Diary Of A Redhead

[mylolita]

Phone rings. 
 

“Hi Daddy!”

 

”Hey! What have you been up too then? I won my match!”

 

”Good! Good! Just… bullsh**ted the night away.”

 

”Ha!”

 

Ain’t it true! Ain’t it sooooo true!!!

 

I’M JUST IN MY ZONE!

 

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

 

x

 

 

[mylolita]

I heard him come in from pool. I’d been in the deepest, blackest slumber. The covers pulled away. I could feel his beefy body close, squeezing me into an embrace. 
 

“I love you.” 
 

I pretended to still be asleep.

 

”You smell amazing.”

 

I squeezed his hand. “I was having a sex dream about you.” I replied, hazy and half asleep. 
 

“Well let’s carry it on! Tell me about this dream!!!”
 

HA! 
 

It’s a bit of a phenomena but, I pretty much always have sexual dreams about the husband. Probably as much as once a week at least. Is this normal?! 
 

I’m not going to complain. After fifteen years, if you’re still hot to trot for your beef cake, I think that’s good going.

 

Ohhhhhhh tee hee hee! 
 

x

[mylolita]

GOD I’M IN LOVE! 
 

A little chunky black bird keeps visiting me on our Ivy spilled, ancient stone wall. He spies on me in the same place I always sit. 
 

When I leave the house, if I throw some oats or bread out onto the lawn he hops right down out of nowhere and plucks the crumbs up right next to me, before flicking his head and zipping off on his way.

 

The house has a name engraved into the two stone pillars that sit aside our metal gate. It doesn’t really seem to fit. The Victorian letters are age and coastal wind worn. There is great beauty in that, I admit, but, D was passing through the front room and took a look out the large bay window at all the starlings and blue t*ts and black birds gathering and singing and hopping along our apple tree, wall and grassed front. He said, “Maybe we should call this house ‘Blackbird House’?”

 

I’m like a teenager all over again lately! Giddy as a giddy giddy school girl!

 

Our street is filled with Spring like bird song.

 

x

[mylolita]

Y’know what? 
 

Y’know what! If I died right now, RIGHT NOW, I would die happy.

 

I got my wish! I have the beach, the ocean. I have my man who adores me. I have three beautiful, tender, scrumptiously delicious bambino’s who are my best friends!  I would lay over hot cold gladly for them! I’m sat here with the birds singing a Spring symphony as they skit in and out of the apple trees. I’m healthy. My life is, full of love. Business is good. 
 

I don’t know! I did it all. I just feel like, the little girl inside me, who would gaze up at the sky from her Grandma’s window wondering what life had in store for me, would be proud of me today. I feel like, the child in me is… content. 
 

I just feel, content, grateful, and overflowing with love! I feel warm. 
 

When you have an open fire burning and candles on, yet the sun is out? Amazing amazing amazing.

 

Warm warm warm! My heart is so warm. 
 

x

[mylolita]

Do you wanna know why I look great?!

 

It’s because I’M IN LOVE! 
 

I am ALWAYS, IN LOVE! 
 

I walked back on air the night I met you, and honestly, I don’t think I ever came down. I never came back to Earth. I know what it is to enter heaven. Heaven is right here, right now! Heaven is you. Heaven is my babies! 
 

No one can take that away from me. Our love is energy eternal.

 

I’ll never come back down!

 

x

[mylolita]

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

 

- Oscar Wilde 

[mylolita]

They say comparison is the thief of happiness? Well ain’t it so! 
 

I’ve been seeing a fantastic, new friend. And aren’t I just SMITTEN! And refreshingly, as corny corny as it sounds, inspired?! I am really inspired. I say that in all seriousness.

 

I’m not one to be easily taken aback. I find I have maybe a slightly quirky criteria for what genuinely perks my ears up, and it happens but once every few years, maybe once a decade. Well! 
 

I’m invited round to my fast friends apartment. She gives me the address. She’s already been to ours twice already. I’m nosey as anything and instantly Google the address, how much she bought the apartment for, and realise, catching my snobbery, that it’s leasehold. I think, we’ll why didn’t they just buy it outright? 
 

I’m not supposed to know this, but her and her husband own a few properties here that they let out. She’s not mentioned it and I find that all the more fantastic, I really do. 
 

I know the street, but decide to drive with my boy and middle girl, leaving D to take a nap while bambino sleeps for her 3 hour marathon. I leave the house and know in my heart he will fall asleep, watching the pool, with the remote in his hand, the fire crackling.

 

The kids are half moaning, half laughing at me sat navving the address which is a 3 minute drive from our own house. We park up, I get lost, they run in circles around me while the coastal wind whips at our hair. I call C up and admit I’m lost! She directs me a little further along to a beautiful parade of Victorian, stone balcony terraces. I’ve walked past this stately, impending building many many times before. I’m beyond excited. I sense glamour, I LOVE IT! I’m practically running up the mass of steps with the kids. She opens out a heaving, deep red double door with ornate brass furniture. Stylish and natural as ever, in a navy linen set of swishing loose trousers and an effortless vest. Dark red hair cut in a  1920s bohemian looking bob. Minimal makeup. Booming extroverted voice that shouts to us, “OH MY GOD! COME ON IN!” 
 

