It’s been so long since I wrote an essay I’m not sure I remember how.

At least, that’s what I told myself before I remembered this is what I do. Words string themselves together in my head. The trick is getting them down fast enough.

Pin down the words, and you can re-examine them later. Spot the patterns.

Come on now, one word in front of the other. Baby words.

It’s all just a mish-mosh unless you find meaning in the madness.

It’s getting colder, the seasons are changing. A full moon has just been and gone.

Telephone wires bristle thick with rooks. They settle and disperse, like leaves flung skyward.

People too, settle and disperse. Keep it moving. Faces cycle in and out: colleagues, neighbours, friends.

Around here, I find meaning in a long walk, or a long cycle, or a good book.

Books on my shelves have the timeless air of trees. They frame my life unmoving, a constant source of joy.

They will outlive me, the books and the trees.

My neighbour—from last year’s moon walk—told me he shares bo…

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“When it happens, it’ll happen overnight.”

“Yep, it’ll come for you while you sleep, old age. The clocks will strike midnight, your hair will scroll to silver and your tits will fall into your shoes.”

“One day, you’ll wake up old.”

Sage nodding. Ice baths and HRT. Turmeric. Kefir.

“Fun fact. You’re already in your 40th year, did you know?” That’s my carpenter friend, who (apart from this comment) I really rate. “It’s true. You’re about to enter your forty-first year. Think about it: you turn one after your first year, two after your second year, and so on…”

He’s right, damn him.

Pensive, I climbed into the river this evening to trim my bush.

Minds out the gutter.

We were thinking about moving. It was a proxy for restlessness and the constant need to change it up, make it better.

Spotting when you’re happy is a lost art, don’t you think?

Constant dissatisfaction is lucrative. That is why we are all cultivated to be dissatisfied, all the time.

Knowing when you’re happy is the hardest thing.

I d…

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A friend sent me a Guardian article a few days ago about how loads of Americans—specifically: young, wealthy, tech-y Americans—are moving to the Cotswolds to escape Trump.

The rationale is it offers the chance to live in the quaint English countryside where there is no risk of water shortages, wildfires or demented, roving bands of preppers (at least in the short term).

I showed this to Joel and, with a lofty air, suggested that my newsletter probably helped to popularise the Cotswolds for that particular demographic.

“Come on babe. That’s exactly the slice of America that’s on Substack. I’ve definitely played a role here.”

He suggested gently that I may have overestimated my reach and significance.

Scoffing (I never do this), I allowed that the smash TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Cotswolds epic Rivals, and its heaving bucolic shagging on tennis courts and al fresco under shady oaks by trickling burns, may have had something to do with it. But, doubling down on my role as trendsetter, I pointed out that I am in fact an American in the Cotswolds, coming up on four years now. Ahead of the curve, what?

So, for my American readers, as a fellow American, if you’re planning to relocate to middle England, allow me to share with you some nuggets of wisdom that I have gleaned from my time on these blessed shores.

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Joel and I were talking about fashion today.

Neither of us is particularly (or even remotely) fashionable.

To underline this point, I was wearing at the time a ski headband of battered fleece that used to belong to my mom.

We were having an uncharacteristic fancy coffee in a local place that is known to be a bit “slebby” and chic.

I commented on a girl wearing platform trainers and trackie Bs with a side-stripe (I think they were tearaways, be still my heart, curdle my fear).

Basically the outfit I lived in when I was 13.

Ah, those dark pre-millennium, post Spice World years. You know the ones.

Tony Blair was God, Di was dead. Texting ‘hello’ on chunky Nokias went like this: gh-de-jkl-jkl-mno. Everyone had a favourite member of Boyzone (mine was Stephen, who turned out to be not inclined to women, again be still my heart).

We were talking about fashion being cyclical.

I was looking at this woman wearing Spice Girls trainers and hypothesising that, if kids now (and by …

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“Do you want to go for a moonwalk?”

This isn’t the kind of offer I usually get down the pub of a Friday evening.

“Sorry, what?” It’s my mate from the pub committee who I’ve mentioned before: musician, carpenter and procurer of hessian sacks.

“Moonwalk. Full moon walk. Light of the moon, stroll in the woods, you know? Bright enough to go without headlamps. You up for it?”

Said in the tone of “come away, o human child”.

Am I up for it? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

Never have I needed a full moon walk more.

Said in the tone of “for the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

_

Meet at the pub for a swift sharpener.

That’s the group chat message on the night of the walk. For an instant, images of spiky birds and pencil sharpeners flit in and out of my synapses.

Then I get it. Swift, as in fast. Sharpener, as in beverage to sharpen the occasion of it all.

One of my walking companions has a hip flask of whiskey. I’ve never…

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Joel was on a rare work trip last week.

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Can’t believe I’m about to tell you what I’m about to tell you.

Are you ready for this?

It. Happened. Again.

I know. You thought I was exaggerating. Or you thought, pah, no one is that rude.

Well, let me tell you: people are that rude. Or that drunk. Or that stupid. Or all three.

It has stopped being funny (to the extent it ever was) and has started to be genuinely horrifying.

Let me set the scene: cute pub a few villages over. We’re talking thatched roof, setting sun, table outside. Perfect evening on the cards.1

We got chatting to the next table. (That’s wrong, in a few ways: actually, they started chatting to us and, actually, it was some actual people, not the table).

The woman, older, sitting with her grown daughter (NOT HER MUCH YOUNGER LESBIAN LIFE PARTNER I ASSUMED BUT WHO KNOWS, ASSUME NOTHING) fixed my son and Joel with a benign smile. They were playing chess.

“So lovely to see young people playing an actual game! Not just on their screens.”

I felt a wa…

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… in aerem …

( … into air … )

I smashed my phone the other day.

