brain chat

Friday evening soup thoughts

FrancescaLeave a comment

Hello lovely humans,

It has been so long since I’ve written here that WordPress just tried to give me a tour of the post-builder. Bit personal, that. Anyway I find myself with zero desire to think about anything academic or worsky, but very little desire to just scroll Am I The Asshole, so I thought popping in here is a good compromise because you all, unlike the folks of AITA, are top notch.

It’s a bit awkward that I didn’t prepare anything to actually write, though. I’m mulling over a longish post about Work Life Balance and/or Society’s Expectations of Young People Today but it can wait. All I can really tell you with enthusiasm is that if you’re into my fiction work, you’re going to see new material in July! Probably the end of July, but that is soon. Soonish. Before Christmas. I can also tell you that if you like online community and/or internet activism, you might like this new article on the Do Something Directory. I didn’t write it, which is why I can tell you with no pretension whatsoever that it is GREAT. You should definitely check out Clare Seal’s work (I did talk about her book Real Life Money on here a while ago).

Otherwise, I want to hear from you. How is hayfever season treating you? Mine has been so much better than last year but I have been taking antihistamines like sweets. I also think I might be more allergic to flower pollen than tree or grass pollen, because I recently won a couple of uni-related awards and was gifted flowers – so fancy! – and I have been sneezing violently. Worth it though.

I am off to think about soup (instant soup, sadly, not stand-a-spoon-in-it fresh soup). If you are having soup this weekend, I wish you the spoon kind, not the instant kind.

Metaphor? Maybe.

Look after yourselves,
Francesca

Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to stories and chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, use the button below for one-off support of as much or as little as you’d like (if you’d prefer, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi). If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buy my book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailers and as a paperback from Amazon. (That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos, you know?)

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Summoning you all a calm and fruitful new financial year, because that is something we should all wish each other if we can’t kill capitalism before our rent is due.

FrancescaLeave a comment

Happy new financial year! Do you have any plans? Maybe make a money jar and say a prayer to the gods of the stock market?

I’m kidding. I’d never make a spiritual offering to the forces guiding free market capitalism. The money jar is tempting though, as despite Karl Marx’s best efforts we are still relying on money to access goods and services. And I wish for you all to have a stress-free, fruitful financial year! If we’re stuck relying on hard cash and good credit for the foreseeable, I want you all to have enough to live in pleasant circumstances. It’d have to be a small money jar, with a couple of 2p coins and very little else, but. Good vibes etc.

I do genuinely think the new financial year is a good time to reflect on one’s Money Situation. Maybe because it coincides with spring really springing and despite my better instincts I’m actually in quite a good mood this time of year. Lambs are arriving, birds are nesting, one can risk a walk without a big coat… hope is in the air. Until you think about commercial agriculture and birds losing habitats and the inevitable collapse of the climate system.

Where was I? Oh yeah, hope. Financial year. I have genuinely taken stock of the last year’s FINANCIAL SITUATION and reflected on how to make it less depressing. Remember those quarterly income roundups I used to do? I’ve been reluctant to do them since I went to uni because student loans make them look quite skewed. Mature students don’t get means tested, so I get the amount of loan I ask for. On paper it’s a lot, but in practice I study in quite a pricy city and I’ve got a lot of funds earmarked for looong summer months in which my term time jobs stop and my rent goes up. Maybe I will do another one in the summer. Or a Week in the Life. I think the last time I did one of those I was finishing my diploma, so it was ages ago. Might be quite fun to compare and contrast how much coffee I consume. (Spoiler alert: I consume better coffee now.)

child throwing money out of a window
Take my money, growers of delicious coffee. YOU DESERVE IT ALL.

I do think something I’d like to improve over the next year is telling people what I do for a living. A nice thing about uni is I say ‘oh I study XYZ’ to people I’ve been stuck with at an extended family function and most people don’t ask a follow up question, because they don’t expect students to do anything for work aside from a little weekend or evening job. (Although, while I’m here: a lot of my peers are missing classes to go to work because they can’t afford not to. People don’t work around a degree anymore, they do their degree around their work. On the off chance you’re a government minister… do more, please.) In actual fact I do have a couple of things I do for work that have been bubbling away nicely while I get on with being an undergrad. I’ve always been appalling at saying ‘I’m an author’ or ‘I run a nonprofit’ even though a) both things are true and b) I’m quite good at them? So I’d like to work on having the confidence to say ‘I study XYZ and also I do blah blah blah.’ I only do the extra stuff when I’ve got a free afternoon, but it counts. I mean, if people are allowed to put ‘Body Shop rep’ on their CV, I’m allowed to say I write things for the internet, I reckon.

