dimanche 31 décembre 2017

The Year of Saying No

When I look back over 2017, for me personally, it has been a year of quiet progress. On a bigger level, it has been fucking terrible, but I'm trying to see the good in it.

Last new year's eve, I stayed in by myself. Sober, pottering, writing, thinking. Then I went out on new year's day and got so drunk I fell over. I think that kind of set the tone for the year ahead.

At the beginning of last year, I lamented that it was the first time in a long time I hadn't travelled to anywhere new in a while. I decided I would go to at least one unexplored place in 2017. Almost immediately, an unexpected work trip to Qatar came up - I had never been to the Middle East at all before, so that was pretty cool.

When discussing The Year That Was with my cousin yesterday, I said 'I haven't really done anything of huge note this year'. She pointed out: 'you had a book published, you dick'. Oh yeah, I guess I did that. Because publishing is slow, I wrote it a while ago, so it's easy to forget. I mustn't, though. It's a book I was apprehensive about, and people have been lovely, which is really the best part of it.

I've also been working on FLOORED, which is coming out in July 2018. Collaborating and learning from others has been a great part of this year.

One of the things that has brought me the most joy has been working on I AM NOT ASHAMED, my fanzine with the wondrous Harriet Reuter Hapgood. A project of pure fun and love and much laughing. We produced two issues in 2017 and I hope we do more next year.

It wasn't a year when I fell madly in love, which is probably why it feels like it's been a quiet year - because I love falling madly in love. I thought I had, around halfway through the year, but as it turns out... it was just a paper bag.

This turned out to be A Good Thing, in the greater scheme. It sparked a latter half of the year of self-reflection, therapy (both psychiatric and shamanic!). I feel I've been laying a lot of groundwork for 2018.

Hopefully, an authentic, joyous and productive year. I've been working on boundaries, on knowing my worth, getting clear on what I really want and - quite simply - 2018 is going to be The Year of Saying No.

People generally talk about the opposite, obviously. I expect this is something that does other people a lot of good, but not for me. I am not going to say 'no' to everything, of course. But I'm going to stop spreading myself too thin, trying to do all the things; saying yes to things without thinking and then wondering why I've done this to myself, saying yes to things because I'm scared I'll seem ungrateful and I won't be asked again.

I will only say yes to the things that make my heart sing, that excite me, that feel like totally the right thing to do. I'm hoping this will mean a great year. I hope yours is, too.

lundi 4 décembre 2017

Time Again.

I keep writing things and deleting them.  Ooh, how deep and metaphorical?!

Anyway. Here are Some Current Things.

I went to see Bananarama and it was unexpectedly one of the best gigs I have ever been to.

I also went to see Aldous Harding and she was quite special.

My friend Neil gave me a T-shirt that says MORE ISSUES THAN VOGUE on it and I love it deeply.

At the weekend my mum came to stay, and we went to the Crab Claw on Brighton seafront and ate clam chowder chips - recommend, would 100% eat again every day for the rest of my life if I could, etc etc etc.

My random festival friend Jez is making a documentary about the album 'George Best' by the Wedding Present and you can find out all about it here.

I've been clearing out lots of stuff and have made many trips lately to Brighton tip - again, highly recommend. They also sell compost.

I became obsessed with the artist Babak Ganjei via Instagram (modern!) and I have been buying lots of stuff from his website. I literally could not love him more.

I am forever torn between thinking it's A Bit Common to put one's Christmas tree up too early, and - if I'm going to spend £30 on a tree - wanting to get my money's worth. So...I put mine up yesterday. Katherine and I walked down London Road intending to get small trees and carry them home. Of course we ended up getting thoroughly carried away and having to take our huge fatty trees home in a cab. Mine has three sets of fairy lights on it and thus looks uncannily like Winona's 'Stranger Things' series 1 breakdown.  Festive!

Reminder that you can buy copies of the beautiful, lovingly homemade lo-fi fanzine I AM NOT ASHAMED - along with 'euphemism cocktail' postcards and a whole bag of incredible one-off swag - from our online shop. We now deliver worldwide! Would make a pretty cool Christmas present, let me tell you.

Bye for now!

ECW X

lundi 6 novembre 2017

Lilja4evr

My friend Sarah is one of the coolest women I know. She’s an artist and designer, with a sharp bob and shiny black-varnished nails. Basically, I want to be her when I grow up.