Oh cool, you’re thinking. She hates her phone, she did it on purpose, she’s so angry. Smashing phones like the patriarchy. I don’t need this, I’m going back to a flip phone. Woo! Yeah!

Nope.

Actually, I just dropped it and it just smashed.

It happened the same day Apple dropped its latest ad. You know the one: for the new iPad.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s a hydraulic pump smashing all of human creativity—trombones and toys, paint and pianos—into a little glass cuboid.

Joel showed it to me and I couldn’t believe Apple could be so tone-deaf and so misread the zeitgeist. People are trying to escape their shiny screens, Tim, not dissolve into them. Don’t you know that? Or have you lived too long in your own glass cuboid echo chamber?

Apparently it was the first time Apple ever apologised for one of its ads. Tim Cook actually admitted, boy howdy, did we mis-read the mood. That was tone-deaf as fuck.

When I watched the ad, I had the same feeling I had in the cinema, watching the bomb-dropping scene in Oppenheimer.

This feels disgusting to admit. These are not comparable things. It feels cheap to even write it. Some things shouldn’t be written about, should remain a great void in which words fail.

But honestly? It feels like the nerve Apple were trying to touch.

The music, the slow motion, the destruction. The empty holocaust of the final shot. Watching the pump smash the tools of human creativity felt like an intentional, wanton violence. It felt wrong in a deeply uncomfortable, anti-human way.

I wanted it to stop. No, what are you doing. Stop. This is wrong. Cartoon horror, and revulsion.

And it worked, because everyone hates it.

At the end of the ad, all that’s left is a desert of reflective surfaces, a wasteland of stainless steel.

All we have left is the reflection of ourself in a glass screen.

And all I can think is: what if the glass screens were all we had, and there was nothing else?

How fragile is humanity if that’s where it lives. If it can all be contained in a glass screen. If it can be dropped and smash in an instant. Back to nothing, reset to zero, in an instant.

We’re already so awash in gen-Ai filler that we don’t notice when it’s showing us something that isn’t real.

Samsung got into trouble last year for gaslighting its users by inserting pretty pictures of the moon whenever it detected a moon in shot.

The lens of a smartphone camera? They’re not big enough to capture the moon. Those craters and aesthetic shadows? Totally made up, gen-Ai filler, in the outlines of an Ai-detected moon.

What about all those gorgeous photos people posted lately of the northern lights? I can’t help but wonder is that what was really there—or is it filled-in colours in a detected ‘night sky’?

Odds are if you can only see it through a phone, it’s not real.

So, back to my smashed phone. How did I drop it?

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In a hotel in central London, I examined my jawline. It has started to collapse backwards into senescence, as if it’s forgotten how to remain straight and firm.

Being back in London makes me feel old. It’s been a long two years since I left. Fashion seems to have regressed to my childhood.

Things I can’t believe are back: those big, plastic, coloured rings. Safety pin jackets. Low rise bootcut. Platform trainers.

Y2K, take me home (actually, no, don’t).

And men’s hairstyles, the kind of hairstyles I thought existed purely as a warning to future generations? They’re back. Mullets. Frosted tips. What the actual. Are you shitting me?

I’m heading out to walk the streets, for a glorious lonesome day. Maybe I’ll find an awkward encounter in the city. My son is at a sleepover, Joel is manning the house. I am loose in London. I want to grab the day in my two arms.

London humbles me with its indifference.

In the hallway hotel, even the chambermaid has a grievance. She’s on the phone, barking orders to someone in a Russian accent.

“I told you, he want to be hit.”

Who is this masochistic gentleman and what are they doing for him, I wonder, as I pass.

Can’t believe how exhausting I find London now. Did I really used to negotiate this hellscape day to day? The relentless crush of people, the inconvenience and indifference. It scares me, in a new way. I’m not sure if London was always this scary. It feels more desperate, its people more febrile and edgy.

A friend who lives there tells me I am not imagining it. It’s the cost of living crisis, she says. People are desperate and have no money. They’ll go for your phone, your jewellery. You probably won’t get stabbed though, she offers in an upbeat tone.

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He was half sat up in bed, eyes following something moving across the bedclothes towards me.

This brought me to waking fairly quickly, as you can imagine.

It was a rather large spider, advancing steadily towards my chest.

Now, I don’t really mind spiders, both real and in chart form. The real ones eat creatures I would rather not have in my house (mosquitoes, flies, etc) and the chart ones let me link thoughts and ideas otherwise unrelated.1

Joel had a spider fall on his face once, in bed, when he was little. The lights were off, he was cozy in his PJs and — slap! A fat juicy house spider landed on his face and scuttled off to oblivion. Because of this, he is immune to my reasoning that they won’t go for you, that they’re pretty harmless really.

“They’re evil. Don’t you get it?”

His theory is that we have an extreme aversion to spiders at a base neurological level because our ancestors were terrified of spiders, so we are too. He says if I’m not afraid of them it’s because I’ve conditioned myself to be unafraid. We condition ourselves not to fear lots of things, to forget things, things we know might harm us, so that we can function. We’re just reacting to our programming, he says.2 Some programming is inherent, not learned — and some programming is unlearned.

Our fear of spiders is atavistic, unquenchable. Think about a tribe in the mists of pre-history. A bear attacks, maybe you fend it off, maybe it bites you but the injury is known, a visible quantity. A spider bites you and, as if by magic, you’re dead. Silently, invisibly defeated from within. You can defend your home from bears, but not from spiders. They’re assassin killers.

His brother too, a dairy farmer, tells me about how spiders are the enemy and all trace of cobwebs must be cleared from a cow shed, because the webs carry salmonella. Now, I’ve just googled this and it’s nonsense. In fact, there is anecdotal evidence that gossamer — spider silk — has antimicrobial properties.