The foyer is ornate and regal. The compliments instantly start fan boying out of my mouth. She’s laughing and the kids are taking their shoes off at the main entrance because, the cuties they are, have been trained in our house to remove their shoes! She’s ushering, leave them on! Oh how ADORABLE! Leave them! Oh! Let me pick them up! 
 

From the traditional red carpet, the sweeping iron work, she throws her door back to something that arrests me instantly, in the best way possible. A minimalist, white, high ceiling, artistic, textured, lamp lit ATMOSPHERE of a lookin’ apartment. It’s just… so. D**m. Cool. Too flippin’ cool. I’m in awe. 
 

I love it. I can’t stop telling them it’s beautiful and so cool, we’re hardly in the door. 
 

“Cha, I can’t tell you, THIS HAS MADE MY DAY! You didn’t warn me I’d be walking into a STYLE OASIS?!” 
 

Her husband Steve comes to the door, smiling meekly. He’s dressed casually excellent, in a black polo neck and some kind of wrap trousers that hint at Japanese influence. He wears leather clog mules for house shoes. 

 

I can’t tell you how cool this place is. Deep cream resin floors. Textured uneven glinting shell like tiles in a slither but clever use of a shower room, and what a beautiful shower it is, huge and framed by a large window. But the views! Panoramic! Like being in an ocean Bond cinema viewing! Sweeping from the white light filled lounge, intimidate and captivating from the linen sheeted bedroom (with large roll top bath next to the window). 
 

We sit and I instantly start admiring his stonewear and assortment of chosen antique pots and hand crafted vases and irregular, delectable DISHES! It’s all too good. 
 

I pull out a bottle of white, some lavender and herbal bath salts I picked up for Cha in town (we both appreciate aka are obsessed with a long soak), but, as the kids run around and slip and slide going from shiny resin to woven rugs and back again, I get that sinking feeling I’ve had before. I’m inspired, I’m in awe, I’m full of adoration, I want to know everything, how what and when - but, here it is? In the pit of my empty stomach? Comparison? Envy? My senses going wild with the newness and curiosity of it all are being twisted and tinged by… jealousy?

 

I start thinking… this property, so amazing, SO gorgeous, is only just, to them, another little holiday let the bought to milk. And they talk about buying another family home this year for themselves. My head is spinning from it all. I suddenly want to BE her! I see her stylish well dressed husband, her two boys, all the blooming tones of even their fashionable clothes somehow matching this bl**dy apartment?! It’s almost all too chic?! I can hardly stand it! I’m still in awe! But I don’t want to be!

 

Now, let me toot my own horn here a little. This girl isn’t without style or taste herself. And Cha on stepping into our house had her mouth open and couldn’t stop saying how beautiful and stylish everything was. How cool I am. Etc. It’s so corny. It really is. Who cares?! This isn’t school anymore! But then, the comparison comes in… well, my interior is more on the traditional antique side. The oil painting side. The piano side. The vases of flowers, the silk couch side. Here we just had cool effortless cos at al Mick Jagger or something. I was flattened and mentally bowed down. 
 

A billion excited questions from me followed, and Steve was besotted to do a tour and explain everything and more. We talked about London, different interior shops there, different members clubs. We talked about giving birth, I talked about motherhood with C. We laughed over wine and ornate candles smouldering on marble fireplaces while bossa nova played softly in the background, and the clash and racket of clinking wooden train track mingled in from the other room. 
 

I could have stayed there in that designer chair round that statement table with my wine in sexy stemmed glasses for another hundred years. But I wanted in! I suddenly didn’t want to leave… their atmosphere. It’s like, for an hour, I wanted their life?! Give me your LIFE?! 
 

How weird is that?! 
 

We left and I grabbed to D about it all for another billion years. I did some instant research and found more properties they owned in the same interior style. I suddenly felt extremely self conscious about our house, and it’s unfinished state. I suddenly felt pretty self conscious about the appearance of my life all of a sudden, as immature and totally stupid as that sounds.

 

I’d had a few items pending in my online basket. Unusual shaped baskets mimicking conch shells and clams. A marble tray to lay on our huge hessian upholstered coffee table. Chunky, satisfying stone wear mugs in muted tones. A pale lilac vase. An antique dish with mother of Pearl inlaid inside. A red velvet hair clasp. All expensive exquisite items I had lusted over this week. And I suddenly just needed to buy them, to catch up, to impress… WHO? Them?! It was so pathetic! But the urge!!! The urge was massive! I felt ridiculous, but right. I NEEDED these objects! Because, look at THEIR objects?! Ugh! 
 

It really is the height of pitiful shallowness. I know it. I do. 
 

