journey to him to meet him at 11am or something to then be taken on a ‘surprise’ date (fun fact, I hate surprises)).
The excuses started dripping in and I then started looking at train times to make my near two hour journey back home. A weight seemed to lift off his shoulders as it became apparent that I was going to relieve him of a drive back to North London that he offered to make.
He dropped me off at the station, said something about how he wished he could drive me back, then waited for me to shut the passenger door behind me and drove back home. I waited in the cold for my train to pull in. I found a seat in a carriage that was nearly empty. I cried for almost the entire journey back to London Victoria. As the train pulled in on the platform I checked that my eyeliner and mascara hadn’t run (they hadn’t), I dabbed at the wetness on my cheeks then got on the Tube for the rest of my journey home.
A voice in the back of my head whispered ‘if he wanted to he would’. I ignored it for 5 more months until ignoring it could no longer work. Having a white boyfriend in the early summer of 2020 was exhausting. I was barely holding myself together and he wanted gold stars for reading a few pages of a book (Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race) and telling me that he ‘was learning’. Those whispered I love yous in front of an oven were no longer going to cut it.
4.
First weekend of December 2023. Fresh from seeing Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour Film and reminding myself just how great that show was and remembering the moments of brilliance. Three hours of being in awe of the stamina, resilience, outfits and editing. My gosh the editing.
But more importantly than that it is the Stricty quarter finals. More accurately, it is Musicals week, which could not be more me if it tried.
My favourite dance of the night is Layton and Nikita’s Paso Doble, but the one that cuts me right to the core is Annabel and Johannes’ Foxtrot because it was to For Good from Wicked.
Wicked, a show that burrowed its way into my soul when I was 16 and never quite let go of the piece of me it held. If anything as time moves on my love for it deepens. I find new things to love about it. New ways for it to ruin me emotionally arise. Lyrics that I’ve heard a hundred times take on new meaning out of nowhere and the love affair finds a new space to exist in.
Wicked, a show that I dragged R to for my birthday because I had no other plans and well, the Apollo Victoria is not that far from us and the tickets were cheap. For Good, a song that we sang while sitting on the ledge of a bridge looking at a water fountain that wasn’t working in Paris. It was muggy. It had been kind of muggy the entire time we were there. Hot and humid. More suited to lying around on the beach than walking through the city’s streets to go see a water fountain that turned out to not be on. The streets were quiet. It felt like rain was on the way, but we’d made the walk so we were going to enjoy the water fountain for the structure that it was. Lack of water be damned.
Because I know her I’ve been changed for good.
5.
For over half my life now I have had a pair of boots that can only be described as having heft to them. They’ve got buckles or an excessive amount of laces. Sometimes they’ve got both (my current ones are buckles). There is a chunky heel that tips me just over 6ft whenever I wear them. They seem like they should be stompy whenever you walk.
The pair I owned when I was 16 apparently looked like they were only good for kicking. I didn’t think that at the time, I quite liked that I got to where them to school because I was a sixth former and got to wear my own clothes every day. They were comfortable, I wore them until they literally fell apart.
R told me one day (when I really can’t remember, we’ve been friends for years) that she was scared of me because of those boots. She thought I was going to kick people. She clearly got over that fear because one day she moved seats in our English class and sat next to me. It started with her having conversations with the person who sat on the other side of me because that was who she knew (and I refused to move) but she was now on the end which meant for any pairs work she was now my partner.
So she had to start to talking to me and I had to start talking to her and slowly we started seeking refuge in the textiles room for free periods. Sitting in corners of the library talking about books and her rather detailed plans for some things. Bonding over mildly niche things. Quitely growing roots that would entwine my life with hers in ways that we could not have anticipated.
She knows now that I am unlikely to actually kick people. Not without due cause anyway…
Jumpin’ Jumpin’
What I’m reading - I am back in my cowboy era (never really fully left it) and have fallen in love with Rebel Blue Ranch by way of Done and Dusted (out now) and Swift and Saddled (out March 5th) - Lyla Sage. Also devoured The Catch - Amy Lea (out Feb 15th) and Girl Abroad - Elle Kennedy (out Feb 13th). To finish up the round-up there is also Witch Boyfriend Wanted - Colette Rivera (out Feb 6th), The City of Stardust - Georgia Summers (out Jan 25th), God of Fury - Rina Kent and a re-read of Fourth Wing - Rebecca Yarros because I needed to read that again before I went in on Iron Flame. (these are affiliate links)
What I’m watching - So, this may seem very niche but Gladiators, when it was on in the 90s (and again sometime in the 00s but not to the same degree), was my jam and so I was very excited to know it was coming back and now it is here (nothing was sexier to me than watching any Gladiator, but especially Lightning, on Hang Tough trying to figure out the best path of action in order to take the contestant down). Also more The Traitors and Junior Bake Off is back.
Title Inspiration - Does the Glee version of this song also live rent free in my head? Yes. But I was actually thinking of the Coldplay version of The Scientist when this title came to me.