"What did the Romans ever do for us, eh?!"

Cor, I spent ages on this picture! Again I'm left wondering when I will grow up and make proper worthy art instead of just drawing girls from different historical eras, but this was a great exercise in drawing straight on Photoshop which I very very rarely do. It's not really my preferred style, but it was good practice. Especially the hair, which took the bulk of 4-5 hours. This tiny crummy upload doesn't really do it justice, but there we go. Her name is Osian, which I know is a boy's name, but still.

I've no idea why but I'm currently in the midst of a massive Roman/Celt fixation. Alright, it's a bit of a lie when I say I don't know why - it all started when I went to see "The Eagle" movie a few weeks ago, based on the fantastic book "The Eagle of the Ninth" by Rosemary Sutcliff. The film is fun - nicely shot, good battle scenes, well acted - a little Hollywood-ish in places but forgiveable. It's not going to win any prizes for groundbreaking cinema, but it's a good fun movie - and it caught my imagination. And it's got that Billy Elliot bloke in it, skulking around being all slavey-y and Gaelic and moody and secretly/blatantly in love with his Roman master - Channing Tatum. Which is a made-up name if ever I heard one.

Every now and then I see a film or read a book which drags me into a particular obsession - usually a historical era. When this happens I just can't get enough of it: I need to read books and magazines about it, daydream about it, I need to watch films, listen to music, completely immerse myself in it. And then a few weeks later and normally with wallet a little lighter I come out the other end of the thing. Until next time, at least.

Mind you, I've always had a particular interest in ancient history and archaeology, so this is at least allowing me to indulge that. Everything seemed...more epic then, didn't it? When men built walls across entire countries, fierce painted tribesmen harried legionaries by appearing and disappearing in the mists, whole countries changed overnight. The list of things the Romans brought to Britain is staggering. I mean, locks and keys, glass, as well as little things like politics and governments and, you know, really really straight roads. They even had under-floor heating ("hypocausts" - amazing!). Turns out the Romans actually did do a lot for us.

The one thing that it's got me wondering though (and it's a pointless rhetorical question as I doubt anyone is reading this, but I can be self-indulgent on my own blog, right?): so much of our modern English language is from latin, and from the later Norman invasions, But when Rome officially got tired of mad tribesmen and year-long winters and abandoned Britain, the Celts and Saxons and British-born Romans were all left to jostle for power. The Celtic language was meant to be something like Gaelic but a lot more like modern-day Welsh (if that isn't a contradiction in itself) - so why aren't there more Welsh and Gaelic words in the English language? If that's what it evolved from?

Anyway, while I'm digging the whole Ancient Britain thing I feel I should really pimp out and recommend all the books by Rosemary Sutcliffe, and "The Eagle" soundtrack by Atli Örvasson, which has some truly epic celtic themed bits of music. I also watched "Centurion", which is alright but I enjoyed far less than "The Eagle" - because I couldn't give a toss about the characters and there was far too little bromance and much too much gratuitous day-go blood. Although it gets points for judicious use of Michael Fassbender. Oh and I revisited "Gladiator" and reminded myself why I loved it so much when I first saw it, and how magnificent the score by Hans Zimmer is. I'm currently debating whether I can sit through "King Arthur" and Keira Knightley's boney jutting chin again just to see the costumes and weaponry, or if it'll induce a repeat of the fit of hysterical giggles that it did the first time I saw it.

Hmm. Maybe my obsession won't stretch quite that far.

"Beautiful! Just beautiful!"

So on a spacey theme today, in honour of the 50th anniversary of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, I want to share this song - "Space Walk" by Lemon Jelly. The voice sample used is Alan Bean (so the internet tells me) an American astronaut, describing the sunset as seen on a spacewalk outside their craft. The song itself is wonderfully bouncy, uplifting and summery, but Bean's commentary is gorgeous - it's incredible to think that this is the voice of a man speaking as he sees the earth, the first "point of light" of the sunrise from space. The joy in his comment of "I feel like a million dollars" is evident. He's witnessed a sight that the majority of us will never know - a sight that would without a doubt change a person's life, and their perspective on the world they live in, forever.

Still, it'd scare the shit out of me. But then that's why I'm not an astronaut.

Enjoy!

Aiding and abetting: '50s shoot with Scarab Pictures

So my wonderful and talented friend Claire of Scarab Pictures asked me to run around in the Soho sunshine, dressed in '50s-ish rockabilly clothes - how could I resist? I'm very lucky to have such talented and creatively brilliant friends, who often not only abide my penchant for dressing up, but often actively encourage it!

