Life lately

Has involved:

Going away to Qatar for a week.  It was hot (which felt like heaven to me at this time of year) and I love anywhere where there is a call to prayer.  I smoked shisha and ate a lot of hummus, sat on a lot of rooftop terraces.  I watched the Kardashians with Arabic subtitles and sat next to a glorious infinity pool, from which I texted obnoxious photos with captions like 'THIS IS A WORK TRIP WHY DO YOU KEEP CALLING IT A HOLIDAY' from my sun lounger.

Reading 'A Quiet Kind of Thunder' by Sara Barnard in pretty much one sitting, which I really fell swooningly in love with.  Gorgeous.

Also reading 'The Princess Diarist' by Carrie Fisher, which has been a slightly bittersweet experience for obvious reasons.  I still haven't quite processed how I feel about it, and it's made me question a lot of my strongly held beliefs about 'being a writer' (see: the sliver of ice through the heart). Possibly more to follow.

Working on 'Floored' and getting stupidly excited about it.

An evening of 90s goth films ('The Craft', 'The Crow') and absinthe (which apparently really does make the heart grow fonder), which was definitely my best occasion of the year so far.

Going clay pigeon shooting.  Long story.

Watching 'Jackie' followed by 'Manchester by the Sea' in a row on the plane, drinking red wine and weeping copiously.  Having to watch '(500) Days of Summer' to recover and then being forced to question how much I live my life like it's a film and Zooey Deschanel is playing me.

Rewatching 'Funny Girl' and rekindling my childhood crush on Omar Sharif and desperate desire to be Barbra Streisand when I grow up.

Listening to a lot of Marianne Faithfull, after fortuitously finding a cheap copy of 'Broken English' (one of the best albums of all time) on a market stall in Brighton.