Weeks the Third and Fourth

Working title: I’m Pretty Sure it’s Fine, I’m Only Allergic to Cow’s Milk.

What isn’t fine is the state of my legs, which are currently giving me a pretty good insight into what having the bubonic plague might look like. Of course everyone gets bitten here but only my bites seem to be in rings around my ankles and wrists and exist in the form of lumps that stay there for days. Any longer here and children will probably start making up rhymes about me and holy men will start waving bags of herbs in front of my house.

I’m also looking for somewhere to get a massage since I managed to hurt some part of my lower back during this week - and considering my activities have largely been ‘going to museums’ and ‘eating’ that’s pretty impressive. A very big thank you to my volunteering fam for being so understanding when I abandoned lunch and chill activities to go and lay down and take pain killers. Thank you for understanding that although I live to peel and chop vegetables, onions render me so blind that I become a health and safety risk with a knife in hand if I’m anywhere near them. Thank you to them for a lot to be honest, the past couple of weeks have been my favourite so far.

It hasn’t all been physical ailments though - I also took a very unsuccessful walk to find what I thought would be a tiny but lovely church with an incredible view over the city, but actually turned out to be a motorway bypass and the sort of scene you’d get at the start of a true crime documentary. I was also chased by some dogs.

I also had some very good friends to visit, which was wonderful because it gave me the chance to speak to people who know me so well, and who I will be very excited to go back to when I leave here. People here are wonderful but they also very selfishly leave and go back to their lives and there's something really relaxing and affirming about being with people who form part of my base. We laughed a lot, and talked a lot, and went to a very strictly-run Byzantine museum.

Dogs, Danger & Disappointment

The past two weeks have also been a lot of change, personally a lot has happened and I think the majority of it has been good, or at least I think it will be the starting of something good. More than anything it’s been affirming in my belief both that time is a great remedy, and that second-chances are what make the world go round.

I think a lot about (a lot of things Claire, cuz you say this every week) the concept of being a ‘badass bitch’ and the way it’s been sold to millennial women. I wonder how many of us hang on to stupid fights with people we care about because we think that’s a demonstration of strength. I wonder how far we’re willing to take the concept of ‘cutting people out’ before we’ve forgotten that we’re not the centre of the universe and that maybe the other person isn’t always the problem.

I’ve reconnected with four people I’d all but lost in the last three weeks. FOUR. That’s more than I see at any social event I organise, that’s enough to have formed a society and fill most of the key positions. Sometimes I was brave and sometimes they were and mostly I think it’s a bit of both, I don’t know what it is about this time frame that has led to this - maybe we’re all too old to care about it anymore - but old enough to care about each other. There was no fanfare, no one ran through an airport, we just very gently reintroduced ourselves to each other, and guess what? No one was angry, not in the slightest, because you can’t hold on to bitterness unless you feed it and I certainly haven’t been doing that, looks like they haven’t either.

We could have, we could have spent the months and years talking shit about each other to anyone who would listen. Maybe we did that for a while but it becomes so boring so fast, and the more airtime it gets the more I at least, began to wonder if maybe I wasn’t as free from culpability as my ego would like to think. It would probably make better content to talk about how you ‘don’t need that in your life’ and you should ‘never look back’, but what would be the point when that couldn’t be further from who I am?

Thank goodness they didn’t form a society, that’s a Facebook page no one needs to stumble across.

*****

I’m on Instagram - clairegillesp - which continues to be photos of the sea and Roman ruins and people looking excited about vegetables.

I’m on Twitter - @clairegillesp - where I’ve been talking about women and our definition of ‘ambition’ in a thread that feels like it might never end.

I’m listening to the new Lorde album - The Louvre, Liability and Hard Feelings especially - and the new Haim album - Want You Back in particular has been on repeat.

So Much for the Tolerant Left

xx