Day 11: Gin

I am in the pub drinking celebratory gin after Wales vs France in the rugby. Also in shot, a less-than-celebratory Frenchman. Normal service will resume tomorro...

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Day 10: Ampersands

I love ampersands. I can't remember my first encounter with them but they were always this odd, intricate, grown-up looking thing that clearly required a PhD and an overly mature outlook on life to be able to conjure. Now I've reached the age where friends are stockpiling letters after their names...

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Day 9: A New Film That Has Come Out

I have not seen 50 Shades of Grey. This somewhat negates my discussion of it in relation to the title of this post, but only somewhat. But we'll get to that. From what I have read however, the books are really not well-written, which alone is a more than good enough reason not to bankroll it in my...

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Day 8: Strangers on a Train

There's a guy sat opposite me on the tube, writing in a notebook. Another one. I was about to be doing exactly the same thing, but now I don't feel I can. It might feel like I'm copying. Almost as if when I chose to store my notebook in my bag along with my new writing pen, as I do every day, that...

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Day 7.

1 week. I've blogged 7 times in the past week and the experience has been all manner of things: enlightening, draining, really rather tricky. 1 day. Today. Today has been, well, a day. Let's leave it at that. Again I find myself the wrong side of 10pm with words spilling from my fingertips and...

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Day 6: Why I love music

It seems fitting that I should get in from orchestra and have to write a post about why I love music. Maybe one of these 40 days I will have planned in advance and not be frantically writing at gone 11pm... Maybe I should revisit a topic a week for 40 weeks once Lent is over, give some of them their...

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Day 5: Describe a train journey

Day 5: Describe a train journey I really love train journeys. I mean, really love them, even that one the day/few days before Christmas (delete as applicable) where the world and their 55 wives stage a mass festive exodus and it's breathing room only as far as the eye can see. Especially that one. There...

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Day 4: Forgiveness

Forgiveness, culpability, remorse. Ultimately, forgiveness is a positive thing. Its precursor bitterness, however, is the kind of thing that festers. That clenched fist of hurt and anger that rests uneasily somewhere between your ribcage and your belly button, like the drop of fresh ink on parchment,...

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Day 3: Dreams vs. Reality

Day 3: Dreams vs. Reality It's 7 minutes past 10, and I'm sat in a bar in Brixton, yet to pen today's post. I want to do justice to the topics so kindly contributed by everyone, but in all honesty I posted the challenge on a whim, expecting to quietly be able to take down the status, barren of suggestions,...

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Day 2: Make-up

Day 2: Make-up Make-up hack for literally anyone: 1. Wear some 2. Don't 3. Re-evaluate options 1-2 as often as you see fit For something I wear every time I leave the house, the topic of make-up leaves me oddly bereft of writing inspiration. Make-up is one of those strange things that somehow manages...

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Day 1: My Nose.

My name is Abi, and I am a writer who doesn't write. In an effort to remedy this, an arbitrary period of time that lends itself to a self-imposed writing challenge. Lent: 40 days; 40 topics suggested by friends. Day 1: My Nose. I pierced my nose. I paid a guy in a shop to shove some metal through...

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