my adored inheritance

My dearly beloved Nan. Oh she is good to me. For as long as I can summon to memory my Gran and I have been two peas in a pod, a duo to be reckoned with. Jan is endlessly teased, hugged and adored by myself. She is a woman I one day yearn to slightly imitate.
She’s acquainted with the entire world and their second cousins twice removed; it is ridiculously impossible to attend anywhere with the woman and not see a soul she knows. IMPOSSIBLE. It was a blessing in disguise when just a few years ago she was temporarily wheel chair bound, we went shopping together. She’d spark a conversation with a lovely elderly couple I’d by no means met before in my life, yet they knew all there was to know about me, and all I had to do was persuade the warm plastic handle of said wheelchair ever so tenderly… pushing myself to freedom from dire and repetitive conversation.
Endless amusement is sourced from her new hearing deficiency. Her joy at being a Nan is transparent to all. A soft woman if ever there was one; petite and the only blue eyed member either side of my gene pool she appears as your ordinary, knitting and baking Grandma. This is all part of the masquerade. Oh don’t get me wrong, she dishes out hugs and kisses as much as any caring and slightly touchy feely relative, but appearance’s may be deceiving. A feisty little one to say the least. To her mounting dissatisfaction I laugh off her attempts at discipline; at the ripe old age of 19 I now only malformed into a timid mess by the raff of my Granddad.
It’s hopeless to endeavour to empress in words how much affection I possess for my Nan. I welled up in the land of Thai whenever my Grandparents crept into my thoughts; I missed not one aspect of home other than real cheese, alongside the love and attention of those two special people.
One of these days I hope to sit alongside my Nan with a cuppa and her splendid cheese on toast (she adds pesto and tomatoes; it’s scrumptious) and simply let her talk, talk about her life and her aspirations, her regrets, her memoirs. It is crystal clear she loves my Granddad, a man she met and married at a young age, endlessly. An enduring vision in modern times.



And this is her dress. A beautiful cotton sundress my dear Nan first adorned about 45 years ago, a uniform I don far too much myself. It fits like a handmade glove, blue is my favourite colour and no matter where I wear it I’m incessantly complimented. Whilst floating about my world in this outfit I can’t help but recall memories I’ve created myself of my Nan and Granddad swaying along a dance floor intertwined in each other. Or the woman herself in the minuscule square kitchen slaving away at a stew for my mother and uncle.
Those that shrug of the implication’s of material objects, well I know not if they are lucky or unfortunate. I am a horder; alike Jan herself I cling to keepsakes to help me remember my forgotten chronicles. If anything was to happen to that dress, I couldn’t forgive myself. Each to there own, but I simply love the feeling of continuing a legacy. A legacy of love, loss and just simple life. A legacy that is conducted through the ages in the form of a cotton sundress.

and i dreamed your dream for you and your dream is real.

“The innocent and beautiful have no enemy but time” WB Yeats

Naivety. Some time ago I possessed this in the truck load, yet this has faltered with age. I would not be as brass as to claim wisdom has taken it’s place, simply reality. Oh that time old statement: ‘Learn from your mistakes.’ Whether by choice, or simply instinctively, one can not fail to do so. I miss my innocence, my rose tinted glasses, my unwavering trust. Nevertheless, I will also not claim that they have disappeared entirely. I continually endeavour to see the best in people, ignorance is bliss therefore I’ve chosen to discount the worst and cling to the superlative. Furthermore this is not a old habit that I’m finding hard to kill off. Rather a novel hobby, one I feel will make the world (or at least my world) a finer place. After all, if we all accepted one another’s less alluring traits it would be far easier to achieve world peace. A rash conclusion, yet optimism is a habit I have yet to shake.

The younger Hursey is a luminary. Here lies but a segment of my final project of my fresher year. Styled, photographed and over edited by your’s truly, I must say my divine sister doesn’t half scrub up well.

easter time minus baby chicks, daffodil's, lamb or matter that is remotly yellow.

Perhaps a first. Parading my unedited photographs for once.

My Easter day was a jubilant occasion full to bursting with Italian gastronomy, walks in the English countryside and discussions more often than not ignored by those supposedly listening.

