when clothes do express your personality

People always go on about using fashion as a means to express their personality, but I seldom feel like my clothes say much about me, actually, beyond the superficial (middle class, late 20s, periphery to a certain urban tribe, etc.) I've always felt there's a divide between how I dress and how I think, with the former being girlier, and more mainstream in a way than my actual personality.

But I think this outfit actually does represent my personality a bit more than usual. The necklace is a nod to the past without being obsessed with it, and this is one of my favourite dresses: not in-your-face feminine, but layers well with demure blouses. I also love plaid... often for women you have the option of floral (why must our default setting be flowers?), stripes (too potentially preppy or wannabe French), or polka dots (too cutesy). Plaid expresses heritage, character, and a certain masculinity that I like to think is more unisex. Also I love the way the asymmetrical hemline flutters in the wind. And I love my hair in a bun.

What looks do you think best represent your personality, or are you still struggling to discover them?

a weekend with a new/old friend

What constitutes knowing somebody in the internet age? Before I had a blog, knowing someone was fairly clear. You met them; and either inclination or circumstance kept you knowing them. Since I started blogging though, I've developed relationships with all sorts of people I've never met, a fair number of them it can be assumed I will never meet. But through reading their blogs over months or years, I know some of them better than I know some of my real-life friends.

A couple of weeks ago I hosted one such friend who I had never met before, Ashley. I don't even know which random click brought me to her blog or her to mine 2 1/2 years ago, but I've been interacting with her since I lived in Mexico. Now, she lives in London, so obviously we had to arrange for her to come and visit me here.

I had fun giving my usual rambling tour, long on food and coffee and short on actual monuments, most of which I made her visit by herself. ;)


dinner with friends


I took her to Parc de la Ciutadella for the obligatory mammoth picture




We had chocolate and churros and coffee at Granja Viader


And on Sunday we went to Parc Guëll. I hadn't been for years myself... it's good having visitors!





That crazy girl in green was wandering around the park in skin-tight pants and six inch heels. Somehow she made it up the pinnacle with the crosses though.


And we did quieter, more local things, like watching Swing dancing in a square in the Gràcia neighbourhood.


And going for cocktails with friends, on a night when I became an official cocktail photographer! Ha!

Come back any time Ashley! Now that we know each other and everything. Also, we've got to finish drafting our best-selling future novel about sexy Leprechauns!

winter sun

England in winter is best known for its "battleship grey" skies, but it was actually sunny for all seven hours of daylight, or whatever passes for a full day at this time of year, on Saturday in Bristol. I remember when I used to live in Glasgow years ago, being nonplussed when it was literally dark by 3pm in December. Of course, the flipside was that in June, traipsing your way home from a night out, it would be getting light at 4am before you've even made it home. One thing I really enjoy about having lived in a variety of places is the way that your sense of what's "normal" becomes warped and finally more flexible, whether it's to do with weather, food, languages, or hundreds of other little instances.

keeping busy

Photo by Hiromi Torres


(that's her) :)

Life is a constant learning experience sometimes. After living abroad for almost a decade, I thought I had the formula figured out. I had gone from being someone who in high school was so shy that I frequently passed whole days without speaking to anyone, to being someone who could talk to most people and make friends fairly easily. I'd made friends with people from every continent (except Antarctica). I had moved to a country without knowing a soul at least twice, and only knowing one soul several more times. I could handle anything.

Yeah right. In the last couple of years, with even more moving about, I found myself a bit lonely. I certainly wasn't friendless, but I gained a new appreciation for how long it takes to grow a network of face-to-face people you actually care about, and between London, Barcelona, long-distance relationshipping and having a blog (yep), I found myself outside of regular society. Going out and meeting new people seemed necessary, but also scary, expensive, and just an effort.

Around February last year I hauled myself out of that rut, joined meetup.com, which was amazing, and when I returned to Barcelona this year I did so with the vow to never turn down a single invitation (and to make a bunch myself). When you feel a bit alone it's so easy to get into a slump, to start feeling like you don't really want to go out, and to retreat to the internet. And let's face it, this can happen in all of our lives. I make things difficult for myself, but I bet you've all been through a phase where everyone seems to be in a relationship except you, or where time or distance and take their toll on friendships.

So, long story short, I've been keeping busy! The above photos are from a once-a-month photography meetup I really enjoy, but also...


The lovely Johana from Venezuela, who I know from a Catalan class invited me to a Tuesday night of listening to her husband DJ rockabilly at a local bar


which is delightful and red


My local friend Mercè and I went to see Blancanieves, a Spanish, silent-film version of Snow White that is doing the festival rounds at the moment. It was beautifully shot and acted and erm, costumed, but maybe a bit too Spanish (sorry about taking you to two hours of bull-fighting and flamenco, Mercè)


It does feature the wonderful Spanish actress Maribel Verdú, however (who Kallie, Albert and I saw leaving the Fabrica Moritz last spring)!



Then Mercè and I had Argentine empanadas and Catalan beers




And of course I've gone for a lot of coffee...


And this, and so much more

Photo by Jerome

(like reading lots and lots to restart my sluggish brain, and going to lectures about urbanism, and writing, but more on that another time).

creature of the night

Guess who got caught out by Daylight Savings Time? :D

One thing I love are nighttime walks. I think it's because I can talk to myself with impunity. When I was a kid I always used to go into my yard, walk around in circles for hours and "play my games," which was making up stories, either from scratch, or featuring characters from books I'd read, or about me and my friends. To this day, I go for long walks whenever I can, and I usually end up talking to myself. Thinking things through is pretty much synonymous with walking and talking to me... one time in Mexico, Albert pulled over on his way home from work to give me a ride and said "did you realize you were talking and gesticulating walking down the street?" I guess I'm destined to be a truly crazy old lady!

