There is nothing I love more than making a list.

When I wrote on A Practical Wedding (yes, I'm bringing that up again. Deal with it) that as we navigated the choppy waters of wedding planning, "tasks were ticked off The List with a satisfied flourish", I wasn't kidding. There's something so satisfying about taking a creamy, smooth sheet of notepaper and covering it in neat, ordered, tidy tasks. Whether I actually get off my arse and complete any of the tasks is almost beside the point - it's the process. (And the nice paper.)

Anyway, when I first heard about the practice of making a life list, I was intrigued. Oooooh, more lists! You can never have too many lists! The theory, as I understand it, is to write down the things you would love to experience or accomplish at some point in your life. It doesn't have to be an immediate goal, it doesn't need to be all extravagant or glamorous, it doesn't even need to be realistic or entirely within your control. Nothing is off limits.

I love reading other people's lists – it's a sneak peek into someone's secret yearnings, their heart's desires. The funny part is that I often find that I have done a lot of the things on other people's lists, especially the American ones, which tend to revolve around visiting places in Europe. Ok, I live here, so it's kind of cheating, but for a moment I feel a little smug. Until I realise that it's not about what other people want to do with their lives. It's about what I want to do with mine.

Wish me luck.


Bunny dressage images via Daily Mail via Cute Overload. Because if bunnies can do dressage, anything's possible.

...until Team Sugar is back.

The Hubster and I are beyond excited.

This year's candidates have been announced.

I continue to be baffled that anyone would willingly subject themselves to this ritual humiliation.

We couldn't pick a favourite candidate (they're all pretty horrendous),
but the odious Natasha is a leading contender for most obnoxious.

Anyone who describes herself as "in your face",
  like that's a good thing, is not really My Kind Of Person.

But oh, how I luuuuurve to hate them all.

And you know the best thing about The Apprentice in the UK?


We don't have to put up with this bell end.

Never mind the royal wedding, it's times like these
when I thank the Lord I'm British.

{This does not end well. I'm serious. Consider yourself warned...}

Once upon a time, I had a Saturday job. Every Saturday morning from the ages of about 15 to 17, I would run along the seafront, inevitably five minutes late, to open up the quaint little florist's in the quaint little High Street of the quaint little town in which I lived. Essentially my role was to be polite, presentable and occasionally creative, and to endlessly scrub buckets with Sisyphean amounts of bleach.

Me being me, there were occasional mishaps. I once apologised for a delay by telling a rotund and somewhat imperious customer that I was very sorry about her wait. It was clear from her face she was quite happy with her weight thank you very much and she did not appreciate my impertinence. That was awkward.

Then there was the time I was filling in a gift card on a bouquet on behalf of a gentleman whose proper name, I presume, was William. Unfortunately, instead of signing the card "Willie" (as in, the well-known contraction of William), I signed it "Willy", (as in, well, you know). Again. Awkward.

There was also the time I melted my trousers on an electric heater but I think you probably get the picture so I'll stop there. Yet despite (or, I like to think, because of) these... eccentricities, they kept me on, I tried not to offend any more customers, and we soldiered on.

On one particular sunny Saturday, the High Street was all a-bustle and the florist's was brimming with spring blooms. We always had a little afternoon lull, so my boss had (unwisely, as it turned out) left me alone to tend the shop. I was idly watching the world go by and probably agonising over some minor high school drama when all of a sudden

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What the hell was that that?

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What?! Where is that coming from??

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I stick my head out the open shop door into the busy street - no, definitely not coming from there...

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After much frenzied searching around the shop and some brief but earnest questioning of my own sanity, finally, hidden behind a vast bucket of lilies, I uncover the source.

A bird. In the shop. A tiny, too-young baby bird, its breast beating wildly in panic and fear and its newly-formed wings fluttering ineffectually against the dusty floor, delicate as eyelashes.