But I couldn’t stop getting back to the comparison thing. And I couldn’t stop thinking about her and Steve, and how fantastic and artistic and stylish and full of taste they are, and how great they are, how exhilarating it is for me to feel “matched” in some area or aspect or trait?! I admire her already. 
 

I said this to D. He rolled his eyes, my working class, down to earth, blue eyed, shaved headed boy. “Well Lo, I don’t admire people who never see their kids and hand them off to strangers since they were 6 months old.”

 

He has a point. I know a whole huge bunch of their values and morals and aspirations don’t match with mine at all. BUT! I simply found the glamour, the needed, new, challenging GLAMOUR of it all, too engulfing. I could tell, I was wrapped up in my image of them, and that was where they were gonna stay. 
 

I said, “Yes yes I know but check out this house!”

 

God! Get a GRIP girl! I’m a fan I’m a fan I’m a fan but it’s hurting me.

 

x

[Jibralta]

Have you ever thought of writing for a design magazine?

[mylolita]

9 hours ago, Jibralta said:

Have you ever thought of writing for a design magazine?

They’d never have me Jib! 🥲

 

But oh boy am I into it! It’s such a pointless and meaningless hobby but, I stack the magazine ‘World of Interiors’ up beside my bedside like it were The Bible.

 

I’ve been lucky, through the husbands work, to see on the regular, a buffet of probably the worlds most interesting and amazing interiors. Not all of them were owned by wealthy people but, most of them are. You have to have some funds at the end of the day to gather up your vision, or; be willing to curate your space over manny years and decades (always the best ones!) 

 

Oh last week, D delivered an object a customer had bought to what he described as “a real life Bond villain lair”. He said it was a modernist bungalow set in a concealed forest. Think the house in Ferris Biller’s Day Off that Cameron’s father had. All glass walls. He had a basement garage with a lift down to it in brushed stainless steel where he kept a small collection of classic sports cars. Modern curved minimal open fireplace, polished concrete floor, and placed on mid century sparse furniture, beautiful museum worthy objects and artefacts. He said there was also an indoor swimming pool. This is not to my personal taste, but I revel in seeing it all the same. I did feel like I had walked into the pages of my beloved World of Interiors! 
 

Strangely, we know a very un typical off beat interior designer who has had his cottage featured in this magazine and we were offered to have our Georgian town house at the same time photographed. I was too fussy and prissy about it and didn’t think the house was “perfect” or “ready yet” and it’s one of those weird missed opportunities I regret. Set dressers come in and start re-arranging your fruit bowls and placing different plants here and there and altering your lamp shades. Smoke and mirrors?! 
 

One thing I was geekin’ out about in my new friends pad is, her husband led me to the living room and he pointed towards a rustic tiny wooden side table with a iron, dark mustard desk lamp on it. It hung over the large, slouchy linen armchair there in the centre of the room. He said,  “One of the things I am glad I did was” and then I over excitedly finished “put the electric tracks around the centre of the room so you can have a concealed plug in the floor and put lamps around your seating?!!!!!” And he laughed and said in a rich southern quiet voice, “Yes. Yes, you’re right.” 
 

After we’d been nattering and I’d been finishing his interior sentences he said, “It’s so nice to come across someone who simply gets it!” I suppose, it’s like anyone who is really into something, who comes across someone else, really into the same thing, and also with the same values and eye maybe for that thing. You start jumping on the spot! Especially if that hobby is unusual. By the way Jib, liking and drooling over interior design and property is by no way unusual but, to be really into it, is unusual here where I live. It’s mostly simple people in a rural ish setting and even the ones who have money aren’t interested in flare. But, it’s in the eye of the beholder isn’t it? Having “taste” and “style”. One persons ugly is another’s knock out gorgeous! 
 

I think what I was so goo goo eyed over is was simply the care and passion they had put into it; the artistic original touches, with collected pieces (most looked inexpensive, it isn’t about what things cost to create that individualist interesting look in my opinion), and also, the fact the place had such ATMOSPHERE! 
 

I even woke up having dreamt about their view from the futon minimalist bed they had laid on the floor.

 

A complete contrast to my room of course, with it’s darker antique pieces, high, super king bed with rattan headboard and brooding traditional wardrobes, vases of flowers and trinket boxes. Persian rug in muted sage greens. No, theirs was all white resin floor like a pool of melted snow, this crumpled linen thrown futon on the floor, like stylish students, that white roll top bath, only one iron pedestal side table with an artsy wicker lamp, some kids books piled and thrown, and then - THAT FLOOR TO CEILING WINDOW WITH THAT VIEW! All panoramic cliffs, ocean, beach - stretches of beach. Oh my LORDY LORDY! I woke up envious, obsessed, and having dreamt of that crisp nothing bedroom and that VIEW JIB! Like I was on a voyeristic CLOUD! 

