George Oates's personal blog. Enjoy! Tell your mum.
As I was enjoying my massage yesterday, my mind wandered pleasantly. I like making salads, and dreaming of salads, and thinking how it's always delicious to prepare something at the top of its season simply. I concocted the following: Thinly slice fennel, like paper thin, douse in intenso olive oil—pressed by a friend (!)—add salt and pepper, and let it sit. (That's always better, to
Had a good sleep last night. Don't always. I've decided to do massage therapy, and had my second session of the year. That's receiving a massage, by the way. My £selfcare game is on point, and I've found a therapist I like after lots of testing. And hard kombucha. I've been feeling a bit detached lately. I guess that could be seen as Independent Woman and isn't she strong, but really there's
Yes, I’m still thinking about it. My old age and my agency. In the last year, we lost my darling Dad, and my wondrous, powerful Mum is now languishing in care, actually in her own worst nightmare. I’ve gently kept researching and thinking about the impetus of my first notice, last year, which is to find a way to take my life if I end up with dementia, like both my parents. I think it may be
I've been doing French 101 at City Lit. It's fun. Today though, I ditched class because a) the 188 was really late, and even though I'd looked up Salut, désolé pour le retard b) I wanted to go get some daal and rice instead. I'm trying to do what I really, really want to do instead of not. (I'll probably do French 102, but not today.)Anyway, City Lit's in Covent Garden so I wandered to Sagar
I think I started this post in April, or maybe May.I was in San Francisco when my Mum and Sis called to tell me Dad had died. It was expected. He was 80. A dear, dear man. Luckily, I have dear old friends in San Francisco, who came to sit with me the day after. What a difference that makes. Imagine if I was in a hotel in... Milwaukee. Thank you friends.We worked out when we could all get back for
Hi. Happy New Year!I'm sure many blog posts today will start with a 'I haven't posted in a while' mea culpa, and mine is no different.But this is a post I've been thinking about, really, for months. Since I visited my family in Adelaide last March/April. Back then, my Dad was moving into a full-time care situation, and Mum was staying at home. Dad's vascular dementia and Alzheimer's had become
It's hard to believe that it's been 20 years since I left Australia. It feels like a lifetime ago, yet the memories of that time are still vivid in my mind. When I decided to leave, I was filled with a mix of excitement and trepidation. I had spent my entire life in Australia, and while I loved my home country, I also felt a strong pull to explore the wider world. Leaving my family and
I loved him to death when I was a girl. Raiders of the Lost Ark was a wonder. The poison darts, the idol, the booby traps, the exotic locales, the "archaeology," the hating-the-Nazis, that trick he worked out with the post-with-the-gem-on-top in the map of the city that time...But, he was somewhat of glorious purpose. Even in his swashbuckling. He was get the baddies. Those people he is
I first wrote about a possible Flickr Foundation back in November 2007 in a notebook. Today we filed a Certificate of Incorporation to bring it into existence. Luckily I have a mate coming over for a sausage and a bottle of bubbles in the fridge, otherwise I'm sure I'd go quite mad from typing OMG OMG OMG into every box I've got on this damn laptop.12th May, 2022. There you have it.(I'll
It's Saturday. I'm sure I've told you before I like a lazy Saturday. There was a new Killing Eve to watch, which I have now accomplished. Eventually, I got out of bed and dressed, and headed out into the chilly spring day with big fat white clouds.I popped into Jolene on the off-chance of a table for one because their feed said mortadella but it was chokkas and the nice young women
I've been home 7 days now. This morning I cleared away the medical stuff that had lingered. Pain meds, spare compression socks, constipation powder, letters from the hospital, Spatone. I moved the projector from the boudoir back up to the lounge–that was too good and I would never leave the boudoir if I kept it there, but maybe it will return for the right moment or person–and am generally
Today I had an MRI. I'm writing about this because it's novel for me. Plus, the "what to expect from an MRI" stuff I saw was... uninformative. I went to the place. I was a bit nervous and therefore surly on arrival. I couldn't hear the explanation the chap was giving me, and had been led to believe there would only be one thing—dye—injected, so was more surly when he said something about
It's been a while. Happy new year. It's a sunny Sunday morning, and it feels like spring is coming. The birds are chirping a little twinklier, and yesterday it was 14'C.Soon I'll have my last period. That'll be something like the 420th one. I can't remember exactly when my first one was, but I do remember that my sister's friend went to the Big Heart supermarket with me and got me some pads.
