Pre-nostalgia
Because I’m choosing life on my own terms now
Pull Up A Chair is a weekly newsletter containing all the things I’d like to be chatting about if we could hang out together in real life.
🪡 Embroidery. I used to be really into knitting, but after using it to get through the lockdowns, I have barely picked up the yarn and needles for the last two years. Embroidery has well and truly taken its place - this week I’ve spent many happy hours sitting cross-legged on my bed with an audiobook by Alexis Hall playing and an ornate piece of hoop art taking shape. My current project is this ‘tattoooed shoulders’ design from Stitch Happy - truly “not your grandmother’s embroidery”!
📚 A Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting by Sophie Irwin. Not so much a ‘historical romance’ as a historical book dealing with the romantic ‘rules’ we’re all familiar with thanks to Jane Austen (and Georgette Heyer, and Bridgerton). I loved this - what do you do when you need to get your little sister married and your family history is somewhat sketchy? Go to London, act like everything is above-board, and throw your lot in with the first member of the ‘ton’ you can. Just don’t fall in love along the way… This is out in paperback soon and Irwin’s next book comes out imminently! (Bookshop.org | Amazon - affiliate links)
🎶 Electric Touch (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault). Okay. I know I put the whole re-release of Speak Now on last week’s list - but I specifically want to talk about this Vault track - which features Fall Out Boy. I am completely obsessed with this track; it’s a total bop and my nomination for the song of the summer. And it’s brought another batch of swemo content (Swiftie/emo) to the top of my social media feeds. I managed to get tickets for the one of the Eras tour dates in Vienna (one of my favourite cities in the world), so that’s my 2024 summer holiday (and 30th birthday celebration) sorted.
ICYMI: Last Wednesday’s post for paid subscribers was the first edition of my ‘Book Concierge’ series, recommending upmarket fiction for Naomi. Sign up for your own recommendations here!
I have three weeks left in Edinburgh. Three weeks. I thought about leaving for so long before I decided to, and even since making the decision it’s taken a while to get the logistics to fall into place. Still, a few of the big puzzle pieces are less sorted than I’d like them to be. But three things are true: I get the key for a flat in my new city three weeks tomorrow, I have a removal firm booked, and I have a hire car reserved to drive myself and my most important things from one end of the country to the other.
The nostalgia is building.
The closest I’ve ever felt to this was the spring and early summer of 2016, when I was coming up to the end of university. My parents helped me move out of my student room on July 1st, the day after I graduated, and they got (understandably) cross that I’d barely started packing. Truth was, I hadn’t been able to get my head around the fact that I was moving - which is a necessary thing to accept before you can pack, it turns out.
That was a very different situation. For a start, finishing uni was a natural consequence of four years having passed since I had started my course. Although I was lucky enough to have a job lined up - at the company where I still work - I didn’t yet know where I was going to be living, so I was packing up to spend a few months in my parents’ house, and then move who-knew-where after the summer. On top of that, accepting that we were at the end of June 2016 meant accepting that the EU referendum had happened - and that the result hadn’t been what I hoped. Change was coming, whether I was ready or not.
I wasn’t ready.
Today, though, I am. I moved to Scotland in the autumn of 2016 ready to spend the rest of my life here. Like Georgia in Alice Oseman’s Loveless, I had started uni expecting to experience my love story. When I came to Edinburgh, I assumed I would find some sort of corporate Jamie Fraser, with a soft accent and legs that looked good in a kilt, and that it would be the start of the rest of my life.
That hasn’t happened. But I have given Edinburgh the ‘good old college try’. I moved here excited to live in a city with a great literary scene, and I have taken advantage of that. I’ve taken a writing course, made writing friends, and shopped in every indie bookshop in the city. Just this week I went to a fabulous event at Rare Birds Books to celebrate the launch of Niamh Hargan’s hilarious new rom-com, The Break-Up Clause. I’ve volunteered at a charity bookshop, had some interesting jobs, and made some friends for life along the way.
I’m a different girl than I was when I boarded a train north from King’s Cross with a huge suitcase.
Most dramatically and excitingly, I have a professional specialism that barely even existed in 2016, fighting the climate crisis from inside the world of finance. On top of that, I have one complete novel on my hard drive (well, in my Google Docs), which I could barely have dreamed of back then.
And unlike when I arrived at Waverley that autumn afternoon, knowing almost no-one in Edinburgh, I’m moving to a place where I can’t even begin to count the number of people I know within the city or a narrow radius.
Last time I moved, I was stepping into the unknown, because the academic conveyor belt on which I had lived my life said it was time to.
This time, I’m choosing to step into a future I’ve chosen for myself.
And I’m so excited!
Speak soon,
Lily
Pull Up A Chair is a weekly newsletter containing all the things I’d like to be chatting about if we could hang out together in real life. If you’d like to access paid content, but can’t afford to, do ping me an email and I’ll happily give you free access.
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So thrilled for you Lily!