Peak Fran

I don’t think that anything dramatic has happened to me in the last week. I had to struggle through the finale of Outlander season 1 which was the SECOND episode to be all about torture and near death and I had to pause it a lot to deal with what was happening. I would love someone clever to write about it, especially the way they deal with certain things that happen to Jamie... I am desperate to have someone to discuss it with! But alas, it cannot be.

I am coming to the end of some long training at work and I’m about to put it into practice which is pretty nerve-wrecking. I think this is the reason that most of the things I’m enjoying at the moment are old favourites.

I am essentially reliving my late teens at the moment. It feels good to revisit all the things that I loved so much then because they are what made me into me, revisiting them makes me fee like I’m renewing my essential me-ness. When I am hanging around in long wooly socks and a massive jumper or cardigan, listening to Jeff Buckley and reading Angela Carter I feel like I have reached peak Fran. 

What are these favourites?

I listened to Jeff Buckley and Suzanne Vega constantly as a 17/18 year old. I listen to them lots now too, but it's not as intense. I don't think anything can ever be as intense as it is when you are 17. 

Rediscovering my love for Angela Carter. Angela Carter would have been 75 this year so there have been a couple or articles written about her that I have come accross over the last couple of days. This on Bitch about the Bloody Chamber and this on Salon. I ruined her in my mind a little bit by writing my dissertation on her books but with 5 years between me and that terrible ordeal I am able to enjoy her once more. I’m reading Nothing Sacred which is a selection of her writing published in the late 80s. Next want to read A Card From Angela Carter. Her writing is so gorgeous I want to eat it (or something less weird).

I finally fixed my Lady Luck teenybopper ring. I’ve had this ring since I was 17 when I bought it as a treat for not dying during my AS French Oral. I failed the exam but I got this ring out of it so it was ok in the end. Earlier this year the original ring snapped in two! But I got a new one and yesterday I transferred all the charms across to the new base and I will never stop wearing it. Mad jewellery is one of my main interests (alongside cheese, gin and hatred for tories) and it all began when I was about 17 with Lady Luck. 

I didn't love this when I was 17 BUT I've been rewatching Big Love. I love Big Love because I have a weird fascination with Mormons and um it’s about a polygamist family with Chloë Sevigny as the grumpiest sister-wife of all time, I don’t think I need to explain why I love it. Bonus: God Only Knows by the Beach Boys is the theme song which means I get to hear it every 50mins or so when I watch it.