She has three daughters, who are all amazingly talented. (And also a pug called Mister Gucci, which is pretty cool.)

Lilja (the eldest) is an incredible singer and musician. Her songs have been soundtracking my moody candlelit late-night winter baths for a while now. They are dark and gorgeous.

I wasn’t entirely sure how to categorise her music, so I’m very glad she has featured in this article in order to help me out… Here she is, talking about her music, her inspiring family and feminism, as one of the ‘8 women of lo-fi hip-hop that you need to know’. Bonus points to Lilja for getting a ‘fuck the patriarchy’ in there. I’m crediting that to the excellent parenting of her staunch AF mum.


You can also check out her Soundcloud here. Highly recommend for these gloomy evenings.

mercredi 25 octobre 2017

October

It’s nearly Hallowe’en. It might be dark when I wake up in the mornings now, but it’s still a favourite time of year. This is the season for:
  • Spooky films.
  • Red wine.
  • Baked potatoes.
  • Curiously hot Amish-level sexting (‘You’re wearing a brown jumper? Send pics. Ooh, Ted Hughes himself would be jealous of that cable-knit!’)
  • Long stompy walks, preferably in the rain.
  • Running at night, funnily enough. It’s hard to get out the door, but when it actually happens, it’s more than worth it. I like to imagine I’m in a Bat for Lashes video as I peer into strangers’ windows. Winter goth running is the best running.
  • Many, many baths.
  • Movie nights with girlfriends. Always, but now (under a blanket) more than ever.

I’m really looking forward to the next few months of jumpers and boots and fires and hibernating with the people I love best. Reading books and drinking many cups of tea. Maybe listening to Dylan and Elliott Smith a lot while I do it. I know it's not even Hallowe'en yet, but I'm actually looking forward to Christmas.

vendredi 20 octobre 2017

The good stuff that I am seeking.

I seem to have spent the past week or so typing and deleting posts. You can guess what they're about. I may or may not post. I'm not sure there is any point.

And so, instead, to the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. Stuff I like; stuff I'm excited about; stuff that brings me joy.

My New Kitchen
I've been redecorating and it is an absolute DREAM. Mexican star tiles, Pepto Bismol candy pink walls, floorboards, many shelves for tiny wineglasses and cookery books... Kitchen discos ahoy (the kitchen glitter ball, of course, remains).

Stella Vine
I am a long-term and avid fan. So, it was a stroke of luck that - semi-drunk on a train the other night - I saw her post on Instagram saying a new limited-edition print was available to buy. Total whim, bought immediately - so much so that I got the very first one. I am in love with it.

Riverdale
Total binge-watch like I haven't done in ages. I watched the lot in one weekend and am now struggling with the idea of having only one ep per week. I need more Veronica in my life.

Glossier
The magic is real. The package arrived like a proper glorious treat, and the lipstick is the perfect naughty shade to make you look like you've been drinking raspberry cocktails and snogging a boy you fancy on a rooftop all night.

I AM NOT ASHAMED
Issue 2 of my old-school 90s-style fanzine, lovingly made with the beaut Harriet Reuter Hapgood, is now available to buy from our online shop! Featuring essays on Riverdale, Emma Forrest, Courtney Love; the in/out list, behind the issue, euphemism cocktails and more!

vendredi 6 octobre 2017

Friday nights.

Oh, hi. Been a while.

It's Friday night, an unusual time to be sitting around and thinking out loud, one might say. When I was 16, or 18, or 22 - staying in on a Friday night would have been literally unthinkable. Friday nights were for best outfits, glitter, eyeliner, cuing up the jukebox, a bottle of vodka round at Lou's house first, hoping your number one crush might turn up at the party tonight...

In so many ways, I am still exactly the same as I have always been - crushes on boys, inability to leave the Nutella jar alone, playing certain songs until I literally wear them out. But staying in on a Friday night is now sometimes a pretty exciting prospect.

My salt lamp is on. So, TBH, are my pyjamas. I am rereading Viv Albertine's memoir (Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys). I have talked about this book so many times before, but please let me reiterate that it is literally the best (non) self-help book I have ever read. Not that I've read many of them, but I swear this is true inspiration. One of my desert island books. Every line is a witty and wise gem.

