The End of Us, the Reclaiming of Me

Posted on 18 April 2026 by Jemma

There’s something really powerful in recognising when you need to change direction.

It feels very similar to the night she left — when I walked into the Best Room, my colourful Wonderland sanctuary. A place of solace. A place of calm.

I looked to the left — the antique sideboard, covered in spirits and wines and exotic liquors from different corners of the world.

Then I looked to the right — where the 130-year-old piano, kindly gifted by a friend, stood silently proud, willing its kinship in that moment. Realistically, though, anything more ambitious than a scale with these currently unpractised fingers would’ve ended in an orthopaedic catastrophe. Disco Granny attempting the Macarena after 15 sherries.

I looked back to the left, thinking, this would make this shit disappear for a bit…

But I realised I’m past needing things to disappear now. I have to feel every atom of this if I’m going to heal.

You need to be sober to feel.

Rational brain kicks in:

Do you really want beer shits in the morning, a raging headache, sticky brain, and life-regret decisions?

The Jemma-that-once-was would’ve thrown caution to the wind in a metaphorical “fuck you” moment — smashed through the lot, got the yah-yahs out, acted first, thought later.

And I chuckled, realising that the thought that ultimately stopped me wasn’t growth or wisdom — it was the sheer reticence to shave my arsehole for anyone right now.

Isn’t the human brain wonderful in a crisis?

Back to my mission.

I knew that today was the day.

Do I let this destroy me? Do I spiral? Or do I change direction? And what the fuck does that even look like now?

Playing the piano for seven solid hours until the pain in my hands overtook the stabbing ache in my gut hadn’t cut it.

But I had walked away from temptation.

Baby steps.

In a desperate attempt to navigate the thoughts tunnelling through my brain like a Dickensian labyrinth of decaying alleyways, I had bought some walking poles.

Now, anyone who knew me 15 years ago would know the only walking I entertained was to the fridge — or the morning-after walk of shame to the tram.

But these poles meant something different.

This wasn’t that kind of walk.

Not the one where I’d wake up still drunk (if I’d slept at all), retracing my steps like a broken zoetrope of blurry, regrettable snapshots.

Not the “who the fuck is this” number on a crumpled bus ticket found in a pocket as deep as the regrets from the night before.

I started thinking about all the walks I’ve taken in 38 years.

Walks of regret.

Walks of chaos.

Walks where I had absolutely no idea where I was going but somehow still ended up on my feet.

I’ve walked myself into injury, into danger, into joy, into love.

I’ve also walked past things my brain quietly buried — splinters of memory I didn’t want to feel.

So I’d bought the poles.

Partly symbolic.

Partly because I genuinely thought I might regurgitate a lung or lose a kneecap.

Disco Granny, but pre-emptive.

I’m aware my last post sounded self-pitying.

It’s not me.

I’m usually that fat, funny bird from Barnsley people say, “Oh God, she’s hilarious.”

Some think it’s attention. Some think it’s ADHD.

But it’s just how I see the world — pragmatically prismatic.

Unapologetically fuckless.

I weave through life telling the truth, cushioning it with humour and self-deprecation so it doesn’t completely annihilate me.

Think Robin Williams… with a bigger arse.

Truth has always been my lighthouse.

Say what needs to be said — just don’t cause harm doing it.

And yes, I’m a gobshite. Through and through. It’s no secret that I could talk a glass eye to sleep.

But talking is how I process.

Talking is how I heal.

It’s also how I’ve historically walked myself into trouble.

But it’s also how I walk myself out.

Except… for the last two and a half years, I haven’t really spoken.

I’ve talked — but I haven’t spoken.

It’s been that metallic taste of biting my tongue. Orphaned words sitting there, never allowed to exist out loud.

And in trying so hard to say things carefully, calculating how to safely sever the artery feeding this growing tumour of censorship, I had never noticed that I was dying the death of a thousand silent paper cuts.

Ironic, really.

Langsett.

The breeze there feels different.

Unfiltered. Uninhibited. Safe.

And as I walk, I realise something:

I did a lot of talking — but I never truly spoke.

The weight of that hits.

Hard.

Thankfully, misery doesn’t stand a chance against a soggy Alsatian.

Bowie wedges his head between my knees like he’s offering emotional support — turns out he’s just tangled in his lead.

Still. It works.

I laugh.

Langsett mattered.

It was our place.

Our first proper date.

We had fun there, even if my cute little moment with the yellow fuzzy caterpillar was a subconscious coverup for the fact that I was about to become an organ donor after wheezing my way to the top of the hill.

The beginning.

I’d even secretly planned to propose there — Google pins dropped along the route, a treasure hunt leading to a ring and a future.

Funny, really.

What once felt like fate now feels like fiction.

I’d laughed off the early signs. The comments. The subtle digs.

That’s the thing about being a funny fuck with cripplingly low self esteem. There I’d been, two and a half years ago thinking ‘fuck me, this lass is bloody fit, and she’s talking to ME?!’

But it shouldn’t have ever happened…

What once had started as a joke that she’d initially swiped left on Hinge, but in an uncharacteristic glitch of the app I had circled back around offering my digital self to a her as a re-swipe… Contextually now, this previously humourous fact now left nil but a sour taste in my mouth.

Didn’t realise I was losing myself in the process.

If that relationship was the Titanic, I’d rather someone had lobbed an iceberg at it early doors instead of letting it slowly sink under layers of bullshit and deception.

At least then it would’ve been quick.

Clean.

Honest.

Salt-corroded memories fossilised and buried so deep that only the most determined of aquatic scavengers would ever reveal them, like opening up a depressingly shit Blue Peter time capsule.

I wonder what other things I’d bury in a time capsule of my life (I actually have a life goal list that includes a wish to make one to open before I’m 69, though knowing me I’d likely forget where the chuffing thing was).

Would I look back with fondness at my past slightly less-bearded self and smile affectionately, the self esteem issues that had plagued my whole life thus far, a distant memory? Would the most depressing bit be the gas bill? Would it be a list of all the Nearly-but-Not snapshots in my life that had pulled the metaphorical rug from beneath me?

In a parallel universe, she’d swiped left that second time too and I was saved from this existential crisis, periodically in the here and now punctuated by the soft wet Bowie nose.

There’s not one person that wouldn’t wish to present their best version to the world on a dating app, however I wasn’t expecting to be dating a Yorkshire chameleon, the whole debacle transpiring to be as disorienting and welcomed as the bubonic plague.

Back in the present — coffee, friendship, breathless steps uphill.

We joke about the cannonball of parenthood, moving towards an age where reaching your own arsehole becomes a gymnastic feat, beards becoming an eventual inevitability but still welcoming the growth and gratitude of those little moments as your Small becomes Tall that remain tattooed on your hearts as you silently will time to slow down. Every adult conversation interrupted by parenthood remains a much longed for and welcomed moment of warmth. They are not moments you wish away. You don’t wish for time to pass in order to make those precious moments fewer and farther between.

I keep walking.

Because I have to.

At the summit, I stop.

This is it.

(After a brief and deeply undignified encounter with a bush that tried to exfoliate my entire fanny mid-piss…)

I dig.

And Christ, it’s harder than it should be.

Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.

Surely it shouldn’t be this hard to dig a fucking hole to close a chapter in your life?

A tiny plastic trowel against something much bigger.

Symbolic, really.

Eventually, there’s a hole.

And it’s just me, my thoughts, and everything I’ve been avoiding.

I take off the ring.

The one that symbolised commitment.

Now just…weight.

I run my fingers over the irregular notches in it’s design, crafted using the Japanese ethos of ‘wabi-sabi’, the unique beauty of imperfection and transience. It’s fucking beautiful and I feel a pang of sadness.

“I’m cutting the rope. I’m freeing myself.”

I don’t even realise I’m saying it out loud at first.

Then I am.

Louder.

Stronger.

Until it feels real.

I soak up the solitude of this moment, look across and see Sara patiently waiting, Bowie’s ears cocked picking up my whispers carried in the wind.

And then I drop it in.

It hits harder than I expect.

Like something inside me collapses and expands at the same time.

Memories, feelings, everything tied up in that one small object.

I make a mental note to tell Sara that in spite of all the damage and pain and need to heal that that this whole chapter has left me with, I’m really pissed off about having a fucking misshapen finger.

I briefly deliberate over whether to bury the ring I’d given her, now that’s it’s back with me, so painstakingly designed and crafted as a unique symbolism of my love for her. I quickly shake my head, and this incredulous idea away.

The power had disappeared from the ring I’d placed on her finger the minute she walked out of my life.

Now, I cut that tie by removing the power from my own ring.

I need to finish this story my way.

All of those memories encapsulated in that one little ring. And I look at it for a minute, having a little sob.

