London: Thoughts With No Obvious Title

One thing that I truly have regretted about this year is my lack of appreciation for the location in which I am living in this year. There are so many crevasses of London to explore and I’ve felt too tired or moody to explore them. Even in these beautiful evenings that have been falling across our skyline I’ve felt chained to the sofa with a book or a film. Last week, on the return from a stressful end to a day where I worked overtime with little breaks, I decided that a walk was what I needed and I took my camera along and turned it into a little exploration project of lots of places that were just fifteen minutes away from where I have been living.

In London, I have seen a lot of ugliness against the beautiful skylines, the engulfing transcendence of the River Thames, the fantastical mist, the movement and buzz of a tube or DLR or from the roof of a bus. I’ve seen broken people, broken youth, broken systems, broken emotions. I’ve seen modern-day poverty and my views and thoughts have been shaped and challenged. I have multiple times felt disgusted at these two opposing sides of London, conflicted in the way I deal with them and because of my heart for these people who are marginalised socially through communities or through class I have avoided what you might call ‘mainstream London’. This includes the museums where thousands of people come to visit artwork and artefacts worth hundreds or thousands or millions of pounds because when I go there. Why? Because I see this work and think of a lady who is driven to suicidal thoughts because in her disability she is rendered helpless and wonder if the money that someone will eventually buy this work for could be better invested in people, giving them a sense of hope or community that could contribute more to society. When I pay out to see theatre I think of people who can barely afford a TV licence. We berate them because all they seem to do is watch TV, but when you scratch the surface it is their loneliness which we cannot fix. That theatre ticket is their TV licence for 3-6 weeks, or their electric for 2 weeks. I am paying for an experience, they are paying for something that allows them to make food of taste and flavour which I never have to considered would not be available to me. When I buy a coffee, I see that £2-3 buying them a pint of milk, some butter, some bread, some basic tins. Worse, when I go out for a meal I see their weekly shop go down the drain in one meal and a glass of lemonade.

However, the way I have dealt with this is to shut myself off and play the pauper. I’ve been spending as frugally as if I were in their situation, shutting myself away from the culture because it makes me feel guilty that I can enjoy it and through this have started to trick myself into believing that I’m not some middle-class white girl from the suburbs. I try and make myself this hard, urban worker, scrimping and scraping when really, I am privileged. I do have the free time and the travelcard to immerse myself in London culture. I saved up all of last summer so I could enjoy all these opportunities in London, to see the beauty of it and take advantage of this opportunity. Guilt of where I came from, of my privilege, made me a recluse and judgemental of others. I don’t want to see London only with rose-tinted spectacles, but I don’t want to define the way I see London merely by the bad I see either.

As I took a walk around my local area, taking pictures of roses from the rose garden against the tower blocks in the background, seeing the Shard from behind trees, I had all these reflections and realised that God has always given us hope, beauty, reminders of his grace. I had been choosing not to see them. As I walked, talked to my housemate, and the sun set, I photographed the architecture, the cute little shop down the road, explored and found an abandoned pub, a restaurant, a coffee shop. I stepped into the warm air and saw missed opportunities because of my unnecessary frugality and self-imposed misery. I only have a few weeks left – and that is moving swiftly on. I’ve seen and recognised the broken pieces of London. I now intend to find the blessings, the grace, the community, the hope, the friendship-building, relationship-deepening meals and coffees, the galleries which increase my appreciation for creativity and variety and culture and history (stuff which God has blessed us with!). I want to squeeze out my time and make it worthwhile, all while still sharing my hearts with the broken as my day ‘job’ and serving a cracking flat white.

-Antonia

The Dark Summer (That Changed My Life)

Ah, Summer. The time of year where to-do lists really get their time to shine as everyone promises themselves that they will have a barbeque, kiss in the rain, make lots of craft, hold down a job, stay out all night, meet new people, explore a forest...

It's also the time of year when endless blog posts come up about this, with people posting goals (whether it be for a bikini body, achievements or simply things they would like to do). Often, because of this, summer is treated as this golden period of opportunity where life is at its fullest, especially while you are still at school and the adrenaline of freedom kicks in. There are endless questions on how you will be spending summer and the thought of merely sitting at home is berated.

