Liebster love!

Well gee, check me out: the marvellous Deb of small house, big picture blessed me with a Liebster Award, making me truly giddy with gratitude. The rules: post the award logos, answer her short questionnaire, and pass it along to two other bloggers (who must have fewer than 200 followers). Hold tight...


1. Favourite book? Damn, you couldn't start with an easier question? Is it cheating to say 'all of them'?

2. Do you read real books or ebooks? I've recently commandeered Flat Boyfriend's ipad and turned it into my ebook reader - apart from the practical reasons (lots of books in one little space! Lighter than a hardback, when I already have constant shoulder pain from carrying around so much clat! No awkward crossover period where you either have to carry two books, or end up reading the sodding Standard out of desperation!), it's amazing for getting old or out of print texts that you'd never be able to find anywhere else. I'm researching the life of Maggie Fox at the moment, and there's a wealth of primary sources available online for the princely sum of Absolutely Nothing.

That said, I have this tendency to put things I like in my mouth, and biting a not inexpensive bit of technology that technically belongs to your boyfriend's employer is not generally recommended. Neither is reading it in the bath. Plus you can't lend them to friends, or buy them in charity shops, or scribble shopping lists in the back...

3. Which art form offers you the truest expression for yourself? Ah, writing. I dabble in various other bits and bobs - knitting and drawing are just for fun, to make a thing that I want to exist in the world. Singing is very expressive emotionally, but I'm (a) not a good enough musician for it to be properly satisfying, and (b) too overly analytical for it to express everything rattling around in my head - you can't really set a 2,000 word essay on British attitudes to immigration to music. (Though I did once manage to get a line about the gender pay gap into a love song, so, there's that.)

4. Favourite genre? I'll read pretty much anything, to be honest. Not promising I'll finish it.

5. What makes you laugh? Black humour, filthy humour, and really obvious blatant sexism, weirdly enough.

6. What makes you cry? Sad stuff? Depression? And, when I'm feeling pent up and peculiar and just need a good cathartic cry, I will watch the prom episode of Buffy season 3 where they give her the award for Class Protector. Never fails.

7. What is the one thing you can't do that you'd love to be able to do? Go through life without the constant inner monologue of 'I am SUCH A DICK'.

8. If you were given an opportunity to spend one more day with a friend or family member who has passed away, what would you do? Just talk. Talk really openly and honestly with my Nana. She had a strange and difficult and fucked up life and it made her bitter and distant and I'd love to hear about it from her, if she could get past the taboos and reticence of her generation and just lay it all out there.

9. Do you write? Constantly, in my head; haltingly, in reality; painfully, when it's fiction. I haven't tried for years and the giddy vista of possibilities is both exciting and paralysingly scary.

Pass it along:

My first nominee is the delightful Maggie of Courage Doesn't Always Roar. Full disclosure: I used to babysit this pint-sized wunderkind, and like to think I played some minor part in her development into the unimaginably awesome lady she is today. She's only recently started blogging, but I have high hopes - her recent post on stigma and mental illness was extremely powerful.

Secondly, I'm gonna blow your mind and nominate a blog that has no relation to feminism whatsoever. No, not anti-racism either, nor trans issues or LGB equality or sex workers' rights or literally anything in the social justice canon. This blog: is about shoes. And dresses. And generally looking awesome. Again with the full disclosure, this lady is an old school friend of mine, but stop crying nepotism - her pictures are lickably good, her prose is witty and entertaining, and her sense of style is just breathtaking. So here you are: Lizzy of Scientist Chic.

Thank you, ladies, and happy Friday x