Thoughts, spiralling sensations, bodily feelings, memories, jokes, laughs, happy times, sad times, the times that I never quite knew which way we were going.

Hands shaking, I cover it.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

“This is where it ends.”

I think how this moment could actually be beautifully poetic, were it not representative of the whole fucking heartbreaking shitshow that’s been the last two weeks of my life.

With each pile of dirt, I’m cutting the rope, I’m freeing myself. Reminding myself that this process is necessary.

I build a rock stack.

Balance.

Control.

Something steady after chaos.

In every significant life transition, these rock stacks have been present. They represent the movement from darkness toward healing and the weight of contemplative learning. More than markers, they signify my own introspection—the quiescence necessary to achieve such a fragile, hard-won balance.

I made one on the top of Snowdonia. I make one every time I go to my dad’s cave. I made hundreds of them at Creswell Beach when I was really unwell just before qualifying.

For me, the act of making these stacks represent a moment of equilibrium, finding the balance between gravity physics and shaking but well-intending hands, knowing that one stray thought could see it topple (and it would appear that Small has developed a taste for it too).

Feeling really fucking proud of myself with a sharp intake of breath I said one last time-

“I cut the rope, I free myself“

And then I stand up.

And walk away.

On the way back, something shifts.

Not completely. Not magically.

But enough.

I laugh again — properly.

Watching Bowie attempt to dig a hole in water.

Relentless. Determined. Completely pointless.

And it hits me.

That’s what I’d been doing.

Pouring everything into something that was never going to hold.

I’m not fully there yet.

I don’t have the answers.

But I have something more important.

I tried.

Back at the car, I look behind me.

Hoping I’ve left it all buried there.

The ghosts. The weight. The what-wasn’ts.

I don’t know what comes next.

But I know this:

I cut the rope.

I freed myself.

And now, for the first time in a long time, I’m walking forward with nothing left pulling me back.

The End of Us, The Start of Me

Posted on 14 April 2026 by Jemma

So, I’ve been sitting with my thoughts a lot lately—questioning my views, my values, and the core philosophy I carried through that entire relationship, and what it all really meant. I was asked recently, at what point do you feel like it’s time to take the ring off? And that question has sat heavy, thoughts whirling, refusing to settle.

So I started asking myself, what will it actually take for me to take off this ring? Because it’s really about what this ring actually means to me.

And the ring… well, the story starts way before the ring. It starts with a conversation where I was looking at her mum and saying, “I know that one day I’m going to marry your daughter”.

And at that point, really, to be fair—hands on hips, staring me down—I should have realised that I was stepping into uncharted territory, sailing the black seas rather than riding the wave. I was never going to ‘win’.

I reflect on a moment when we both said that if we ever split up, it would be because of our parents, not because of us. And I sat heavy with that. From that moment on, it felt like a constant effort to try and find my place. I don’t even know if “win people around” is the right phrase—more like trying to earn the right to feel secure in being the most important person in the life of the person I believed was my soulmate.

That should have been a warning shot. The tears in the eyes, that angry glimmer. And instead of stepping back, I thought: I’ll prove you wrong. Tell me no and I’ll say, ‘right, fuck you—hold my beer’.

But it wasn’t one-sided. I looked back through messages before I blocked her, and there she was saying the same things. Talking about marriage. Talking about that moment—standing at the end of the aisle, turning around, seeing each other in that soul-colliding instant. Those words hold you. They hold you in a way you don’t understand until someone tells you: no, you’re not having that.

And that’s when it hits.

One of my best friends asked me, what value does this bring? What value is there in punishing yourself like this? And my answer was clarity. It brings me clarity.

But it’s been 14 days, 18 hours, 16 minutes. And for someone who thinks the way I do, that’s a long time to sit inside your own head. Trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense is like trying to put a wig on a palm tree and wondering why it doesn’t look right.

How do you find clarity when you’re mentally wading through mud? How do you get to that place where you can say, it’s okay—stop, forgive your mind, nurture your heart?

I kept asking myself, is this my time? Is now my time? And nothing sat right. It all just sat like a lead balloon in my gut. And it hurt.

I kept going over everything. Every conversation. Every moment I ignored my gut. Every moment I didn’t. Asking myself: why didn’t I listen? And what does that say about me, not her?

Because I’m responsible for my responses. I’m responsible for how I processed things, how I justified them, how I made them make sense.

So instead of asking what value it brought me, the real question was: what am I bringing to myself?

And the answer was pain.

I was hurting myself.

And I’m done hurting.

I feel like I’m on the brink of something—some kind of closure. Like waking up from a dream and trying to cling onto it, knowing it meant something important.

In that dream, I was in her world. Her family’s space. Walking past people I would have once stopped and spoken to. Standing near places that used to matter. And then seeing the family members people who I know are estranged in the waking world, that would never be standing side by side—smoke and daggers, and shadows I never fully understood.

And one of them looked back at me and winked, like: ‘I see you. I’ve been here’.

But the phrase that always echoed—blood’s thicker than water.

And I realised something when I woke up. That clarity comes with pain. Because it was the crashing realisation that I was never going to be fully part of that world. Not in the way I had imagined. More like I would always be an addition, an add-on—someone invited in moments, but never truly written into the core of it. Never on the guest list, even if I was sometimes in the room.

And why would I want that?

Why would I want to dip a toe in the river when what I really wanted was to throw myself in completely—fully, freely, naked and without hesitation?

Why didn’t I realise I might never feel able to do that?

That’s not about them. That’s about me.

Why did I give it value?

And I’m done hurting. I’m done hurting myself trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense.

The only sense I can make of it is this: I was lucky.

I was lucky because I hadn’t fully realised the dynamic I was in. I hadn’t realised, until it was almost too late, that I deserve more. That I need to listen to myself more.

I ignored my mind, my body, my soul. I chased what I thought I wanted instead of listening to what I actually needed.

So when I was asked what it would take to take the ring off, the answer is this: I needed to go through this. I needed to sit in it, question myself, understand why I ignored my own warning signs.

Because they were there. I just didn’t listen.

-(And yes, that’s been a pattern for me). But this time, I thought I was doing it right. I thought I was being honest, being open, being true to myself.

But looking back now, it feels like I was telling myself a version of the truth that kept the dream alive.

So now I’m sat in my car. The rings are back—not out of pettiness, but because they mean more to me than they ever would have otherwise to her. My house and car keys are back where they belong. I’ve got a packet of snacks beside me.

And I’m going to Langsett.

Back to the place where it began. Our first proper date. An unfamiliar hike that pulled me out of my comfort zone, the kind that leaves your legs aching but your mind wide open. The ease of sharing stories, laughing, joking—those early moments where everything feels light and possible.

I remember becoming completely, almost absurdly, fascinated with a bright yellow caterpillar. Stopping, laying aside it, getting lost in that tiny moment of curiosity and joy. That was me—free, uninhibited, unapologetically myself.

That memory now feels distant, softened, worn and tattered in the way an antique film reel nears it’s final play at the cinema. Days where everything felt vivid. Days when the colour wasn’t just in what I wore, but in who I was.

And I’m going back there.

I’m going to find that place where our journey began, and I am going to finish it there.

That’s where the ring comes off.

That’s where this story ends.

Because now, it’s time to heal. Long overdue time to heal.

I choose to take my power back. I choose control. I choose me.

And I’m not ashamed of that.

Because when I’m sat at 2am, consoling my daughter while she cries and asks why she left us, why she did this, what it means—what could we have done—I tell her this:

People come into your life for a reason. You’re meant to learn something from them.

And what I learned wasn’t that she was my forever.

What I learned…

is that I matter.

I matter more than I ever allowed myself to believe.

And today—today is the day that ring comes off.

And I couldn’t be more ready for that moment.

I breastfed an abandoned premmie found wedged in a wall running it to the closest SCBU: 10 days into feeling like my soul has been pulled out of my ass.

Posted on 10 April 2026 by Jemma

I wake up cold and panicked, tits tingling.

The familiar nail dragging sensation only ever comparable to the oxytocin-induced equivalent of the “not my daughter, you bitch” gut-punch feeling of seeing your kid been punched in the face by an unnamed Shitbag at a kid’s party, her Everything imploding with the resounding and soul crumbling thud-an autonomic readiness to wager the war you “never signed up for”.

——

To be factual, I neither found myself walking towards the underpass, Ginnel… (Gin-uhl, jenn-ell, debate it like Yorkshire ‘picky tea’ on the night you perused Casualty Corner before food shop day)….. -between two Northern terraces, nor did I actually find and/or rescue a 35 week preemie newborn swaddled in stained towels within a nook of a semi-crumbled wall alongside and leading to said ‘ginnel’.