So there. Spiders are awesome.

I know what I’m talking about when it comes to spiders because I lived in Thailand and Burma for five and a half years and, let me disclose, they have some really fucking huge spiders there. There was one — a huntsman — that lived in the gap under my cutlery drawer and emerged only at night, only when I was in need of a late night implement (say a spoon for a cereal snack) and only when I forgot to bother to switch on the lights.

There was another that I saw when I went swimming at a very remote spot between the Yunzalin and Salween rivers, in a little river deep in the jungle in eastern Burma. There, teak hundreds of years old, long protected by ethnic conflict, cast deep shadows. Above the stream hung a bedroom-sized web, at the centre of which nestled a black and yellow bird-eating spider bigger than my face.3

The spider made that wild swimming spot pretty wild indeed. I could take this theme still further. Draw a spider chart of all the places — all the rivers and ponds and lakes — in which I’ve gone wild swimming. It would look like a map, with lines like spider legs jumping across continents.

In descending order, my top three wild swimming experiences are:

3. The river near where I grew up in upstate NY. The spot is shrouded by a twee New England covered bridge that rowdy teenagers jump from when they get drunk. When I was a kid, before people cared about that type of thing, the potato fields around the river would be a mist of Monsanto-laced chemical spray. You’d duck your head into the river just to escape the fumes, stay under as long as feasible, and come back up for a poison-laced breath only when forced by lung limitation.

2. North Wales: the stream that tumbles off Snowdon, the lake under Cadair Idris, a nameless lake in the Rhinogs. The limpid clarity of Welsh water belies its startling frigidity: a cold so chill it freezes the genitals instantly upon contact (a fact only noticed after a minute or so when a painful throb attests to their total numbness).

1. Lake Baykal, deepest in the world, a gash in the surface of the earth, wrinkled where the Himalayas continue to ruck Central Asia like a Turkish carpet. Made balmy by the sun on a warm day in late September and aromatic by a whole smoked omul fish inhaled at the water’s edge. Word on the Trans-Siberian is that if you wash your hands in the lake it adds a year to your life. Splash water on your face adds five, neck and arms ten. Whole immersion, twenty. By this count, I expect to live a long (if not necessarily healthy) life.

Honourable wild swimming mentions go to: (i) a river in Spain where I stole a perfect sun-baked orange from a tree and jumped in naked after a day’s climbing; (ii) a lake under Shuksan glacier near the Canada border where the water was so cold that piles of snow half-in half-out of the lake refused to melt, like stubborn little ice-bergs; and (iii) Great White Lake in western Mongolia, where on an October day threatening snow, I spent about twelve hours trying to warm up post dip (and awoke still freezing at 4am, in hat and neckwarmer, when the host came to stoke the fire in the ger).

Now, the reason I’ve been banging on about wild swimming is that it came up in the office the other day. The thing about open-plan offices is that you’re often party to conversations in which you are neither welcome nor particularly wish to be part of.

Most of the time the conversations I overhear in the office are as inspiring as toenail clippings, and quite as brittle. Net Worth. Aircraft leasing. Cross border marketing policy.

Are you still there? No? Thought not. I’m often not either.

Which is why I’ve got pretty good at zoning out. My ears swivel only when unexpected words or phrases are detected.

The other day the phrase was “fishing waders”.

That phrase came from a colleague — an earnest and rather strait-laced individual — who was recounting something to my line manager.

“What was that?”

I turned from my monitor, eager to not think about Net Worth for a moment.

“Oh, I was just saying. I’m a member of this group, you know, game fishermen, and the group organised a protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice.”

The Royal Courts of Justice or RCJ is a popular spot for staging protests and one of the more eminent buildings in central London, above Temple, along a busy stretch where the Strand meets Aldwych. It turned out my colleague had been intending to protest about river pollution and sewage dumping by Thames Water, which is a big enough deal that it’s made it into the US news. My colleague, as a game fisherman, was chiefly concerned about the sewage killing the trout.

“So I went along but it turned out the protest had been called off because of the rain and no one had thought to tell me! So I was just there on my own, in the rain.”

“In fishing waders?”

“Yes, well, that’s what I was wearing, you know, for the protest. My fishing waders. That was part of the plan, you see, to make a statement. About the fish.”

“But no one told you it was cancelled?”

“No! They texted that it was cancelled when I was already standing there!”

“Alone, outside the RCJ, in your fishing waders?”

“Yes. And a fishing cap.”

Now, two things. One: I’m not much of a fisherwoman but this is obviously too good a story to not release back into the wild. Consider this my very first catch-and-release. And two: this story makes me angry, not just because of the trout but also for my drinking water, my desire for poop-free showers and, yes, for wild swimming in quiet local rivers.

I said as much and we bonded over a shared wish for poop-free rivers. I told him about the place where I go swimming near my house. A bit of a magical spot, it doesn’t look like much when you first turn up — you have to ignore old trappings of industry and squirming shoals of crayfish — but once you set off up river, it winds between high banks, overhung with willows, stout with marsh lilies and deep enough that there’s no touching the bottom. Once, on my birthday, Joel and I went alone. It had been baking hot all day and the oppressive mugginess broke into a soft but persistent rain as we swam. Up the river in this rain, it was like swimming underwater but still being able to breathe. I felt like a toad, or a dragonfly, something that exists solely at river eye level or an inch or two above it. It was magic.

My colleague listened, frowned and opened Google Maps, trying to plot where I was talking about. Then he got very excited.

“Oh yes, I know that area so well. I often go there to see my very best friend from school. He lives near there. I’ve known him forever, we were in school together. He’s so lovely, a bit of an odd one, you know. But just wonderful. He’s actually kind of a hermit, won’t come to London, so we go and have dinner parties at his place. Went just last weekend actually. He’s a farmer, you know, and doesn’t like to be around people too much, just likes to keep to himself. He lives in a small village in the middle of nowhere.”