Check out the whole shoot here.

Newspaper milestones, straws to clutch at, and finding hope and shouting fucking loudly about it.

Today I bought The Times - I rarely buy newspapers, in fact, I only really do when there's something really significant on the front page. I take them home, well-thumbed and read on the tube, the ink slightly worn off on my fingers, and pack them away safely in a box.

I can pinpoint this habit back to a specific date - 12th of September 2001. I remember the front page clearly: vivid, almost obscenely blue sky; two stark white lines; a smudge of black smoke; balls of bright fire. Moments before the World Trade Center towers collapsed. I was almost 17, had just moved school, was blissfully unaware of my naivety. But this - this was too big a thing. The other day I sat around with some friends, nearly ten years on, and the conversation somehow turned to that day. It's almost a cliche, but everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing on that day. It's a milestone now, a Before and After. No one, no matter how young, could fail to see how utterly and completely world-changing that day was.

So I bought a newspaper. And it wasn't just the covers I wanted to keep, the terrifying headlines or the shocking images - I wanted the whole papers. I wanted to look back in years to come and see all the many mundane trivialities we concerned ourselves with on the days that rocked the world off its axis, for just a moment. The way that we were still talking about the latest film reviews or the celebrity gossip when the little path we're blazing as a species is shunted sideways, in the blink of an eye, changing everything.

So there they sit, these paper records: dictators and towers and cities toppled, men rescued from deep under ground, new leaders elected, economies slumped, earth shifting and ash-clouds. A little while ago I was clearing out my old room at home and came across those papers, now all packed and sealed in a box that I left my parents with strict instructions to stash in the attic.

Folded and piled neatly next to old birthday cards, my exam results, diaries, letters from friends - little transient things that never seem to lose their significance over time. There's something fascinating in the complete paradox: the fragility of the paper and ink, and the permanence of the stories they tell.

So today's Times will go into the box, and some day I know I'll look back on it and realise how the events that began last friday off the coast of Japan sent aftershocks rippling into the years to come. My only real wish is that, over the years, I will be able to add to this odd collection with happier headlines.

I feel on the brink of being drowned by this tsunami of terrible images, body-counts and lives utterly devastated - I hope that somehow we can rise as a species, rise all over the world and pull ourselves out of this swamping desolation. I know there's so much we can do, so much we can achieve - incredible things. But they're never as loud or as insistent as the tragedies, and this needs to change. We need to get over our rubber-necking morbid fascination and shout - really fucking loud - about all the wonderful things people do for each other and for the world we live in every day.

And with that, I'll finish with a link that I've found and has made me smile, just a little. Small miracles amid the carnage, from the Brisbane Times. Read to bolster your ever dwindling hope reserves. If anyone is reading this and finds similarly hopeful links please do feel free to post and share here - clutch at enough straws and we might just make it through.

EDIT: Since posting this I keep seeing little bits of...well, maybe not "good news" as such, but tiny little human things that I suspect are happening all over Japan right now - kind acts, a smile here or there, politeness and respect and civility in the face of utter ruin. Everywhere we see the depths that humans can sink when they are afraid, in pain - to but I want to hear the stories of the good things - which (believe it or not) are human nature too. So I'm going to compile them here:

BBC news - an old man sifts through the wreckage of a ruined Japanese city, searching for stranger's keepsakes - he finds a photo of a smiling man holding a baby under a blue sky, blossom on the trees in the background, another of a line of children in uniform, a school trip - he puts them in a plastic bag. "The army will burn all of this. If these children are gone now this will be precious to someone."

BBC news - Katie Hinman of ABC News tweets: "Driving through the wreckage of Sendai, and saw the saddest sight: a bewildered horse standing alone among it all."

Then later:

The tweet by Katie Hinman of ABC News about the lonely horse in Sendai (See 2146) prompted Breda Gahan in Dublin to email in: "Can't believe I read this. Please return horse to Natsuko Komura." The BBC's Damian Grammaticas interviewed Ms Komura on Sunday as she searched for her trusty steed near Sendai's beach. She had been riding it when the tsunami approached on Friday, but had not seen it since.

BBC news - A Twitter campaign has been set up to persuade Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yukio Edano, to go to bed.Mr Edano has been dutifully covering the nuclear crisis at all hours of the day and night, but many TV viewers feel the strain is beginning to tell. The hashtag #edano_nero - "Edano, go to bed" - has been trending on Twitter.

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.