My experiences of summer have been varied but I can say that the best summers haven't been the ones where I have been on lots of holidays or explored the world around me, but the ones where I have grown, changed, matured and tried not only new things, but challenging things. The most memorable summer is the summer of 2009, the summer where I had no friends to hang out with other than my sister.

I had made a wrong move, lost all my friends and was living in guilt and shame. I wanted school to end badly but found myself even more isolated trapped inside my house. My only outings were with my sister to Shakeaway (I calculated that I spent around £40 on Shakeaway in the space of a few weeks that summer) where we would sing walking along the road and wear matching harem trousers. I watched a copious amount of TV but felt a real emptiness in my life. Yet I was moved. I was forced to confront the mistakes I had made which caused this dramatic cut off from community. Until that point, there was always someone to point the finger towards, someone who provoked what I had done. In a summer of loneliness I saw that I had been hiding behind that and exposed a lot of lies that I was believing about myself, others and the world around me. I had been believing that violence and anger were excusable reactions if provoked, that my insecurity absconded me from punishment, that paranoia was damaging my friendships and how I saw the world around me, that my heart and all its desires were set on all the wrong things. I was moved, I believe by God, to a state where I realised that I needed to be forgiven, and that I didn't need to work for it. I longed for my friends to show forgiveness to me as well as the forgiveness I believe that I already have received through faith. But then my thoughts progressed: I longed to have the strength and courage to forgive the friends who had given up on me, provoked me, made me feel insecure and paranoid and anxious, had failed to support me through my counselling and therapy and who I didn't trust enough to tell them how I was feeling. I longed to repair relationships, to regain confidence in my abilities and release anxieties that were weighing me down.

I found that at the foot of a cross and it changed me. Never before had pain brought me such joy. It is a dark summer that ended in light.

I remember the first day at school when we got our timetables and the girl who I had directed my violence at the June before was in around two thirds of my classes. I braced myself for a hard year of proving myself and trying really hard to change but there was something else working which released me from that responsibility. A few nights later, a facebook friend request that had earlier been denied set my heart on fire. Forgiveness was mine. Friendship was restored. Faith became real and exciting.

I was baptised the next January and a journey began that took me to other summers on beaches in Wales that stirred up a heart in me to take 'good news' to London, to walk over Tower Bridge everyday to embark on a journey to the East side to serve lattes and engage with community. Five years after the dark summer, my life is changed and renewed and my faith is as real and exciting as ever.

Maybe your summer is shaping up well, maybe it is looking miserable. Don't romanticise summer as if it is a magical period of contentment and happiness - it surely won't live up to it and be filled with more boredom that BBQ's I'm sure. Summer is a chance, if you have the time or invest in the time, to search your soul and find what is wanting. It might be a qualification, an experience of volunteering, a friendship that has been slack, it might be rest. It might be discovering what true hope and life is once all the routine and rhythms have been removed. I hope that you will find it where I did.

-Antonia

Instagram Collective Vol.2

It's been a good two months since my last Instagram update. I have to admit, I've been cheating on my Instagram a bit recently by using photographs from my big girl camera and editing them, but these are all photos which my good old HTC One has taken. A recurring theme, most of them revolve around Tower Bridge because I'm there every day and I do see some spectacular sunsets that are too good not to 'gram.

The quality of some of these are extremely variable and that's one thing that I really dislike about Instagram: using their editing software seems to completely bodge the quality. You can definitely tell which ones I have used vscocam for (yep, I've become an Instahipster, help me), especially that moody latte art shot.

At the top in the centre is a rare breed of photo from my Instagram - something other than sunsets, architecture or a latte art moment of pride, but something which points you forward to another upcoming scrapbooking blog post. These were not cheap to print but came out in a beautiful matte finish and the perfect size to make into pages, write around and add a little something extra to my scrapbook, otherwise all the cherished snaps on my phone would never leave the abyss of the internet.

You can follow me on Instagram if you would like - @mosaicofantonia. Give me some links to follow you! My favourite kind of Instagrams are those which don't just indulge in poorly lit selfies and endless hashtags of every single word that you want in your caption. There is a girl in Australia who I follow who does the most charming shots of coffee and of her in floral crowns and I feel like she is living a fairytale through her Instagram. I've journeyed through her Instagram for over a year and honestly would quite like to be a penpal of hers. Her name is @athenagracee and I thought that she probably deserved a little plug as she has pretty much inspired the way I used Instagram.