And then he named the village that is on the far side of the field in front of my house.

Well, we slapped thighs (our own; not each other’s) for a moment over the coincidence. He showed me his friend’s Insta page. Turns out he’s a flower farmer of reasonably impressive repute. I looked more closely. There were many dreamy thirst-trap photos of a handsome man, flat cap and distinctive old-fashioned farmer style, swathed in flowers. In at least one photo, he was arse-naked.

“My goodness.” This was suddenly a much more interesting conversation than I was usually party to in the office.

He dampened my enthusiasm only slightly by showing me a picture of said flower farmer’s ex-boyfriend. Apparently they’ve only recently broken up; how sad.

Anyway. That was that.

Cut to that evening, coming back from London.

It had been an eventful day because, well, no, that’s a lie. It had been a really boring day. But anyway, here I was, driving back from the station to my house, trundling along the country road at the spot where it keeps two lanes and runs fairly quickly.

And there was someone walking along the side of the road.

A rangy, farmer-y looking someone with that country walk I’ve written about before, making great purposeful strides.

It was, of course, the sexy flower farming hermit friend (SFFHF, for short) of my colleague. Clothed, but still.

I drove past about one hundred metres, dropped to second gear as I dithered and then found a spot to whip round.

And I drove back. Of course I drove back. You know me.

Window down.

“Hi. I know this is so weird but …” And I told him I’m so-and-so’s colleague and how funny because he was just telling me about him and showing me his Insta page and I recognise him and can I give him a lift somewhere? All very quickly and without drawing breath.

He rallied quickly and was politeness and charm, itself. A drunk driver smashed into him and totalled his car only the day before, which was why he was walking.

He accepted the offer of a lift and asked me polite questions, where do I live, where am I from, etc. (Always, always, where am I from. It’s the accent.)

Then, after a few minutes of me going on and on about how my colleague had shown me his Insta page and what a funny coincidence this was, he broke in.

“Oh yes? And he knows me?”

I was confused. I wondered if he’s maybe a bit slow. I’ve already said my colleague’s name, first and last. If my colleague is to be believed, these guys are bosom buddies, pals from the womb. Has he exaggerated how close a friend this person is? Why? To what end?

I said the name of my colleague again and Mr. SFFHF’s puzzlement increased.

“Hmm, how old is he? You know, I meet so many people, with the flower farming….”

This is so weird. I’m wondering if I’m going mad. I don’t *think* my colleague would make this up but what do I know. The guy wore fishing waders on a street in central London. Who knows what he’s capable of.

I described him, his height and hair colour, distinguishing features. Said his name again. Explained his role at my work. In desperation, I mentioned he said he went to school with him, came up here only recently for a dinner party.

He looked sideways at me and said an entirely different name.

“Do you mean him?”

Ah. “Yes. That is who I mean.”

And so, it turns out that I have got my little-known (clearly very little-known) colleague’s name completely wrong.

Oh well.

Back to the spider that was on our bed yesterday. Once I had safely excreted said spider outside — Joel has many wonderful qualities but an ability to deal with spiders is not one — we got up. We were staying at his sister’s place in the Brecon Beacons in Wales — and the plan for the day was the waterfalls.

That’s right: more wild swimming.

And the spider-chart-joining of thoughts and ideas, only tangentially related.

When raindrops hit water they create reverse raindrops; liquid shafts of vertical water stipple the surface like hairs and create an impression of the river floating up.

This month is shaping up to be the wettest July on record. When we went to the waterfalls, the river was up, thrusting through its allotted space, claiming more and pulling slides of earth and rocks down to join it. When we made it to our usual spot, the rain had eased but the river was still torrential in places, a fast-moving churn that would dash a body to pieces.

But there were a few inlets and eddies, peaceful, overhung with willows and full of moss-covered logs and boulders, where it was calm enough to enter.

Which we did.

Willow bark is made into aspirin. Neanderthals have been found buried with willow branches and green mould was made into penicillin. We have been battling unseen terrors for millennia.

Did our ancestors have an innate terror of spider bites because they couldn’t develop a method for treating them? Have they passed this down to us, a primordial arachnophobia?

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I had to go into the office in London yesterday.

The idea of going in is to make sure I stay in touch and have personal interactions with my colleagues.

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Well, it happened again.

Another person asked if Joel is my son.

Joel is my boyfriend, to be clear. Not my son.

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This has been a week of me wrestling with the awkwardness — and insubstantiality — of my national identity.

Identities.

See what I mean?

I am American. I am also Irish. But, being both, I’m neither of those things. It’s very awkward.

If I say to an Irish person that I’m Irish, they will without exception give me an indulgent eyeroll (yeh, course ye are, luv) and assume I’m one of the visiting Americans shopping for last name plaques in House of Names on Nassau Street.

Protesting that I grew up in Dublin only makes it worse. There are basically only about four schools in Dublin and I went to one of them. So, yes, I probably do know your cousin Jacko in Newpark and I probably kissed him one messy night at Wesley circa 2001. I know what a Brown Thomas is, I can walk to Teddy’s from my house and I remember when Spin 103.8 first came on the scene (pretentious upstart to FM 104.4, hallowed be thy name.)

But the thing is, nothing — no amount of rugby club discos, Supermacs, West Coast coolers, hours waiting on rainy DART platforms, or drinking in Blackrock in the days when the shopping centre was inexplicably open to the Irish sky and just had a posh Superquinn and not much else — that will ever make me sound like a Dub, to a Dub.

