Christchurch, New Zealand

I can't believe it was almost 7 years ago that we sat enjoying the autumn sunshine in Cathedral Square, Christchurch - sitting on a bench outside the beautiful cathedral, watching buskers and street performers, moving every now and then as the sun sunk lower and the huge shadow cast by the spire crept towards us.

We were staying in a hostel opposite the cathedral, and spent the days roaming the city - taking the tram to the art gallery and wandering around its lovely little bead shop. We walked miles to find a little vintage shop where Cara bought a lovely deep green velvet blazer and Bridget a fantastic '70s green and white polka dot dress. We walked for about 40 minutes one evening out of town to a cinema to watch "Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban". I bought the book - I picked it up again the other day. It made me smile to see the inscription I'd written on the title page: "Bought in Christchurch, New Zealand - the perfect place to Potter. 15th June, 2004"

And it was the perfect city to potter, with its old Hogwarts/Oxford/Cambridge buildings - pretty much the only old stone architecture in NZ. It had a wonderful, friendly atmosphere - probably due to our meeting up with Hannah (old friends of the family, she'd moved there when she was younger. I hadn't seen her in years but it was like nothing had changed) and the warm friendly attitude of the locals...but maybe also due to its familiar English feel and that fact that, after nearly 3 months traveling around the country, we were nearing the end of our trip. As much as I loved the place, I was looking forward to seeing home, familiarity again.

A few days later we took a small internal flight from Christchurch to Auckland, and from there a flight back to the UK. I swore I saw Orlando Bloom in the airport. I jiggled my legs the whole journey - a nervous flyer, a nervous everything - but as the plane rose above the clouds the view was breathtaking: a blanket of cloud with the snow-capped Southern Alps a line snaking away into the north.

All I can seem to think about now is that evening, sitting outside the cathedral. I have a photo somewhere of us sitting on the bench, Bridget perched on the top wearing her polka dot dress. That bench is under rubble now - the spire of the cathedral collapsed during the quake. I remember the little old ladies that worked in the cathedral visitor centre and I hope they got out before the whole thing came down.

Such a terrible terrible thing - and strangely, almost shamefully, I feel more shaken and upset by it than any tragedy before, because I feel like I know that city.

If you can spare anything, please please donate to the Red Cross NZ earthquake appeal.

Roadtrips: Scotland

Every now and then I'm overcome with the odd pang of homesickness - in times like these I dream of heather-purple moorland, crashing waves beneath cliffs clad in frith and coconut scented gorse, red kites circling over green forested valleys. Quiet. Fresh air. Growing things.

Don't get me wrong: I love London, I really do. But my heart aint half in the country, and every now and then I feel I need to top up my dwindling levels of fresh air, mud and salt sea-breezes or I'll keel over and never make it out of the city alive.

Oddly these pangs seem to coincide with the changing of the seasons. In spring I start to think of snowdrops pushing through the black soil, unseasonable warm days walking on the clifftops around Llangrannog, the garden at home starting to turn green. In summer I dream of warm nights watching the bats flit around the yard, crab-fishing and hillwalking and tick-searching annual holidays in Scotland as a child, clouds of midges and everything smelling like citronella. In autumn my thoughts turn to dull orange beach leaves, blustery walks with two smelly black labradors along the mountain tops and evenings in front the fire with my family, watching tv or chatting. In winter I think of rain-lashed windows, hot-water bottles, cold foggy days and woodsmoke.

(photo by Ian Cameron here)

Right now though, this pang for countryside and fresh air has coincided with an overwhelming need for a holiday, and all I can think about is a fantasy summer roadtrip across Scotland. I want to drive through Glencoe, feeling like the only people for miles and miles, the tripled-peaks of the Three Sisters that used to fascinate me as a child looming above us, passing tiny Eilean Munde (Isle of the Dead) in Loch Leven where the distant gravestones poke out amongst the tall pine trees, a lonely white crofter's cottage or bothy speckling the feet of the mountain every here and there. I want to take the Corran Ferry across Loch Linnhe and see the stormy sunlight break through the clouds above the solitary lighthouse, hear the roar of stags across the valley, search for ticks on bare legs through bracken, dip my toes in peaty-pebbled loch beaches. I want to smell the wild garlic down by the sea shoreline, carpeted in seaweed, otters and seals bobbing heads out from the waters and lazing on rocks around the pretty painted Tobermoray harbour.

It's a strange feeling, something that's hard to describe, when you feel like you belong to a place and a place belongs to you. I feel that way about my home in Wales but I think I've always that personal belonging to and from and for Scotland also, especially the west coast and the highlands. I know my parents would love to move there one day, and if Wales had to lose them to anywhere I think Scotland would be a fitting substitute - and I could visit them a lot I suppose! Some of my family have just moved to the Isle of Mull, another of my favourite childhood places, so I might just have to add them to the itinerary of my fantasy Scotland road trip too...