I freeze. I can't leave the shop; I'm here on my own. I don't know what to do. My experience as an erstwhile budgie-owner has not prepared me for this moment. As an interim measure I upend one of the buckets over the bird, catch it like a spider under a glass. This seems like a good idea, although I'm not sure what I think I'm going to do with it now. I can't exactly toss it out the window - I have no idea how it got into the shop but if there's one thing it didn't do, it was fly here. It must have hopped here. Maybe it can hop back? It's not far to the woods, it's just around the corner, a few teeny hops and it will be safe and free and maybe it will be reunited with its mum and it will learn to fly and all will be right with the world. That's it, it can hop back. All I need to do is point it in the right direction and it will be fine. I've saved a baby bird! I'm like Snow White or something! This plan can't possibly fail!

Oh, Kirsty. Silly, stupid, teenage Kirsty.

I shuffle the upturned bucket towards the door. I can't abandon my post but I take it over the doorstop and onto the narrow pavement. Gently I lift the bucket. The bird hops out, more confident now. "Go, little birdie," I whisper. "You're so close - go and find your mum." I watch as the bird hops once, and then again, off in the direction of the safe, leafy trees that beckon to it, calling it home.

Then, no. Wait. Where are you going? Before I can move, the little bird hops to the left, towards the edge of the pavement, towards the stomping feet and the black tar and the rushing, growling cars.

You think you know where this is going, don't you? Oh, it's so much worse.

Hop. Hop. Ho- 

I watch in horrified slow motion as the little bird leaps from the pavement, yearning to fly, stretching its butterfly wings, and then drops oh-so-inevitably between the dull metal grates and into the water-filled drain below.

Oh. Fuck.

I am filled with a terrible dread. I grasp at the bars, I strain against them with all my weight, but they don't even twitch. I look wildly up and down the street and desperately beg passersby for help, but in the end all I can do is watch in horror as the little bird beats its fledgeling wings against the dank, dirty water, in the most futile act I have ever had the unhappiness to witness. I almost want it to stop but it doesn't, it carries on thrashing and striving and clinging on to its short life.

But, eventually, it begins to tire. The frantic flapping slows, and slows, and slows, and, finally, stops. The sight of that still little bird bobbing there in that dark place is one of the saddest, most guilt-tinged images I have ever seen.

Why did I not wait for my boss to come back? Why did I not release it into the garden behind the shop? Why am I even telling you this story?

The answer, to any of those questions, is that I don't know. But I do know that I have carried that little bird in my heart for more than ten years, and it will stay with me for many years more.

When I asked Fin to name The Most Traumatic Thing That Has Ever Happened To Me, this story was the third one he guessed (after my mum getting cancer and the girl I once met who had a really inappropriate relationship with her dog). In some ways, he said, you could argue that this story just shows that life, in the end, is pointless. Thanks, Fin. Cheerful.

But I don't think that's it. What it shows, to me (without wishing to get overly anthropomorphic about it) is that life is often unfair, it's certainly unpredictable, but above all it is short. It's the same mantra that has hummed in my ear ever since my mum's diagnosis, and the humming is getting louder. Life is short, life is short, life is short. Better make the most of it!

I'm still working out what that means for me, and how to cherish the things I love in my life and change the things I don't. I still have a lot of thinking to do. But I'm working on it (here's a hint: Zan isn't the only one with a life list to share).

In the meantime - anyone else got any traumatic stories, to make me feel better (please)?!

All images by Sweet Eventide via her flickr

This summer, the Hubster and I are taking a trip. A fabulous, fun-filled, family trip. We are going to visit Fin's dad and his family in California for nearly three whole weeks in June and I. Cannot. Wait.

Flights to the US seem to be inordinately expensive at the moment and it was difficult to decide whether to go or not, but now that we've booked up I am embracing it. We're spending most of the time staying with Fin's dad outside Sacramento, with a couple of days in San Francisco somewhere in the middle, and ending with a long, luxurious week in a beach house in Santa Cruz.

