If you’ve never been to a festival before (as I hadn’t, before last year) I join Zoe Ball in suggesting you try out Latitude next year. If you have kids, I recommend it, too.
Last year, my first year at Latitude, I remember being totally blown away by the spirituality of the event. Not a prescriptive spirituality, but the kind you find at any event where people truly believe themselves to be part of a community, experiencing things outside of their usual lives. Never have I felt so close to the village-church community of my childhood, or the “we’re all stuck here together”-ness of Lampeter, my love. I spent much of last year in the poetry tent and fell in love with Rhian Edwards, among others. I scribbled feverishly during pauses in the line-up and imagined myself on stage when the poets were a little disappointing. I ate great food. I went along to music performances when my more trendy friends suggested it. I bought a flower garland for my hair, and wandered in maxi-dresses in a daze.
This year it rained. It rained for a whole day and the fields turned to mud. I never thought I enjoyed camping, I often said I didn’t. But, when you camp in mud and still wake up smiling, you have to rethink your own ideas. I think I might love camping! There is certainly a sort of freedom in not having brushed your hair or looked in a mirror for four days. We all smell. None of us care!
This year, in the rain, the poetry tent was often full. Though I hated that I couldn’t get in there, and cursed the people who were using it for shelter, rather than being ACTUAL POETRY FANS, I like the thought that some of those teenagers may have learned a little there, too. This year, I ventured beyond the poetry (but not before seeing the amazing Tim Keys and the inappropriate, but beautifully-Welsh, Mab Jones) into the Cabaret Tent. The Husband and I thoroughly enjoyed an accidental performance by Life Coach, Chris John Jackson (otherwise known as comedian and actor Will Adamsdale). Jackson’s Way is one of the best self-help instructionals I’ve heard – and I’ve read a fair few in the last year! In brief, Jackson believes that for every action that has a point, there are an infinite number of pointless actions. He believes that these pointless actions are where we should be spending the majority of our time and effort. Indeed, Jackson spends many hours trying to do things like, for example, make his hand appear in two places at once. Or rhyme words that simply do not rhyme. These pointless actions are called ‘jactions’ and you should repeat them until you feel physically sick. At which point you will know you have achieved the jaction, and can move on. I haven’t laughed so much for a long time. If you’ve ever watched the way that children play and thought we might learn something from it, I recommend Jackson’s Way.
Suede were the real pull for me. I went to see Suede in Oxford as a teen. Brett Anderson stormed off about half an hour in, and my best mate and I were sorely disappointed. Maybe it was about the time Bernard left. Maybe they were just too big for a theatre in Oxford with fixed seating.
At Latitude, my friend, the Journalist (another huge fan, who took me to see the Tears years ago), pushed to the front and we sang our hearts out. He touched Brett’s hand. I touched his, in a kind of ‘I’ll never wash again’ relay. It was an amazing concert. The Husband saw us on the giant screens and it was apparent in that moment that I had totally forgotten about him.
But actually, the performance that really did me in was Kele. I wouldn’t have gone, not knowing who he was, but when my Trendy friends explained and I recognised Bloc Party, I thought I’d give it a go. And what a performance!! It was this song that killed me, made me cry – blub – and raise my hands up, laughing. It’s been a funny old year.

It all started, I suppose, with the above poster, which I posted on my facebook wall. A friend of mine, who I don’t know very well, reposted it onto his wall, with the comment “It made me very happy you put this up”. I’ve known this lad since he was born… a family friend, though we lost touch when his father died and his family life got a little complicated. As it goes, he’s gay and surrounded by other family friends who are evangelical Christians. So, when he posted it on his wall, he didn’t get the same positive reaction as I did.
I’m quite used to the argument that all gays will all burn in Hell. It’s difficult to be brought up in a Christian community without coming across that opinion occasionally. I assumed, for a long time in my teens, that this was the opinion of my parents. Homosexuality wasn’t talked about in my house, and usually that meant it was something that was too distasteful to stomach. Years later, my vicar father made the very brave and awe-inspiring decision to be open about his acceptance of homosexuality – using Biblical justification…  in a small village… in print – and for that I am forever grateful. I have a very wise and beautiful father.

Unfortunately, there are still so many religious people out there who fail to grasp the most basic of Jesus’ teachings: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself’. For me, there isn’t an option to love homosexuals but still stop them from being allowed to have a loving sexual relationship, or commit to one another in marriage, or have a family together, or work where they please and talk about what they want. That isn’t loving someone as you love yourself. It’s as simple as that.

So I got involved in an argument that I’m not particularly proud of, because I know it hurt some of the people I count as family.