Anyway… interior mags are all about the photos, and being a photographer and set dresser is more the vibe, there are usually very little words as it’s all a spiritual (LOL SHE SAYS) visual thing. I think I am straight down the middle both. Both visual, and gabby wordy. It’s hard for me because I wrestle constantly. I can’t seem to indulge them both at the same time… or I do but it’s like yesterday, a perfect assault on my senses. I’m in a delightful spiral as. The two things register at once!!!!
 

I was one step away from stealing their crockery!!!

 

Steve was behind me and could tell I was knocked out by the view. I kept saying it over and over anyway, it was no secret. He said simply, finger under his chin, “It’s addicting, isn’t it?” And we all stared out to the waves rolling back and forth, in and out, in and out, hypnotically, as we observed from the warmth like Gods from above. 
 

People look at open fires in the same way, but there was something even better about this ever changing, never the same magical VIEW! 
 

I could go on Jib. Can you tell I’m impressed?! 🥲🥲🥲

 

She’s IMPRESSED! 
 

Doesn’t happen OFTEN! 
 

Impressed and inspired! But, kind of sad. Because I got home for the first time and felt my life and surroundings were beige and dull compared to the experience I had just walked out from.
 

Comparison is not very cool. I actually felt, uncool?! 

 

I think, if I analyse it, I put a lot of my value on aesthetics. For myself personally, and anything to do with me that is an extension of me. That means, anything from my house, the garden, my car, even my flipping children, if I am honest. I love them presented well, dressed in cosy knits and stylish but comfy walking boots. I’m not going to lie, that terrible, conceited part of me is over the moon they are beautiful. It’s conceited yet again to say this, I might be all in my own arrogant head here, but all through school, college, I was like, the “trend setting girl”. I’d have an unusual bag then next week all the cute blondes had it. I was popular and cool because of this. Girls would copy the way I twisted up my hair and clasped it or ask what colour varnish I’d used on my nails. I got to experience a kind of, social referral hopping, from popular kids, to the geeks, to hang with the artsy types, to the flat out rejects, and I was never socially ostracised for any of it, because I got a free pass because I was just “spirited and with it”. I was invited to every party. It’s carried through into my adult life. People will say, “Oh you look amazing” or “Where did you get that?!” Or “You have GREAT TASTE” or “I love your style!” And I’m not gonna lie that, I like it. I do. I wonder the day I stop being relevant, how I would take that? 
 

And by the way, I absolutely detest corny fast trends, and popular things. You have to always keep a tab on not becoming a cliche, which I have been and sure I am, on many fronts. But I am big headed and think I’ve avoided it all. But everyone, absolutely everyone, is influenced, and copies, to some extent. 
 

Anyway Jib. Culture, taste, style, aesthetics  - I LOVE IT! Did I go on?! Areghhhh! 
 

x

[mylolita]

I’m going to add, that I grew up in the land of rich kids, in a great school, and by their standards, was the poor kid. But I would sift through my Mums old collection of shirts and gather up vintage belts from the second hand shops and go hunting. My mantra was it had to be “real”. Real suede, real leather, real linen, real silk. Decent quality. But I would search and search for it secondhand then style it in my own simple way. I still don’t like mock things. It’s either real wooden floor or do something else for me. I don’t like mock wooden tiles, or leather look things, or imitation marble. I’d rather do a nice, homely wooden topped kitchen over opting for fake quartzite. I still love sifting and hunting and bargains now, but don’t have the time for vintage markets, Portobello market, craft fairs, art galleries, auction houses, mid century garage vaults piled with cast off modern antique furniture. The huge outdoor antique fairs D goes to, when I was 18, 20, 25, all those ages, and be scouring round with him at 4am, those days left me when I hit 27 and became a Mum. I look forward to actually, when the kids are older, getting out there and taking them again. Letting them run in and out of cattle stalls that have been filled with table top curiosities and inlaid boxes. As I got older, I had more spending power behind me, so my tastes shifted. They would shift again if money was no object. I’m not and will never be into the brutal, in your face luxury I have seen in some homes. The homes where a butler opens the door to you and the floors are all rouge marble. That’s not my idea of what makes a “home.”

 

My friend once said - “What makes a home is an open fire, books, and children.”

 

I have to say, I think he’s near the money or bang on. 
 

It’s a spoilt affair, being able to indulge in what is an after all normally expensive luxury passion. To buy a house and renovate it to your taste is a big luxury. To buy more on top of that, oh how pampered you are. 
 

I said this to Cha. We were all around this caramel coloured circular table of theirs in the kitchen, and I was taking in the aroma of smouldering incense burning away on the fireplace, and she started saying, “We will only doss here for a year. We need a family home. This was always going to be a holiday let, it’s far too small.”

 

I got her. Technically, it probably was a bit too small for them and their two young boys, who both were owners of extravagant, upper class fussy Italian names, when none of them were any hint Italian.

 

I added, “This isn’t small though, Cha. This kitchen, for example, is the size of my Mum and Dads living room, dining room and kitchen combined. And, that’s how most people live. I forget that when I’m sat in a gorgeous place like this!”