This week I have seen Belinda Carlisle and a couple of my oldest friends. I am feeling very grateful for my friends these days, the old ones and the new ones. This weekend promises to be productive and fun all at once, which is surely the key to life. I'm feeling the autumn vibes hard. Give me great books and red wine and log fires and French music and boys in nice jumpers, please.

Yep, that sounds pretty much like heaven on earth to me right now - feeling the ethos and look at what a babe she was and still is...



samedi 9 septembre 2017

Chazzing.

It's ages since I did a good chazzing mission.  Today I went to George Street in Hove and bought the following:

Bright yellow Adidas Gazelle high-tops (for £7!)

Songs of Leonard Cohen on vinyl (amazingly, I did not previously own this)

Heart of Stone by Cher (contains If I Could Turn Back Time - such a great addition to the kitchen disco collection!)

The Head on the Door by the Cure

Best of The Bangles


Then I came home and made a tuna sandwich and a cup of tea. Pleasing.

Current mood: back-to-school autumn vibes strong. New school shoes, healthy and productive mode. Dreams of Sunday lunch parties with lots of red wine and log fires.

I was trying hard to think of good autumnal songs.  My favourite is 'Autumn Teen Sound' by the Slingbacks, from their album 'All Pop, No Star'. That whole album sounds to me like teenage nostalgia.  I felt like that even when I was 20; I think I was more nostalgic then than I am now, even. I can't find any links to their songs, but that album seems to be available in nearly every charity shop in the country, funnily enough. I originally found it in the chazza, and bought it just because I liked the cover.

I remember bicycles overturned on summer lawns
Came so far, we rode so hard
Past the veils of chainlink to your back yard

I remember you and me in that autumn teen sound
Sing along to prove that you've been listening

Being stranded all alone
Between the Partridge Family and the Rolling Stones
I was walking down your street, undressing in my head

I remember you and me in that Autumn Teen Sound
Kiss me once before your sunburn fades

Years turn to sighs, scattered hopes lie dead
And realise how yellow and red autumn really is

Why do I romanticise an innocence we never had?
Was I ugly? Were you boring? We struggled to make sense

I imagine you and me in that Autumn Teen Sound
Kiss me once before your summer fades
I remember you and me in that Autumn Teen Sound...




dimanche 27 août 2017

Plus ca change...

Yesterday, 5:30pm, in a cab:
Preston Park to *pub* in Kemptown, please.
Going all the way across town in a cab, just for a drink! Doing anything special?
Actually, I'm meeting my ex-boyfriend, to give him back some of his records. That's what this box of stuff is.
Oh. Sorry.
It's OK. It's not recent. I've just had this box of records for a long time.
How long?
Nearly two years. It's still going to be weird, though.
Well, throw them at him!
Nah, it's not really like that. It's OK. Thanks, though.
Your fault then, was it? That's the thing with women: when they change their mind, they change their mind for good.
I'm not sure that's particularly women. Maybe just humans?
Maybe. My ex-girlfriend, though...
Oh dear, are you OK?
Yeah, I don't care. I'm over it. Tried to get her back, she wasn't having it. Have a good evening, sweetheart.

Approximately two hours later:
Ooh, look at you two and your coordinating outfits. Adorable.
Haha, thanks.
Are you two a couple? You must be, you look great together.
Actually, we're not.
We used to be. We're not any more.
Oh... That's awkward. Well, you obviously still have a beautiful connection. The outfits and everything. It's nice you can still go out for a drink together. You look like a couple.
She was just giving me my records back.
Yeah, we hate each other.
I can't tell if you're joking. Have a nice night, you two!

vendredi 11 août 2017

Courtly Love

Courtney's right.  This IS a really sick song.  We all know that.  It's actually always really annoyed me how people in the crowd cheer when she says it.  It's not cool.  Sick is not cool.  However, I *do* like - a lot - how dirgy Eric makes the guitar on this.  It's much more fitting than a girl-group sheen, although that obviously has its place.

I've been listening to this and other obscure Hole gems this week (I'm genuinely not trying to be obscure when I say 'My Body The Hand Grenade' is my favourite Hole album).  Thinking about it, Hole are really good on cover versions.  My faves are (look 'em up; they're worth getting hold of):

  • The Void (Raincoats; this cover was a B-side to the original Doll Parts CD single)
  • Hungry Like The Wolf (Duran Duran; another B-side, can't remember which)
  • Gold Dust Woman (Fleetwood Mac; from 'The Crow: City of Angels', which IMHO is one of the most beautifully shot yet thoroughly awful films ever made, but bizarrely has a properly great soundtrack)
  • Take This Longing (Leonard Cohen; I don't know if a recording of this exists, but I saw her sing it live - with billowing sleeves, strewing roses across the stage - and it made me cry and cry and cry)


I'm trying to channel a lotta Courtney lately, basically.