Who inspires how you take photos and capture your life via Instagram?

-Antonia

Nine month review // May - June

It’s getting to the point where each month blurs into the other: the rhythm of life has become so smooth and slick that I barely notice as time passes away and I head further and further towards my leaving date. I can’t remember what was in this month and last month and frankly my emotions have been so high and low over the past few weeks that it feels like a month in itself! I want to apologise for having not blogged a little more but frankly I’ve been horrendous at updating all my social medias over the last month (Instagram in particular suffered a sad neglect as suddenly my photo-taking suffered an unprecedented drop), and it’s just a little fun for me and so I shouldn’t feel pressured or guilty for not doing so. This month has been a very reflective one as I look towards the end and towards new beginnings once again, and how all the pieces of my life at the moment might carry through to my life at University once it begins in September. My world will temporarily return to what I have known when I move back with my parents for all of seven weeks and then I will return to education in this weird place up North where there are no sirens before bed and people of my own age everywhere and books to read and no tube sweat. I’ve got a whole new environment to adapt to ahead and looking back on these reviews is reminding me on how far I’ve come this year, how much I’ve learnt and how capable I am to do so.

There is a distinct lack of pictures this month due to business and general laziness. This makes me sad because I love photography and have lost my groove with it this month. So, somehow, words will have to made do, especially since the photos I did take aren't too high quality and seem to be butchered as soon as they make it online, no matter how I edit them.

1) Weirdest thing you have seen in London this month?
Every month I make a mental note about the answer to this and by the time I come to blog, completely forget it. The problem is, I think, that in London you see so many strange happenings that they pass you by. On an inspiring note, I saw a huge group of people cycling for Help the Heroes last Sunday over Tower Bridge.

2) Particular highlights of this month?
By far I think a highlight has been doing a trip to see a few friends at different Universities and getting out of London for a while at a time where I was feeling a little under pressure and really missing familiar faces. I didn’t get to catch up with some of them as I would have liked over their Easter break because of timing so it was great to spend 24 hours with a few people watching films, exploring their campus’ and generally having a natter. I went to the cutest cafe that was Alice in Wonderland themes and ate Walnut cake (one of my faves), ate very nice but largely unhealthy food, drank tea, went to the most hipster Costa coffee I have seen and stayed up later than I have all year. I was tired and exhausted by the time I returned to London but simply taking a glimpse into my friends lives was so worth it. It made me wish that I had made the time to do it sooner and more frequently over the year. It was a three day escapade that made me excited for more times with my school friends over summer.

This concoction was made by my friend when I stayed with her in halls. It has salmon on it. Student life is not what I thought it would be. 

I have also been enjoying the sunshine this month, especially at breakfast time when I can explore our small, overgrown garden and on Sundays where I always have the afternoons free to sit in the local churchyard and hang out with my housemates or read, all crammed on one blanket. I’m not too good with the heat so I don’t last long and eventually retreat to the cool air of my bedroom but getting out of those four walls during the more rainy periods of May has been lovely.

The flowers and reflections found in our small garden - someone's been secretly hard at work!

I also went to the British Museum last Saturday with a friend which was fascinating. I haven’t been to the British Museum for a good year and a half and that was for a special Shakespeare exhibition so going there to see the more permanent exhibits was very worthwhile. We barely made a dent on the museum and were there until we felt our legs were going to drop off so it is worth a return. I also spent a Saturday with my mum this month, trundling along Oxford Street in the search of some clothes suitable for this hot weather. I don’t necessarily miss living at home but I do miss seeing my family more regularly and love the fact that I am only a short train ride away if they wanted to see me. It’s going to be hard when I move a four hour train journey away in September and won’t see them for over two months. In terms of mid-week treats, seeing Maleficent was definitely a good choice, and free because my housemate kindly paid with her Odeon loyalty points. I am very picky about films that I see and this definitely exceeded my expectations, the graphics and cinematography were beautiful and Angelina Jolie had so much poise.

