Despite there being more furniture, more nature, higher fences and more people, it feels as though each addition added an extra metre or so. Lazy summer days that merge into one are spent here, finding joy in the rare days where all nine of us come together for an evening.
At the beginning of tiptoeing through a collapsing, ghost town, society, I was both ashamed and confused by the immediate relief and freedom I felt as soon as lockdown peaked. How could I ever admit that within waves of death, I had become alive?
Some pick at their faces mindlessly, but I know I am using it to cope with depressive episodes and issues of anxiety in many forms that I have been avoiding for years.
Reading & Leeds Festival announced their line-up for this year and while it’s certainly full of decent to great acts, it’s all looking a little XY-chromosome heavy, isn’t it? Here are 11 non-male artists who could easily have gone on that line-up.
I want to believe there’s consolation in reminiscence, that mourning can be cleansing when it’s set against green and red lights and holiday songs and a sense of impending renewal. But when time never moves forward for us, it can never be properly marked and peacefully released. Instead we are the ones marked. Holidays repeat endlessly.