This post is also brought to you by: migraine medication, watching 'Nocturnal Animals' while bombed on migraine medication (emphatically NOT recommended under any circumstances), not getting enough writing done and eating a lot of leftover macaroni cheese.

Bon weekend...


vendredi 4 août 2017

The Brighton Fanzine Tea Party!

I am extremely excited to announce that - following our wildly brilliant mini-workshop at YALC - Harriet Reuter Hapgood and I are hosting our very own BRIGHTON FANZINE TEA PARTY.

If you'd like to come, you can buy a ticket here!

Here's the deets:

I AM NOT ASHAMED zine (by YA authors Harriet Reuter Hapgood and Eleanor Wood) presents THE BRIGHTON FANZINE TEA PARTY. Come and spend a cosy afternoon with us, making zines and celebrating DIY culture – with cake and music and glitter. Teens welcome!
  • Make your own zine
  • Chill in the zine library
  • Buy personalised zines and books
  • Browse the jumble sale
  • Drink tea and eat cake
What you get:
  • Everything you need to go home with a master copy of your own fanzine
  • Zine-making tutorial, advice and all craft materials (much glitter)
  • Chat to authors about your book/zine/writing
  • Tea and coffee and homemade cake
  • Hang out with friendly creative people in a lovely cosy place
  • Exclusive I AM NOT ASHAMED party bag



mercredi 2 août 2017

The modern world.

Exciting news, I have made myself a Proper Official Author website!

You can look at it here.  It's very fledgling, so feel free to let me know if you have any comments or suggestions (you can use the handy contact page!), but please be kind.  Technology is not my strongest suit, and neither is self-promotion.  However, I have lots of events and things coming up (more to be announced!) and thought an actual website would be useful for such matters.

I will definitely still be spouting my random thoughts and feelings on things that don't really matter here, in my usual ramshackle and sporadic fashion.  Nil desperandum, obvs.  But please do have a look at my website proper for news, events and official things.

Over and out, more soon.

mardi 1 août 2017

Cowboy Mouth

I was a big fan of Sam Shepard.  His writing, his acting, his face.  Mostly his writing.  Mostly his face.

He was a man made of dreams.  ‘He was just everything one could want,’ said Patti Smith of their first meeting.  A cowboy, a writer, a rock n roll energy, a classic face.  A crescent moon tattoo in the crook of a hand, of course.

He’s the sort of hero one would conjure up.  A cowboy and an American literary genius.  Is there any word sexier than the word ‘playwright’ (and even then they so seldom look like Sam Shepard)?  A man of letters and the outdoors.  He was Cowboy Mouth perfect.

Last night, I spent a lot of time flicking through his Seven Plays.  Just reading odd pages and lines, the rhythm of it all.  The set-up to La Turista, talk of whisky under the sofa…

“This isn't champagne anymore. We went through the champagne a long time ago. This is serious stuff. The days of champagne are long gone.”

Later in the evening, and all I wanted in the world was to watch Paris, Texas.  (Shepard wrote the screenplay.)  It’s a film I haven’t watched in a long time, but which haunts my memory like I suspect it does all those who have ever seen it.  The loneliest film I have ever seen.  Nastassja Kinski in her pink sweater.  I watched it as a teenager, around the same time I first saw Betty Blue, and I still conflate the two in my mind.  Photogenic desert ennui, doomed love.  Something to aspire to – they probably had too much of an effect on me at too young an age.

The day before, the worst sort of Sunday, I had woken up in a half-dream panic: I could not remember the number of the house where my ex-boyfriend and I fell in love.  It was over a decade now, and yet this struck me as all wrong.  It was a significant house, even though it didn’t look like one.  I looked the road up on a map and I discovered the very same house was currently for sale.  The breath was knocked out of me as I scrolled through photographs.  An ugly sofa where there used to be a drum kit.  A baby's room where we used to sit on the floor and watch subtitled films with the curtains drawn, for days on end.  I knew those rooms; I walked those floors.  I used to live alone before I knew you.

The same desert feeling of sadness.