 

She didn’t take offence, because I think she  gets me, which also adds to my excitement about her, and she knew I was actually saying something grateful and humble and trying to be realistically sweet. She nodded, her baby still nursing off her exposed left breast. “Oh I KNOW! Oh, I know. It does well to remember. Honestly, you’re right. No, I am being picky, but we do crave a family space.”

 

I told her I understood. And, I did. But I always know fine well, sat in these amazing interiors and having the life I do and the things I do, that round the corner are people struggling and adding up their spare coins to buy a few food items from the corner shop. Mums wondering what they can do without so their daughter can have much needed new school shoes. 
 

I am always reminded of The Other Side because of my husband, and his working class ness(!) proudly hits you across the face every single time he speaks or enters a room. And it’s bold and reality. And, his family are all the same, well, on his Mums side. So I can never forget or pretend that I float around in ethereal glamour with not a care because, I have our working class heritage mingled in beautifully right here, and then, I have my upbringing, which wasn’t flashy in anyway, and then, we are always one step away from financial ruin or financial bliss, and the pendulum swings back and forth every month it feels. 
 

I have the absolute luxury in not budgeting and not knowing or caring about when money comes in or how. But! It doesn’t mean my funds are endless and I do get hit with cold hard day light that, I’m not a sauntering millionaire. Sometimes I think I want that but, if I looked deep into my soul, I don’t think it would do me any good, or make my life any better.

 

I would love to buy my Mum and Dad a beautiful four wheel drive car, and a holiday cottage somewhere rural, if I ever come into serious money. And, I would give my mother in law house money to move where she would like, because I know she has always been unhappy where she lives and wants to move but can’t. I’d get my father in law a fishing boat, pay off my sisters house and offload a load of cash into her bank account. Give away some to friends or even people I see who have been sweet and lovely to me. Shop assistants I chat too everyday, the Indian guy at the garage who jokes I put the car through the wash too much. Teachers who have been kind to my son. My Mum friend across the road who wants her drive doing. Things like that. Money is freedom to help. After that, after I supposed I maybe bought another property just as a little project and retirement fund, and finished our own house, there wouldn’t be much more than I would want. Maybe savings for our children when they are up. But I don’t want to hand out houses to them, as tempting as a parent that is. Maybe a very large deposit towards something modest to start them off. 
 

Anyway, we can dream, can’t we 🥲 

 

But, I feel a selfish and tacky sometimes talking about style and taste and interiors and fashion because I am painfully aware it is a dirty indulgence and not sympathetic to the times we are in. And, fuelled by vanity as well. And I am, truth be told, very vain. I deny that I am to myself but, I am a project of vanity, for sure. Not the best quality about myself. A modern day Dandy. A part time socialite. 
 

x

 

 

[mylolita]

Sometimes I have to realise that I used to sit in a £5,000 bath and complain about my life. The audacity. 
 

It’s disgraceful, really. 
 

Spoilt and privileged. It doesn’t really matter. 
 

Everyday I wake up and realise my children and husband are healthy is the richest day. 
 

We all had another conversation about babies. Cha was musing. “I’d have a third.” Steve looked like he’d heard this before but the terror flashed across his face. “Things are good as they are Cha! Why risk it?”

 

We all started talking about how, when you are pregnant, you hope above highest of hopes they are simply healthy and okay, and every baby added feels like a further risk. Steve and C had these exact feelings. 
 

“I always thought four. Four or five. I actually thought I could DO IT!” They all started laughing. “Three is beautiful enough for me. You have a beautiful family Cha - I mean, if you’re not desperate for another, you’ve done well right here as you sit.”

 

”I wondered all kinds of things. What if they had a mental disability? What if I couldn’t look after another one? What if I couldn’t love or even like the new baby as much as the others? Financial added pressure of another baby? My own health? All of this ran through. I started with the Hollywood ‘Holiday Season’ vision of a large family, all my children independent but always coming back to me, a bustling large house with the fires on and all my children sat around with their grandchildren and D there asleep in an armchair. I imagined the noise and the gorgeousness of it all. Then I think after having a few one after the other, I realised the proud and glowing mother at the head observing all her children and grandchildren at Christmas in emotional wonder had been through a mill we never acknowledged or saw in her younger days being pregnant, raising all these babies. And the reward, the snow globe scene I had planned out, was a very hard slogged fiction.” Cha’s baby boy slumped off the breast, full, content and asleep. Both their eyes were fixed on me. My hands were moving around in the air again as I streamed off my thoughts. I had no self consciousness about my verbal preaching, my personal outpouring. Whether it’s appropriate or not never influences if I say it or not. They were, in that moment, my King Arthur Japanese art loving, captive audience. 

 

”It was a type of miracle that she had come out of the test sane AND with all her children still adoring her! And I realised, that woman was better than me. I didn’t think I was up to her job. And that three was my content max. And I am starting to feel comfortable and warm about that. I guess I am making peace with my expectations? Do Y’know what I mean? It’s okay to not get everything you thought you would.” 