The younger, cooler Hursey and I have comprehended that our family do in fact get on by means of paying no attention to one another. Constantly. My mother is a fervent gossiper, the peril being that since she does not ACTUALLY know how to sufficiently listen to another’s conversation her information is more often than not inaccurate and therefore she actually discuss’ malicious rumours begun by herself.

A day spent undertaking a hell of a lot of deliberating aloud; there was not so much debate about the dinner table Sunday teatime. Nonetheless, I do relish a gleeful family get together. Mine is a minute one, merely ten of us, I like to believe it is cosy yet I’ve always longed for a large brood…

Upon rumination, it has taken a day and a age to upload these noteworthy photos of ten members of family. Anymore and I’d desecrate away in front of the lime green laptop of dreams.

you turn around, and life's passed you by.

I fear I confer this far too much in my scrawling, nonetheless today is but one year (otherwise known as 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,766 hours or 525,949 minutes) since I voyaged to the land of Thai.Now this is slightly startling. It is particularly frightful to reminisce how a year once felt so extensive.

Call to mind your childhood if you will. All we have ever acknowledged before now is education. For 12 years it was obligatory, whilst many of us plumped for 14 (crazy fools). Preceding our arrival to primary education we graced a nursery school with our presence, furthermore we attended pre-nurseries.
Life, it didn’t change a great extent in the beginning. Naturally we swelled as individuals, but as far as external forces were concerned, they preserved their appearances.
A year had the ambience of a life time back then. For myself change is what makes time fly; whilst life lingers at a steady state it is arduous to distinguish one year from the next.

Unsurprisingly, I shall not misplace the memoirs of my voyage a year ago, t’was such a colossal fraction of my life. But for my memories to feel like yesterday, that is startling. To recall natters from my homecoming in June, what I did with myself, how long for, who with, what I wore!

It panics me that the first year of University is approaching the end; I’m but a third of the way through attaining a higher education (apparently). Several of my amigos, in a years time, will be adorning a gown and graduating!

And then what? Adulthood one is led to believe.

Whilst making our way through the throng of traffic in Pinklao in the Bang Phlat district of Bangkok our pink taxi passed a graduation costume shop. I gawked up, impervious to of all that lays past graduation. 365 days on I fear I would not chortle at the beaming Thai faces garnishing the adverts.

In two years time I will be sporting that attire, society stipulates that it is time to become an adult. A adult whom makes resolutions, a being with responsibilities.

A majestic protagonist once assured us all: “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Conversely, with great responsibility comes great power. At present I’m viewing this as the power to well, and truly, fuck up. And that’s with two year left to go…

(My apologises for becoming so appalling at being regular with my posts. Mr Adam Langley must also take some of the credit for this since his post: http://www.facebook.com/#!/note.php?note_id=411923236277 helped fuel my innate fear of the future. Additionally, this should truly have appeared in your lives yesterday yet I was distracted by the charming establishment that is Zens of Dartford.)



Home sweet home a year ago.

a messy pup, despite the labours to possess a OCD.

In the midst of unpacking it is continuously an ingenious scheme to arrange one’s wardrobe, extract amusement from a stretched out slinky that has yet to intertwine itself into a cluster of carpet and metal, and to snap shoot all of this on a beautiful camera I have yet to understand significantly enough to produce anything worth anyone’s while. Tally ho, here they are.

I have commandeered Nanny’s suitcase since my own pleasant pink contraption with the wheels came to the conclusion it loathed the weekly return to Kent and committed suicide in Waterloo East. I thought I’d look like a cool kid with this design. Alas, without wheels my feeble physique is unable to look anything but hazardous whilst strolling through the train stations of Hampshire, London and Kent.

This bedroom held within its walls not one, not two, but FIVE plates of toast. God only knows how long they had resided there (or why I had to overcome a powerful urge to consume them.)

a pesky question.

Crossing my hairy pins I rest against the wall and glare my favourite curly locked friend in the eyes. “But I aaaaaaaam……” I howl.
“You can’t be,” sighs Freddie, slackening his shoulders and laying back into his seat with frustration, “The Cribs say you are either or eye-ther, so what is it?”
“I’m defiantly both. I promise you, it’s possible to be both.”
“But hooooow?” wails Freddie this time.
At this moment the spindly, profoundly limbed friend jostles into the room, insistent to be integrated into the natter. Matthew Sandford and myself are fervent, conflicting opinions on the matter at hand. I knew his answer to Freddie’s question prior to it being asked.
“Matt, realist or romanticist?” enquires the ringlet one.
“REALIST,” bellows the gangly one.