Now, I wouldn’t describe myself as Mother Theresa, far from it, but waking up panicking about the potential demise of that starved, weak and extremely cold baby that I ‘dream found’ that I’d frantically put in direct skin to skin, removing the frost-hardened stained teatowels avoidantly enshrouding it, placed just so in a way that not even an amoeba could mistake as an attempt to signal ‘this child has been abandoned’ were they to pass, the fear that I may well be the only middleman between what I saw before me, and an unmarked grave the week following, thinking what if any attempts I make, just aren’t enough…. I consciously say out loud that this tiny human deserves to be given a fair chance. In that moment, ‘dream Jemma’ recognised this, touches the cold, sunken cheek of a very clearly unwell and near-death helpless newborn left to the elements…. My only thought, primitive and instinctive was: Help.

I swiftly scoop up my lethargic liege, sodden weeks old nappy bulging at the seams and all, grunting, nasal flaring, all the things that make me realise that once you’ve seen a poorly baby in your real conscious life, you never forget those signs that say “oh fuck”, even if you are REM-ing the fuck out of your lucid dream state….

I can still smell the damp moss around the crumbled bricks it lay upon, the olfactory assault of the sour waft of dank putrid water puddled amongst the inevitable end point of the complex and mismatched [but very broken] tangle of a drainage network that abruptly gathered in a sudden yet uninvited gathering of the dank, voiceless drip- drip- drip- signalling a chequered flag retrospectively waved at the water that somehow, despite being so very close, never made it to the sewer.

The cold, stale insult on my nostrils, flaring in response to the bundled up emergency I saw before me, Drip -… Drip….

Dream Me holds this tiny helpless being, heart pounding, willing my core heat to defrost some of its miniscule extremities, cupping its head to protect from the chill, I run… Hard.

Now (as dreams have a beautiful way of presenting thoughts as facts- snapshot moments traversing vast spaces and astronomic timeframes), I’m running…. I see nought but a few paces in front of me only. I’m no longer in the alleyway, but I feel this tiny helpless baby wrapped into me, as I run harder than I ever have, the drive to save this creature and overpowering purpose consuming me. Dream Self recognises that I am racing towards a neonatal unit I am nearby, knowing that “I just need to get this kid to safety…”

I feel the aching forgotten soul of this tiny helpless thing yearning for life, knowing that the adrenaline coursing through my veins like molten lava will keep me going, just one mile, another mile – nearly There, but I sense the nasal flaring slowing, the painfully visible carotid pulse noticeably slowing through it’s paper-thin skin, and I think- Nutrients!

I remember how the rich and royal in days long since forgotten would often ‘wet-nurse’ the young of their employers, as I unconsciously whack a boob out and guide a nipple to this fading soul, see the most minute of movements signalling the recognition of food, energy, life. In this moment, I was willing this baby to latch to this temporary life-sustaining source of much needed energy and nutrition, I see the primitive survival instincts of this tiny, unwanted baby kick in… That unmistakeable physical ‘draw’ as mouth signals milk.. the ghosts of many sleepless nights suddenly enshrouding me and calling on previous subconsciously filed memories of questioning my own belief and ability to ‘parent’ when holding my now 11 year old, weak, reliant, hungry and helpless, casting a murky shadow over an intrinsic need to nurture. Yet, with a tangible tug, I’m hurtled to the Here and the Now, every nail-dragging ‘pull’ of that feeble suckle, gradually getting stronger until I am reassured that whilst I’m feeling the thud of my heart in every muscle fibre screaming at my weary limbs to slow down, I know I can’t stop running, I must not stop running.

The tiny, unloved, unseen, invisible baby is feeding away, flaring reduced, respirations stabilising, it’s excruciatingly prominent carotid pulse, now regular underneath it’s tiny malnourished underweight frame, every tug a life-giving affirmation- This baby is a fighter.

I’m suddenly back at the entrance of the ginnel, having been catapulted to the scene of where the dream started yet somehow at the end of the seemingly infinite cobbled offensive path, panting, breathless, limbs screaming, sweat pouring.

Clinging to this the tiny sentient being, I see the SCBU.

The team—ready. Resus kit prepped. Paeds lined up like figurines waiting for orders.

I run.

TUG, TUG, tug- a strange auditory synchronisity with the dripping broken drain faintly heard punctuating the heavy, dense atmosphere, I can barely breathe, but the tiny baby, warm, pink and now flailing limbs, is safe.

I unravel this frail being from it’s dirty shroud and kiss the now significantly less icy forehead of the ward I was temporarily custodian for.

I wake up.

What. The. Fuck?

Read into this as you will.

I spent hours and hours dissecting this dream. Left in a clammy sweaty dazed state for the whole morning- what did this mean???

I think back- am I the baby? Was I a faceless entity put there in the dream to serve- and save- the baby? Is this me seeing a biologically vulnerable thing and nurturing it to safety, putting things in place to ensure survival at the most primitive instinctive sense?

I firmly believe that we are all here for a reason, for many however, this reason never truly reveals itself and they may bimble through life navigating things entirely unaffected by the significance of one meaning to the next. To some this may seem like a welcomed oblivion, to others the biggest curse in the plight to achieve self-actualisation (and anyone that knows me, knows the short period of time where I would have happily dug Maslow himself up to burn him to a pile of the indignant ash I believed him to exist in eternity as- I’ve thankfully grown since!)

It made me think- Are people inherently and intrinsically hard-wired to ‘fix’…. I mull this thought over, repeatedly and with extreme dedication (I even managed to not pop a cortex whilst doing so!)… Is the thing that I saw as a helpless soul (abandoned baby) a reflection of all that I see and have issue with in the world. Does the fact that I ‘saved’ said baby make me a martyr to the injustices of the world around me, or am I, without realising, seeking validation somewhat? Or could it be that in this moment, I simply miss pouring my heart and soul into holding the hands of, and guiding the steps of the families traversing the perilous river of growing a human.

I’m exhausted!

I lay, a million thoughts running through my head- do I have a pathological need to serve, to support those around me, was the ‘baby’ in my dream representative of the pregnant and postnatal caseload I hold as dearly to my chest as I held the fading premature bundle to me and got them to their ‘end point’. I miss them, a ‘family’ that I know I am there, present for, in varying levels of input, for up to ten months at a time.

Am I at an impasse where I am inherently and to my core absolutely breaking, watching great chunks of my soul, my safety, my core value and truest psyche crumble around me? Fuck, was I the baby?

I’m spiralling by this point, psychological equivalent of having a full tank of fuel in the car, but stuck circling the M25 with no way of finding the right exit watching the guage plummet wondering which will stall first, my racing thoughts or my sludged-up engine very much running on empty by this point.

—–

The doorbell rings- I forget I was expecting Tim to pop in on his rounds today, I’m pulled out of my existentialist crisis and realise I really fucking need to put pants on, I’m still sporting the strangled chicken aesthetic that would only be appealing to a polar bear with neck-down alopecia identifying it’s next ‘snack’.

I talk. I hear. I mull shit over.

I piece through the last 9 days and 14 hours (not that I’m counting!) of the pure hell I’ve been launched into.

Tim has this excellent ability to just be in a moment. We’ve had many life crises navigated in very much the same vein of ‘fuck it, let’s make a dark humoured joke about this shitshow’, and it never lands unsavoury. But the hug at the end of this moment, means everything. To really feel nurtured and safe to introspect and work through my perceptions, test that to a less objective and unbiased viewpoint. Metaphorically, if I’m the 70p gossip mag in a hairdresser’s, Tim’s the BBC website—grounded, factual, no bullshit.

Hearing and feeling first-hand that level of shits given, I feel ‘safe’ in my own head for the first time in a week, I feel my shoulders un-hunch.

Tim leaves, I head to Small’s football training, I temporarily redirect my Erin Brokovich-esque Karen rage at rallying a team to voice and fight for something I, in this feckless state and in resounding defiance of the silencing I realised I’d previously felt with any viewpoint that may have been even the remotest bit contentious, believed in for the girls and the team.

I feel an unfamiliar pang of hunger, realise that there’s a reason I can see my toes (and twat) for the first time in years, and consciously remind myself I need to eat, my body needs fuel. I recall Sara saying she’s coming over and not to worry about an evening meal, so I await her return.

The door is barely clicked shut, closed in a ‘normal’ way that I’ve not been familiar with for the last 2.5 years, I allow myself the tiniest of smiles in recognition of the fact that whilst my heart and soul feels like it has been ripped into infinite pieces, I am resoundingly certain that the doorframe will no longer follow closely behind- when the doorbell goes.

Me casa es su casa

Why the fuck is my best mate ringing my doorbell?

