Follow The Brown Signs

18/12/2025

A most miraculous spot of Oxford Street’s very own Totoro while walking to the tube on a wet London eve after the actual matinee of what a fortunate stroke of serendipity 🎭

16/12/2025

For six months, in my late twenties, I tried to write a book in the strip-lit, windowless reference section of the brutalist Bromley Central Library, while living with my parents after breaking up with my long term boyfriend. The cumulative effect of these variables naturally lead me to experience a sustained feeling of bolloxness for some time. I’m over most of them now (except the inability to write a book one) but I wonder if I’d have felt as bad if i’d been writing in the Stormen bibliotek in Bodø, Norway instead.

When surrounded by sleek wood stairways to book-lined-shelf heaven, views over the harbour and snow-capped hills of Nordland and the Lofoten Archipelago beyond, all framed by gigantic picture windows, maybe I wouldn’t have felt so depressed. Or maybe I would, but I might have done something cool with my depression, like write some weepfully beautiful, or more likely, crap poetry.

My sister and I took our poor children to Bodø during the notorious autumn storms last year and spent a significant time in this aptly named “tempest library”. We went to workshops, read all the English books they had and often just watched fishing boats to-ing and fro-ing. We took turns braving the knock-you-over wind nipping to the ferry terminal, only to be told our ride over to the stunning but apparently ungettable-to-in-autumn Lofoten Islands was yet again cancelled. But it was a place we were happy to be stuck.

Norwegians love their libraries, and here they’re about way more than book borrowing. Libraries are treasured community hubs offering dynamic services that foster engagement, including cultural events, workshops, music and education in the broadest sense. They lend books but also bikes, guitars and even hammocks. They’re beautiful and most open until 9pm or 10pm. I’m never worried about killing time before a night train in Norway because I know I’ll find a library. One such evening in Oslo we hung out in the stupendously wonderful Deichman Bjørvika library where we walked in to a streetdance battle happening on the ground floor of this five story joy on earth.

If ever I am protagonist in my own Midnight Library (by Matt Haig) please let my purgatory be a Norwegian library ❤️📚

11/12/2025

On Starlings and Humans - My kids were most miffed a few weeks ago when my sister and I crept out without waking them to see the dawn rising of a million starlings, so I thought I’d take them to a sunset murmuration last night.

I wasn’t going to post anything about it because I knew I’d struggle to overcome how different it would feel with loads of other people there. I’m not proud of this, and I try and fight it on the daily, but I’m just happier and seem to enjoy things more when I’m not surrounded by lots of other humans. I also just wanted to watch the murmuration through own eyeballs with my kids, and not on a screen whilst videoing. I did want to show my husband what we’d seen though so I took two videos.

These weren’t originally meant to be shared because the audio would be full of the noise created by the 50 or so people around us, and I wasn’t putting background music over it to bother disguising it. I wanted to share it only if you could hear the gentle rush and sweep of the starlings and the breeze flowing through in the reeds, but of course you couldn’t. I decided if it was going to be full of the sound of other people it would ruin it and it wasn’t worth sharing.

So I took these two videos just for my husband, but while doing so I captured the sound of a little two year old behind us saying “wow, oh wow!” which she said over and over while she gaped in awe watching the starlings flowing together in their hundreds of thousands creating such immense beautiful patterns in the sky. At that moment instead of being annoyed at everyone around me, my shoulders slumped and I thought just so beautiful it is that humanity can be so full of wonder. I was there witnessing it, and doing wondering too. It also made me wonder at myself, wonder how I can be such a right royal bastard a lot of the time.

In the second video I also hilariously recorded my children talking about how much the starlings must be pooing during their fantastic display 😂. Then, after the poo chat, I captured my daughter’s own little utterance of awe. And it made me want to share the videos not despite, but because of the sounds of the humans around me. An unexpectedly moving eve

10/12/2025

This from Pražská integrovaná doprava showing off the new and brilliant Prague Walker system. These shiny new obelisks encourage tourists to navigate around the city on foot and it is hoped will help ease the city’s burgeoning mass tourism induced problems. The obelisks are currently being phased in while the rough and old (rendering them even more wonderful in my eyes) brown tourist signs attached to lampposts are phased out.