 

There was communal understanding. We were at the interior pews. Confessions of the middle class thirty somethings.
 

Cha topped up the wine glasses.
 

Sitting round that circular table in the womb of a softly lit room, sounds of our children playing and flour spread around the floor from baking ginger biscuits, felt like church.

 

x

[mylolita]

There is just too much intricacy and beauty and terror and simplicity and workings to ever get down on paper.

 

I could write a five hundred page essay on the rack over my bath and it’s contents alone. 
 

We would pen a novel about yesterdays walk to the corner shop. It’s paper bag twisted in high hedgerows, the taped over bin with a hand written aggravated sign ‘NOT IN USE.’ We could spill sonnets about the weather observed from one window. 
 

It would take a lifetime to indulge and describe one ten minute dream. 
 

It kills me that I can’t do it all. It’s a complete overload for me. It’s a delicious, delectable, terrible, painful, overload. It’s sheer joy. 
 

Being alive will blow your mind, every single second, if you let it.

 

I just allow myself to be blown. This is, after all, one hell of a windy town.

 

x

[mylolita]

It’s Sunday morning. I have a week laid out ahead of me counting endless days with the kids, social evenings out for drinks, and a visit from my business owning, Botox lip filled ex lap dancer of a friend who’s never seen the new house. 
 

The sash window is half open at 8am, a delicate flow of warm tinged about to be Spring breeze ebbing in an endless cycle. The early sun is bright and sweet. The heady scent of hyacinths clustered in an vase on my bamboo dressing table mingles with the air of the ocean. I’m sat up in bed, passionately typing on the phone I said I would give up. I can hear the kids all laughing then crying then laughing again down on the ground floor. I can hear soft reggae music, and clinking and clanking as someone works in their garden. 
 

D comes in, pulls back the covers. The door has been shut. I don’t look up. He buries himself under the powder blue sheets. I can feel his thick hands working my feet, then his lips kissing my ankles, toes.

 

”Don’t suck my toes!” I demand! He doesn’t say anything, and continues to worship me up my limbs. I’m still typing. He appears like a whale gliding over the top of sea foam, dressing gown open. I won’t say anything else. This is ENA. He’s over me, in front of me. 
 

“I just want to get this down love.”

 

After fifteen years, you start saying what you mean. 
 

He silently begins to tie his gown. He slowly shuffles off our vast bed. At the door, he stops and says, simply and positively, “You look nice.”

This is a working class, straight forward guys way of saying “You are the most beautiful thing I have ever set eyes on. I want ten thousand of your babies. I would die over and over again for you. The way the sunlight hits your hair makes me want to cry. I adore your long neck. I want my hands around it, in the most tender, assertive way. I want to f**k your brains out.”

 

Instead, I leave off the sentence, look him in his baby blues, and say, “Thanks Daddy.” I throw him a wink. “Sorry.” He leaves. 
 

On the bedside table is a line up of liquid sustenance that will do me until much later into the day. A small glass of iced coconut water. A milky foam filled cappuccino. A tall glass of water with a Berocca fizzing chirpily at the bottom. Then a stylish flask filled with the most pretentious herbal tea, infusing. Turmeric, ginger, lemon. It will all be cleared away and disappear within an hour. 
 

I have started to write openly, only in the last day or two. It’s always been in secret. It’s always been a veiled embarrassment for me, that I would even journal or keep a diary. Think it was important or worth while to do any of it. Think it would be any good. 
 

I used to slide into the bathroom and hurriedly type out paragraphs to the tune of the running bath. I would sneak into the loo and take a quick fifteen minutes to pen something sporadic. Always off the cuff and erratically hurried. I don’t know what it is, but it’s been happening behind closed doors since I was twelve. And the door had been opened this morning. And I was writing something infront of my husband. And I said, I need to get this DOWN?! 
 

Bizarre.

 

I don’t know what this is, anyway. A massive jerk off, truthfully. 
 

I feel like I’m building up to something.

 

February is a great month.

 

x

[mylolita]

Some of the best events to dress for:

 

Evening drinks, day time coffee dates, everyday everyday, and funerals. 
 

x

[mylolita]

Rome wasn’t built in a day, b**ch!
 

Remember that.

 

x

[mylolita]

As pretty and happy as my walking days have been, I have been having the most disturbing, horror filled nightmares lately.

 

So bad and dark, I don’t think I could even describe them openly here. 
 

I’ve always been plagued with vivid, twisted, Twin Peak style surrealist bad dreams. Always. But it’s amped up. What does that mean? I just don’t know.

 

I had a creepy dream that my mother in law was laid in our antique cast iron bath tub,  her scrawny old body naked. She would contort and cry out, and jerk, and fresh waves of dark blood would fill the bath tub. It was as if she was a terrible plastic sex doll of some strange medical kind, going through spasms, like someone pressing a button behind her, to release gushes of blood into our tub.  
 