But at least I don't go around jumping into other people's photographs.



P.S. After years of colour, colour and more colour... apparently I love black again. Not sure if I'm falling victim to the 90s gothic revival thing, or decided life would be easier if I dressed like Audrey Hepburn, or maybe it's from studying French in the summer... ;)

coffee and comfort

These days I'm really into comfort, but the kind of comfort that's hovering on the brink of new adventures. It's about simultaneously embracing the old and new. In clothes for example, I've found myself stripping back, retreating to things I've had for a long time, or buying something new and then wearing it every single day. And mainly, just not worrying about it too much. I feel like I'm conserving resources, because I'm gearing up for a major shift in thinking, and I feel like it's going to be reflected to some degree in how I dress, so I may as well take it easy until I've figured it out.

Another aspect of comfort is my daily (okay, thrice daily) tea or coffee. A lot of people say they can't function until they've had their coffee, and I guess after at least a decade of caffeine I am that addict, but strangely it's never really been about the stimulation for me. I always turned to hot drinks because they're comforting, because they're something to hold onto that's warm (I'm usually cold), because their comfort is a reward when you have to study or work, because sipping them is something to do when you're stuck in a boring class. I could probably extend that metaphor of change somehow and say that I'm thinking of switching to green tea or something, but actually, after years in Europe, the only change is there's no way I'm paying $3.50 for a cappuccino, so I'm forcing myself to like drip coffee.

If you're ever in Vancouver, go to Trees on Granville by the way. The drip coffee is surprisingly nice, and they are routinely voted Vancouver's Best Cheesecake.



P.S. If I'm a bit rambly, that would be the jet-lag. ;)

september issues

If recent posts give the impression that I'm a little disconnected from the blog, and even from getting dressed, that's entirely the case. It's September, and September is an uneasy month for me. I've moved or said goodbye to a significant part of a past life every September except one since 2003. September is the anniversary of my dad moving to Canada 40-odd years ago, and the quiet celebration of a life-changing event always makes me reflect on what the real life-changing events in my own life with prove to be, with hindsight. My birthday is in early October, and as I'm sure everyone over 24 can relate, birthdays just get more fun with every passing year. I guess I'm brewing up a little crisis of my own.

It's been interesting being back in Canada to see where people are in their lives. Unsurprisingly given the worldwide crisis, a fair number of people my age (late 20s, I'm about to turn 29) are drifting or in limbo, but not everyone. Some of my friends, even in difficult-to-break-into areas like journalism and the art world, are starting to make headway and seeing these successes really makes me want to focus on forging my own way in my own desperate and unrealistic dream (writing). I'm my own worst enemy through fatalism and lack of confidence, but the changing of the season and that damned birthday are reminding me that time and tide wait for no man.



Oh yes, blog. I'm feeling restricted by the formula of this blog as I've built it and as it fits into the wider genre that it does. I'm feeling restricted by a perceived need to seem happy, to seem polished, to seem on top of things, and ultimately by the task I've set myself of portraying myself all the time. I've considered stopping blogging, but then I look back through my archives and appreciate their existence and I don't want to stop. I'm inarticulate, but I suppose I'm saying I hope you'll bear with me while I work through the September issue...



"September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret."
- Alexander Theroux, 1981

Photos by Shona

quiet days

I've been keeping a low profile this week, since coming down with New Country Syndrome a bit. Luckily, it's come at a good time to catch up on all the other projects I set myself to do in the summer. Apart from working (I've been able to work from home for a few months which is how I seem to be on two-month vacation), I've been really getting back into writing, which kind of fell by the wayside when I got a new job this past spring. My other project of the summer was learning (or relearning) French. Like most anglophone Canadians, I studied it in school for about a million years and came out able to write an essay but unable to speak a word. I've been applying myself for the last month, doing CD courses, trying to read, getting a language exchange partner, and watching children's TV shows out of Quebec. I've regressed about 25 years and my favourite show is currently about a piglet and a camel and a puffin who are all friends. So cute! Kind of wish I'd actually watched these when I was a kid though; I would probably have learned way faster.

What are your goals and projects at the moment? I always have to have something in the back of my mind that I'm working on, or I start getting neurotic and think I'm doing nothing with my life...





Photos by Shona

party time

If I could choose one thing to wear to every party all summer, this would be it. This dress, a £15 bargain from the Asos sales, fulfils all the requirements of a party dress to my mind. You can't be underdressed, because it's classic and black and flattering, and you can't really be over-dressed either because it's just a little sundress (I find a messy pony-tail helps defuse a potentially overdressed look anyway). I wore this to a party in Guelph that I knew would be casual, but didn't care and wanted to get dressed up anyway. The girls said I was 'elegant' and the guys thought I was hot, and you have to love a dress that walks that line so successfully.

This was also the first house party I'd been to in forever (they aren't so common in Europe, at least not where I've lived because no one has enough space). I just love the dynamic of house parties; the way everyone ends up in the kitchen at some point, the inevitable moment when you find yourself drinking red wine out of a mug while sitting on the floor, the spectacularly random conversations at 3 in the morning. My sister was telling me today that she's not really a party person, but I think almost everybody is... you just have to find the type of party you like. Mine involve lots of talking, not too much loud music, but perhaps a little spontaneous dancing in the wee hours...





Oh, on the topic of my sister... didn't she take some lovely pictures this time around?



Photos by Shona