Invisible Illnesses
Having a period is not a unique experience. Many of us have had and will have periods. The symptoms and challenges that accompany them are experienced by each individual and by all women; they connect us together in mutual pain and discomfort. But those with endometriosis suffer more than most. The
Shibuya hospital
August 31st 2017. Tokyo City, Shibuya hospital second floor There is an incredibly ominous feeling that accompanies knowing the exact place you are to die. I have been lying in the same spot for nearly a year now. Tubes snake their way under the blankets, latching onto me in humiliating place
Nostalgia in Music
Nostalgia is a strange feeling. It has the power to warp memory and identity, accentuating positive associations and blurring negative ones, reducing them to aberrations at the edge of our retrospective vision. Witness the way that the crackle of vinyl can return us to a mythic and unexperienced mus
Observing Blackbirds
For three or four years we’ve kept chickens in our back garden. One of the things about chickens is that they really tear up the ground, and once they’re done with it the earth often doesn’t have much vegetation left at all, so we’ve started to rotate our chickens around the garden to let th
Empire Adrift
Ten years ago, I saw one of the most memorable sights of my entire childhood. I remember a column of bright red coming slowly into view round a bend in the road, progressing methodically to the beat of a drum. Cream pith helmets, golden sword hilts and medals gleamed in the sun. At the head [&hellip
Invisible Illnesses
I have been stuck outside many doors in my life. I do not mean figurative doors, though I could probably expand on that, but literal doors. The door to the kitchen in the house I live in; the door to the Montague Place entrance to the British Museum; the multiple fire safety doors that block [&helli
‘I’m down on my knees…’
By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me. I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet. – Sylvia Plath, ‘The Hanging Man’, Ariel (1965) Words are like people. They flake when you need them. ‘Pain words are lacking,’ Virginia Woolf wrote. ‘There should be cries, cracks, fi
Invisible Illnesses
Beginning life at the University of Oxford as an international postgraduate is a momentous event and one that brings a host of new challenges as you settle into life in an entirely different country. Just finding suitable accommodation as a postgraduate is a herculean task and inevitably leads to we