I was convinced I owned a copy of Paris, Texas.  Maybe once I did.  Turns out now I don’t.  I couldn’t find it anywhere.  I thought it had to be on Netflix; it wasn’t.  The closest matches that came up were Paris is Burning (a favourite that I have watched and watched into the ground) and Last Tango in Paris.

I had never seen Last Tango in Paris all the way through.  I vividly remember seeing part of it.  Drunk-ish, late at night, in bed with a boy called Rich, who was not my boyfriend.  He was an old friend, though; he was a sweet soul.  I was 21, before all of it.  Marlon Brando on a tiny TV propped in the corner of the room before we passed out.

Last night, I watched the whole film.  I hated it.  It was the worst thing to watch.  I thought I’d like that early 70s mood, the Paris apartment, the coats.  I love a good coat.  I hated Last Tango in Paris.  Did I mention I hated it?

It’s like when I read The Story of O and expected it to be much like Anais Nin, who is my favourite.  Safe to say, it was not, and I still pretty much take that book as a personal insult.

I suppose it doesn’t help that I do not find Marlon Brando remotely attractive.  Not at any stage in his career.  I do not care for his face.  I would like it to be known that I do not find angry men attractive.  I do not.  Give me the good ones.  Give me the Cowboy Mouth playwrights, please.  Or just a man with a truck in the desert, who writes books no-one will ever read.


It was number 26, by the way.  I don’t think I’ll ever forget it again.

vendredi 21 juillet 2017

Oh, how you do reflect the sun...

I am a Courtney Love apologist and I don't care who knows it.  I have a picture of her on my bedroom wall, which is in my eyeline when I wake up every morning (a greater honour than even Patti Smith, over on the other side of the room, has).  It's in black and white, when she had a chubby face and her original nose.  I have spent many, many hours of my life arguing with a certain type of boy over Courtney Love.  Too many to mention.

As such, it is probably not a surprise to know that I think her first solo album - America's Sweetheart - is criminally underrated.  But IT IS.  Even retro of-the-moment early-00s digs like 'But Julian I'm a Little Bit Older Than You' are still hilarious and poignant.  Even the lady herself calls it 'that coked up piece of shit I made in the south of France when I needed the money'.  However, most of all, it has some of her most affecting songs.

I am, of course, also a great proponent of the iPod iChing.  Yesterday, on a train, I flicked onto shuffle and asked the universe for a sign (it's been that kind of a week, dear reader)...

This is what I got.  Oh, sigh - baby, you were almost golden..

It took me way back to the year this album came out.  I was 23 years old, working a boring temp job and trying to be A Writer, without quite knowing how, living in a sweet little cottage with a girlfriend - where we barely slept for the entire year we lived there, and a boy once pissed on our sofa.  I used to listen to this album non-stop.  Once, literally, all night.  That was when I wasn't listening to What Would The Community Think? by Cat Power and crying my eyeliner off, TBH.  It was a time of total extremes, for which this was the perfect (half) soundtrack.

We would spend days on end in the pub, have post-gig parties with all the bands back at our place.  On Sundays I could be found at Camden Market, helping out my new boyfriend with his art stall.    I still played bass sometimes, then.  Sometimes we had people round for spaghetti bolognese and felt grown up.  I spent a lot of time in my bedroom, with its wooden floorboards and a huge mirror, taking big-haired panda-eyed pale-faced selfies for my MySpace profile.  We used to watch The Dreamers repeatedly, while drinking wine in the afternoons.  We were still young enough that skipping dinner and drinking cheap fizz on a schoolnight felt impossibly glamorous.  It was the house where we saw a ghost.




mardi 18 juillet 2017

YALC

So, this year, I will once again be at the Young Adult Literary Convention (YALC), part of the London Film and Comic Con!  I am very excited about this.  Last year I had a great time, did lots of booky things and saw lots of lovely friends, but also sneaked off to see Dolph Lundgren and a Game of Thrones panel.  Dream.

This year, I am extra excited, and with very good reason...  My wonderful friend Harriet Reuter Hapgood and I are hosting a MAKE YOUR OWN YALC ZINE workshop!

Harriet is one of my favourite people in the world to hang out with, and when we do, a lot of our time and chat revolves around zines.  Early in our friendship, we established that we were both former makers of our own 90s lo-fi fanzines.  We talked about how cool it would be to resurrect the scrappy, black-and-white photocopied labours of love from our youth.  We drank some wine, ate a lot of snacks, worked on our novels and sometimes even cut up old copies of Vanity Fair for inspiration.

