Immunity : Unfiltered

Early May always feels strangely bittersweet to me. The light changes almost overnight. The evenings begin stretching themselves lazily across the garden again, the air softens, and suddenly everything feels alive after months of damp British hostility. Even the birds seem unbearably pleased with themselves. One blackbird outside my window has recently begun performing at approximately 5am every morning with the confidence of a West End lead who believes the nation personally requested his return. And somehow, alongside all of that renewal, comes this horrible creeping awareness that the academic year is ending. I genuinely don’t know how I’m supposed to cope with that. This semester has done something to me intellectually that I was not prepared for at all. Somewhere between lectures, heritage work, books piled dangerously high beside my bed, museum visits, essays, and fieldwork discussions, I seem to have fallen completely and irrevocably in love with my subject. Not in the vague “th...

These little eggs made a smiley face!- so CUUUUUTE!  There are days when cooking feels like a chore. A series of timers, washing up, and wondering why everything always ends up needing more salt than you think. And then there are days when it feels like something else entirely. Something softer. Slower. Almost like therapy you can eat. This was one of those days. I made gnocchi for the very first time. Not the shop-bought kind that quietly sits in your cupboard waiting for a moment of desperation. Proper, handmade gnocchi . Soft little dumplings that somehow manage to feel both rustic and elegant at the same time. The kind of food that makes you feel like you’ve briefly stepped into a quieter version of your own life. And I don’t say this lightly, but it genuinely made me happy in a way I wasn’t expecting. Ingredients (for spinach gnocchi with ricotta) 2 eggs 900g / 2lb spinach leaves 225g / 8oz ricotta cheese 225–275g / 8–10oz plain flour (depending on texture) ½ teasp...

 Spring is sprung! Finally! The birds are singing, the sun is shining... and the seasonal depression is finally lifting from my system! . What a few weeks it has been, and although I wanted to update my blog sooner, the best laid plans go awry and whatnot! haha!  I have been a bit nose to the grindstone over recent weeks but with good reason... I have had deadline season, but also I have had in general several appointments. The joys of admin!  How good it feels to finally shake off the snow, and feel like it's finally a new year and a chance to reset!  LOOK how Pretty my Uni is in the spring!- I love this place and I hope I get to make it my home for the next 3 years!  Well.... the last few weeks have been truly intense! Several deadlines, a 4-day migraine, and I was beating myself up because I needed to ask for an extension for the first ever time... I was hoping to be able to keep up without any need for any such measures! I hate feeling like I am different to...

  20 Pieces of Ableist Propaganda I’m No Longer Falling For Over the past few months, and more so this month, which is why my blog has been so quiet... something quite unexpected has been happening. Not in a dramatic, cinematic way. No inspirational movie montage here. Just a slow, quiet process of unlearning things I didn’t even realise I had absorbed.  When you live with a chronic illness like CVID , you pick up a lot of messages about what you’re supposed to be. Some of them are obvious. Others are so subtle they hide in plain sight for years. Little ideas about worth. Effort. Productivity. What counts as “deserving”. A lot of those ideas are, frankly, nonsense. So here are twenty pieces of ableist propaganda I’m actively unlearning. Because apparently the brain sometimes needs to hear these things out loud before it believes them. JUST LOOK at this study space in the library at my uni! WHY WOULDN'T I, or anyone to be more than honest, be OBSESSED with reading and studyin...

Uni has a way of throwing you these little curveballs that make your chest ache in the best and worst ways. This week mine came in the form of a recommendation for Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2018) as part of reception studies in classical literature. Honestly for the first chunk, you would be forgiven for saying that "nothing happens" and that's almost true.... Forty-five minutes in, it's a language of stolen glances, barely a word exchanged at times, and yet it grips you completely. It feels like someone has taken the awkward, burning intensity of a Sapphic crush and put it on screen. It is savage. The baited breaths, the eye contact, the conversations behind the eyes, and the YEARNING..... BRUTAL! My heart went in my mouth several times, and it was agony! Seriously. Céline Sciamma is a genius at making you feel like a voyeur. The sound design is understated and gorgeous, the kind of subtlety that makes you hold your breath. The camera follows Marianne and Héloïse...