How did I know? Honestly, I may well have had a small hernia if he’d of replied anything but the cynics response. Matt Sandford is a pessimist, a sceptic, incapable of dreaming loving rom-com’s up in his script writers psyche.

“What are you then Freddie?” I wonder aloud.
“Well, I’d like to think I’m a romanticist, but then again…”

Is it feasible to be a realist in addition to being a romanticist at one time? Or is it implausible to be a romanticist. A romanticist without a smidgen of cynicism about yourself?

For myself, there have been a number of encounters, many experiences where in a split second I have gazed about and contemplated about how the world is truly perfect. How cheesy?! God, I wish it wasn’t true.
My happiest memory should truly be tainted, because the reality a year on is so dissimilar. Yet my romantic side allows me to acknowledge that in that one moment, whilst laying in that Bangkok bed, jet lagged and wide awake at 6:00am flickering through music, chitchatting as life continued in the busy streets of Pinklao outside of my sanctuary, I truly was happy and time can not snatch that memory away from me. This is my romantic side. The segment of my mind that looks upon a beautiful beach, or up at the stars, or across at my dear old Nan and smiles. Because things are right in the world.

Nevertheless I do indeed declare I’m both a romanticist AND a realist.

Despite my optimistic outlook on life, I acknowledge reality. In the deepest realms of love, I’m not naïve enough to believe that it will continue forever. When I gaze at my Nan, I mentally prepare myself for the worst; morbid I know, right? Whilst lounging about on a stunning beach, I know that in but two weeks it will be time to return to reality; beach bumming can not continue subsequently for the next 80 years of life.

It would appear that during times of glee my natural reaction is to remind myself that this will inevitably be followed by sorrow; I seem to reality check myself constantly so as to control my over-zealous emotions.
Whilst alternatively during times of grief and dilemmas my optimism shimmers through, my innate response is to mentally reassure myself that things can and will become better.

Therefore, it is shown. I am both a realist in times of cheerfulness yet a romanticist throughout periods of unhappiness. Optimism and pessimism can coexist beside one another. They can I tell you!
And does this not just sound like the most idealistic state of mind to possess? To allow one's self to have faith, yet misgivings as well, at once. To debate the pro's and con's in one's mind? To be rather brutally honest, the romanticist within is probably the stronger of my self's since, despite acknowledging the brutal realities of life, I will continue to put myself in these positions that one day I know will hurt, but at that moment they create happiness in my life. It's alike that time old saying: a moment on the lips, a lift time on the hips.
Should we really live for the long term, how those pesky 100% Matthew Sandford realist would have us go about our day to day buisness? Or is the spontaneous, short term thinking and consequence forgetting life of the romanticist’s the way to go?

"There’s always madness in love, but there’s always reason in madness."
Leecher

fortitude shall conquer all

Oh Mr. Dallas Green, how you speak such wise words. How well you recuperate what my own mother has told me today: “You must follow your heart.”
From hence forth, the following two years are dedicated to scheduling in extensive details my three year world trip. Beginning in either India (if I daren’t brave the pooey streets) or Thailand (simply because I know the country) I shall travel south east Asia, onwards to the Philippines, down towards New Zealand, Australia and Fiji. Over to Hawaii, up the west coast of the USA, across to the east coast and down towards South America, up again towards the Caribbean and the final frontier shall be the home continent of Europe. Obviously extensive planning shall be taking place, and freelancing shall be a necessity yet I think I can do this…can I not?
Maybe even the Russian vodka trail in celebration? Bear Grylls, watch out, a unwavering girl can do as she pleases, and more.

what's that you say? a collection of photographs ought to have somewhat of a facet in common.

A few snapshots from which to acquire joy and to admire. I ought to exercise my photography skills and the new camera of dreams more often so as to become a increasingly knowledgeable self.

My kinda’ bouquet.

Forest meditations for Buddha.

Timekeeping in Japan

Jewels

ShadaanDan

Mr. Cobb

Head Cheerleader