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week 30 recap

29/07/24

listening to: bleeding muddy water - mark lanegan band

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holiday! big holiday roundup! well, the roundup is big, the holiday was pretty small. but very nice. fancy hotel by the beach, room with a balcony with view of the sea. quite a big room too, plenty of space for armchairs and a coffee table to watch the sea and sunsets even with the balcony closed. drank our tiny teas and ate our cookies and stroopwafels there. and our snack-meals-from-home - cherries, dark bread, ham, babybels. the nearby store had loads of fentiman's, so we had two big bottles of that and a pine drink. there were also a beach-restaurant dinner and drinks and breakfast. plenty of bubble teas and one or two fast-foods. like the fries which got me head smacked by a thieving stinking (literally) seagull.

(the other bird adventure was a pigeon laying an egg on our balcony. it was gone the following morning - maybe a predator? or it just rolled off? poor pigeon kept coming back to investigate and sit on the "nest" - some dried flowers).

overall we went to like... three witchy stores, three guitar stores, and two book shops. without much success in either place. but it afforded us plenty of opportunities to just browse, walk around town, and back along the shore, wading in the waves and collecting shells. new experiences, new places.

there were quite a few books i wanted to investigate in the first bookstore, but there was an awfully-coughing woman (everyone else unmasked, of course) and it just wouldn't do. couldn't find the same books in the second bookshop but i got something called the paris review, a quarterly literary magazine. i like that idea. here's your stuff to ponder for the next three months. i wonder if i can find it here, too.

biggest highlights:

the one day of swimming! for the usual "weather being a bastard" reason it was unseasonably cold on exactly the few days we had our holiday booked. so only the one day was conducive to swimming. i forgot how much i love it. haven't swam in over 10 years, i don't think. after doing it quite a lot at uni and all throughout my childhood. alas, being trans at a pool is a nightmare. beach is different, without a dress code or changing rooms. everyone just dropping their clothes where they stand, the Weirdness Of Bodies understood and brushed away. oh the sea... holding you gently if you surrender. slapping you hard if you stand in its way. i love her. hearing the shells roll around against each other with each wave, everything else muffled. it's like they're the only things that exist, so i must be one of them. together, in the sea.
big museum! oh the fatigue... material enough in there for weeks and weeks of visiting and soaking up inspiration. mondrian, kandinsky, schiele. louise bourgeois, hilma af klint, picasso. and contemporary creators. we didn't have the strength for the whole thing, but took plenty of pictures to revisit later.
stumbled upon an amazing leather goods store and got A Bag. now that's the sort of thing i want entering my life - quality, durability, will probably outlive me. souvenir acquired. also it's in line with my Recent Decisions about when to acquire (on special occasions) and what to acquire (only Good Quality things). it's a privileged position and it's quite New To Me to even consider such a thing. but as long as i can afford it, i think it's what i want to do.

overall, a great success. all trains were on time and we didn't have to wait too long on any changeovers. a station worker was warning us that due to high traffic some trains refuse to stop on our desired station, but we didn't have any problem reaching it or catching a ride out. it was pleasantly cool, with the one gifted day of sunshine and swimming. the only thing i missed was a clear sky, to see if more of the stars were visible. i don't mind the red line of wind farm lights we got instead, far off in the distance. eerie in a sea-appropriate way.

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