Journal

I was writing the colour block for lemon and I stopped in the middle of the sentence. It had come out without any hesitation: the yellow of zest, not the yellow of the fruit. Then I read it back and asked by what right.  I have never met the woman who will read it. I have no idea...

I have lived mostly on my own for three years, and for most of that time I would have told you the silence was the best part. In a world that never stops talking, a quiet flat felt like wealth. I believed I knew what silence was. I thought it was one thing, and that it was mine. 

Two oils I reach for often behave nothing like each other, and knowing how they differ on paper is a different thing from watching what they do in a room. Put a few drops of orange sweet in a diffuser and the whole room has it before you have set the cap down ... 

For me, citronella is a small roof garden. We had one once, full of plants, with a wooden swing chair where I used to read and write through the long warm afternoons. My dog Jingle, a beagle, though calmer than any beagle has a right to be, would lie on the ground ...

You walk into a room and something shifts before you have a thought about it. The light is the same. The furniture has not moved. But the air carries a smell, and the rest of you registers it faster than your mind does. ...

One summer at university, my friends went home and the term emptied out around me. I was left in a rented flat barely mine yet. One night I sat by the window, the street lamp laying its light across the sill, the road below empty. Out of boredom, I recorded myself talking. ...

Self-love is a phrase that’s heard everywhere these days.   It’s become so routine that it sometimes feels hollow, like a backdrop for everything from bath bombs to positive affirmations.  But what if self-love isn’t where we begin?  ...