Let me know how you’re feeling about the new year! I really should be feeling worse given that every time I check the news a bank has collapsed and another type of cost of living support has gone away – and then I spiral for half an hour wanting to know who came up with the phrase cost of living I mean oh my god – but it’s the sunshine, man. I’m almost enthusiastic and I want to know what you’re enthusiastic about too!

Look after yourselves,

Francesca

Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to stories and chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, use the button below for one-off support of as much or as little as you’d like (if you’d prefer, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi). If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buy my book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailers and as a paperback from Amazon. (That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos, you know?)

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weather

Hello from definitely-springtime

FrancescaLeave a comment

So last I wrote I was excited for spring AND THEN IT SNOWED.

But the frost has gone for good this year I think, replaced by torrential rain that times an appearance for just as you’re putting the bins out. I am extremely excited for springtime, more than usual. Mostly because this year I know which plants on campus set off my hayfever and I’ve prepared.

from Screencrush

Also, I have two shows in my diary between now and August, plus two entire trips out of the country. One is a holiday and the other is an academicy trip I signed up for with uni thinking ‘I’ll never be accepted’ and then I was and now I have to learn Dutch. Either way, lads, it’s about to be skirt weather and I’m in an unreasonably good mood for someone averaging six hours of sleep a night. I might have to replace my Birkenstocks. That’s a lie. I will have to replace them, because pieces are falling off them. AND I DON’T MIND.

That’s what a good mood is, knowing you’re going to have to source summer shoes and therefore visit a shoe shop (which is either a fun experience or absolutely the pits of hell, there is no in between and no way to know which before you’re doing it) and you don’t mind. Those extra hours of sunlight really do make a difference, huh…

See you in April!

Look after yourselves,

Francesca

Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to stories and chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, use the button below for one-off support of as much or as little as you’d like (if you’d prefer, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi). If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buy my book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailers and as a paperback from Amazon. (That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos, you know?)

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brain chat

Hello from almost-springtime

Francesca1 Comment

Hello!

I realised that after moaning that January lasted approximately eighteen thousand years, I blinked and it’s nearly March. Which also lasts eighteen thousand years. I blame the 2020 Covid madness which descended that March. I’ve got a March hatred hangover.

How are we all? Is anyone doing Lent? I’m not – last year I tried giving up chocolate and in retrospect I reckon I should give up things I already don’t like doing instead of depriving myself of one of the few foodstuffs I can still digest properly. So this year I’ve given up bothering with people I don’t like.

It’s going extremely well.

I wish I had cool things to share with you when I come here – but alas cursenovel is still in Word doc stages. It’s going to be a fun one though. Well, presumably it will be fun for you guys. It’s been fun to write and I think that always shows through. You can sometimes tell when an author’s tortured themselves over a book because the pages basically weep blood and resentment…

You won’t get that, I promise. Anyway. What else has been occurring? Not a lot unless you count that I hurt my back which adds an interesting element of risk to every upper body movement. Maybe the universe decided it’s been too long since I’ve seen the inside of a physiotherapist’s office, I dunno. I’ve been in a lot of meetings lately, but they are either uni-related and therefore I won’t tell the internet because a) the minutiae of my course are not interesting unless you’re on my course and b) I don’t fancy broadcasting where I study or with whom… or they’ve been for things I just can’t talk about yet.

It’s all funsies, though. Ish. Mostly. It’s nice to be busy I reckon.

Speaking of, I do have shit to be getting on with.

Look after yourselves,

Francesca

Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to stories and chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, use the button below for one-off support of as much or as little as you’d like (if you’d prefer, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi). If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buy my book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailers and as a paperback from Amazon. (That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos, you know?)

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Books · brain chat · TV

In which it is still fkn January

FrancescaLeave a comment

Hello!