But, on the other hand, I am so un-American that I didn’t really drive a car until I was 37 (this year, in fact). I have never watched an episode of the Kardashians. I don’t understand how the House of Representatives works (or, ya know, doesn’t). I wouldn’t be able to pick Nick Jonas out of a line up (or tell you why he’s famous. Is it singing?) and I’ve never heard a Machine Gun Kelly song. These are all true facts and, combined, make me feel like a real outsider in my native land.

I blend right in stateside. No one ever asks where I’m from. But I maintain a hunted air, as if at any moment someone might turn to me and press me to explain who Demi Lovato is.

These feelings were all stirred up by two things that happened this week, one of which involved my American identity and the other my Irish. Both underscored my unfailing ability to be awkward as either.

First, I had to take my son to the US embassy down in London to renew some passports. Since I live in the countryside now, this gave me an exciting opportunity to go be awkward in an urban environment, at an uncomfortably early hour of the morning.

Going to the embassy is already a terrifying business and I defy even the coolest least awkward human to manage it without turning a hair. It makes me very nervous to be in a place where my awkwardness could inadvertently get me shot or cause a diplomatic incident1. Passing four semi-automatic sub-machine guns at 8am has a certain capacity to focus the mind — but still I dropped forms and misplaced appointment slips with practised ease.

My laptop, it turned out, had to be taken to another building for storage. I received in exchange yet another piece of paper not to lose if I ever wanted to see my laptop again. The stakes are so high at the American embassy.

Then I over-explained in great detail to the woman at reception why I was there and she looked at me with dead eyes and said “I don’t really know anything about that” and pointed me to the lift.

My son stroked the smooth stones in the lobby and wondered what kind of rock it was.

Maybe marble?

A British guy near us said something jolly like “I would expect nothing less in the American embassy!”

I’m delighted when other people are unexpectedly awkward near me. I have an internal “me too” moment and imagine that we are pals, of the highest order.

I responded enthusiastically.

“Oh cool! I didn’t know that was a thing in American embassies!”

He looked a bit overwhelmed and responded as if I’m simple.

“No, I just meant, you know, no expense spared.”

“Ah, I thought you were alluding to the Lincoln memorial or something and maybe there’s some unwritten rule about American monuments and embassies and other important buildings that I’ve missed!”

I was being genuine but had clearly overthought things for a brief lift interaction. He communicated this wordlessly and very effectively by smiling politely and deciding not to engage with me further. I compounded this decision by getting off at the wrong floor and jumping back on while the marble lift doors were closing. He studiously avoided looking at me, the way British people do in a closed mode of conveyance (a lift, the Tube, etc) when you’re doing something excruciatingly cringey, like shitting your pants.

Finally, on the right floor, I got to the right window and had all the right forms. The lady there had a kind smile and made a lovely comment about my son and I thought, winning, finally.

Then she said “and the father?”

Thus it transpired that my son, despite already holding a US passport, despite the fact that his father and I are long (amicably) separated and that I have full custody and sole financial responsibility for him, is not permitted to renew his existing US passport without the say-so of both parents. I missed this in the fine print, despite the fact that it is literally my job to read the fine print2.

So we sat, for several long awkward hours, in the US embassy, while my ex-husband made the awkward trek across London. I became great friends with the girl making coffee and my son had ample time to examine the rock types in the waiting room. So there was that.

And, after my multifarious failings at the US embassy, it was St Patrick’s Day3 last Friday.

Layering identity upon identity.

I booked tickets to go see Killian Sundermann, one of our favourite up-and-coming comedians from Dublin, who was in a line-up of a load of other Irish comedians at a gig in London.

They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes.

Or maybe that’s just me. I shouldn’t meet my heroes, on account of my abiding awkwardness.

Heroes, it turns out, extends to include TikTok content creators with even the mildest amount of fairly niche celebrity.

I say fairly niche — because the reason I love this particular comedian is because he absolutely nails the awkwardness of growing up in Ireland as a not fully Irish person, which speaks to me for obvious reasons (see above).

Anyway, he was standing right there when we walked in and I immediately recognised him from his videos (which are, to be fair, absolutely hilarious).

As they were checking our tickets, I couldn’t help myself. I know, reader, I know. I should know by now. I should help myself. But I can’t. It’s a compulsion.

I turned to him and said something that was supposed to be appreciative and complimentary but in hindsight was just plain old psychotic.

“We love you, we came just to see you.”

He smiled in a terrified sort of way. Then he gestured at the lad standing next to him.

“Um tanks he’s performing too?”

I had no idea who the guy standing next to him was and my abiding awkwardness prevented me from being able to stop the words flying (truthfully) out of my mouth.

“Nope! Just you.” With emphasis. “Just. You.”

Accompanied by a terrifying point of the finger, as if I might have duct tape and handcuffs in my pocket.

Why am I like this.

Later, after his set, he was standing by the bar. I tried to remedy the situation by being normal and friendly. This was not easy for me, as you may have gathered.

I alluded to one of his videos — the one where he asks if people think he looks like Pedro Pascal — and joked “oh, my boyfriend really wants to ask you if you’re Pedro Pascal.”

He laughed in a nervous way and moved (quickly) away.

Where he was immediately intercepted by Joel, who goes “hey, are you Pedro Pascal?”

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The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted that this is a new sub-section of Life Litter called Awkward Encounters.

I’ve been racking my brains trying to work out what theme(s) unite my posts here because everybody likes a theme, a structure, a story.

What I have landed on is that most of my posts seem to be about me being awkward, in various interactions with other people.

So many of them. It’s quite humbling, really.

Why are my encounters so awkward? I’m not really sure.

I’ve been told my resting bitch face would curdle milk. I learned it from the b****es at the all girls school in Dublin I went to between the ages 12-15. One of them poked me with a pencil so hard through my school shirt that there is still a lump of graphite visible in my arm twenty five years on. I never really trusted girls after that and I didn’t understand boys. I certainly didn’t know how to talk to either of them.