But the comments went a little like this:
–“Well… honestly… Marriage is the union of one man and one woman, made by a public declaration, for the procreation of children, and for the building up of a stable society. Marriage between two men or two women just is not possible – it could never lead to the creation of children, and it could never build a stable society.” [As a ‘straight’ married woman, without children, I find the idea that marriage is solely for the aim of procreating a little alien – I also worry for heterosexual marriages where sex is only about having babies… let alone the huge number of marriages that totally fail to build a stable society through spousal abuse, or other issues].

–“Come on… look at the biological logic and the sociological and psychological perspective – men with men cannot be the right way can it? You can be what you want to be, but what you want might not be the best for you – an alcoholic wants a drink but it may not be the best thing for him. Common sense surely must prevail – its just a clearly observable fact. Nothing personal, just a fact.” [A fact from where?? And when did it become ‘common sense’ to compare a homosexual to an alcoholic (someone with a medically recognised illness?). And – as another facebook user pointed out – how can telling a gay man that the way he lives is wrong, NOT be ‘personal’??]

When I offered this commentator a link to my father’s website, where he once wrote on the subject of homosexuality, he replied:
-There are some people in the church (such as [Sunshriek’s] dad it would seem, although I do not know him) who reject the Bible – that is their decision. I believe that I do not have the right or the ability to decide that God didn’t mean what he said in the pages of Scripture.

Reject the Bible?? My daddy?? That made me mad. ‘Bring it’, I said. ‘Ask me anything! Tell me your reasons for thinking homosexuality is so wrong. I have a degree in Theology! You want a biblical argument, I’m your girl!’.
His answer? He doesn’t much care for degrees and thinks my Theology BA only proves I have a degree, not that I have actually read any of the Bible.

At no point did this commentator proffer any actual biblical evidence. In fact, the best piece of evidence he could find to persuade this ‘poor’, ‘gay’, friend of mine to stop his ‘sinful ways’ was this: “I know a young man in [insert Northern town here] who has engaged in so much anal sex with so many men his back passage has collapsed and he now is fitted with a bag to take his poo away”. Brilliant. Gay men have a lot of promiscuous sex because they are filthy and disgusting. I thought we’d moved on from this.

I left the Church a while ago. I fell out with God. One of the main reasons was that His people seem so intent on making the world a horrible and intolerant place. One which I don’t want to live in. I can’t believe that a God who “Is Love” would approve of such utter thoughtlessness and cruelty. Until the Church sorts itself out, I’ll find my own way to God, thanks very much.

Postscript: I left out the most upsetting and disgusting of the comments because I couldn’t bear to deal with the thought of it, but it was this: “its wrong and yr dad would have disowned you if he was alive’. It’s comments like this that are why gay teens are twice as likely to commit suicide as their heterosexual peers.

I’m a little superstitious. I’m not sure I want to mention this yet… It seems to good to be true. But, today… today feels like it might be the start of something new. Something good.
The doctor was useless as always (one day, I might write an expose of the NHS’ treatment of Mental Health issues). But, with the help of an excellent counsellor, and with the support of some pretty amazing employers, and – maybe – with a bit of Grace from God… things are looking up.
The plan – and I know that until I have it in print I should slow down a little – is to work in my teaching job three days a week and write for the other days. Or sit still. Or laugh. To be part-time.
I am incredibly lucky to have this luxury. I’m not ignoring that. I am incredibly lucky that I married a man who is able to support me while I work part time. I am lucky to have had the opportunities, the education, the genes that mean I have a job that pays well part-time… I am very lucky.

Over the years, the fact that I am a vicar’s daughter has raised numerous smiles and winks from people who think they know what that means. There are two types of vicar’s daughter, I’d imagine. Those who remain good and sweet until someone corrupts them, and those, like the girl who wins Bart Simpson’s heart, who go off the rails and rebel from the beginning. In a small village, where everyone knows your name, rebellion is impossible. Unless you really don’t mind hurting the people that love you most. And I did mind that.
My parents will tell you that I was a difficult teen. Sometimes I wouldn’t eat my vegetables. Sometimes I would sulk and slam doors. But I never took drugs, I never came home pregnant and I only got really drunk once (or maybe twice) and really that’s just a sign of not ever having drunk enough before. As teens go, I was pretty boring.
There was a sense of freedom when I arrived a Uni. I could suddenly begin to live on my own, out of the shadow of the duty and conformity of the vicarage. It wasn’t a miserable childhood, but the expectations to always be good and polite were stifling for a child who probably had too big a personality for it. If I rebelled at Uni, I still did it on a small scale – finishing my degree in Theology, going to chapel on a sunday morning (until they all drove me bonkers) and not coming home pregnant, or on drugs.
After Uni, I went to work in a Christian retreat. The life of service and quiet nearly destroyed me. I was too big for there, too, or too proud. I didn’t find God in the quiet, I found a new misery and loneliness.