I hope I do get the opportunity to go some time this year - it's been a while since I've paid a visit and I feel my second home calling to me. For now I can only dream - and listen to my specially made Scottish Roadtrip Playlist on spotify (here)

(photo by Eamonn Shute here)

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(Ardtornish on the west coast of Scotland, where we went every year with friends when I was younger, photo by Nick Connor from here)

Costume, not Fashion

Cor, it's a bit dusty around here isn't it?! I suppose I have been a bit lax in posting for the past, oh, year or so....

Lately though I've felt myself having real thinky thoughts, or just feeling the need to write things down again, regardless of whether or not anyone is reading them or if it's just me, shouting into the internet void. So I'm going to try to post here a bit more this year, and make a real effort to document things.

So to start things I want to try and get some thoughts down, about, well, why I do what I do - or more specifically, why I look the way I look.

I think a lot of people are surprised when they see photos (or sometimes even footage) of me larking about in full costume-swing - whether that's head-to-toe 1950s style, or at midnight on Halloween dressed as dead Marie Antoinette, demanding cake and fluttering my fan in a coquettish manner as I swept through the dirty puddles of Soho side-streets. I've always been a very self-conscious, shy person, you see. No. Really.

I've no idea how I've got to be this person, and sometimes it actually does surprise me. I wonder how much of it is really that dressing up is playing, pretending...or maybe hiding? When dressed as a 1920s flapper or jitterbugging in mock WRAF uniform with GIs underneath the railway arches of Shoreditch, I'm not Jemima from small town west Wales who is a bit self-conscious and speccy and anxious. I can be anyone I want to be. And that gives me the freedom to be myself in a way that I could never be before.

I know I look stupid, and I don't think I mind. I think I've become accustomed to the fact that I can quite easily make a fool of myself, even whilst trying my best to keep a low profile. It's best to embrace - pre-empt it, almost. I don't mind looking stupid - there are far worse things to be. Like the sad little prediction of regret you know is waiting for you in the future, the one you feel the very moment life is passing you by. I've spent a long time with that feeling - we're old friends. There's a lot of things I was too shy and too sensible and too sober to do - and those are the things the little voice in my head repeats like a broken record.

Ah yes - the voice in my head, the killer of an internal monologue. It's a little voice that narrates my day to day life with cutting, harsh observations about myself and my inability to survive in the adult world - she sounds very much like me, but bitchy and delighting in torturing myself for every mistake or wobble. My biggest fear is not regret in itself, but the failure of character, of quality, of courage maybe, that leads me to falter and hesitate just before that leap out of my comfort zone into the unknown. "Oh of you course you couldn't do it - you're not good enough, are you?" she says "You've always known you're not capable". God I hate that bitch.

But I've come to realise how huge a contributing factor that voice has been in every quiet little humdrum victory in my life - stupid insignificant things like the first time I wore something that I wanted to wear, even though I knew it would make people look at me. But in bigger things, more vital things too - like the first time I stood up on stage and sang with my friend in an open mic night. It's that voice that helps me not say no to the opportunities that I really, really want to try, but terrify me. Like stage-maiding at a burlesque night in a skimpy showgirl outfit, or helping out as a magician's assistant on stage (this time in a very prim 1940s nurse's outfit).

Most of these significant, challenging experiences in my life involve dressing up in some kind of costume. How we present ourselves to the outside world is hugely important - and incredibly trivial. If I step out of the house today wearing insane '80s prints leggings (which I did. Because they made me laugh) then is anyone really going to care? I might get some funny comments or teasing from my colleagues at work (which I did), but is that really important? If I laugh and make fun of myself, are any of those people really going to spare a second thought to it?

There are bigger more important things in this world than fashion or how we look. Which is not to say that it's not hugely important to ourselves, but only in the way that it makes us feel or behave and interact with the world around us. I don't think there is anything vain or shallow about being interested in what you're wearing. If you religiously follow the dictates of Vogue regardless of whether or not you want to wear 8-inch leather peep-toe boot-sandals, well..... I wear things that make me smile, make me feel like I'm playing dress-up, like I'm in another age or another world or another story - and that helps me live my life with a smile on my face, feeling confident and happy in myself. And there's nothing so satisfying as the confidence that comes in feeling comfortable in your own skin - and the clothes - you're in. Okay, so I've made some pretty insane and maybe amusing choices of clothing over the years, and I will look back and laugh and cringe, but I know I'll never regret.

Every time I step out of the house wearing something a little bit different, the horrible little voice in my head softens a bit. Instead of doing something purely to prove wrong the voice telling me that I'm too weak, I can use the confidence built on past experiences to know that I am strong enough to go through life embracing the next experience. Having fun, living - and looking - the way that I want to.