I moved in slow motion, turned to D, who was at the door, and the room was filled with medical bright light. He told me slowly, in treacle dream speech, that it was okay, he had it under control. I felt sick to my stomach to hear this gut wrenching pain emitting from her mannequin version of a wrinkled face. Each new wave, more blood. I went back to bed. Then suddenly, her skeletal frame was in our bed?! And she was moaning new moans, and I could see blossoms of blood forming underneath her. I was about to throw up. My skin was crawling?! How could he expect me to sleep next to her in this zombie, twisted state?! Wasn’t anyone going to help her?! What about if the children heard?!

 

I woke up in a startle, and could hear both my girls crying out for my in unison. Maybe that had caused the nightmarish dream? I woke up thinking, she is ill? 

 

What did it mean, God knows. I woke up to a pounding headache after it.

 

x

[mylolita]

There was an exquisitely beautiful era in my life, that I’ll never get back. It was simple, young. The whole world and it’s contents, the future, was stretched out before me, for only me.
 

Now I’ve visited parts of that unknown, and found something beautiful again, in it’s own deep, painful, heavenly way. 
 

I can’t go back, but, I know once upon a time, I was eighteen, had just met the love of my life, my soul mate - and I was just so f*cking optimistic. The whole future, even the next second, was hope. 
 

Some songs remind me of that time. They are bitter sweet to hear. Sometimes, I think I want to go back, but… I know I can’t, and I know I couldn’t really. I couldn’t leave any of this beautiful weight I have collected behind. Atlas can’t drop the world. 
 

Those years were… weightless. I was a feather in the wind. 
 

I like to dance all night 
Summons the day 
But that's how I play 
Yeah that's how I play 
I said who are you? 
Don't matter who you are 
So we dance all night 
And dance all day

I say 
I say

We're gonna fuel the fire 
Gonna stoke it up 
We're gonna sip this wine 
And pass the cup 
Who needs avenues 
Who needs reservoirs 
We're gonna show this town 
How to kiss these stars

I say 
I say

I'm on a hunt to kill 
Gonna skin the hide 
A yelp and scream 
And away I ride 
I'll never top this view 
I'll never follow ground 
It's all for you 
For what you've found

I say 
I say 
I say 
I say

It's gonna take your head 
And gonna drive you home 
It's gonna keep on, keep on, keep on 
And then forever roam

x

 

[mylolita]

“From the very first time I laid my eyes on you, girl; my heart said follow through.”

 

- Bob Marley, ‘Waiting In Vain’

 

 

I’ve got my eyes on you

You’re everything that I see

I want your hot love and emotion, endlessly

I can’t get over you

You left your mark on me

I want your hot love and emotion, endlessly 

Cos you’re a good girl and you know it

You act so different around me 

Cos you’re a good girl and you know it

I know exactly who you could be
 

x

[mylolita]

I opened the front door out onto our quintessentially British chocolate box street to see a man, mid twenties to early thirties, dressed in outdoorsy clothes with a trendy twist, mobile to ear, talking so loud with a thick, American accent. 
 

Took me totally by surprise. It assaulted my British senses, actually. 
 

“…AND I WAS LIKE… AND SHE WAS, LIKE, I SAID TO HER…” 
 

I don’t know which accent and from what area it was, and sorry Americans, but, it was offensive. So out of place as the black birds chirped. He was pacing back and forth addressing the whole street.

 

I turned back, baby daughter in the pram, shutting the door. 
 

“My God.” I said to her, “Bl**dy Americans. On our street?! We’ll wait for it to pass chickadee.” 
 

🤪

Churchill was right. Can’t do a thing about it my luvvie, not a thing! 
 

x

[Jibralta]

2 hours ago, mylolita said:

thick, American accent.

Ha! I can't imagine what that sounds like without narrowing it down to a region. If he was upsetting the wildlife around him he's probably from my area lol. Our way of speaking can be very jarring. 

[mylolita]

9 hours ago, Jibralta said:

Ha! I can't imagine what that sounds like without narrowing it down to a region. If he was upsetting the wildlife around him he's probably from my area lol. Our way of speaking can be very jarring. 

I’m only half kidding Jibs because I really love and admire the idea of America even though I’ve never been! 
 

It was more valley girl? “Like, Y’know, whateverrrrr!” And really loud. Hit me like a tonne of bricks because you don’t realise how very British everything is until a rare, rare American booms in 🤣 We don’t see many of your species round these coastal parts! Chinese tourists though, posing for photos, taking photos of everything, everywhere. You spot their really cool trainers before you see them. They can pull off absolutely any clothing combination 😎

 

If your area sounds like how I think it sounds like - I don’t mind it ONE BIT! I am thinking, Sopranos but without the Italian?! 
 

