sutra je nada

Tomorrow I will be here, with five of my very best friends, hopefully swimming in the crystal clear sea and sampling Croatia's delights. I'm so excited!

See you soon!

Saturday.

Today was a wonderful day.
My mother and I went swimming in the early morning.
Then we ate eggs on toast and omelette in a neighbourhood cafe (I felt like I was in Gilmore Girls!)
We walked 'round town, visited thrift stores and bought vintage shoes and a straw tote.
I drove to my grandparents' house with my dad, admired my grandad's garden and sat in the kitchen talking with my grandma and felt glad that some things never change.
I watched lots of ER re-runs and didn't feel a bit guilty for not being productive.
I finished unpacking the boxes and boxes in my room and contemplated lots of important things in the process.
I read the weekend newspapers with the company of our darling cats.
I lay on the grass in the dying sunlight and felt happy as I've ever been.

It was a perfect Saturday, a perfect first day home, with little time to be homesick for my house in Bristol to which I have now bid farewell (though I miss my friends and bicycle dearly.)

Wochenende

This past weekend involved stargazing, three barbecues, taking silly pictures and endless laughter, baking ridiculously decadent desserts (including two batches of white chocolate and raspberry cake!) - and lying on the ground in my best friend's pebbled garden with my very closest, most beloved friends around me, wondering what I did to be so lucky. Board games and the sun so strong I could almost feel freckles forming on my nose, walking past abandoned churches in the dark, and feeling utterly at peace. A weekend I shall undoubtedly remember and feel nostalgic for, a little weepy even. I am so thankful to have such kind, accepting, endlessly funny friends - the sort everyone wishes for - and I am beyond grateful to have six who live just a few streets away.

all images c/o sophia.

Dear Bicycle

Dear Bicycle,

thank you for being so bright and shiny and always lifting my mood.

Thank you for enduring your two month sabbatical in Victoria Square Park after the cable lock froze over in the depths of a very cold winter.

Thanks for bringing a smile to the face of many with your flower-adorned basket.

Thank you for resisting the prolific Bristol bicycle thieves and staying true to me.

Thank you for ferrying me to and from those late Tuesday evenings football practices far over the Suspension Bridge.

Speaking of which, thank you for taking me over that bridge safely and filling me with wonderment - because riding one's bike over the Suspension Bridge at night has to be one of the very best things in the entire world.

Thanks for keeping up with the boys (well, almost.)

Thanks for accompanying me on many a weekend afternoon ride around Clifton College, and keeping me company whilst I read my book on the Downs.

Here's to a kind new owner and a happy life from here...I'll miss you.

Love, Louise

My electric turquoise bicycle with its wire basket and helpful stickers telling one to 'Wear a helmet - cycle safely!' is for sale, because I have no way of transporting it back home to London with me for the summer (and I have my perfect purple bike from my grandmother with its highly superior wicker basket there anyway) and cannot take it with me to Germany on my adventures, of course. But it's been a good ride....

Update: bicycle sold! (To a lovely BBC worker who very much appreciated the flowers.)

All you need is love

{Daphne, Hannah and Violet}

This week has been spent in assorted old people's homes, singing and talking. I am so grateful and happy to have been involved in this volunteer project for the entire year and it's only now just winding down with a last set of visits to wise old ladies and men in their 90s and even 100s. The highlight of the whole week was when Philly asked Violet, a 101 year old brave and wonderful woman (who looks not a minute above 70!), what her foremost piece of advice for us would be. 

Her answer?

Love. 

'Love everyone. There are so many different types of love and so many different types of people in the world. All you can do is try to accept everybody, love as much as you can. Each and every person has something inside of them, something worth loving. It is your job to find that, to love them even if you cannot. That is the secret, life's secret. Simply love.'

To live so many years and to still have this opinion makes my heart happy (an expression a new Swedish friend used today and which seems so right to me.) It is so easy to become jaded, cynical, even about the most trivial of things. Yet Violet and the other wonderful women and men we speak and sing  with have taught me more than I could ever have wished for when I first stepped into the residential home last October. What also strikes me is that the women rarely concentrate on their jobs, their appearances or the troubles they have faced in the past. They speak, most of all, about their families; past, present, future generations. They are so full of love for those who raised them and those they helped raise, those who continue to visit them towards the end of their lives. And it simply confirms my convictions, leads me to love my family even more and thank whoever may be up there every moment for blessing my life with such accepting, hilarious, loving relatives every day. 

the little things I will miss about here

• the view of lush, leafy gardens and assorted windows from my little room
• Boston Tea Party (their beyond perfect brownies especially)
• coffee dates with Holly, wonderful housemate and friend of two years
• the majestic first glimpse of the Suspension Bridge
• the Downs, which always make me feel entirely at peace
• spending Wednesday afternoons in the company of wise old ladies and musical friends
• the little Victorian villa that houses some of my favourite teachers in the world
• chatty, intelligent, endlessly fun and engaging friends
• rainy Saturdays (Bristol does them best) spent with a book and a steaming pot of tea
• Victoria Square Park and its gorgeous trees
• Tuesday morning farmer's market with Emmy
• the Union, in all its ugly functionality
• the cherry blossom tree outside the French department
• cycling around Clifton on Sunday mornings
• our cute Victorian house and the kind, fun, accepting people who live inside it

Bristol, I love you (for sentimental reasons).