thelittleplum.co.uk

My Nan and Grandad have a favourite pub just outside of Ipswich which they visit most weeks for a discounted pensioners' lunch. I accompanied them last Wednesday as a little pre-celebration for my Nanny's birthday; they live about a 35/40-min walk away from my house, so I used the opportunity to get some much-needed fresh air and to stretch my legs, stopping at Applaud (a local café) along the way for a latte and a few hours of work

Turn the lens 180 degrees, and there you'll see it: the familiar mound of carelessly tossed clothes; yesterday's half-sipped tea, complete with a few tiny puddles of second-hand limescale; bins overflowing with a burgeoning tide of baby wipes and diet coke cans. The images we see have been brightened, retoned, and even retouched (it's all too easy to 'heal' out that dead fly taking up residence in the corner of your windowsill), but when we glimpse these photos, it's easy to forget that 9/10 times the scene has been staged, and also that the bits and pieces included have been acquired over the course of years (and sometimes, in collaboration with brands). That's why it has taken (or is taking) me so long to make the rooms look decent; only now have I taken the steps to turn our crappy, dark dining room (which had literally just the table and chairs in it) into a much more open and useful space. I found homeware edits like this quite useful in the run-up to our move, as they offered the chance to anticipate how different items would look together, whilst also offering bountiful ideas of both retailers and items I'd not known about previously.

All I wanted was a boyfriend with long hair, who would compose ~ totally meaningful ~ emo ballads on his acoustic guitar, and who would confirm the suspicion I had mediated over for some time: I was different to other girls (and being emo is not a phase, Mum! Of course I was different in the sense that I had the haircut of a 45 year old when I had only just stumbled into my teens (I had raccoon blonde highlights and a DIAGONAL fringe), but other than that I was a carbon copy of every other Ipswich girl that had come before me: getting drunk at the local park, going to a much-below-average state comprehensive, and desperately searching for something more than the county town I was born and bred in. It becomes risky, and it becomes untenable, because you’re forced to accept the fundamental truth that to have love and to be in love, means to accept the often likely possibility that heartbreak is on the horizon. The reward of love is so much greater than the pain, even when the pain seems to outweigh the pleasure, and that’s why we so readily accept the risk when we allow ourselves to love.

If I'm having a shit week, whether it's personal or professional, I always find forcing myself into the capital for a day of meetings is the perfect antidote. First stop was Coal Drop Yards around King's Cross; I had a piercing booked at 1pm but arrived early, so I set up shop in Vermuteria with a diddy latte and an open view and tapped away to pass the time. Then it was upstairs to Sacred Gold, the new sister studio to the famous Love Hate Social Club in Notting Hill. I had my tragus pierced with BVLA jewellery by the genuinely lovely Nicole, who happened to also have pierced my other tragus a few years back at their Notting Hill location.