I marvel at people who engage effortlessly with others. For me, it is a conscious and exhausting effort.

They say it takes ten thousand hours of study or practice to become expert at something.

I have spent many, many times that trying to work out how to blend seamlessly into social interactions. I applied myself to it, as others apply themselves to learning a new craft or skill, and still I lack the unpractised ease of people around me. Through trial and (much) error, I have achieved passable decency.

But trust me, there is still a vast amount of room for more error.

Just yesterday we went to Joel’s family for Sunday lunch. Joel’s sister hugged me and said my hair looked nice. I responded fast and in one breath “thanks it’s a bit hard and crunchy1”.

Because, reader, I am super fucking awkward.

I can’t just accept a kind compliment from a well-meaning person without vocalising all the things I am thinking that they are definitely not thinking.

That is part of the reason why so many posts are about me being awkward, in many different situations and with many different people. And it’s why I’m dubbing this bit of Life Litter “Awkward Encounters”. The aim is that it will carry with it news of my Awkward Encounter of the Week (or several, when there are just too many to choose from). You can find them all on the dedicated Awkward Encounters section of my page.

As a (somewhat related) aside, I’m reading a book by Ruth Ozeki at the moment and, in it, there’s a brilliant passage about needing other people to make sense of the world, not living in a barren human desert.

“It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama, power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness.”

See? I need the Awkward Encounters (even though they are often so very awkward). They are just how I make sense of the world.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Non-human nature writing can be great and there is some excellent stuff out there. Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin. But (for me) the best bits in their books always have the human element. Robert Macfarlane’s nearly getting lost on the Broomway. His recounting the ancient custom of gannet slaughter on frozen beshitted Sula Sgeir off Scotland. Roger Deakin going off to hang out with biologists in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in search of the ancestor of the malus domestica or ancient wild walnut groves.

Pretty much the only pure nature writing I can think of that I’ve really enjoyed is Nan Shepherd. She writes about the mountain, the water, the rocks (a chapter on each, no less). But again it’s the human experience of it that are the bits I most remember; the feeling of jumping in cold water, resting a cheek on moss. When I post updates about my garden on Insta, I mostly lose followers. When I post about my kitchen cabinets, people pull up chairs in droves2.

And Richard Powers wrote a whole 600-page novel about how, fundamentally, we want to read stories about ourselves, not about trees.

Nobody cares what you wrote unless you wrote about them.

Or unless what you wrote about is relevant to them, even obliquely as a member of the same species.

So, without further ado, here is the inaugural instalment of Awkward Encounters.

This week there were almost too many to choose from so I shall instead recount the story of me going to see a new play in Oxford from Complicite theatre called Drive your plow over the bones of the dead.

The first half was a good solid long hour and I was gagging for a beverage at the intermission. My mate went off to the loo and I queued up to pay for my tea.

As I was queueing, I spotted the woman who follows me on Insta (who I follow back) and who (I think?) works for the production company that produces this play. Her Insta is how I heard about it and thought, ooh Oxford, that’s near me, I’ll go. And bring a friend, which I duly did.

I said hi as she was walking past and she said hey! In that slightly panicked way British people have when you address them unexpectedly and they don’t immediately know who you are. Then she twigged and we did a very awkward 45 second dance of how we don’t really know each other except on Insta and how she originally followed me on Insta because I used to live near her in London. But now I don’t.

Then the man behind the till, who had thinning blue hair and a large thick non-blue beard, asked me to pay for my tea and I remembered that my phone was dead.

Insta-pal immediately seized the opportunity to vanish, liberating us both from the awkwardest of encounters, as I tried to explain to non-blue beard that I’ll have to wait for my mate to reappear from the loos so she can tap for me.

He looked at me like I suggested he wait while I take a dump on the counter instead. I went to the end of the bar and hovered there, too afraid to even remove my teabag from the ill-gotten tea.

A much older woman came up. She was coddling her teabag around in a rich and unashamed way that suggested she had already paid for it.

“Are you enjoying it?” She was direct. Very un-British.

“It’s ok.” Diplomatically and discreetly non-American and noncommittal in my response. “You?”

“No.”

Taken aback. This is unusually forthright for a British person. “Oh right. Why?”

“Well.” Spoken as an exhalation, an entire sentence, and a condemnation. “It’s just the same thing Complicite has done a million times before. It’s been done to death. Nothing new.”

I pointed out that it’s probably new to all the Gen Z-ers in our midst. I also admitted that, while I didn’t really like it either, if her biggest complaint is that it’s just like the ones that have gone before, I probably wouldn’t have liked those either. And I certainly wouldn’t have come to yet another one.

She moved swiftly away.

I was still standing there waiting for my mate to reappear and non-blue beard eventually took pity on me.

“Are you still brewing that? Take out the tea bag and just drink it, for heaven’s sake!”

I panicked and grabbed the tea bag and burnt my fingers a little bit and also got tea everywhere and started drinking it.

He regaled me with a tale of dropping his phone in Liverpool Street on the way to catch a flight to Morocco. All his flight details and cards and everything were on his smashed phone.

I feigned horror, as I knew I was supposed to. “So what did you do?”

“Well, I had printed out hard copies of my tickets and I had all my cards in my wallet too. So I was fine.”

I took his point and made no response.

He moved down the bar to attend to paying customers.

Chastened, I drank my tea alone, pondering with some awe my unflagging awkwardness until Helen returned at length from the toilet queue to rescue me.

And thus did yet another chronicle of my awkwardness write itself — and Awkward Encounters was born.

Watching the Last of Us is causing me some serious anxiety.

