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I'm sorry I've been a bad blogger. Here's a smile. (Me at a recent BBQ competition. Which I WON)

Yes it's been a long time since I blogged.

Things have been pretty busy in Libbyland recently, what with turning 21 (it was hard work. It took me several days to recover) and finishing my university degree (I got a First!! Have a look at my showreel here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yf2PukrMthc) and campaigning hard for fairer, paid internships. I've done some writing for the Guardian and have been tweeting away (most recently at Tesco Customer Care, after a horrible experience made me angry to the value of a £10 'good will' gift voucher that is now on its way to me.)

Have a look at my shiny updated website, www.libbypage.info, to see what I've been up to.

Despite all the exciting serious things going on in my life at the moment, I think it's time to get some pink and sunshine back into it too. I am of the strong opinion that a woman can love both campaigning and cupcakes, and that you can be a strident feminist and still love to bake and rock a pair of killer red wedges (my latest purchase).

So on this blog I am going to try and celebrate the sunny side of life (as well as probably sharing the occasional rant, because that's just me).

"And if you couldn't be loved, the next best thing was to be let alone." L.M Montgomery

L.M Montgomery said that the next best thing to being loved was to be let alone. I must admit I can understand where she was coming from. You can do what you like, when you like, and no one is going to tell you that it's inappropriate to eat cake for breakfast. (Yes, I ate cake for breakfast this morning.)

I am lucky enough to be loved (here's us, having just won an international BBQ competition representing France in honour of my best friend Juliette. We baked a cake on the BBQ). But one of my favourite things to do is still to spend time by myself in cafés eating cake, or in bookshops strolling through the aisles and tucking up in a corner like a cat. I think the best combination in life is to be loved, whether by a partner, family, friends, your pet poodle or all of the above, but to still enjoy time spent happily alone.

One of my favourite lovely lonely London spots is Woolfson & Tay in Southwark, a delicious independent bookshop with equally delicious cake served in the adjoining café. This slice was raspberry, rose and pistachio and tasted as good as it looked.

This week I received feedback from my final university project (a film about unpaid internships) and found out that I've got a First in my degree.

Unfortunately my friends were all busy that evening, but that wasn't going to stop me from celebrating.
 
I headed to the Southbank, where I spent my evening enjoying the late sunshine. Children were playing in the fountains and the sound of laughter and chatter made me smile.

I stumbled across live music at the Southbank Centre (one of my favourite spots in London), spent well over an hour in Foyle's, bought two books (Franny and Zooey, J.D Salinger and The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford) and bought dinner from the food stalls outside the Southbank Centre.

Then I headed back to my flat and watched the sun setting like melting pastels out my window, glass of wine in hand.




All in all it was a pretty perfect evening.


You don't have to be lonely when you're alone (and you don't have to be alone to be lonely).

Libby

Dear Diary...

Yes, I write a diary. I have done for as long as I can remember. Like most long relationships there have been ups and downs: months spent apart as well as times of great passion. Oh for those evenings spent me and my diary, as I nearly set the pages alight scratching vigorous accounts of that girl whose shoes I really, really wanted, or that boy who I really, really fancied.

I think it is a tragedy that so few people keep a diary. In my diary, if nowhere else, I am the movie star in my own film.

In my diary I can write whatever I like; it is like talking to an elderly relative who loves you very much but is very hard of hearing. They will sit and nod and it really doesn't matter what you say. I can fill the pages with mundane details about the food I ate that day, I can safeguard my most thrilling gossip (sadly never particularly thrilling) or I can write four pages about bookshops...

9th June 2012

I am sat in bed with a happy pile of books next to me. Today I spent several hours in two beautiful independent bookshops in Bath. I could have spent all day there. I could have spent my life there.


Bookshops are unlike any other place. They are ripe with opportunity - all the possibilities of the juicy words I could pluck from bookshelves that are like branches. Not just the opportunity of all the books I could read, but also the opportunity of all the different types of person I could be. The books you have on your shelf and the books you read on the tube say a lot about the kind of person you are, or at least the kind of person you want other people to think you are. It is inadvisable, for example, to read self-help books on the underground. I once sat next to a woman on the Victoria Line who had her head bent over 'How to Find a Husband'.

Back in the bookshop. If the books are fruit and the shelves are branches, then I want to sit quietly in the shade of the trees and wonderfully waste away an afternoon.


The first bookshop we went to was called Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights and had wooden floorboards and a clawfoot bath in the window full to the brim with children's books. The shop twisted around corners where unusual titles were hidden amongst wrapping paper and birthday cards and above a small bench seat scattered with gingham cushions. 


Upstairs was a small coffee shop, although we didn't go up to have a look. But I imagined it: wooden tables, one with a wobble. Chairs with homemade cushions. And cake. Of course. 


After book shop number one (and three purchases), we walked down the street in the sunshine. At the end we bought ice cream from a little stall. It was lovely and locally made, but in those crunchy wafer cones that taste like stale seaside holidays. 


I like watching how different people eat ice creams.


We walked up the other side of the street and then went into bookshop number two, Topping's. This one was bigger, which meant more books and more difficult decisions. 

Here they love books so much that they wrap the covers of their favourite ones in cellophane. I like the idea of wrapping all my favourite things in clear plastic; the kind of plastic you get around sweets and flowers (that says a lot). 

In the shop there were tables and chairs placed like commas through the room, offering pauses to the people sat at them drinking coffee and reading books. The sound of running water behind the till comes as a surprise; they have a kettle and a cafetiere and a teapot in this bookshop. 


A man was in there with his dog, a big brown spaniel who huffed and puffed as they walked up the short flight of stairs to the 'Arts Room' - the section of the shop dedicated to art and design books.

I pulled out the spines that smiled their sideways smiles at me and left the shop with an even larger pile of books.

Now to decide which one to read first...

Libby 


P.S And yes, I do realise that I cannot draw. And my handwriting would make primary school teacher put her hands in her head and weep. Miss Jenkins, I apologise for my wayward ways.