I am on a break from my assignments (aka if I look at any of the relevant documents again today I might cry because I keep working on them but they aren’t getting any closer to being finished and it’s so horrible it’s crossed back round into being funny) so I thought I’d do something I like for the rest of the day, aka read Private Eye and say hi to you all. How has January been? Here is a brief summary of mine so far:

  • Finally watched that pirate show and I get what all the fuss is about
  • Learnt what yin yoga is (if you’re one of the people I used to work for at a yoga studio, I promise I knew what yin yoga was when we worked together. Then I removed the information from my brain to make space for new stuff and had to relearn. I absolutely knew what I was talking about when I wrote your marketing copy. Absolutely.)
  • Read The Book Thief and holy shit the people who call it a classic were spot on it was devastating
  • My tax code changed so I basically got a really big bonus from my job so I spent a good three days feeling like Scrooge McDuck when he slides down all that money. Until I remembered it’s 2023 and by June one tea bag will cost £87
  • Remembered that I really like Fleetwood Mac. How have I made it to 27 without realising how much everyone should like Fleetwood Mac. Also I didn’t know Everywhere was a Fleetwood Mac song because as this list has established I have the brain of a sea snail. I don’t know who I thought wrote it. I think I have song blindness.

Otherwise it’s been a quiet one. If I ever become one of those wealthy-ish ladies with a lot of small pet dogs and a husband who died in mysterious circumstances, I think I might take the whole month of January to recline in the bath and eat Christmas cake.

Might do that anyway to be honest.

How are you coping with 2023 so far? Everyone I know is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, including the people who are normally quite together. My working theory is that it’s because the last two to three years have been week after week of varying degrees of ‘THE WORLD IS ENDING AND YOUR GOVERNMENT HAS GONE ON HOLIDAY.’ And now everyone is like taffy right before you stretch it so far it breaks.

How’s that for a metaphor. That right there is why I have almost-double figure Patreon membership! I’m going to fuck off now before I can descend into talking even more shite than normal. I hope you’re well, is what I’m saying. Cling on. It’s still light at 5pm now. We’re nearly at St Brigid’s Day and the UK has only had one prime minister all year!

Look after yourselves,
Francesca

Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to stories and chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, use the button below for one-off support of as much or as little as you’d like (if you’d prefer, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi). If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buy my book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailers and as a paperback from Amazon. (That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos, you know?)

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brain chat

Happy new year!

FrancescaLeave a comment

Got you with that title!

Well, lads, the year is nearly over. For people observing the winter solstice as a religious/spiritual festival, we’re already into the new year. I quite like that idea, that you follow your new year’s celebrations with a couple of bank holidays. It makes January feel less daunting. There’s so much pressure on NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS NEW YEAR NEW YOU IT WILL BE THE BEST YET IF YOU BUY/DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF ALL THESE THINGS AND LET’S START IN JANUARY, THE LONGEST AND GREYIST MONTH.

I much prefer the concept of the new year starting when the days start getting longer.

How has your 2022 been? Mine’s been all right, cheers. Quite long. Quite busy. Good busy, I reckon. I’m fairly sure that 2023 will be longer and busier, but I don’t mind because if I’m busy I can’t spend too much time panicking over things I can’t change, like gas prices and our electoral system. I hope you had a good 2022, or at least not a terrible one. I am going to fuck off for a while and make eggnog and reflect on the year. I like journaling and lists (surprise! You have never noticed this) and 2022 is definitely one for list roundups. Shit I’ve learnt, shit I’ve enjoyed, shit I don’t want to keep doing. 2023 deserves the list treatment. I am slightly devastated that I don’t have 2-3 concerts to go to that were cancelled in 2019. That MCR show was in so many calendars! But I hope it will be a healthy and peaceful one for you and I, regardless of, you know, the ongoing degradation of our planet and ethical standards in public life. And however many wars are going on when you read this.

I’ll leave you with this snap of the sunrise yesterday. I observed the solstice when the Stonehenge people did, because if it’s good enough for Stonehenge then it’s good enough for me. But a lot of people observed it the day before. Something to do with sunsets, I think. I like to think of Apollo basking in the double adoration. I picked a good day for sunrises, anyway. Although that bastard gull flew away and ruined my one chance to look like someone who understands photography and lines and that.

