Most first-person pieces on dating end neatly (‘and I quit all the apps one Sunday and met my husband on the Tuesday’, or ‘I have decided to stay single, I now devote my life to rescuing orphaned goats*, and I’ve never been happier’) and frankly, so they should. The general rule of writing is: take… Continue reading In search of the lightning strike
Category: romance
Risotto: a love letter
I love the significance we ascribe to food, the memories certain dishes evoke. Most of mine take me back to Granny’s kitchen: the smell of frying bacon will always put me by her Aga on a crisp blue winter’s morning; whenever I eat shortbread, I can see her taking a pale gold slab out of… Continue reading Risotto: a love letter
Lines on lust
The thing about being both insecure and perhaps a touch self-involved is that when someone sends you a 4,000-word email explaining what they think of you, you find it more compelling than creepy. I received one such missive fairly recently, and it contained – among a host of other wildly incorrect things – a line… Continue reading Lines on lust
Flirting with writers
Or: Woman, 28, in ‘modern dating is awful’ shock If you’ve read Dolly Alderton’s beautiful memoir Everything I Know About Love, you’ll join me in a sharp intake of breath when I mention the ‘guru chapter’. For the uninitiated: a few years ago, Alderton conducted a phone interview with a man who billed himself as… Continue reading Flirting with writers
Going solo
Oh, you knew it was coming. To me, it always sounded like a horror story. The couple who got together in their early twenties, made it work through shitty first jobs, slightly-less-shitty second jobs and gruesome houseshares, finally moving in together and starting to cobble together what looked like a reasonably adult life. Only to… Continue reading Going solo
A matter of choice
If you write about your life – as a blogger, columnist or memoirist – you sometimes hear the advice, “don’t write breaking news”. Don’t write about an event as it’s happening; hold off until you have even a tiny sliver of time and distance from it. Sometimes this is good advice, but personally I… Continue reading A matter of choice
Every word handwritten
I have a bizarrely intense attachment to things that are handwritten. Actually, maybe it’s not bizarre at all, given that I write words for a living. On Valentine’s Day last year, upon finding out Drummer Boy hadn’t got me a card, I thrust some scrap paper and a Biro into his hand and told him to write… Continue reading Every word handwritten
In defence of Valentine clichés
I used to be seriously anti V-Day. Initially because when the majority of my sixth form college friendship groups were trying out their first relationships, I was single, and so watching these newly-fledged couples celebrate on 14th February wasn’t much fun. It was like Christmas for people who’d found someone to put up with their… Continue reading In defence of Valentine clichés
Bloody Valentines…
I am a hopeless romantic. Really. Under this cynical, twisted, borderline-misanthropic, Bernard-Black-lite facade, there beats a heart as mushy as melting cheesecake. I am absolutely powerless in the face of a romantic gesture, no matter how big or small. I love seeing old couples walking along hand-in-hand*; I think airports are romantic places, because of… Continue reading Bloody Valentines…
Inbetween Girl 