Then, one sunny Saturday, we spent the day in Harriet's garden with her cat Stanley and we finally put together our new fanzine I AM NOT ASHAMED!  It is a lo-fi wonder, homespun and very much put together in a day, which is how a good proper fanzine should be.

Copies will be available for the first time ever at YALC (each individually decorated and numbered!) and we will also be hosting our workshop on how to make one yourself.  There will be inspo, activities, ideas, snacks, music and LOTS OF GLITTER.

I can't wait.  Hope to see you there... for revolution girl style now!




vendredi 14 juillet 2017

I Blame Jilly

I blame Jilly Cooper.  For many things.  I love her beyond all reasonable measure, but I can’t help but feel it’s all her fault.

Jilly had far too great an effect on me at far too young an age; I spent my pre-teen years nicking my mum’s copy of Rivals and discussing with my cousin which character we’d be.  We don’t still do that; no, not at all.  We’re grown-ups now, honest.  (Ahem, Prudence and Imogen.)

In Jilly World, women should be fun and naughty, just a little bit grubby.  Self-control is not only boring but deeply suspicious.  Pouring stingy measures is so frowned upon it might as well be illegal.  Lunchtime drinking is not only fine, it’s positively de rigeur.  You shouldn’t be too healthy or too good at your job (you’re allowed to be bright, as long as you take two-hour lunch breaks and fuck everything up a lot, but everyone in your office loves you so it’s fine); your house shouldn’t be too clean.  You should be charmingly self-deprecating at all times, a little bit indiscreet, just a tiny bit too fat for your favourite slinky dress (which may be covered in cat hair).

Basically 'Jilly made me do it' is my standard get-out for all of my many character failings.

However, the most important thing I learned from Jilly is that romance has a formula.  The path to true love – with a Matt/Corey/Ace/Declan type if you’re really lucky – is well signposted.  So, obviously I thought this would be the case in real life: heavy hints dropped throughout the story, the happy ending clear cut and arriving just in time.

If the universe would only conform to the Jilly rules, I know exactly the man in my life who I am supposed to end up with.  According to the Cooper Law, here is how it works:
  • You are entirely disinterested and/or antagonistic towards Said Man at first
  • Love Feelings sneak up on you when you least suspect them
  • You find yourself engineering meetings, putting on lipstick when you are going to see him and denying to your friends (who have suspected all along) that you are falling for Said Man, while fervently trying to deny it to yourself (after all, he's not your type/you despise him/you're mad about someone else!)
  • Said Man kisses you and a thousand bolts of lightning go through you, etc
  • You possibly have ill-timed/drunk sex, which makes you both feel awkward and handle it badly in the morning (despite both of you having The Secret Love Feelings)
  • Just as it looks like you might get it together, there will be a dramatic obstacle in the way (a secret girlfriend/estranged wife/evil ex; meddling family/local busybody; a sudden death/illness/horse-related crisis)
  • You are heartbroken and slink off to be consoled by your hilarious boozy girlfriends and their pun-based one-liners, in either a tumbledown country cottage or a flat in Putney (NB their love lives will suddenly and unexpectedly be going brilliantly, just to make matters extra depressing for you)
  • There may be some sort of miscommunication on the way to tangle things up even further and lead you to think it’s all utterly, utterly hopeless
  • He turns up, only to find you in a red-eyed and hairy-legged state of despair, having just eaten an entire jar of pickled onions, yet still manfully declares his undying love and willingness to take on your grumpy cat/blind dog/demanding family/crippling debt
  • You have a very jolly wedding, where Janey Lloyd-Foxe gets off with the best man and your long-divorced parents get so pissed they end up in bed together
  • Live happily ever after.

I mean, is that really so hard?  It’s how it’s supposed to go, according to everything I have ever learned in my life.  I genuinely do not understand why the Cooper Law cannot apply to the actual universe.

The idea that it doesn’t is personally upsetting to me.  I am both affronted and terrified.  I mean, what are you supposed to do if Said Man doesn't appear to have read enough Jilly novels to know how this is supposed to end?  Shit.  There is no Jilly plot for this.

Yep, I blame Jilly.  I'm still going to spend the weekend rereading Prudence in the bath and eating pickled onions.