Sara has seen my arsehole in 50 inch screen HD whilst a gynae colleague was casually waving a hysteroscope in front of me chatting away, prior to the inevitable and imminent insertion of It into it’s fleshier and more amenable neighbour. At the time I was unsure of whether I was blushing more at the fact that she’s being reminded of the night she had to hose the sick of my naked body as I lay in her bath, bollock naked, for a ‘nap’, tangled in my partly detached hair extensions after a 6am kickout from the haunt of our very messy 20s, or whether it’s the fact that the hot gynae nurse assistant is eyeballing me oblivious to the fact that I’m secretly wishing that in a parallel universe, this was not the way I’d envisaged anyone remotely as attractive as her to be seeing the core of me in quite such magnified narrative.

I open the door and am met, my hair thrown up in a shambolic attempt for ‘presentability’, greasy, forgotten even more so than the depressed, messy, sad and woeful tragedy that I’ve seen in the mirror for the last week, and a sea of faces of those I love meet my tear-filled gaze. Sara, Rhi, Amy (and my wonderful Rosey-cheeked bestie Sophia and brother Leo), and Scothern.

I quickly forget how I’d anticipated a night of figuring my shit out, figuring out quite why the dream overnight continued to haunt me in a flurry of untimely and uninvited tableaus throughout the day.

But I quickly forewent this in favour of an evening with my nearest and dearest, each a resounding pillar of quadrangulation to the messily unhinged yet unfounded doubts that plagued me. I feel the peace and presence that I’d felt earlier that day with Tim and the night before when speaking to Adam and Lizzie from afar (enjoying a much-needed break but still sending their apologies for being absent due to being geographically in another continent!). I feel, for the second time in what is now 10 days since I saw in almost dissociative objectivity my world get turned on it’s arse and tossed on the scrap heap, a calm that remains alien to me still but which I trusted that I was safe space to feel.

The conversation earlier in the day with Tim was “at what point do you think you will feel ready to stop wearing your engagement ring?”

I’d thought long and hard about this, was it when I felt ‘healed’? Do I feel it’s when I’m beyond broken and the sadness turns to anger and disbelief that I didn’t see any of the now clearly ‘more red flags than a circus tent’. But we learn I guess, will it be when I stop loving her? Do I need to hate her? I came to the conclusion that this time would come only when I could see far more clearly the beautiful moments that I can cherish, than the pain, sadness, grief and finally got to a point beyond the bereavement that sits heavy on my chest, catches my breath when I start to vocalise that “I’ll be ok” and I choke on the words.

When I start to feel like, as true as the impulse and urge to defend your young as angry mama bear protecting her ‘cub’ … in the self same way that she’d hurtled to the rescue of my bruised sobbing Small that day long since passed where she’d been (unseen by me) punched square in the face by the shitbag at a party, having pinned this as a mental polaroid on a corkboard graffitied with the words “I didn’t sign up for this” seeing now, that I was too blindsided by the pretty picture as a photographic memento to take any other fundamentally cohesive meaning (warning) of the bigger memo.

Thinking on it more and mulling over my thoughts in the quiet hours since my tribe – The Family You Choose- left,

I can’t help but wonder if the moment I’m waiting for—the one where I finally take off that engagement ring—is the exact same moment I truly understand that dream.

Crying into my chicken selects: the dark side of lesbian breakups TikTok doesn’t show you

Posted on 8 April 2026 by Jemma

We’ve all been there haven’t we?

You’re in love, think it’s the real deal, goes a bit wrong, you convince yourself there’s more fish in the sea… You then go one of two ways- 1. Throw yourself under anything with a pulse in a frantic bid for anything that makes you feel less like an alien, or 2. Do something drastic like leave the country, shave your head, become a Monk… Then cycle repeat.

But what if you find yourself at an impasse and go neither way? What happens then? Well, dear Reader. This is where you find yourself in the jarring Upside Down of what-the-fuck-ery so you do now?

Picture this:

You respect your body and your twat a lot more than you did in your twenties, having abstained from the things that nearly destroyed you despite them being ‘easy fixes’- the behaviours playing to an anthem of an initially steady (but rapidly gaining) momentum decline that would be enough to give Newton a rod on.

However, convincing yourself that you’ve ‘achieved’ somewhat for pairing the orphaned socks together in a frenzied blur of internal monologue, where that Kondo lass would be smiling down at you from her perfectly Feng Shui-ed compartments for life- “well done Jemma, first prize for being a shit show, but at least your toes will be warm until you’re dead”.

I nearly did shave my head on Thursday evening. Convinced myself that it would be ’empowering’, something that isn’t just for broken hearted gals with a birth year starting with a 20. Sure I can pull that shit off? How to rid myself of all this bad karma, bad juju, dropping the ‘weight’…. Maybe self discovery? Become everything that the ex-mother in law was terrified her own daughter would do, because it’s a ‘rite of coming out’ passage?

I had those fuckers, in my hand, ready to go.

Hands trembling, eyes leaking, a Pinterest save board hyperfocus overflowing with fat birds all looking Free with likely cold ears. The trimmers were turned on, I’m sat on the floor frozen in a follicular fight or flight, buzzers chopping nil other than the shadows of the person I’d become, when I just slumped, hands in my lap still clenched around the trimmers. A nice chunk out of the bush (at least the Girls were unscathed).

I realise I’ve not paid much attention to that particular part of my body until I’m sat looking at the orphaned tumbleweed hurtling away from it’s motherland like a weird ‘This Is What Colour Your Eyebrows Should Be’ banner whisking across the screen of a shit B film copied from the market VHS stall before the piracy advert fully starts. Not even the moment that I realise that I can actually see the fucker it came from… I had entirely disembodied myself from my pelvic area in anything other than the sense a Karen (housing committee board) would angrily spit unfounded venom at that one neighbour that didn’t hoover their wheelie bin. Easily now, in the seemingly relentless uterine war waged for the last 6 months- reserving no more than 20 days off in the last 180. My haemoglobin had plummeted, self love dead, so why not grow a 70s bush? My own feminine version of the handlebar Tash.

Still, in that moment, faced with realisation that a large proportion of my own self protection ‘barrier’ was now missing, I found a Tiny Teensy Moment to acknowledge that whilst the breakup diet had completely bypassed the chins, they’d been rerouted to the cake shelf, every cloud.

It was in that moment, somewhere between the internal battle of which way to direct my trembling sweaty hands with the trimmers buzzing away, strangled badly plucked chicken, or a thumb… That I realised that neither of these were self-empowerment, they were a form of self harm. Because had they been a true honest part of me before, they’d be like that already right? Because I know myself, right?

Like fuck I do. It was in those wee hours that followed that I remembered that I’d made my friend promise to never let me revisit my Thumb haircut (Covid life), in the same way that I’d promised to sweep the Bestie’s bedroom for ‘personal effects’ if she snuffs it before the GP makes his final home visit to certify there’s no pulse. We make those promises, did I subconsciously think this wasn’t one of those situations, did it call to initiate Operation Wingbitch? I doubt it. So I sighed into yet another dodged bullet of life choices that I’d have previously made much more impulsively, with greater fallout, bigger consequences. I sat looking at my battered bald chicken, and for the first time in 48 hours, didn’t want to be swallowed into the ground.

But alas, these moments pass quickly Dear Reader. As I sit scooping chicken selects into my sad face because I’ve less chance of these resurfacing uninvited than anything that has nutrients, I reflect. For, despite that brief 20 minute interlude, it’s been a smorgasbord or shite before, immediately after and ever since.

The supposedly empowering Re-Thumbing moment, a kind of unease that is only superseded by a danger fart on the way to your first ever professional job interview (I lost, but still miraculously got the job even if I did have to wash my arse in McDonald’s, do the interview commando and had to drive there like my coccyx would explode if it touched the drivers seat). My freeing bald fat girl board saves accidentally pinged into the wedding planning inspo Pinterest…. And I feel my breath catch, my earth plummet all over again as I’m met with a sea of woodland-themed and sunflower-drenched saves, moody and whistful snapshots of a happy ever after that was shot from my life at point blank range, punctuated with accents of the beautiful outfits I never had the chance to try and find Temu copies of… Gut punch.

Fuck that….

Let’s look at angry lesbian breakup tiktoks, that’s surely going to help, right? It worked for a while, then I saw how much fanny was flinging itself at Lesbian Nan, everyone has someone out there, the ragey posts, the ‘oh, she’s not worth it’ first #wlwfirstbreakup hashtags. It made me feel even more sick.

How do I even find a bastard hashtag for this crock of shite?

So, for now

…

I’ll just sob into my chicken selects.

Holiday blues

Posted on 21 November 2022 by Jemma

A month down the line.

It’s hard to believe that a month ago today we were both well in the depths of the most horrific long haul flight I’d never imagined I’d be mopping sick up on, navigating tiny aisles and even tinier seats with my lardy arse, or that we were about to embark on a holiday of a lifetime.

Let alone, be stuck on the other side of the world in charge of a frothing loud and hyperactive Small for ten days, with not even a sniff of another responsible adult to take the slack.