I love visiting his (our) family in California, even if I haven't always covered myself in glory when we've been there. The first ever time we went to visit Fin's dad, on our very first night there, I found myself standing out on the deck, savouring the warm evening breeze, alone for a brief moment. The rest of the family were inside somewhere (playing ping-pong, probably. They love a bit of ping-pong). I decided I'd better go and join them, be sociable and all that, so I walked from the darkness of the deck back into the empty living room.

Without opening the screen door.

It did not end well for the screen door. Or for Fin's dad's bank account.

CRINGE.

Anyway, I'm sure that won't happen again. And now that we're into May and our holiday is officially Next Month, the excitement is really cranking up. I can't wait to feel the California sunshine seeping into my cold, creaky bones. Paddling in the Pacific, drinking wine in the hot tub, eating my body weight in Lucky Charms - it's going to be heaven.

And, of course, now that it's Next Month, holiday fashion planning can officially commence. I went on a pre-honeymoon Primark spree last summer (it was amazing, I just went round the shop picking up three of everything. It was how I imagine Victoria Beckham must feel in Harvey Nicks) so I can't really justify a whole new wardrobe, but there are definitely a few gaps to be filled.

In particular, I find myself unexpectedly lusting after a new swimsuit. Not a bikini, a tankini, or (God forbid) a monokini, but a good old covers-all-your-squidgy-bits swimsuit. (Incidentally, I hear Anthropologie are calling them maillots these days, which is possibly the most pretentious thing I've ever heard. "Hey, do you like my new chaussures?" "Why yes, they look marvellous with your pantalon!" Come on, Anthro. Get a grip. Also, it's a maillot de bain. Un maillot is a jersey. Just so you know.)


The swimsuit thing has partly arisen from the fact that my brother-in-law and his teeny-tiny Chinese dancer wife will also be joining us. Sitting next to her in a bikini would not be conducive to maintaining high self-esteem, especially not after all the Lucky Charms. Not to mention the fact that swimming in the ocean, as I know from bitter past experience, is often a bit too much for a bikini to handle. Nobody wants to flash their in-laws. Destroying their screen door is quite enough for one holiday.

Mostly, though, I am just loving all the retro-inspired suits that have sprung up everywhere this year. More 50s pin-up than Baywatch babe, they are classic, flattering and fun. I think I'd feel a lot more comfortable hanging out (hopefully not literally) with my in-laws wearing one of these bad boys than in any of the teeny-tiny honeymoon numbers currently crumpled at the back of my sock drawer:

Anthropologie, Undrest, Boden, New Look

But while I'm super excited about visiting the beach, and our family, and San Francisco (the only place I've visited in America where I could really imagine myself living), there is also the tiniest tinge of disappointment. Because if we were flying out just a couple of days earlier, there's a chance I could have been in San Francisco for the next APW book club meet-up there. Which would have been AMAZEBALLS. I could have met Meg, and Lauren, and who knows who else? It's like the APW mothership. Sigh.

However, all is not lost - it just means we get to have a Scottish APW meet-up instead! Now, I tried to organise one last time, and only two people were interested. Two! That is lame, Scotland. Lame. But since my graduate post went up a few more people have expressed an interest, which has got me really excited. So this is just an early heads-up that there will be a meet-up at some point in June, so if you're at all interested in coming along you should head over to APW and vote for a date that suits you, then buy the book, then leave a comment or send me an email to let me know, so that I can circulate the deets nearer the time. There will also be a facebook page set up once we know the date, so keep an eye out for that.


I am so excited that I might finally escape from behind this laptop and actually get to meet some of you lovely ladies! Almost as excited as I am about the beach and the sunshine and the Lucky Charms. It's a close-run thing.

All images are of the exquisite Grace Kelly, shot by Howell Conant in Jamaica in 1955. Because I thought we might all enjoy a little reminder right now that there was more to her than just her wedding dress.