I often find the ceilings of museums more fascinating that the artefacts inside them. The majority of my photos from the British museum confirm this.

3) Favourite part of your work this month?
The introduction of iced latte and Iced tea has been a welcome one, and I am, frankly, a little bit obsessed. I have been relishing all things cafe culture this month as I seek work in a coffee shop and I think that I identify as a coffee snob now.

4) Least favourite part of your work this month?
My routine has been interrupted somewhat with new arrivals and volunteers and I suppose that this late on in my year, I am not coping well with change, especially if I feel like my roles are being taken away from me that I really enjoy or was looking forward to be a part of. I have limited time left and I want to squeeze all the goodness out of it possible!

5) Hardest part of your work this month?
One thing I have learned about myself this month is that I pile unnecessary pressure on myself which is unhealthy and drives me into anxiety and worry over things that don’t exist (like this blog readership). In short, I exhausted myself by inactivity because in my quiet moments my worries drove me to nothing, and then I felt guilty, and then I was stuck. It all stems from a mindset that I have as a woman of ambition who constantly strives to be more in all things but finds herself helplessly falling short of it and being sent into despair, losing my core identity and all motivation. I found myself feeling tired and grumpy doing a job I loved and then feeling guilty that I wasn’t doing my job well because I was tired and grumpy with all my worries about nothing and non-existent pressure. It’s been a tough ride, but I have finally rested myself. Just about. Maybe.

... and this pear and walnut cake certainly helped to lift my mood at the end of the day!

6) Would you kindly sum up your working month in three alliterative words/phrases?
Inspiring, Innovating, Iced! The first two words refer to a lot of exciting changes which I believe will take everything forward, inspiring new people joining the team and all the envisioning going on among my personal team. It’s just a shame I won’t be there to drink it all in as it happens.

7) Weird habits developed this month?
This month hasn’t been too weird and I haven’t had many fads. I suppose my biggest habit this month has been obsessively watching Nashville and rewatching Heroes. I am glad this is coming to an end so that I can finish those books I never finished last month and those which I have started reading this month. I have also fallen back into my summer habit of eating ice cubes, which is especially hard at work when we have an ice cube maker staring at me all day and all I want to do is fill a bowl with ice and crunch it. Yep.

8) What are you missing most about home this month?
I feel like this answer is a culminating of all the answers that I have put all year: my friends, my family, and the silence and privacy of being able to step outside and go for a walk without there being people everywhere you go. I have grown to be intolerant of tourists even though I still feel like one. And, more superficially, I miss the income my paper round used to bring in and feeling like I had my own money to spend on things other than food and travel. One of the most irritating things about this year has been having the whole of London to explore yet not having the money to do it: every day out means lunch has to be accounted for or you end up hauling round food and drink on the tube. I’ve been keen to go to the Tower of London all year but it takes a huge chunk out of my money right now. Even if I do find things that I want to do, I miss having all the friends to do it with who will enjoy it just as much and make spending the money worth it. No one in my house is into art and so I go to galleries alone which can be a pretty isolating experience on a Saturday. 

Even though London might be expensive, sunsets and architecture are free. Winning combination! Taken at a bus stop in Aldgate.

9) Best Housemate moment?
Celebrating one of my housemate’s birthdays with a curry and company. We spent the evening playing stupid games in our living room and having one of the funniest evenings in a while. Just taking that time for around ten of us to sit round a table is rare and special. Like I said last month, I am appreciating all the time we are spending just chilling out together in the evenings having a chat or watching a film, eating dinner together. As much as I enjoy our little outings (and we have a great one planned for a few weeks’ time) those times are the times which make the difference to your week and mood and I am grateful for them. I am anticipating many more evenings together as world cup season approaches!

The best rosetta I have made all year!

10) Discoveries this month?
Using the depop app to find cheap, second hand clothing (I bought a beautiful bag for £6 - can't go too wrong!); how GOOD the avocado and green bean salad is in Nandos; the aforementioned British Museum; vscocam editing app; Iced lattes; one-pot cous cous; this beautiful etsy shop where I recently bought a new laptop bag in preparation for University.

Hope this has helped you to reflect on all the little and big things in your months, too. It is certainly helping me to remember things that so easily would have passed me by this year.

-Antonia