Right. I’m going. HAPPY NEW YEAR.

misty sunrise with a gull, over Southend-on-Sea

Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to stories and chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, use the button below for one-off support of as much or as little as you’d like (if you’d prefer, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi). If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buy my book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailers and as a paperback from Amazon. (That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos, you know?)

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Books · Food

In which I made the November Cakes and I’m so pleased with myself I’m telling the internet

FrancescaLeave a comment

Hello!

Do you remember how, a few weeks ago, I spoke about my hopeful plans for November and they included baking an extremely tricky, sticky batch of November Cakes?

WELL I DID IT AND IT TURND OUT OKAY

I was so surprised and also so in doubt I’ll make them again that I took a photo:

plate of cakes with a lot of pooled glaze

Ignore the pools of glaze. You’re meant to roll the dough into a cinnamon swirl shape that the glaze pools in, but I couldn’t because I was using a reusable coffee cup for a rolling pin and the dough wasn’t quite as firm as it should have been so they were more like fairy cakes. The glaze just ran off the cake onto the plate, where it congealed.

Can confirm: just as delicious as if I’d done it properly. Probably. Bonus is that there’s a lot of waiting around while dough rises so I got to read The Scorpio Races at the same time… and sip mint tea from the fancy Scorpio book box I bought back in January. I never really liked mint tea until this blend of mint and… raspberry?

copy of The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater alongside bookmark, teacup and tea tin

I’m keeping the tin so I can search out something similar. Also, yes, I took a photograph of my themed tea with my themed tea tin and my themed bookmark. Today was a strike day at my university, so since my main project this academic year is not to burn out, I thought I’d do the unthinkable and take the day off. Do some yoga, read my favourite standalone novel, use my crockpot to bake some cakes (I don’t have a mixing bowl, but the crockpot did the job I reckon).

It’s so bucolic I want to puke a bit. Although just out of shot is a moderately gross student living room, so it wasn’t totally… what do they call it? Cottagecore. Kitchencore. Cutecore.

Right I’ve got to go and press some November Cakes onto my friends. I made twelve. I have consumed three. Three might be two too many. Either way, see you in December assuming I haven’t snaffled all the cakes and gone into a sugar coma. No ragrets, as they say.

Look after yourselves!

Francesca

Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to stories and chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, use the button below for one-off support of as much or as little as you’d like (if you’d prefer, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi). If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buy my book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailers and as a paperback from Amazon. (That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos, you know?)

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Books · Food

November Plans *autumn leaf emoji*

Francesca1 Comment

Hello! What are you looking forward to this November? I am pleasantly surprised that I’m actually quite enthusiastic. A few years ago I couldn’t get excited about October or November, because they mean ~ winter is coming ~ but I have recovered from this misconception. Partly because climate change means winter arrives in March, and partly because October and November are brilliant. This month I am planning: to read The Scorpio Races actually in November for the first time ever; make November cakes for the first time ever; start a certain other Maggie Stiefvater book that concludes two other Maggie Stiefvater series I may or may not be procrastinating my reread because I don’t want to say goodbye; go for some walks.

Pretty heavy on the reading, but November is the best time to read because there is nothing else to do except listen to fireworks too far away to see, work on your winter deadlines and talk about how it should probably be colder this time of year.

I am also thinking about shopping for a certain midwinter festival, but that is because my budget is a bit stretched and I need to plan early. WE ARE NOT GOING TO MENTION THE FESTIVAL.

I am going to think about eggnog though. I learnt to make it last year, and it’s top notch. Speaking of food, if you aren’t a Scorpio Races fan (and I shouldn’t be; on paper it has little I enjoy reading but in reality it is a perfect hug of a novel) these are November cakes. I am tentatively planning to have a go at baking some – I haven’t baked anything for months and months, not least anything that requires that many steps. I also don’t own a food processor. Or a rolling pin. Or any ingredients.

I’ll let you know how they go if I do make them, not least because I suspect it will be funny for you guys immediately, and funny for me once I’ve washed flour out of my hair.

Must dash, I told myself today was a day for reading once I’ve worked on those deadlines. Let me know your autumnal plans! Especially if they involve food. We can compare notes…

Look after yourselves,

Francesca

Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to stories and chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, use the button below for one-off support of as much or as little as you’d like (if you’d prefer, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi). If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buy my book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailers and as a paperback from Amazon. (That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos, you know?)

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