I’m not your stereotypical Queens English wear a morning suit to read the breakfast news type gal, but when I say “cup of tea crumpet scone and your galoshes” I mean it 🤣

 

Oh and, my dear! Gosh! Bl**dy hell! And “are you having a laugh?!” 🥲

 

x 

[mylolita]

9 hours ago, Jibralta said:

Ha! I can't imagine what that sounds like without narrowing it down to a region. If he was upsetting the wildlife around him he's probably from my area lol. Our way of speaking can be very jarring. 

It broke through the peaceful quiet of a hazy Saturday afternoon on a British sloping Victorian terrace street.

 

The near sound of the ocean swashing, a “snip snip” of garden pruners, black birds and starlings singing in the hedgerows, a just about to start to set winter orange sun, cornflower blue skies, my crumbling stone wall, then this t w a t on his phone to the rest of the county. I should have launched a fat ball at him 🤣🤣🤣

I was just taking in the sweet, aged cherry wood aroma of a dining table D had bought for me (17th century) and I was disturbed Jib, DISTURBED! If I in fact WERE American, I would have lodged a session with my therapist immediately, but because I am British, I cursed him to my 1 year old and secretly thought about contacting the council. Instead, what I’ll really do is talk about it to the neighbours with self depreciating, black humour, where it’s hard to see if I’m really bothered or not, and then slag off someone’s lawn to conclude, then maybe finally round up with how nice the weather has been! LOL!

x

[mylolita]

It would have been totally acceptable to be shouting “What the F U C K?!” across the street because someone had scraped your car, or to be hollering across a few gardens because “Polly! Polly! Your bag is flying off!” As she gets her shopping in. 
 

But it just was borderline illegal Jib. My senses are shook. I didn’t realise it at the time, but this encounter with the joggers in socks one probably subconsciously made me nip to the shop to buy iced tea (4).

 

LOLZ! 
 

x

[mylolita]

Hahaha @Jibralta! You guys are alright by me really! 😘

 

Hows the house hunt?! 
 

x

[mylolita]

 

It’s Valentines night.

 

I’ve been with D for 15 years. Fifteen years. It feels like forever. It feels like a minute in time.

 

I was 18, and halfway through a shift working at an upmarket cocktail club behind the bar. I even remember what I was wearing. A semi-sheer drop shouldered, dark plum shirt, that had been my Mums once upon a time in the 80s. My hair was mid length, full of large, deep red curls. I’d drawn a few back off my face on each side and secured it loosely with booby pins. I had quite great, high cheekbones and this used to highlight that part of my face. Cherry coloured lipstick, black cigarette trousers, black suede heels. I remember what he was wearing too. Navy T-shirt, chip toothed grin, dark jeans, and short cropped, tight blonde curls. 
 

The night he chatted me up over that bar, endless Southern Comfort & Cokes, he asked for my MySpace. The little artsy one I was, it was full of collage pictures and photos and a song - ‘4am’, by Cherry Ghost. He left after the lights went up to run instantly home and send me a long, heartfelt, drunken message that appeared in my inbox that I checked before I could even breathe. That walk home in the early morning, inhaling silent summer air to the hammer of an excited heart who felt, no, knew, it had been given something unbelievably significant, was the damn walk of my very life. It was, my coming of age. My defining moment. The Moment. The moment everything changed.

 

I came home today, dropping the key in a shell bowl and releasing all the kids into the hall, to find a Valentines card left on our bed. A large bouquet of unusual blooms sitting next to it. 
 

He had written out all the lyrics to the song I’d had on my profile the night he met me fifteen years ago. It’s become Our Song. 
 

This man, who is so hard, so strong, so industrious, and so full of original, sparking, bold, blunt intelligence, is an absolute teenager for me.

 

When I’m with him, I will be, I am; forever eighteen.

 

———

It'll get you on the last bus home, 
Get you at the discount bin, 
It'll get you on the old dancefloor, 
Get you when the party ends,

Oh 4am, is the time when you were mine, 
Frozen in deepest sleep, for only I to keep, 
Now there ain't a hiding place on earth, 
Where loneliness ain't been first,

It'll get you hanging out your clothes, 
Get you when you wash your hair, 
It'll get you as you're making plans, 
Catch you trying to climb the stairs,

Oh 4am, is the time when you were mine, 
Frozen in deepest sleep, watching the morning creep, 
Now there ain't a hiding place on earth, 
Where loneliness ain't been first,

Hard times, hole in my heart, 
You stole the sun and left me alone again, 
Give me a guiding light, 
Stretch your sky and the hand on my shoulder, singing,

Hard times, hole in my heart, 
You stole the sun and left me alone again, 
Give me a guiding light, 
Stretch your sky and the hand on my shoulder,

Oh 4am is the time when you were mine, 
Frozen in deepest sleep, for only I to keep, 
Now there ain't a hiding place on earth, 
Where loneliness ain't been first, 
Oh, no 
There ain't a hiding place on earth, 
Where loneliness ain't been first, 
Been first, 
Been first

 

———-

 

x