Feeling raw with emotion about all this if I’m honest. Facilitating walking and championing exploring on foot this almost unfathomably beautiful city has got to be a good thing. And for someone who gets constantly lost and positively NEEDS a map and a signpost wherever I am in the world, I feel relieved and grateful for the Prague Walker system. But to know all those old brown signs I took photos of myself under when in Prague only last year are about to be gone forever? 😞 Well, I’m filled with a deep ole sadness I’m embarrassed to admit.

Rest In Peace fair brown signage of Prague. Know that you were noticed, you mattered, you were loved ❤️

Wonder if I can get my hands on one before they’re scrapped…

09/12/2025

It’s no Gropecunt Lane (now sadly known as Magpie Lane) in Oxford, down the road from where I used to live, but it’s sentiment resonates as strongly, enough for me to screech a u-turn and photograph it anyway…

05/12/2025

I bought this (20p) 1981 Italian phrasebook just for its smell and browning pages. I thought I’d make a piece of art out of it… but then I started to read it, and I felt the history of a world I once knew slipping through my fingers, and it’s making me laugh and cry in equal measure

03/12/2025

02/12/2025

“In fair Gloucester where we lay our scene” began no poetic prologue for any heart-breakingly beautiful tragic play ever. But if I do today find myself in the aforementioned city for a hospital appointment, which is so vastly different in so many ways to fair Verona, I am compelled to look for it’s beauty and find romance, surely it is somewhere… and so my friends I found it, here it is.

Medieval Verona, unlike what’s left of medieval Gloucester, has no train station at its centre nor does it have a level crossing with frighteningly quick up and downy barriers, loud bell signals and flashing lights dissecting any of its roads. So if like me, you’re scared sh*tless of level crossings but also weirdly attracted to them, and you also love a bloody lovely train wherever you are in the world, then rainy Gloucester has this one thing up on Verona at least 🚆🥰

30/11/2025

Chased down that soft setting Italian sun all the way back to London. The wonder of an hour long sunset 🌅

30/11/2025

Stop it Verona you sexy bitch, seducing me especially hard at the most romantic of times, bathed in rose gold glory at the setting and rising of this soft Italian winter sun 🧡

28/11/2025

This time two years ago I was about to set off on an epic/mental trip through 10 European countries in 6 days spending over 50 hours on trains, buses, trams, trolleybuses, ferries and one taxi, covering well over 3,000 miles. I spent most of that time on my own of course but I spoke to more randos, had the best chats and connected with people I’d never usually talk to precisely because I was flying solo.

One evening I killed time waiting for the sleeper from Vienna to Zurich in a cool/weird hostel bar near the station. It was a long wait in there and I got chatting to the lovely barman, who also happened to look so like Dave Grohl it was unnerving… I watched him while he was cleaning the cutlery, or wiping down the bar, or taking people’s food orders, and everything he did was so Dave Grohly it hurt.

I ordered way too many Zwettler Zwickls from Dave, slurring in Foo Fighters lyrics such as “you gotta promise not to stop when I say when” as much as I possibly could (probably my favourite lyric of all time fyi). Turned out he did stop when I said when though because I had to stagger off and get my train. Unsurprisingly I’d got myself quite larruped, so after predictable trouble finding my train I eventually hauled myself into my bunk fully clothed and passed out before the train even left the station.

I still think about him when I hear any Foo Fighters of course, and I’m so glad I took a surreptitious photo of him, there goes my hero, watch him as he goes…🤘🏼

27/11/2025

Today at the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath I was lucky enough to partake in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony. It was beautiful, meditative even (my scalp actually did that semi-orgasmic ASMR thing ☺️). Another post to follow on the beautiful collection at this most wonderful of museums, but the best thing of today was being reminded of the joy of spending time with those special people (and they may only be a few) who tell you they love you and make you nearly cry openly in public because you know they mean it ❤️