But we did, and it’s done. And it’s been really weird being home. Japan is the only place that less-than-stable 20-something me would’ve easily spontaneously gotten on a plane and never returned from, and I’m feeling the pull still even as a semi-conscious semi-adult 30-something, so it must have been decent. We’ve acquired this cute little mama-Small delusion where we’ll still faux plan a day exploring the suburbs, like we’re waltzing around bustling Ueno rather than schlepping the sodden streets of Barnsley.

I’ve yet to properly eat bread since coming back, my body’s acclimatised back to not walking 10 miles a day and other than a slightly unhealthy obsession with cooking ramen daily and just shy of 2st having been misplaced somewhere, it’s like it was all a very long and colourful dream. Small’s feet have just about stopped hurting from our little treks, so I reckon it’ll take her a while longer to feel the holiday blues!

Well, I say that. The suitcases are still downstairs, semi unpacked of all bar the goodies I’ve yet to find homes for, Small is still finding little trinkets from our travels. And I’m still putting away a mountain of washing. What goes up must come down, so they say.

We’ve come away with a greater appreciation of being outdoors, more respect for each other having shared and bared all in our time over there, and a significant lack of comprehension for rude bastards. I’ve only just stopped subconsciously bowing with every social interaction with strangers/service staff, and I’m still finding myself disgusted by bad manners and loud/shouty arrogance. Small is struggling more so with seeing graffiti everywhere back home, and her first words on stepping foot out of Manchester Airport were “mummy, isn’t England really filthy compared to Japan”. She’s not wrong, but it’s taken a good month just to realise quite how different a world it was.

On reflection, it was a really fucking big world too it appears, and I’m riddled with the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘I should’ve gone back to that village/shrine/shop’ moments. I’m at peace in the one sense, I reckon it’d have been sensory overload had we pushed harder to do even more and I’d have been discovered a glittering dayglo wreck shaking in a street corner had we tried to do more…. But do I feel bad that we didn’t manage more shrines, more museums and the famous Ueno zoo, absolutely.

I’ve clearly struggled to make peace with being home, my purse is still bulging with 1 Yen coins and the IC travel card taking pride of place. It probably wasn’t helped having a day to sleep then being back to work with Small heading back to school. Every now and again though, Small without prompt tells me just how much she enjoyed it, how she’ll never forget our adventures and that she can’t wait to go back. She’s already decided shes going to go and live there a month when she’s 25. I decided against arguing the specifics. The weather has changed, from the late autumnal acer leaves carpeting the front garden on the day of our return, to being cold, wintery with bare trees- there’s no denying we’re home.

But we have 81640 gachapon toys to play with (and still finding more to open), magnificently coloured outfits we acquired en-route, a kitchen full of ingredients to still eat as we were, and of course a newly acquired Crunchyroll subscription to binge all the anime she was fan-girling about whilst there. She’s still saying please and thank you in Japanese, and the snuggles are even better after a week of being besties. I never thought having regular adventures as a solo mama on (potentially) ill-planned holidays would ever see us as we are now- content, together and more understanding of each other than ever, but here we are and I guess it worked.

So, until our next adventure, unless I fall out with the NHS and buy a campervan to disappear with her in tow, I guess that’s it! Thanks for reading 🙂

Sayōnara Japan! Our last day in this wonderful place 🇯🇵

Posted on 30 October 2022 by Jemma

It’s midday, guess I did need that sleep, the classical cat music blurring through my brain still as I jolt awake thinking I’ve missed the flights. Small’s been waiting patiently and decided on the one of two outfits I left her and I’ve wrenched myself out of bed.

I surprise her with a little visit to the rooftop terrace where she’s wowed by the views, as am I, with the Tokyo Sky tree clearly visible in the background and skyscraper after skyscraper lacing the vast heights that we’re surrounded by.

Off we set walking to make something of the day and we find her much-loved chicken sticks for brunch. We then head to Harajuku to visit the Meiji-Jingu shrine, after 3 visits that left us no time to do so and I’m extremely glad that we did make it.

The huge Torii gates beckoning us towards the shrine are set atop a backdrop of ancient reaching trees and beautiful woodland area. It’s so elaborately decorated with masses of gold edging and old dark wood immaculately sculpted that we barely notice the hundreds of folk there. After a few lovely and serene hours, stocking up on tea from a local mountain village and getting a few last souvenirs we head back to get some food.

On the subway I’ve become a full blown Karen, or maybe the two entirely separate groups of other tourists on the train are managing to piss me off royally are being especially cuntish. Three girls, dressed up in cosplay looking adorable but that’s where it ends. They’re talking so loudly, publically and with so few shits given to the culture of train etiquette, only one wearing a mask, and I’m feeling my fists itch. I’m not the only only casting them annoyed looks though, they’re talking about how ‘you can’t truly get into the anime culture without having done yada yada….’, what about the trainful of culture that you’re actually in and pissing off right here, dickheads? The next ones on my Karen hitlist are very American, talking loudly about some element of the Japanese transport system that they disapprove of, swigging beers (also not wearing masks). I’m relieved when all the disrespectful bastards have all fucked off and it’s quiet once more.

We head back to Ameyoko Street to find food, looking for a very illustrious sushi restaurant that I was foolish to think we’d get seated at, and head to the neighbouring restaurant instead, also a conveyer sushi place, and get seated. This feels like a truly Japanese place to eat, filled with nearly all locals and a sushi chef diligently creating the wonderful plates right in front of us.

I order sake with mine, and it’s very very delicious, almost too much so, as I’m thinking of squeezing another bottle in before we leave, until realising that Small is eating plate after plate of raw fish in my warm and fuzzy presence and I should maybe hold back a little.

We’re just about to finish, when a chap (expat) approaches us from the next booth, explaining that he’s so very happy to see people coming to eat here, as it is a true representation of the gorgeous dish, and how lovely it is that Small has been given the opportunity to come to Japan, it being a place he visited and never returned from, having wishes he’d been brought in his childhood.

We saunter through the busy shopping street taking a little more of it all in and having one last diabetes-inducing crepe and head home.

On walking back to our hotel for the final time, I reflect a little on the sushi place bloke said, and get quite teary about it. It has been a wonderful opportunity, for the both of us, and I appreciate that we’ve had the chance to spend the last 10 incredible days here seeing it all and soaking everything in. I realise it’s been my favourite solo adventure with her yet, and she’s transfixed on the return trip that she’s hanging onto me saying would be in 2-3 years. I figure out I’d better put my annual leave request in early and graft at saving if I’m to achieve the same again on a similar level, especially as I’d be wanting to travel around the beautiful country a little more next time with her as well.

We nip by her beloved Family Mart to stock up on the abominable sandwiches she loves and a handful of indeterminate whiskies and sake (maybe some shochu too, I didn’t google translate the label), and we’re back at the hotel to try and squeeze our last few goodies into the suitcase.

It’s been wonderful, peaceful, and eye opening. Japan has given me more than I ever thought it would, and opened my eyes to the many possibilities of exploring this magnificent country again. The sake has worn off too now, so maybe I’ll not forget my passports, or child, as we head to the airport.

Sayōnara Nihon, you’ll be much missed and forever cherished.

81625 steps, Pokemon and pissed off cats.

Posted on 29 October 2022 by Jemma

Feeling a bit au fait with the subway system now. It’s just as loud and busy as London, but it’s quite possibly the easiest system to navigate, and an entirely full platform in rush hour is still silent. I think I’ve figured out the silence rule on trains- it’s because every fucker is fast asleep, how on earth does everyone cat-nap so well? Obviously I looked into it, and it’s a known phenomena over here, the sway of the carriage, white noise and feeling safe due to a culture of neighbourly consideration, can’t imagine having any belongings left if I had a nap on a train back home!

She’s either still asleep, or has listened to me about the no talking, finally. Sitting opposite to me on a busy commuter train, knowing we’re here for 30 mins and I can still see the odd glimpse of her insanely neon shorts. It remains an alien concept but I actually really like it, I may ask her to adopt it back home. The silence that is, I’ve got no say in the abominations she wears. There’s no brash conversations loudly echoing down the carriage about the next door neighbour running off with the postman leaving her kids to starve, no ridiculous displays of, well, anything.

Personally, I find it calming, and it doesn’t make me feel like I need to explode with everything as much as I thought it would, how bizarre that ordinarily I find myself batting the status quo both internally and externally (often subconsciously), yet here I am a country with myriad cultural and etiquette rules to observe, and I like it. Maybe I could live here. It’s not like I’ve properly unpacked or finished decorating the bathroom yet, so we’re talking minimal upheaval. Maybe I could become the token fat gaijin in a maid cafe?

