Towards the end of August, Tom and I spent a week in Cornwall – staying in Carbis Bay first and then St Ives for a few days.
We had plans to visit Sicily in June, but the trip ended up being cancelled due to Covid. After 5 months of staying in Leamington Spa and only venturing out of town to Warwick once, it was nice to get away and spend time somewhere new.
It’s been a little longer than I intended but I’m back with the next instalment of all the things I’ve been loving during lockdown. This time focusing on the things I’ve been reading, listening to and the activities I’ve been doing.
If you’re anything like me, lockdown will have left you feeling like you’ve completed Netflix by now. With this in mind, I wanted to take the monthly ‘favourites’ concept and do something different with it.
Rather than giving you a list of things to buy, I’ve put together a list of that content I’ve found interesting and informative over the past four months.
One of my new year’s resolutions for this year was to travel solo. As my boyfriend was on a three-week trip to Indonesia this August, I decided that this was my opportunity to fulfil that resolution by taking a trip to Germany.
But, after mentioning it to a friend, she decided that she’d like to come along with me. So I don’t think I’ll fulfil my resolution this year – but it did make the trip a lot more fun.
Towards the end of June, my friends and I spent a week in Xlendi, Gozo. If Malta is the “little island near Italy” then Gozo is “the even littler island at the top of Malta”. It is teeny tiny, but a quiet week away is exactly what we wanted.
In May my boyfriend, his family and I spent a few days in the Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands.
It was my first time time going that far up north, having only ever visited Glasgow and Balado (for a festival lol) before. I was really excited to spend my time in a cute little cottage in the middle of nowhere, going for really long walks – a bit of a step away from wanting to get drunk and dance until my feet hurt at a festival.
Birmingham literature festival took place in October, bringing with it the opportunity to hear from Caitlin Moran, Sali Hughes and Lauren Laverne – so naturally I jumped at the chance.
Going along to see these women in conversation with each other, I fully expected to come out fangirling (as always) over how incredible they are. And I did. But something else I came out with was much less expected – the decision that I was going to get back into beauty and makeup.
Life update: I moved to Birmingham last month to start a new job.
Accepting the new job meant packing up my things, moving further away from my hometown of Hull than I have ever been, and leaving my best friends and boyfriend behind.
A couple of weeks ago my boyfriend went on holiday to Mexico. He was gone for two and half weeks, staying in hostels along the coast before finishing off – the jammy shit that he is – by getting put in a 5* hotel by the flight company after they cancelled his plane.
I, on the other hand, stayed in England. I worked 9 til 5, Monday to Friday, and spent time with my friends on the weekend.
I’m opening this post with the biggest oxymoron ever: I am pragmatic at heart. I have always thought in terms of logistics – how I can get things done and what is manageable/unmanageable within a certain time frame.
At an early age, it was deciding when I went to bed (always around 10.30 on a school or work night) and what time I got dressed on weekends (always before 11am unless I’m allowing myself a lazy day). In recent years it’s been deciding what I want to eat for tea, when to schedule my blog posts and when I’m going to go to the gym.
Becky Marrow 