Today’s episode was almost entirely tame, but that doesn’t seem to matter vis-a-vis my cortisol levels. It was basically as tame as you can possibly imagine a zombie apocalypse TV show to be but I still had to watch it through my hands, fingers stuffed in ears and gritted teeth.

Just WAITING for a zombie to jump out.

It’s not good for my heart, this waiting for zombies to leap out. I need restful things to calm me down.

Knitting. Knitting calms me down.

Except, at knitting group, two police cars flash past.

I worry a zombie apocalypse is breaking out and I’m just sitting here knitting.

I call Joel.

All ok?

Yes. You ok?

Yes.

I need an alternative solution. I think of times in my life when I have been peak chilled out.

Hot tubs.

Ritualistic immersion in hot water is my spirit animal.

For example, there are natural hot springs in California, in the high alpine desert behind the Sierra rain shadow. The long valley behind the mountains (imaginatively called Long Valley) is actually a caldera, the sixth biggest in the world (I seem to recall, don’t fact-check me).

Occasionally people go to the hot spring tubs when they’re drunk. They get straight in without checking the little thermometers that sit near the source and are instantly scalded to death.

But mostly the tubs are benign and temperate. Locals go naked so the only people wearing bathing suits are out-of-towners. Everyone smokes weed, locals and out-of-towners alike, and it is pretty chilled out.

The tubs are a chilled out place.

Trying to recreate this in the Cotswolds, I sat in the tub outside my local gym today.

There are very few things you can do to affront me in a hot tub. I’m so at peace as to practically be Gandhi.

Two men get into the next one and start a full video call with their mum to show her how nice it was before they started their video call.

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I like to think of myself as a cool mom (who doesn’t).

I’m a modern parent. We have a modern family. I parent four children regularly, one of which I gave birth to. The other three are Joel’s and share his various wonderful and questionable traits (sweet, loving, smart and neurotic in varying doses).

I am a member of a WhatsApp chat with my partner and his ex-wife called ‘Co-parents hand-heart-emoji’. We send respectful (and only occasionally pass-ag) messages about scheduling cock-ups and kids’ uniforms being at the wrong house. Also, many cute pictures of cute kids being cute. My partner and I sometimes get child-free time, which we spend lying very still so as to conserve energy, like dormant shrubs in winter.

My son’s dad doesn’t live with us but my son goes to stay with him fairly regularly and we are (now) amicable. Last time, we all had a drink and some food together at the hand-over. My ex-husband spent twenty minutes rhapsodising about Bali to my partner, instructing him to go there and banging on about how wonderful it is. They had a beer together. The kids see us all being cool with it. And they’re cool with it. It’s very modern.

Another aspect of this modern parenting business is talking about where babies come from — or more specifically, in the case of our family, where babies don’t come from. Because we have definitely maxed out at four.

I believe in immunising my son against body guilt and shame. He is battling a hefty cultural headwind of latent Jewish and Irish guilt (from my side) and latent Burmese reticence (from his dad).

So, on the suggestion of a mate who works in public health and knows about these kind of things, I got him a book called ‘It’s So Amazing!’. The So Amazing things in the book are the monthly Egg Journey and the great Sperm Race. It’s essentially an adventure book for kids, in which the main characters are single cells, battling against improbable odds. There are even little cartoons of an egg tapping her foot impatiently and checking her watch, waiting for the sperm to show up. It’s a wonderful book.

Anyway, there is also, of course, a full page cartoon of two people getting busy under the sheets and a lot of explanation of how adults have sex because it feels nice and also sometimes because they want to make a baby. See again: Modern Parenting.

My son: “Well, lucky you and Joel don’t do that.”

Me: <lingering silence>

My son: “Because then you’d have to have another baby.”

Ah.

Me: “Well, honey, we do. But it’s ok, because Joel has had a special operation called a vasectomy. It’s where the doctor snips the little tube that the sperm travel down. Some men do it when they decide they don’t want to have any more babies. It means that his sperm don’t go on any adventures anymore.”

He made a ‘well-fancy-that’ face of mild interest and turned back to the book.

The book had his undivided attention because it’s about to get interesting. The sperm hasn’t showed up so now it’s time for the egg to peace out. We discussed menstruation in frank and unembarrassed terms and I kissed him good night, aglow with parenting success.

One small step for womankind is raising a boy who doesn’t think periods are gross, I thought, with just a touch of grandiosity. This, my service to humanity.

A few days later, and Friday night finds us out in the nearest large village, having a curry and watching the footie at the pub. We managed to get a good table so we were right in front of the screen, with the rest of the pub behind us.

Not loads of people, a couple dozen maybe, but everyone convivial, chatting to different tables and, when they hear my accent, gently ribbing me about the US’s inevitable defeat at the hands (feet) of England. Which is fine because I have spent the majority of my adult life in England and love the England squad just as much as everyone else who grew up watching them lose repeatedly.

My son is there too, eating crisps and just generally enjoying the buzz of being out way past his bedtime.

If you watched the match (England v USA, final score 0-0), you’ll know it was one of the more boring games of football to ever grace World Cup screens. Neither team seemed to do very much at all for the entire 90 minutes (plus stoppage). Most players seemed unsure what to do with the strange round object that appeared repeatedly at their feet.

I spent most of the time chatting to a very friendly young couple behind us—she a nurse, he a Tech recruiter—who told me they moved to Amsterdam when Brexit happened (which I just fucking love, how brilliant is that).

By this point, we were the only tables making any noise. The lethargy of the protracted 0-0 score had lulled everyone else into a hushed stupor.

The match had long since ceased to hold my son’s attention. The rest of the pub was quiet, the match utterly uncompelling.

My son turned to Joel.