We’re on the subway to Shinjuku, the busiest station in the world, in rush hour. No giant sardine train experiences though, maybe the real rush starts later, it’s busy sure but not to the extent that I’m acquainted with folks in the way only can when smashed up against their delicates.

Had a bit of time spare, so decided to go and ask for the station stamp, that’s another thing that covid has fucked up- half of them aren’t doing it, Shinjuku included. I thought that yesterday’s tiny station was because of its miniscule setup (just the two platforms), but it would appear that maybe it’s a people-touching-it thing too.

Getting a seat on the next hour long leg of the journey to Mt Takao together has made for a slightly less grumpy Small, and I’ve found a vending machine selling hot black coffee for the equivalent of 59p, winner. Even managed a sneaky slightly-less-illegal pork cutlet and cabbage sandwich (sounds gross, tastes delicious), snaffling it next to the vending machines.

We arrive after 90 minutes of journeying and head to figure out where the fuck this mountain is. The tour company said that I could either get a cable car halfway up or to the top, and back, which I like the sound of as my strained achilles is demonstrable right now. Sneaky prawns, it in fact only climbs a third of the way, a 20-30 minute walk to the Temple from there and then again to the summit of Mount Takao. I’m looking around me and there’s a handful of the usual hiking superstars, but many of them are extremely elderly/slow/using walking sticks to get around, so I’m reassured and we hop on the cable car.

Small could not understand the gradient of the seat on entering, the steep incline at 31° making for entertaining angles until we hit the big climb. I’m touching knees with a gentleman in rather an un-Japanese way, until it levels out. I’ve slurped my morning coffee jelly though so I’m armed with apologies and ready to take on the world.

Small getting a fortune gachapon hand delivered by a performing mountain monkey rolling it down a track thriugh a teeny tiny Torii gate had her in stitches. The laughter is music to my ears and somewhat lessened my pending angst at the oncoming marathon. The little old dears still hobbling along the relatively flat path make me wonder, where the fuck is this temple and summit?

It’s like we’re having a leisurely stroll in the woods, passing the 450 year old octopus cedar tree ‘Tagosuki’ with ease, topping up our supply of togorashi spices from a hillside store and then – BAM….

The steps, ascending to the gods (quite literally) appeared out of nowhere, after what felt like what I now confirmed had been an upward slant going off the damp upper lip. The guide leaflet notes a place of the 108 steps, so surely that’s going to be it right? Wrong. Whilst beautiful, that was just the beginning.

The vast stone steps are beautiful, cold, and were I not on religious ground whilst hauling myself up them, I’d call them cruel. I’m the only fat one but not the only one popping a lung up, though I’m getting a little annoyed at how easy it appears for the very old ladies whizzing past me. But then I realise where I am, what I’m here to do and that I should stop whinging like a little bitch and get on with it.

The view are vast, soaked in whilst eating what appeared to be chicken balls on sticks, but turned out to be baked bread balls coated in sticky soy sauce, absoluty delicious and unlike anything I’ve ever eaten.

We cleanse our minds as much as you can do with a proper dab on, weak knees, and sweaty child, and head through the Negai Kanau Waku Kuguri wish ring and the Yakuoin Yukiji temple. The entrance to this temple is my favourite yet with all the bright colours, I’m fully wowed and it takes what little breath I have left away.

We get our goshuin stamp and carry on. The steps and climb is a bit brutal now, and its not just me being fat and lazy either as theres a notable decline in pace from nearly everyone on the next step. But my god is it worth it. The view, a panoramic scene of mountains all around us, Mount Fuji in the distance, is just magnificent.

After a look around all the tourist bits, and deciding that as we’ve managed to do all this before lunchtime we head back down the hill to find some food and stop near the chair lift gate for some traditional soba noodle dishes. Small managed to throw her miso soup everywhere and instantly went to clean it up, Japan has fixed my child, I’m in raptures!

The chair lift is an experience and a half, and vertigo kicks in amidst Small’s laughs of glee looking down, the bump of the rails bringing her all the joy whilst I’m praying to all the gods at all of them temples that I don’t just jiggle off and roll down like the fat ginger tourist that I am all the 300+ metres down the hill.

All things said, she’s not been too much of a bastard today and in reward I decide to surprise her with a visit to the Pokemon Centre in Ikebukuro, partly in thanks for her sleeping most of the hour and a half journey back. I have no idea why she’s so knackered, I’m the one that has had 3hrs sleep, but I’ll let it slide.

Ikebukuro is stunning, in the way that only a Japanese town with its glittering lights and shining billboards can be. Sunshine City, the department centre that we’ve headed to, is a kawaii nirvana and shes truly in her element.

We get all the treats then head to a cat cafe, which unfortunately don’t allow children under 13 but we’re recommended another one that does, on the other side of Ikebukuro but unfortunately closes to new entries in 17 minutes. I run like it’s last orders at the Chinese buffet and theres no shits given for the sweat running down my face blurring the glitzy streets and slightly misaligned google maps instruction. We make it at the time they’re closing, however with my terrible Japanese and the help of google translate they allow us in.

Now we all know cats own humans, and these furry bastards couldn’t give two shits about being played with, but she’s blissfully unaware to this fact and gets stuck in. Theres a Maine Coon that looks like it wants to eat her, yet still she tries to pet it, so away I sup my free coffee until closing time. Shes so grateful, shes been missing the cats at home and this was just what she needed. A cheeky stop at the Animate character store and after being told that all the shows she likes are so old in Japan that we’ve no chance of getting any merch from them, we head home to open the days gachapon haul instead.

Its been a busy one, and we’re both truly shattered, but as our holiday is drawing to a close, she has nothing but gratitude for every single thing we’ve managed today.

Tomorrow is our last full day, theres one Asahi left in the fridge, and after having a semi-conscious sit in the gigantic bath tub its 2am and time to sleep.

Last day tomorrow, I’m so tired that I’m not planning a thing, not setting an alarm and I pass out.

When your local Disney will never be the same again!

Posted on 27 October 2022 by Jemma

When you wake up 3hrs after your alarm clock, and that was only because of a wanting bladder, you’d have thought there’d be an ‘in/out/pants on and go’ attitude. But my oh so lovely mermaid/pastel blue roots have faded so badly
that the surround of my face looks like the verge of a roundabout mid construction-muddy and in desperate need of some TLC, halo of said grim roots surrounding my face, making me look dead- there is a point to this hang in there. The resulting makeup-athon led to Small announcing “mummy don’t worry about your face, it’s your soul that counts”, immediately after responding to request of an opinion on said face with “the kindest thing for me to say mummy is that it’s interesting”. Whilst it’s cheese as fuck, clearly I’ve instilled that in her as she recounted my said pep-talk verbatim. She might be a dickhead sometimes but she’s mine and I’m proud of the wibbly-wobbly-what-the-fuckery-way she’s turning outout, cute potato. Not all is lost, and what a lovely way to wake up, albeit 3hrs late.

I digress, we get to Disney around 11.30am, forget to bring the tickets, so did a lovely little 180, thankfully not losing more of our time.

Kids have no concept of time do they, she keeps thanking me for the fact that we got here ‘early’. I’m nodding with gratitude at her innocence, knowing she’ll one day call me out on our shambolic timekeeping (in the land where lateness is a huge taboo).

It was magical if I’m honest, and it’s made me love Japan even more. Whereas in France, it was hectic and crazy and loud and messy, here it’s calm, everyone is dressed up, I went to approach Belle to take a photo of her and her beautiful dress, only to realise she was just a regular guest, shopping bags in hand. It was beautiful and friendly and everyone was so excited, the locals really get into Disney here. There were all the wonderful contumes, and as soon as I was able to, I was asking for photos of them (shashin o totte mo īdesu ka? ) and feeling pretty chuffed when they understood enough that they acquiesced! There was a full blownblown anime cosplay that were clearly getting snapped all day and I never found the window when there weren’t any adoring fans falling at their feet to get a pic.

Small practically combust upon seeing 4chan, before the whole troupe as the Mei from Turning Red came bounding towards us about 15 mins later so she could get a full photo, very cute. I also think this is going to be Small’s next favourite thing, as she sadly looked like I’d just deep fried the cats on suggestion she might get the slightest bit excited about seeing the traditional Disney characters, let alonealone the disgust on asking whether she wanted to go and meet Belle and that I was happy to pay for anything like that. I might show her Bambi to recalibrate things.

Disney is Disney though isn’t it…. The clientele are what made it for us, the atmosphere was achieveofby the people who brought the magic with them. The customer service is unlike, I’ve ever seen anywhere- every single cast member smiling, waving, wishing us a good day and a good ride, it appeared as genuine glee to be there, and it was mirrored in the visitors. We didn’t wait any longer than 30 minutes for the big rides (other than two big ones being closed for maintenance) and I was gobsmacked that we actually got all round it! I’m glad we did Disneyland rather than DisneySea, just for the familiarity of the setup. But the lack of monster queues were definitely a refreshing taste, whether that may be because Japan has only just opened up or not I’m unsure. We were the glaringly obvious minority there.

