Bitter roots
Jun. 18th, 2023 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12The sweltering, humid weather continues, so thank you very much to everyone who commented on my most recent Friday open thread post. There's some good advice about tricks to combat sleeplessness, and I learnt a lot, which I very much appreciate.
I had to go into Cambridge for some errands yesterday, and as usual when this happens, Matthias and I made a day of it. Central Cambridge itself was heaving with people, so we avoided it for the most part, instead walking out across the fields for 5km or so into Madingley, where we ate lunch at the pub/restaurant there, sitting outside under a canopy, eating cold seafood, asparagus with potato dumplings, and heirloom tomato salad, washed down with crisp, white wine. It was lovely and relaxing, and the walk, while short and mainly across flat lands, was made more challenging by the heat. I stuck up a photoset on Instagram.
Twitter has been actively triggering (and I do not use that word lightly) for me for similar reasons relating to at least three unrelated situations, and by Friday I realised I'd hit my absolute limit, and haven't been back since. I'm pretty good at avoiding the place for long stretches when I know it's necessary (the longest period probably lasted around nine months, a couple of years ago), so it's likely to be a significant period of time before I go back again. To calm down and restore some sense of equilibrium, I've been focusing on the sorts of Instagram accounts that I find soothing — a lot of cottagecore-ish stuff, and generally people who post beautiful things. Here is a short, but illustrative list:
![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
westcountry_hedgelayer: a man who builds and restores traditional hedgerows in rural Britain
provencallife: a man who posts beautiful photos and videos from various parts of Provence
boroughchef: soothing cookery videos of vegetarian meals
redrubyrose: a woman who makes bags, wallets, purses and scarves using hand-dyed materials, with lots of photos of her inspirations from nature, and the process of creating the products
alysonsimplygrows: gorgeous photos of gardens, interiors, and renovations
momentsbyjemma: photos and reels of interiors, cooking and baking, gardens and farmland taken by a woman who lives on a working farm in the south coast of New South Wales in Australia
theswissshepherdess: breathtakingly beautiful photos and videos by a woman who, together with her husband, herds sheep, goats, cows and horses in the Swiss alps
The combination of the heat, and everything else, has left me feeling fairly uninspired when it comes to reading, but I've been working my way through rereads of the more 'summery' books in Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series: so far I've done the two set in a Cornish seaside village (Greenwitch and Over Sea, Under Stone), and I'm just about to pick up Silver on the Tree. The first two make me yearn for the seaside, which I suppose is unsurprising. Silver on the Tree will likely irritate me all over again with that ending (if you know, you know), but we always have fanfic, of which I have contributed my share of fix its to this particular canon.
I'll close off this post with a strong recommendation for the film that Matthias and I watched last night: Rye Lane, a romantic comedy about two young Black people in London, meeting in strange circumstances, telling each other their stories, revealing (and not revealing) truths about themselves, during a rambling, sweeping wander through the streets of London that in some way mirrors the rambling, sweeping way in which they both let one another into their lives. It's a glorious love letter to London — but a London seen through the eyes of an alternate universe version of Wes Anderson who is a Black, British, TikTok-using twentysomething, with a keen eye for the surreal and quirky. If you have Disney+, it should be available for you to watch as part of the subscription. It's compassionate and warm-hearted, made me laugh out loud in places, is sharply observed, and gorgeous to look at.
I had to go into Cambridge for some errands yesterday, and as usual when this happens, Matthias and I made a day of it. Central Cambridge itself was heaving with people, so we avoided it for the most part, instead walking out across the fields for 5km or so into Madingley, where we ate lunch at the pub/restaurant there, sitting outside under a canopy, eating cold seafood, asparagus with potato dumplings, and heirloom tomato salad, washed down with crisp, white wine. It was lovely and relaxing, and the walk, while short and mainly across flat lands, was made more challenging by the heat. I stuck up a photoset on Instagram.
Twitter has been actively triggering (and I do not use that word lightly) for me for similar reasons relating to at least three unrelated situations, and by Friday I realised I'd hit my absolute limit, and haven't been back since. I'm pretty good at avoiding the place for long stretches when I know it's necessary (the longest period probably lasted around nine months, a couple of years ago), so it's likely to be a significant period of time before I go back again. To calm down and restore some sense of equilibrium, I've been focusing on the sorts of Instagram accounts that I find soothing — a lot of cottagecore-ish stuff, and generally people who post beautiful things. Here is a short, but illustrative list:
westcountry_hedgelayer: a man who builds and restores traditional hedgerows in rural Britainprovencallife: a man who posts beautiful photos and videos from various parts of Provenceboroughchef: soothing cookery videos of vegetarian mealsredrubyrose: a woman who makes bags, wallets, purses and scarves using hand-dyed materials, with lots of photos of her inspirations from nature, and the process of creating the productsalysonsimplygrows: gorgeous photos of gardens, interiors, and renovationsmomentsbyjemma: photos and reels of interiors, cooking and baking, gardens and farmland taken by a woman who lives on a working farm in the south coast of New South Wales in Australiatheswissshepherdess: breathtakingly beautiful photos and videos by a woman who, together with her husband, herds sheep, goats, cows and horses in the Swiss alpsThe combination of the heat, and everything else, has left me feeling fairly uninspired when it comes to reading, but I've been working my way through rereads of the more 'summery' books in Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series: so far I've done the two set in a Cornish seaside village (Greenwitch and Over Sea, Under Stone), and I'm just about to pick up Silver on the Tree. The first two make me yearn for the seaside, which I suppose is unsurprising. Silver on the Tree will likely irritate me all over again with that ending (if you know, you know), but we always have fanfic, of which I have contributed my share of fix its to this particular canon.
I'll close off this post with a strong recommendation for the film that Matthias and I watched last night: Rye Lane, a romantic comedy about two young Black people in London, meeting in strange circumstances, telling each other their stories, revealing (and not revealing) truths about themselves, during a rambling, sweeping wander through the streets of London that in some way mirrors the rambling, sweeping way in which they both let one another into their lives. It's a glorious love letter to London — but a London seen through the eyes of an alternate universe version of Wes Anderson who is a Black, British, TikTok-using twentysomething, with a keen eye for the surreal and quirky. If you have Disney+, it should be available for you to watch as part of the subscription. It's compassionate and warm-hearted, made me laugh out loud in places, is sharply observed, and gorgeous to look at.