And then I rebelled. It was a conscious decision. I moved to London to work in a bar. My letter of application to the graduate bar-management training scheme said: “I am a vicar’s daughter desperate to move to London and make friends with people my parents will disapprove of”. I think they gave me the job just for that.
I lived in London with Uni friends, we partied a lot, I didn’t eat properly. I found a boyfriend who wasn’t like all my other, lovely boy-next-door boyfriends. Not the sort of boy I could take home – who taught me a lot about how to find out who I wanted to be, and who I wasn’t. I stayed out all night and slept all day and didn’t ring home for years.

But rebelling wasn’t really me, either. I was lonely and I was miserable. And then I fell in love with my housemate, who was take-home-able, but still not too dull, and we got married and I trained to be a teacher and we bought a house, and he started doing really well at work and now…. well, now I find myself at 31, with a mortgage, married to a man who works in the city and I can’t help but think that I didn’t rebel enough, really, and now it might be too late. Where is my campervan? Why am I not travelling the world, playing the guitar and writing poetry?

I am working through this with a wonderful counsellor who asked me yesterday if I ever just felt like painting myself red and running through the room naked. She’s brilliant. I think I’ll be ok.

Teenage me would not have thought much about the Royal Wedding, yesterday. She would have reminded everyone that the monarchy is a disgusting, archaic idea that does Britain little good other than bring in tourism, which we’d get anyway, because we have HISTORY. She’d have told you, in no uncertain terms, how disgusting it was that a group of people were treated differently by sheer accident of birth. That having a monarchy means we will never be able to adequately bridge the gap between rich and poor. That they were all fairly awful people anyway, by dint of having to live such sheltered unreal lives.
In fact, I might have thought all of that, right up until we arrived in America, a few weeks ago. There is, of course, something about being in any foreign country that makes you very aware of your own nationality. Sometimes, it’s because you look around and think ‘Wow, we do it so much better at home’. Sometimes it’s when you have to speak to the waiter in very loud, very slow English because, of course, you never bothered to learn enough Spanish. Sometimes it’s because of the way people can spot you as different from a mile off (though I’ve been told this is because of the colour of the Husband’s hair).

In America, though, they love the British. Okay, so maybe it’s a little patronising; the British accent is ‘awful cute’ after all. But they are happy to talk to you; happy to hear about all the differences ‘across the pond’; happy to show you their way of doing things (You have to tip waitresses because they haven’t worked out the idea of a minimum wage yet, right?). One girl stopped us in the street. “Are you guys British?” she gushed. “Say ‘hello’”, she begged. “Hello” we said. “No! No! Say it properly!” she asked.
“‘Ello, guvner” said the Husband. She roared with laughter.

They also love America. There is no fear about being patriotic. They aren’t embarrassed that it might not seem cool. They are unashamedly and totally in love with their (frankly, ludicrous) belief that everything they do there helps every citizen to live the American Dream: To work their way up from the bottom and become something amazing.
It’s a beautiful dream. But it won’t work if you don’t help the poorest people a little more. Like with free healthcare.

Being in America made me proud to be British. I may have mentioned before that I can stop whole lessons and wax lyrical about the NHS, I believe it is so important. It isn’t just the NHS, though.

Quick aside: I was speaking to a woman in a bar in New Orleans. She worked in the medical industry. I asked her what the reasons were for a lot of Americans not wanting a free health service. She said “People like me wouldn’t get paid enough”. I said I understood, I was a teacher. She blessed me, said it was wonderful that I did such a lovely job, started talking about God. I said “Forgive me if this sounds rude but, that’s kinda my point. Don’t you think that a free health service, helping those people in society who are the greatest in need, is the most Christian thing a country can do?”. She left soon after that.

No, it isn’t just the NHS. It’s this:

A sign outside a bar in Memphis (or was it Nashville?) reminding people that they have to leave their guns at home and can’t bring them into a bar.

And it’s the radio over there, that makes me proud to be British. We drove all the way from New Orleans to Chicago, listening only to local radio stations. The music was good. I like a bit of Country. But the Husband likes to listen to talk radio when he’s driving, so we tried some of those stations. No word of a lie, I heard a radio presenter call the president of the USA: Barack Hussein Obama, Peace be Upon Him. I heard an entire radio slot that appeared to be about how odd gay men are; listing every stereotype I’d ever heard. I heard a presenter using the ten commandments as a reason why Obama’s plans to tax the rich higher were anti-Christian (It’s stealing, and that’s wrong). The level of stupidity and stubborn refusal to change made my blood boil.