We did the weirdest of rides and interspersed them with a cracking set menu and went popcorn bucket hunting. I’d have loved to have looked for the matcha or black pepper flavoured ones, as to date I’ve not seen a single one of those 300+ flavours of kitkats that Japan allegedly boasts, so feeling a little left out on the ‘snack-cidents’ front, filling it with standard cute Disney popcorn rather than the weird and wonderful. Still, she couldn’t give a shit what flavour it is, she can queue up for a ride and get all in there, sneaky eating handfuls of the stuff under her mask. Me too, guilty as proven.

Dropping pieces of popcorn and hunting the floor to find it to take it home was a priority, but amidst a whole 19 mins waiting for Splash Mountain, there it was about 5 meters away. Can you imagine, Japan is so clean and tidy that I was able to see my one cookie flavoured kernel standing brightly against the immaculate painted red floor, waiting for rescue and being walked around like a sinkhole, if only for the fact that crushing it would render me in droves of frustration and probably get me deported.

The eating rule is a little less enforced here though still very much a thing, and I’m feeling slightly guilty for making Small stand between an office wall and chicken restaurant this morning facing the wall to hide her woofing down her new favorite here for breakfast (ham, egg and cheese on white bread no crusts).

We finished off with the Electric Parade, which was magical, then we headed to find a good spot for the fireworks display, that being one of Small’s favourite parts last time so much so that we’ve a framed picture that I took. Nope…. Maybe it’s covid or maybe they didn’t get the memo, didn’t bother snapping any of the handful of fireworks adjacent to the castle (which were quite piddly in fairness), aside the backdrop of some basic lighting shone on the castle- ‘any minute now the real thing is going to start’. It didn’t, that was it. The only disappointing part. Small wasn’t fussed though, we had 3 trains to get and she was hangry, so whizzed up for yet another ham and cheese sandwich, despite my fruitless attempts to convince her to try even some noodles, anything! She got to ride on a double decker train though, so reassures me she’s happy!

I’ve cracked open the Asahi and am swilling the leftover popcorn out like I actually have an adult in me. I started tactically packing the suitcases but gave up half a pint in. Mountain Day tomorrow, ufffffffft. I wish the tour company had put me up for sake or mochi tasting instead!

Temples and sparkling lights

Posted on 26 October 2022 by Jemma

Our Goshuin book is lacking some love, so we set to that with a short trip out to Nikko, about 2hrs from Tokyo and a beautiful mountain Village that hosts some beautiful temples and shrines, specifically the Togushu complex.

Having bartered decent behaviour from Small by way of offering up (yet another) Akihabara for a tootle afterwards in the hope that we find the right street, we cracked on with our three part journey to Nikko. She was a hell of a lot more awake than the day before, but the bar had ben set quite low. I acquired some ‘coffee jelly’ by mistake, and spent an embarrassingly long time figuring out how to change that jiggling caffeinated almost sentient substance into something drinkable. Turned out I just needed to shake it. Obviously- I was pre-coffee parenting. It was the equivalent of putting a Mensa test in the way of getting a place in junior school, just cruel.

Having swiped in at the station and made our way to Tokyo, we hopped on the bullet train packed up with the cutest bullet train bento box for Small and a giant tempura prawn to add a bit of leverage to the element of peace. She has by now figured out that if she so much as whispers loudly enough for someone other than me to hear her, it’s horrifically not the done thing, and is subsequently sat with puppy eyes, gesticulating with more theatrical pizazz than a RADA dropout, glaring at me.

I still don’t understand how you’re allowed to eat on the Shinkansen but not on a train that’s a same time frame, but it doesn’t matter, it was all gone within ten minutes, before we’d even pulled off if I’m completely honest. Small naturally frothing at the choos anticipating the sensation of being catapulted into deeper space with the GForce of Tom Hanks crashing down to earth, but ultimately, whilst fast, it didn’t feel very ‘bullet-ey’. And why would it I guess, can you imagine the whiplash? We got there like hot shit off a shovel however and before we knew it arrived at Utsunomiya, connected and landed in Nikko.

Now, we’re in the hills, it’s fresh, the air smells and tastes incredible and I can’t help but think that the spring water we’ve been buying from out local shop that Small insists ‘smells of sushi’ is in fact just pure as fuck and filtered through nature’s answer to a top of the range Brita filter. It doesn’t smell of fish, mind, and it’s entirely implausible she’s capable of racial slurs, so I’ll take that as her having a capacity to distinguish between tap water and fancy shit. There’s hope yet. Used extemely broken Japanese asking about where the bus was to the shrine complex in the mountains, because fuck that and we land.

It’s primarily Japanese folk, and I was relieved that there wasn’t the abundance of tourists fucking the atmosphere up with their loud talking cheeseburger snaffling attitudes, until I released that sans the burgers, I’m the tourist. We did everything as all should be however, so much as a fat blue haired English girl and her hyperactive gobshite kid can, I guess.

I was glad of having frantically posted on Reddit asking for recommendations about suggestions for our tiny window of opportunity to see everything, having scrapped the chance to go an hour further from Nikko centre to a traditional Edo themed amusement centre. No time for that when there’s all the pretties to see!

Kudos to Small, she eventually said she was glad we were doing something special together. We did the Futusoran Jinja, Togushu, Yomeimon gate and the Nikkosan Rinnijo, passing by the sleeping cat sculpture (which we both absolutely adored) and battling the 207 steps to the resting place of a highly respected Shogun, Tokugawa Iegasau.

Following the advice of Reddit (the Netmums of travel advisors) and after as many temple visits as we could muster, we headed for what I’d hoped would be a leisurely stroll down the 634m above sea level ‘hill’ to the station, Small gingerly nursing a finger that she burned sticking it into a pile of burning incense while I had my back turned (theme, much?!). Stopping by *only* for a souffle mousse pancake and a cheeky visit to pick up some 90 year old art prints, we found ourselves twatting it down to make it to the only train that would make out connection for the bullet train. The views and the mountain air had been delightful, but all good things must come to an end, I guess. And I realised that aiming to get down a steel hill of 1.5m in 20 mins laden with all the temple charms and arty luggage wasn’t my finest adult calculation.

Very full of pancakes might I add as it goes by this point; Tell me now that those sweet red bean paste pancakes are filled with anything different to that kidney bean crumble I made as a very poor very broke student of 22ish? Same delicious shit, different context!

Small being unable to discern between a normal and a bullet train, she was convinced we had three of the Japanese spaceships to get, so was extremely happy. However sitting in the middle of Utsunomiya station frantically looking for our lost tickets, it’s fair to say that I was not.

She’d remembered my promise of Akihabara by this point, and stuffing my bag to enable avoiding a trip home to dump our haul we headed to the electric town with minutes to spare on retrieving our ‘lost’ tickets.

It was so fucking shiny! Threw ourselves into the first shop we came across, I found myself in a bizarre google translate dance whereby it eventually transpired after 30 minutes that I was signing up to a delivery based pre-order scheme. Upon ditching and apologies to Small for the lost time acutely aware everything shut in one hour, we headed to a figure shop. Second hand and very cheap figurines of Japanese pop culture characters, we were both in our elements until Small’s bubble of innocence almost burst when finding myself having to explain away the nude provocatively posed little plastic minxes and swiftlys exiting.

The fatigue has kicked in by now, I’ve promised her a little tickle at one of the hundreds of arcades, bags full of plushies that I know I’ll regret trying to pack and feeling sorely guilty for my mum-splaining of aforementioned naked female anime figures.

Turned out I was quite ok at the tactical grabbers, coming away with another three huge teddies I have no fucking space for, and we went on the hunt for food.

It’s 10pm by this point and we’re both feeling the burn we ended up falling into a fish restaurant. Noticed the grill on the table and remembering her last adventures with cooking her own food, (fucking brilliant), we’d committed to the seating and it was last chance saloon…. Notwithstanding my not-very-Japanese dimensions were sure to make it difficult to snake my way out on a hurry, so we made peace and ordered. We were presented with Dave and Lisa, the tiny fish, to Small’s great delight, until Lisa’s head fell off and I realised I didn’t know the Japanese for ‘please tell me what the fuck I’m meant to do with this?’. All things in, full bellies were had and we traipsed to Akihabara station to get home.

She was pleased with her haul, and I had a cold can of Asahi waiting for me, all was well.

