I was once a tall tree

I noticed this toilet-door graffiti in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow*. There were the usual graffiti suspects scrawled over the door (e.g. ‘Yer maw!’ or ‘Lucy + Gregg 4eva!!’ [enclosed in a crudely shaped heart] and so on), but I liked how a few of these were quite poetic (and uplifting). I've never met anyone who has admitted to writing on toilet doors. I wonder what gives people the urge to do it:

('If you are reading this then be happy. 'Cause, hey! You are alive')

('One day you will be loved the way I am. You deserve it, trust me.')

('Choose life.')

('I was once a tall tree/I was once a child')

♥

*Incidentally, I was at the Mitchell Library during the Aye Write! Festival – a wonderful book festival which runs every year over a few weeks in the spring. Over the past few years I’ve heard lots of interesting writers including David Aaronovitch, Germaine Greer, Julian Baggini, Susie Orbach, and others. (I’ve yet to go and hear a poet or a novelist. This will be a must for next year...)

The evening these pictures were taken was quite exciting as, rather than going to listen to a reading, I was actually giving a reading along with two other students from my year at university. (I’d received an award for a piece of flash fiction as part of Strathclyde University’s writing completion: the Keith Wright Memorial Award, judged by Ewan Morrison.) An amazing – if slightly nerve-wracking – experience! My first ever public reading, and also the first ever time I've been given a spot of money for a piece of writing. 

on the subject of Found Words

...I also found this small paragraph tonight (written in 2009, when I was 17, waiting to find out if I'd got into university):

'Sometimes I think it would be nice to be the kind of person who is not really bothered by anything. My problem always is that I care a bit too much. But then I realise that not caring would be a life half-lived, and that would be much worse. So I can put up with all the worrying if it means that my heart will beat a little faster when the sun comes out.'

(Picture from: here.)

the smell of spring.

Spring smells like

stringing laundry outside –

pants and pillows and pyjamas –

and like picnics and playing

badminton in the garden –

tea, more tea, and triangle sandwiches –

and like enjoying the sun

before the wasps come.

Spring smells like

yesterday.

(I just found this tiny list which I wrote out a few years ago. Quite liked the rhythm of it. I caught a whiff of a few of those aromas recently. And then the rain came.

This picture was taken last week, a week hereby named The Week of Essay Madness. I drink quite a lot of tea in a day. This picture was taken at about 11am.)

the final countdown.

Here's three funny little pictures for you to chuckle about (by the very most wonderful Marc Johns: his pictures crack me up) while I sit in my room, typing madly, panicking slightly, trying to blast through two 3000 word essays which are both due on the same day (incidentally my last official assignments as an undergraduate. I have one 'unofficial' one. Strange, I know). I can do this! I can do this! ...bye.