Annie and the Little Pinch of Salt

Bruce by Mary

2011-10-15T14:15:00.002+01:00

{ A drawing of my father by my mother, c.1980 }

Well, whatever, nevermind.

2011-09-26T18:55:00.007+01:00

Last week was the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’, which I mostly celebrated by not feeling a need to wear all my dad’s clothes at once or thrash around my bedroom in a hormonal rage.

I did listen to it, though, just to see what it sounds like now. The lyrics seem a little confusing, which is disappointing, because they made so much sense back then. Didn’t they? I distinctly remember hearing ‘In Bloom’ for the first time and thinking: “God, he’s right, nature really is a whore”. Then I earnestly wrote it on my schoolbag with Tippex.

I cried for about six months after Kurt Cobain died. My parents were surprisingly patient for the first week or so: I remember my mum hugging me on the edge of my bed and my dad coming up the stairs with two mugs of tea, mumbling what exactly is it that’s happened again?

Being a sleepy village in North Wales, the little girl from down the road came over to comfort me, too.

“Why would anybody actually kill themselves?” she asked, nine years old and totally perplexed by suicide, suddenly finding herself comparing humans to lemmings.

“He hated himself,” I explained, sobbing. I was fourteen.

Mark says he was fourteen too, and what really helped him was to make a ‘cupboard shrine’ by removing the clothes and shelves from his wardrobe and filling it with Nirvana pictures and incense and candles.

A cupboard shrine! If only I’d thought of that, too.

“Oh god, stop,” says Mark, cringing.

“And if only we’d all had cameras back then,” I wonder. “We could now make a really great collection of Fuck Yeah Cupboard Shrines for the internet.”

Somehow, in the midst of our grief, Mark and I were both savvy enough to carefully file away the cancelled Nirvana tickets we had for Manchester, so that we could be millionaires once we were grown-ups. Not that we agreed with being millionaires or anything. We were Nirvana fans and we hated money! Sort of.

I still have my ticket, wrapped up in my parents’ attic: current value on ebay looking at about €20.

{This post was originally written for The Anti-Room}

The Electric Triptych

2011-09-04T23:51:00.003+01:00

Please stop confusing love with praise and attention

2011-08-28T16:36:00.020+01:00

Rita's turning 80 this week and I want to know what she'd do differently with her life if she was starting all over again. I find myself doing this a lot lately: pressing people for more stories and wisdom than they were expecting to have to share.

“Body lotion,” says Rita, lighting a Silk Cut like a full stop. This conversation is over, my friend.

Body lotion! I don't believe her. She just doesn't want to spend another afternoon discussing love and ambition and personal failure.

“Okay, fine,” I say, leaving it alone.

Rita calls me Annie Get Your Gun, and so does the caretaker at work. I tell her that now – how I turned up for my first day too early, and the caretaker had to let me in and he said what's your name and I said Annie and he said oh yeah, Annie get your gun, is it?

“Yeah,” I said. "You got it.”

I like it when older people reference Annie Oakley when I meet them. It makes me feel like a cowboy. Then they wink at me and I wink back and nobody knows what just happened – but it has something to do with riding a horse through a canyon when really it's my first day at work and I'm not even sure where to find the bathroom.

“Down the hall and to the left,” said the caretaker, and I'd walked off down the corridor where he was pointing.

The building was quiet and dank and felt more like an old cigarette factory than a film studio. But that's because that's what it is. I walked past the empty costume hall with all the empty costume racks and into the bathroom; then I went and found the empty art department and claimed a desk and a pile of scripts and started reading. People assume that being a graphic artist on a TV show means you work on the opening titles or something – but that's a whole other department. My job is to make the graphics that the actors actually use in the set: old treasure maps and period newspapers and boxes of vintage cigarettes. Isn't that a great job? To be put in charge of making old love letters for the actors to pass between them on set?

I am making all this sound way more romantic than it is.

