The Thankful Project

My darling friend Lisa tagged me in a thing where you write about stuff you're thankful for. I am very thankful to have a reason to blog today! So let's see.

1. A person

 

 I'm sure everyone expected this but obviously it's my girlfriend. She is the sweetest and most beautiful person to me and I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with her. I kept scrolling up while writing this post to look at this picture again because she is SO PRETTY  <3

2. A role you’ve played

 I kept trying to think of a really interesting 'role' I've played in my life (sister? girlfriend? fangirl?) but I couldn't think of anything I wanted to write about so I decided to interpret it very literally and say that I'm very thankful to have played the role of angel for a photoshoot when I worked at a costume design company. Really I just wanted to post this picture of teenage-me as an angel.

3. A place

Maison Rouge. My grandparents bought this beautiful 300 year old farm in the French countryside in the 60s and made it into a true little paradise. All of my summers were spent there as a child, but I grew unbelievably bored of it as a teenager when all I wanted was to travel to places I hadn't been before and go on wild adventures. Now that I am becoming old and boring however, I love this place more than anything. I've stayed there with my friends for the past two years, and it gave me the chance to discover the house and the beautiful surroundings in a whole new way. It is a beautiful and peaceful place and I can't wait to go back there next summer.

4. An experience

Seeing The Darkness in Liverpool. When I was 17, I spent a lot of my time on a fan forum about Dan Hawkins from The Darkness. They were about to do their last gig of the tour in Liverpool, and everyone in the fandom was either going or constantly crying about how they weren't going. I was in the latter category. Two days before the gig, just as I was coming to terms with the fact that I would have to just live vicariously through my friends that were going to be there, someone offered me a free ticket. She was going to go with her boyfriend, but they'd split up and he'd told her to go with a friend instead. What happened in between isn't pretty, so I'll fast forward to the moment when I set foot in England for the first time in my life, saw my favourite band playing what was going to be one of their last gigs before they (temporarily) broke up, and took this picture with Dan. I flew home the next morning without sleeping and floated on a happy cloud made of Darkness for the next few months.

5. A talent you have

Making stuff. I haven't done enough of that lately, but I used to constantly sew fishbags and weird dolls. I made this little fucker inspired by a Mika video and then took him with me everywhere for a few months and took pictures of him doing everything I did. This is him ice skating behind my grandma's house.

6. A failure

 Dropping out of fashion school. This is me in front of the Amsterdam Fashion school I went to for a year an a half, posing in an outfit I made/styled for an assignment. I learned quite a few things in the first year, but in the end it made me incredibly miserable and I'm glad I could step away from this extremely toxic environment, even if it meant giving up my dream of becoming The Darkness' personal stylist......

7. Words 

 Even for this one I could find a relevant picture! Me and Oscar Wilde in Dublin last summer ;) I am very thankful for all of his beautiful words, of course he is responsible for many funny witty quotes but my favourites are lines that are just beautiful like a painting can be beautiful.

The world has changed because you are made of ivory and gold,
the curves of your lips rewrite history 

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars

Put out the torches, hide the moon, hide the stars
 
8. A photo

Best friend, girlfriend and myself in Southampton all covered in glitter about to see a Bowie tribute band. I'm wearing a Darkness top. So many good things. 

9. A memory

 Getting my first tattoo. Here a real ladybird came to say hi to it. I was 19 when I got it, and even though I it's not perfect and needs some touching up it still means a lot to me because it was one of the first decisions I really made for me.

10. An opportunity    

Studying in Southampton for a year. This picture of me and my parents was taken on the ferry to Dover on the day I moved to England. It was a beautiful year and it changed my life forever. I miss Southampton so much and I can't wait to go back next week to see my girlfriend.

Let's Do The Time Warp Again

  

I finally acquired a time machine! I can't go into specifics on how it came into my possession, but I've certainly been making the most of it. The first thing that I did was of course take my girlfriend and my best mate to see David Bowie in the 70s. We wore an appropriate amount of glitter:

The 70s are an excellent era, I took Cat again the next week to go and see T.rex.

Then I went to see Cécile in Brighton and we went to an underground party in the 80s:

 

 And to get a milkshake in the 50s:

The next stop is going to be the 1880s because I want to meet Oscar Wilde!

An ode to my friend Cécile

 

The daily blogging has so far brought about two changes: 1. my pageviews have skyrocketed, and 2. I procrastinate on something that I love to do. I just realised that it was getting rather late, and that I needed to write something. So I decided to write about my friend Cécile.  

I met Cécile in the first week of university, September 2010. I didn't really like her, she seemed overly enthusiastic about reading a poem in class in a slightly fake English accent. But then a few days later she sat in front of me in a lecture and wore a Franz Ferdinand top. Now, she is the first person I talk to about literally anything. 

Awesome things that happened involving Cécile:

- In the aftermath of a rather sexually confusing party, we went on a road trip through Amstelveen and had Chinese take away in front of Patty Brard's house. We then slept in my childhood room in Uithoorn and read magazines from the early noughties all morning. What you don't understand is that this was awesome because it was with Cécile.

- She is the kind of person who sends me this for my birthday.

- She has a furry black coat called The Monster. 

- We once painted our faces like Mexican skulls and tried to get into Jesters but it was full so we went to Sobar and danced with straight gay men and then when we went home I fell into a ditch full of nettles and she had to ask two random Asian people to help pull me back out.

- She once let me help her bake chocolate banana bread to eat on our holiday to France to cheer me up on a shitty day. It was a nice moment.

- We formed an 80s disco DJ team with Eva called the Damsko Disco Dolls and then had an 80s party as an excuse.

- Sometimes she tells people that she hates them and then pretends it's a joke when it's actually true. It confuses everyone. 

-This is (probably) the first photo of us together. In a phonology seminar.