Lets be a tourist on 3hrs’ sleep and other ill-fated life choices

Posted on 24 October 2022 by Jemma

Chuck a couple of Totoros at a kid and you’re laughing, it would seem. She’s buggered off to the room to unpack her sizeable haul while I have a cheeky 5 mins in the fresh air. Have to admit, it would seem that underneath all the transient rage, I’ve got a decent and extremely sensible seven year old in my pocket here. Not that I’d have said that an hour ago upon watching her mimic the ‘Ninjas’ that were serving her food, with more than a tickle of the theatre that went along with it, but more on that later.

This morning, we peeled ourselves out of bed more than a little bit fucked after a very late night meticulously organising all her gacha to head to the very pretty Mitaka and visit the Ghibli museum.

On the promise of a decent breakfast once I’d got us across the city and hoping (in vain) that there’d be coffee before our adventure began, we made it. An underground, overground and a bus later feeling rather smug with myself might I add, we landed in the gorgeous town to find it was going to be a sneaky onigiri round the side of the shop. To someone to whom eating is as ritualised as breathing, the not eating in the street thing is a real killer. What do you mean I can’t stuff my face with foreign deliciousness in public for the works to see?

Not that it was a bad thing, the spicy beef bun that I snaffled in secret presented more than a mild threat to my digestive system (thank the universe for the background noise buttons on these ‘ere fancy toilets!). I was more than focused on having to haul a knackered grumpy seven year old through Tokyo first, painfully regretting my lack of parental insistance that she’d gone to bed at a reasonable time. She took the best part of 3hrs to pull round, which she achieved around the same time she first cast eyes on the museum exterior, wide glassy eyes in wonder at the oncoming treasure that is all things Miyazaki and Takahata.

The strict ‘no photography’ rule is something that I initially couldn’t understand, but having come across a Redditor getting roasted for snapping the exhibits, the only pics I can justify are the ones that made my interior design synapses ping like a motherfucker- so much wood, watercolour and stained glass (featuring Kiki, Totoro to name a few!!!! Every corner had little creative surprises that reminded me of Mouseman woodwork back home.

She was transfixed by the Robot statue outside, one of the few things we could full blown tourist over, insisting that it was ‘in actual fact mummy’ an Antony Gormley and ‘how amazing was it that the Japanese people respect his work so much’ – (I let it slide).

The cafe was cute but rammed, though was worth it to watch Small neck some roast barley ‘coffee’ and then have this enjoyably visible dissonance as to where she could dispose of said frothy dishwater in a way which didn’t draw unnecessary attention -it was like watching Simba eating bugs in Lion King- still, I’m proud she didn’t yak it back up into the cup, Domesticating, and all that. I guess some parents are proud when their darling little spawn ‘graduate’ reception, write their own name and get invited to every kid’s party, I’m just happy when mine doesn’t run into glass doors or bang into ‘not-things’. Perfect I’d say.

But she acquired a fuck tonne of Ghibli stuff, after I made it extremely clear that she isn’t getting much from Santa this year. Unless that is, that I can find a shop selling something Princess Kaguya from a Ghibli shop, and no I didn’t fancy the thought of trekking across Tokyo for (wait for it….) the one magnet they do. Now that’s a very sentimental Ghibli for Small and I, so we settled for dust bunnies, multiple Totoros and other things that I enjoyed buying but live in the suitcase until we come home.

The day wasn’t without the odd mishap however, with Small managing to lose our IC transport cards at least twice, traversing the extremely busy rush hour Ueno station only to have the extremely kind locals chasing us down with a gentle ‘sumimasen’- (why the hell didn’t I bring any little packaged up thank you gifts today?). And the later ‘douitashimashite’ when I accidentally careered into an innocent man’s leg on pivoting on the spot to look for the extremely verbal but woefully absent Small in th gift shop. I’d have pulled it off had I realised at the timetime and not just now that I should have been saying ‘gomenasai’ and not ‘you’re welcome’, talk about a lingo faux pas, no wonder the poor fucker looked shell-shocked at my badly babbled sociopathy.

I may have accidentally found myself in the Japanese equivalent of Poundland, B&M and The Range’s genetically ambiguous lovechild, Daiso 100. I’ve you’ve ever been lucky enough to supervise me on a particularly sensory day on a shopping trip to any of these places, you’ll understand quite how determined I was to ensure that at I filled at least one of the extra 2 suitcases we’re coming home with stuff from here. For context, Google today shows 1¥ as the equivalent of 59p. And 99% of what we’re coming home with had cost just that. I still however managed to spend like I was TKMaxxing and crammed £79 worth of cheap but not shit stuff into the oversize nana shopper (reminiscent of those red blue and white checked ones we all saw in our childhoods), getting a huge discount on a giant teddy which then went in with the fucks I didn’t give to the struggle I never anticipated lugging said bag and then two further ones across town, to our dinner reservation.

The food products alone, all the base products that I simply cannot get at home. Bags and bags of unidentifiable dead dried things and miso for miles that I can make gorgeous stocks/soups etc with. We both thoroughly enjoyed playing with our newest acquisitions this evening.

Picture the aforementioned amount of purchased goods, we’ve survived rush hour subway, and have an extremely easy guide to our dinner reservation at the Ninja Restaurant in Asakusa. There was an entire page in our guide on how taboo being late would be to this, on top of the cultural suicide that is doing this in Japan ever, so I twatted is as much as a fat bird with a shipload of shopping can, before realising I had a kid in tow who was slogging the bag of food and glass bottled ingredients up and down the platforms with each step getting slower and slower, I tried to encourage her in the way that I figure people perceive health promotion advice from people with certain outward appearances. We both knew that the anxiety-induced cold upper lip sweat had more than adequately shifted into a full blown workout that made my body scream in protest as I was practically bathing in my own exertions running up (yes, running….) the 100 something steps that lay before me. I’d relieved Small of her burden thus she watched on with great amusement, little bastard.

It was 16.55, I’d run with said bags through the busiest crossing I’ve seen yet, upt down and around the same whole corner of a department store that housed Ninja restaurant 4 whole times, before I found it. I mean I know it’s basis, but I practically dropped a lung in my attempts to find the bastard.

We were shown into a dark room, my eyes squinting in the darkness in the way they only do once you hit your 30s regardless of whether you wear gigs or not, and stumbled through a fucking maze. Yes, a maze, guided one on one with a ‘ninja’ who made us jump through spaces, over fires etc into the (unsurprisingly still fucking pitch black to me) dining area. Small loved it, yet I found myself daydreaming about whether there’s a special reward for having a heart attack in a themed cafe, in the same way that one usually gets free shopping for life when your waters break in a supermarket?

We had plate after plate after plate. Small got bolder and bolder until she eventually started lovingly harassing the ninja staff with her call of battle. I had to smirk, she held her own and got into the magic of the green-flamed, smoking, sparkling ‘treasure’ dishes. She quite literally got into as well, despite many a reminder of basic table manners, she went on to digitally explore most of my plates by man handling before some were even out of their box (anyone else’s kid a dickhead when they’re hungry?) I ate ‘big-plate-little -food’ grub for the first time without getting pissed off, it was delicious. And I was full, despite sharing mine with the bottomless pit that announced she didn’t feel fed enough still. I disregarded through the first few whinges based on the portions at school dinner that she orders making Oliver’s Twist’s scran look like an all you can eat buffet, but she persisted, so we shared.

She didn’t seem that chuffed with the offer of the clam part of the clam chowder. I wonder if throwing up a kilo of mussels still hits hard?

I forgot to mention Derek! Please forgive me, but couldn’t help but be reminded of my late Grandfather, minus the vacuous nothingness beneath the samurai gear with the bristle brush style upper lip moustache. He didn’t say much, just soaked it all in. Derek sat between Small and I, she picked a few fights with him, but he never rose to it.

We navigated (myself rather blindly still being hyper aware of how bloody dark it was) to quite possibly the fanciest toilets going, to bail on the 40 min journey across 3 stations and a lost fuck to get home by hopping in a taxi. It was quite nice actually, as you’d expect for a £20 sit down, having the local sights being pointed out, feeling incredibly tiny seeing the huge high rise corporations towering above us in the business district, and having the real Akihabara pointed out to us (it was indeed very well lit up, and I gather we walked a good mile in the wrong direction the other night having seen where I should’ve gone).

Off to Nikko to see the grand shrines and temples, I’m hoping she plays nicely. I can’t imagine a point where I could walk up the pebbled footpath (representing walking through water to aid release of any impurities before calling on the spirits) without dredging her back from running over any sign staying keep off/out, pissing someone off with her profound cheekiness, or just deeply disrespecting the sacred ground upon which she stands, usually achieved by caterwauling like the banshee she is. I guess if nothing else we’ll get to ride the bullet train, even if she’s got the romanticism and spiritualism of a rapidly evacuated dulcolax, making it difficult to fully submerse in the experience.

Half Laughing, Mostly Fine

Formerly Mirth and Crumbly Cheese (aka The Adventures of Angry Small)

Author Archives: Jemma