I've learned three new Australian things:Ember Attack I was watching a show recommended by my sister called You Can't Ask That, and this episode was about firefighters. They were talking about what it's like to fight a gigantic fire, and how even if there's a fire break like a road or something that can be skipped over by an ember attack, and the fire continues.Deep Time There's a real hum
It feels appropriate to break out of the COVID-19 Journal now. At least for the next little while perhaps. I write to you from a little room in Perth, where I've been holed up for the past several days to clearly and unequivocally establish I will not be the guy to bring that horrifically contagious strain of the virus into this wide, brown land, my home. I'm exchanging madness for the belief I
Now I'm just using my creative writing course to spawn content for the blog. I'll put some lunch photos at the end. Sadly, the course has now finished. Thank you very much to our teacher, Vicky Grut, who is an ACTUAL WRITER.This was a quick exercise we did in class, about setting a scene without stating the obvious. Writing for ten minutes after selecting from one of five prompts:She was very
Today is about 1'C. It's snowed a bit for the last three. I am still deeply amazed and awed by snow. I love it. I spent most of the first day just sitting in my front window and looking at it. Turbulence, writ large. The cats liked looking at it too. I've enjoyed the proper cold. My step count has flip-flopped between 0 and 12,000 daily this year so far, and I am fine with this. Cardio?
I have made a delicious 24 hour salt-and-pepper dry-brined expensive spatchcocked roast chicken. I've had one drumstick and thigh in some fried rice and now the whole house smells like it and even though it's delicious I feel like it's everywhere. I thought I'd valiantly do the make your roast chicken stretch the week and now I'm like ugh. Once I finish writing to you I'll go and deal with it.
Thank god I've defeated the lentils. No actually they were delicious and lasted me three days of meals. I had "lunch" at... 16:21.Just one sausage left. Buttery toast, obvs.Quite a lot happened today, but I can't really remember what. Spoke to several other humans, either phone or Skype, which was refreshing. A friend in Liverpool, one in Maryland, another in Massachusetts, one in Somerset. Now
Naturally I began today tweeting to the ether that my job for today was to listen to Kate Raworth's book called Doughnut Economics. I did so. I'm enjoying it. Today my job is to listen to Doughnut Economics by @KateRaworth 🍩🍯🎧— George Oates (@ukglo) January 20, 2021It's history and critique and statistics and information and a roadmap, all about economics and the planet and humanity.
Whoops almost forgot and then just remembered that yesterday I said I'd try and do this each day again or close to it, so here we are.Last night I attended the first session of an online creative writing class with actual strangers and a teacher and it was awesome so now I'm free-writing this which was the first exercise we did, and to be honest most of the journal entries I've made are a bit
Oops. Missed Day 300. I'm officially marooned. Marooned in my house in London though, so, it could be worse. At the beginning of my maroonment, I decided to read Robinson Crusoe for the first time in a billion years. Turns out he was a slave owner. He was stuck on Trinidad. When Friday enters the story, it gets gut-wrenchingly awful. I kept thinking what it must (have been?) like for black
Happy Christmas.I was booked on a flight on 30 December to go home for 6 months, but that was cancelled. I'm working on it, like the tens of thousands of other Australians who are trying to go home. My home state is only letting in 600 people a week so the quarantine procedure doesn't get overwhelmed. I had made many major plans in order for this to work. These plans have gone somewhat awry.
I'm ok. I feel better today. You know when a scab comes off when the skin underneath is very tender and new but also sealed and ready? It's a bit like that. You can just feel that the black dog has wandered off. It was a big thing to learn that you will eventually feel better even when you're in a depressive bout.Plus I made Nigella's giant pot of lemony chicken orzo thing for linner-duncheon and
What a day. Started well. Coffee, small gift, bacon, orzo (in a packet), coffee, four carrots. Took the bus after (that and sunny Tower of London) for about 20 mins. Went past my stop to look beyond. Ended up crying as quietly as possible wearing sunglasses and a mask in 10'C as I wandered up Green Lanes on the side of the footpath that’s the way back home. Had been listening to a