Tell me that you want to dance. I want to feel your pulse on mine.

Dress: Gap via eBay. Shoes: Irregular Choice. Brooch: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

I now weigh exactly what I did ten years ago. While I was at a healthy weight anyway, I did sort of secretly want to get to this point because to me the additional weight represented a series of events and experiences over the years that caused me to comfort eat. I could literally tell you that I added the first 7lb for this reason, the next for that etc over the years.

So while I was healthy anyway and wasn’t trying to lose weight but rather improve my overall fitness, I do now feel like my body is back to where it should be, to where it naturally goes when my mind is healthy. Because I’m doing what I do when I’m healthy.

Baggage: gone.

And that’s a bloody good place to be.

You can have my isolation

 Dress: Ted Baker via eBay. Shoes: Next via eBay. Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

…it’s no good. The words are all in my head and I can’t poke them out into a coherent blog post just yet. Well, not one that’s not rambling still further about the sudden appearance of a few days of summer – on which subject traditional media hasn’t disappointed, having, as it always does, sent camera crews jaunting off to the nearest available beach to pan over bodies-in-beachwear and talk to a suddenly-sunbathing nation about how nice it is to be sunbathing instead of grumbling about the rain. We really are obsessed with the weather.

I do love this country.

The grass is several shades of blue

 Cardi: Gap. Top: Dorothy Perkins. Jeans: TopShop. Shoes: Dune. Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

I seem to be embracing the yellow lately, don’t I? Must be the signs of impending summer

Over the weekend, I was rummaging around some old photos (On the hunt for formal pictures and pictures of my teenage years, both of which are rather light on the ground, between lack of occasion and detestation of having my picture taken. And viewing the resulting images.) and stumbled across this one:

    This is me, a bit over ten years ago, on my 24th birthday. Celebrating in style (erm) in Pizza Hut with my then-new colleagues, including the person who that weekend became my other half. I’ve never really thought it’s a particularly great picture of me – and I actually prefer the way I look now – but it’s a fantastic picture of the moment.

Funny how you can see energy in a still image sometimes, isn’t it?

Don’t want to get to a place I don’t recognise, where we’ve all bought the world but left with second prize.

 Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk. Dress: Fever via eBay. Shoes: Next via eBay

“You just need a bit of white and you’d look patriotic!” was the comment about today’s dress. I have to say, that one had completely passed me by – something about the inclusion of the black had made me completely fail to register the red and white in any sort of patriotic or even nautical sense. Strange how habits stick, isn’t it?

I am, of course, suddenly interested in dresses in red, white and blue. Even though I’m not really one of life’s flag-waving sorts  The politics and governance and monarchy? Those are just constructs. The country, the nation isn’t about slogans or figureheads, to me.

I love my country, but it’s the bones and the veins of it that I adore. The green rolling hills and the wide flats of the fens and the pink-dotted meadows of Avebury and the hedgerow critters and the birds of prey and the quirks of its people.

And with that, time to put the kettle on!

I love to hear you oralise

 Shrug: thrifted. Dress: Gap via eBay. Belt: thrifted. Shoes: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

Overheard in the office: “You’ve got legs!”. Translation: colleague for whom it’s not completely unheard of to wear a skirt but who has been wearing trousers more lately happened to be wearing a skirt. Steady, chaps!

Overheard in the office 2 “Your hair’s gone all fluffy today”. Heh. That’ll be me not being one for using product in my hair, then, I suppose!

I’ll spare you the rest…

I was asking strangers but no-one understood me

 Cardi: Gap. Dress: thrifted. Shoes: Next via eBay. Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

You wanna know why all these rivers run dry, and when I see you again I see it there in your eyes.

 Shrug: thrifted. Dress: Fever via eBay. Shoes: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

As you’ll have a hint of from yesterday’s post, I’ve been doing a lot of pattern recognising and response-poking lately. Mostly in myself, but also in others. Patterns in behaviour, and in responses to things. I’ve learnt amazingly fundamental yet strangely not-quite-admitted things about myself just from stopping and asking myself why I did a particular thing or reacted in a particular way to a particular stimulus. The answer isn’t always immediately forthcoming, but rummaging for it is a useful process in itself.

There’s something decidedly satisfying about it, both in terms of personal growth and from the perspective of someone who likes to understand how things and people work. It’s fascinating how understanding a thing helps to either deal with it or just let it go if for whatever reason it’s not mine to deal with.

I’ve swallowed half an hourglass

 Cardi: thrifted. Dress: Gap via eBay. Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk. Shoes: Hush Puppies. Holdups: Wolford

It’s been a strange week. One of connecting left, right and centre in one respect and feeling as if I have a perception filter on me in another respect.

But I’ve several friends who have made really positive decisions just lately, so life has a pleasingly happy glow about it, all things considered. Even if it does seem to be becoming a bit pigeonholed.