As an aside, something you should know about Joel is that he was raised in a VERY Christian household. He has ten, yes TEN, siblings. Though he is a fully-fledged atheist now, his upbringing and also just the fact of being British tend to militate against the type of candour and frankness that come naturally to my NY-born self. He is a very polite human. He is also an introvert. In short, he is just very British.

There was a pause in our conversation with the other table. My son took advantage of the gap—he knows better than to interrupt—and hailed Joel from across the table.

We will never know what triggered his thought process. If he had been ruminating for days or whether some thought had newly occurred to him. Whether it was an attempt to build camaraderie or offer support or what.

In the serious—but piping high—tones of an unselfconscious 8-year old that carried from wall to stone wall of the old pub, he voiced a question for the ages:

“Joel, have your testicles stopped producing sperm?”

I’ve had many thoughts lately about what it means to be a grown up.

This may be because I often sit idle on public transport looking at other grown ups. I sit and wonder: Who are all these grown up humans with whom I am sharing this tube ride? What binds us together? Usually, it is just the state of being a grown up.

It may also be because, as you may recall from previous posts, I can drive now, just like a real grown up. Driving means you can make your own decisions about where to go and where to stay. Now, I can drive ten miles to buy some bath salts or because I want sushi. These feel like very grown up decisions.

Autonomy is very grown up.

I also went to a dinner party on Saturday night, just like a real grown up.

It was a bring and share, which gave everyone an opportunity to judge the contributions of everyone else. This is an occupation in which grown ups excel, I find.

Anyway, everything about the dinner party was VERY grown up. It was a masterclass in easy understated wealth, from the wrap around plate glass dining area to the cozy wood stove to the squashy cushions in the designated wine drinking area. When I asked where the loo was, the hostess explained where the nearest loo was. In my house, it would just be The Loo. She also told me how the dining table was made out of reclaimed cart wheels. I heard “cartwheels” and was visibly confused like a complete twat, imagining ten year olds turning cartwheels on a lawn, until she gently inflected cart. wheels.

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There is a Japanese word for forest-bathing. Shinrin-yoku, being calm and present among the trees.

In contrast, I am city bathing, on a rare night off from childcare. I watch people like a playwright on the cusp of a great breakthrough, as opposed to a half shit-faced banking lawyer.

I am people watching in Exmouth market which is like 19th Street in Yangon. Three twenty-something girls sit next to me. They start talking loudly among themselves but suspiciously referencing things relevant to me in the way that being in a group next to someone on their own gives you confidence to discuss them as if they can’t hear you. I’m ok with it because I can hear them and I like to listen. I am drinking red wine.

“Oh I can’t drink red wine.” The loud, self-assured one who has humble-bragged how hard she finds it working home alone four days a week. “I have never even had one glass. It gives me a UTI.”

Then they are talking about my phone out on the table.

“That totally happened to my cousin in Dulwic…

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It’s good to know certain uncomfortable truths about yourself.

This makes unattractive qualities more attractive because *self-awareness*.

For example:

1. I am very impetuous. I tend to make decisions based on a week’s horizon-scan at absolute most.

2. I am inclined to bouts of startling moodiness and depression in the four days before I get my period (and sometimes the first day or two of it as well: a whole week of fun!).

3. I lack follow-through. I am great at starting things—especially really important things—but not great at finishing them. I started learning to drive when I was 17. Next month I will hopefully pass a test that will allow me to do so legally, at the advanced age of 37.

So far, none of these things has led me wildly astray.

The first means I tend to snap up good opportunities quicker than most (bad ones too, but never mind).

The second really isn’t great but at least it has driven away some wildly unsuitable men in the past. The good ones don’t scare so easy, I find.

And the third, well, if I haven’t followed through on something, it’s probably because something better came up and I jumped on that instead.

All of these are a roundabout way of saying that life is really, really short. I’m still learning and doing new things every day.

Just last week I bit my tongue almost right through while I was eating some delicious saucisson and I realised that at 37 I still haven’t worked out where to put my tongue in my mouth when I’m eating. There must be so much else out there still waiting to be discovered.

I took a break from work today to walk up to the shop. It was inordinately full for a village with a population of about 300. The reason it was so full was because there was an elderly man, very elderly, at the head of the queue and he was moving slowly but also talking to the woman at the check out and really just to everybody else in the shop as well and everyone was listening and waiting politely and it was ok because this is a small village, not London, and no one had anywhere pressing to be (apart from me, but never mind).

And what he was saying was:

“It’s nice to be out. I’ve not been out for ages. I had a brain tumour, but they took it out for me.” He’s touching just above his left ear. “It’s all gone. All gone. I don’t know whether to dance or cry. If I dance, I’ll probably fall over.”

So, you know, life is short. You could get a brain tumour or not be able to dance or bite your tongue off eating some saucisson. No one is ever going to thank you for being good, staying quiet and living an inauthentic life.

Unless you’re the Queen. And you’re not the Queen, because the Queen, bless her, is dead.

So carpe fucking diem. Go live your life.

What, like, morally and ethically?

Yeah, I just feel like at a party I would side with the flat sheet people.

The flat sheet people? Are they like flat earthers?

No, some people just argue that it’s like more aesthetically pure and more perfect to have a flat sheet and fold it under. At a party I would totally side with the flat sheet people.

If we’re ever at a party and people start arguing over fitted sheets I’m leaving. No, seriously, I’m throwing my drink in the host’s face on the way out and saying your party was shit, people were arguing about sheets. Next time get out Twister or something for fuck sake. Before it comes to this.

He’s folding a fitted sheet. Which is why this has come up. He can’t fold fitted sheets but nor can I. No one can. Who cares?

Fitted sheets are great. They’re easy.

No but I mean like some people say it’s a scam, they’re just trying to get you to accept less fabric, or som…

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