It's gonna be May!

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 “this is interesting” sense either.

I mean properly consumed by it.

The kind of love that changes the texture of your thinking. The kind where your brain starts involuntarily connecting everything back to archaeology, folklore, landscape, material culture, mythology, memory. I’ll be sitting peacefully with a cup of tea and suddenly catch myself wondering about ritual deposition practices or Roman domestic symbolism like some sort of extremely niche Victorian ghost.

It’s become less like studying and more like discovering a language my mind was already trying to speak.

Which is wonderful.

And also mildly devastating.

Because now the year is ending and all I can think is: surely we have only just started?

I want more of it constantly. More lectures. More archives. More practical work. More conversations with people equally obsessed with tiny fragments of pottery and historical context. More afternoons disappearing into libraries accidentally. More opportunities to stand in ancient places and feel that strange electric sensation of continuity between lives.

I have become academically greedy.

And perhaps the strangest part is that I actually did better than I expected this term too.

Much better, honestly.

I’m still not entirely sure I’ve emotionally processed that.

When you spend years dealing with chronic illness, medical appointments, exhaustion, recovery, and simply surviving day to day life, it becomes very easy to underestimate yourself intellectually. You begin assuming you are constantly behind everyone else, constantly compensating, constantly one flare-up away from collapse.

So to receive genuinely good grades felt… disorientating in the loveliest possible way.

Not because I don’t work hard. I do. Intensely so. But because somewhere along the line, I think I stopped believing hard work would necessarily translate into achievement.

Apparently it does sometimes. Against all odds. Humanity’s most irritating feature remains its occasional capacity for hope.

To celebrate surviving the semester with both my dignity and grades somewhat intact, I bought myself something I had been eyeing for quite a while: a replica Roman intaglio ring depicting Minerva.

Technically Minerva, anyway. Spiritually Athena. The Romans did what the Romans always did and politely borrowed Greek ideas while pretending they invented civilisation itself.

I absolutely adore the ring.

It’s heavy in the hand in that satisfying way good jewellery should be, and the intaglio carving has this beautiful worn quality that makes it feel as though it already carries stories before you even begin attaching your own to it.

I’ve always collected jewellery with meaning attached to it. Not extravagantly. Just carefully and sentimentally. Rings, pendants, little symbolic pieces connected to memories, transitions, accomplishments, versions of myself I don’t want to lose entirely.

Some people document their lives through photographs. I seem to do it through objects.

And this ring felt particularly fitting for this stage of my life. Minerva represents wisdom, strategy, learning, craft, intellect, discipline. There’s strength there, but not loudness. It feels grounded rather than performative. Quiet competence rather than spectacle.

I think I needed that reminder.

I also got myself a smol treat.... I had to see what the hype was all about! 

Is Matcha worth the hype? YES actually.... This one is cherry and vanilla and I think I am obsessed with it. 

Alongside my increasingly archaeological-magpie tendencies, I’ve also recently been gifted something I am absurdly excited about: an Omlet Beehaus beehive.

I do not yet have bees.

At present I simply possess an empty hive and the enthusiasm of a medieval peasant who has just been entrusted with a sacred agricultural duty by the local abbey.

But I am so excited to learn.

Beekeeping has fascinated me for years in that deeply romantic, slightly obsessive way certain countryside skills tend to. There is something profoundly comforting about the idea of tending bees. Something ancient and rhythmic and practical about it. Humans and bees have existed in quiet partnership for thousands of years, and I think in a world that increasingly feels artificial and frantic, that relationship holds a particular kind of beauty.

Also, if I’m honest, I suspect part of me simply wants to become the sort of woman villagers describe vaguely as “eccentric but knowledgeable” while buying local honey from a weathered wooden table.

There are certainly worse aspirations.

The garden itself has become a bit of a sanctuary lately too.

It’s finally warm enough to properly sit outside again, which has done wonders for my mood. I hadn’t realised how starved I was for sunlight until recently. There’s something medicinal about early May warmth after months of cold rain and grey skies. Tea tastes better outside. Books feel slower in the best way. Even silence feels less oppressive.

A garden sulk with a watermelon Iced coffee Latte! 

Most afternoons lately have involved me sitting in the garden with a book, occasionally staring dramatically into the middle distance as though I’m in a BBC adaptation about forbidden intellectual ambition.

And honestly? It’s been healing.

I also dyed my hair slightly darker recently.

Not dramatically dark. Just richer. More mahogany than copper.

I do genuinely like it. In certain light it looks glossy and expensive and vaguely Pre-Raphaelite. In other lighting it resembles polished conker shells and causes me to question every decision I’ve ever made. I don't love it, I sort of like it.... ish... well, it could have been worse. 

It’s fading now, slowly returning to something softer and warmer, and I think that’s probably for the best. I could never fully commit to staying this shade permanently. The brighter copper tones feel too much like me somehow.

Still, it was nice to experiment a little. Reinvention is healthy in small doses. Less healthy when conducted at 11pm in a bathroom with kitchen scissors and emotional instability, but this thankfully remained within acceptable parameters.

Health-wise, things have thankfully been steadier too....

I had my asthma review recently and it went genuinely well, which was reassuring after how frightening last year’s infection became. I don’t think I realised how much that experience had stayed with me psychologically until this appointment. I had a small asthma attack earlier that week from trying to do vigourous exercise. You hear "diet and exercise" enough, you'll try anything, and that chest infection last year was a CLOSE SHAVE!. 

Once breathing itself has frightened you properly, your relationship with your body changes a little.

But this review was calm and kind and competent. No panic. No alarm. Just reassurance and straightforward care. After some previous experiences with healthcare that left me feeling deeply uncomfortable and unseen, that kindness mattered more than I can properly explain.

And finally, yes, I remain entirely obsessed with the newest season of Bridgerton.

I know. I know.

Pandora Jewellery with Bridgerton?!- what even? Obsessed!- next review? 

But listen. Humans have spent centuries obsessing over longing, yearning, impossible romance, dramatic eye contact, and emotionally repressed people standing too close together in candlelight. We simply gave it orchestral pop covers and Netflix budgets.

There’s something strangely comforting about stories where emotion is allowed to be grand and sincere. Perhaps because modern life often pressures us toward detachment, irony, and emotional minimalism instead.

I don’t think I’m built for emotional minimalism.

I am, unfortunately, a yearner.

Which perhaps brings me to the quieter truth sitting underneath all of this: while life feels fuller lately, loneliness still exists alongside that fullness sometimes.

I think because I’m no longer permanently trapped in survival mode, I finally have enough emotional space to notice the absence of certain things again.

Seven years without dating anyone is a long time.

Long enough that avoidance begins feeling safer than vulnerability. Long enough that you begin wondering whether your distance from intimacy is identity, fear, self-protection, exhaustion, or simply habit calcified over time.

I still don’t entirely know.

What I do know is that I have absolutely no patience left for lukewarm affection, placeholder relationships, situationships, emotional ambiguity, or people who approach romance with the spiritual depth of a Tesco meal deal.

If connection exists, I want it to mean something.

If it doesn’t, I would honestly rather sit in the garden with my future bees, my archaeology books, and my Roman goddess jewellery.

Which, when phrased like that, sounds less tragic and more like the opening chapter of an unexpectedly powerful novel about feminine self-actualisation.

So perhaps things are alright after all.



With My Heart,


Clare Alexandra