(It was wholly different when we got to Chicago, I have to say – and I know that it wouldn’t be right to judge all Americans with the same brush, or whatever the saying is, but these guys were pure evil).

So, returning to Royal Wedding mayhem was actually quite refreshing, and took on a whole new meaning to me. I watched the service and was reminded again what a fantastic institution the Church of England is (though I was sad that Rowan wasn’t given the opportunity to have a little joke with the nervous pair). Even the BBC commentary on everything the guests were wearing, was so hopelessly quaint and innocent, that it made me smile.

So, it might be embarrassing, and it might not be very cool. But, I’m proud to be British this weekend. We don’t do so bad after all.

I was at a wedding recently (more on that later) and was a little shocked to find that all of the bride’s other friends were quite incredibly talented musicians. More than one of them got up and performed – some had even written songs just for the happy couple. It made me think about how it might be that she had found this people and why it was that I wasn’t so surrounded by brilliance.
We need to find new friends, I said to the Husband, all of us are talentless freaks.
This isn’t true, of course. Perhaps it’s something to do with the UK (the wedding was full of Americans). We just don’t shout about our talents as much as we should do. Self-promotion is seen, over here, as a little crass and that just means that too many truly talented people are hiding away for fear of ridicule or jealousy. Enough! I say!
And so, I’m talent-collecting. I’m going to watch out for incredible talent in my friends and loved ones and shout about it here.

Starting with the lovely Purrr, a friend from Uni who I’ve only really known since; a true artist. It isn’t simply the wonderful paintings that make Purrr an artist. You could meet her in a bar, and realise in seconds that she isn’t of this world – she isn’t one of us. She’s fragile and beautiful and a little work of art – just like the lovely ladies she paints on old book pages. One such painting is now in our living room, apologies that the photo quality is terrible (and the framing is shoddy, but I so desperately wanted to get her on the wall, that I couldn’t wait to have her mounted professionally!). Paris, 1957 – Anais, in her favourite room. As I imagine many of Purrr’s customers feel, I like to think this one was painted just for me and named for my favourite author.

Check out Purr’s work here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Purrr?ref=pr_shop_more . Or like her on Facebook! I’m also a big fan of Patrice reads obsessively. What great clothes these little ladies have!

What a talent and an inspiration. It’s a pleasure to know you, pretty lady.

The garden’s coming along nicely, with this funky new pot holder that I bought online and screwed together myself. I’m getting pretty nifty with a screwdriver, as you can see.

The bench also arrived, and will be the death of me… I think I may have underestimated how long it might take to paint a bench. I got up for five days in a row and painted until I just couldn’t paint any longer and it still isn’t done! But, boy, what a great colour!!

When I was growing up, I struggled to have good friends. It seems to be hard-wired into a girl’s nature to think one should only have a Best Friend and no need for any one else. Or, at least, that’s how it was for me. I had a host of ‘best friends’ one after the other, and was happy, until they all found someone better to hang out with… or, in one case, found life too difficult… and opted out.
But, over the last ten years or so, I have found myself surrounded with some of the most beautiful people. When I started University, I realised I wasn’t that hard to love – at least, not always. And my current Best Friend is someone I met in the very next room to me on my first night in halls. I have many friends from Uni still, most of them not necessarily the people I knew best while I was there, but who I love dearly…. and Facebook has brought me back in touch with a lot of the people who really made a difference but with whom I lost touch.
The friends I see most often, though, are newer friends. My London Friends. And even these, I realise with a jolt, are people I have known for over 7 years. I can’t list them here, I don’t think I need to, but I just spent a lovely weekend with them all. After Uni, the best thing that happened to me was a chance meeting in a pub with the Best Man – which moved me to London where I met the Husband and my Brother in Law (neither of which had those titles at the time, that would be weird). Then, after a year in North London, we advertised for more housemates on Gumtree and found the American and the Journalist. We were incredibly lucky, or God was watching out for us, because when we advertised for housemates, we found life-long friends. Family. And now, years down the line, the group has grown, to include former Uni friends on the Husband’s side (now friends in their own right, of course) and girlfriends and husbands and other significant others… and suddenly I have a group of friends who I really could turn to in an hour of need… but also who are excellent fun to drink with.
I feel immensely privileged to be able to grow up with these people, and grow old. A few years ago, it wouldn’t have been our choice to spend a weekend in the suburbs walking and having dinner parties, but now, we enjoy ourselves and laugh over the Observer together, and pat ourselves on the back that we have come this far and… well, it is pretentious, but we like it…
And all of them, behind the boisterous silliness and jibes, love me entirely for who I am… and I love them the same. I am very lucky. I don’t think I tell them that enough.