Rita is falling asleep. I remember her once telling me I should stop confusing love with praise and attention. My scalp is itching. Sometimes I wonder if I have skin cancer — is an itching scalp a symptom? Also, when people say “I've nearly finished my book” are they talking about reading a book or writing one? It's hard to tell sometimes and it makes me feel anxious. I tried to read/write something last night but I got distracted and ended up drawing a picture of an owl instead.

I tear the owl out of my notebook now and leave it on Rita's dresser. Stop confusing love with praise and attention, she said. I think I'm trying to impress her.

Shanna Germain

2011-07-05T12:23:00.005+01:00

One Person's Forever is Another Person's Summer

2011-07-03T23:02:00.007+01:00

"It's amazing what you can fit in to these small cars, isn't it," says Adrian at Storage World, watching me load up my boxes. I don’t think it's in his job description to help with any lifting.

"Yes, Adrian," I say. "My entire life."

I only say this because that's what people always say when they pack up their physical possessions, but I don’t really believe it. I'm more romantic than that and I like to think my life fits in footprints on mountains and in pictures I took in the desert — not in fifteen cardboard boxes jammed into the back of a Nissan Micra.

But it does, of course. I slam the boot shut, say goodbye to Adrian, and shift my entire life over the river to the other side of town. Then I sit down on my new bedroom floor and pick through the boxes. I have too much shit, I think, for someone who moves house once every six months. Definitely too many books, anyway. People love giving me books. They mistake me for a reader because I'm so great at spelling. I can spell pretty much anything right first time — even 'accommodation', which was the most frequently misspelled word of last year, according to a survey in the New York Times — but I can't read a book from start to finish.

Here's one now: a tattered yet never-read copy of The Grapes of Wrath. Inside the front cover someone has written:

With love forever, John.

Forever! I only vaguely remember him. Hmm. Yeah, I vaguely remember him eventually getting together with another girl in college named Summer.

"One person's forever is another person's summer," I say out loud, throwing the book back into the box and laughing at my own joke.

The house is quiet. I pull a blanket out of a bag and curl up with it on the floor between all the boxes. This is my usual response to having loads of stuff to sort out: take a nap. I can't sleep though, it's only midday, so I just stare up at the ceiling for a while and think about the future.

I've moved in with a lovely woman, as her lodger, in my favourite part of Dublin. It's only a temporary arrangement while I work on my temporary job, which is on a temporary TV drama about the building of a temporary ship they called the Titanic. They didn't realise while they were building it, of course, that it would only be a temporary ship: it was another thing on the long list of things that are meant to last forever. My screenwriting teacher, Mary Kate, says this is classic dramatic irony. And that just means the audience know the characters are fucked before they do.

Filming will last until November, then the sets will be torn down and the crew will go home and my equipment will be packed back up in to boxes. I'll take them to Adrian at Storage World again and then what? Go back to America, I think, and take more photographs of the desert. But when I'd said that to Megan she'd shrugged and said hey, who knows what'll happen between now and November.

There's an old fireplace in my room and I get up off the floor and start stacking some of the books up on top of it. Maybe this year I'll try to finish some of them — then I can give them away again. I have too much shit, I think, for someone who has no forever.

Magic Megan

2011-06-29T00:05:00.004+01:00

{ Mulligan's beer garden in Stoneybatter }

Back in Town

2011-06-27T20:07:00.006+01:00

I feel a little bit unsure when I get back to Dublin, like maybe I don't belong here or something, so I put on my aviator sunglasses and I go out driving. Am I a fugitive or some kind of a lady cop? Nobody knows.

I stop to pick up Megan — magic, magic Megan — who'd surprised me at the airport when I landed back in Dublin. SURPRISE she'd said, throwing out her arms, and I had been confused and then happy and then I'd started to cry a little bit. But crying at an airport isn't the kind of thing a fugitive and/or a cop would do, so let's not talk about that right now.

Back in town, back on the road. Is there any feeling greater than driving around town in your aviators? Sometimes I don't know whether to wave hello to people or pull them over.

Happy Summer Solstice

2011-06-21T09:08:00.004+01:00

{ with Juste and Vala at midnight in Reykjavik }

Thank You So Much for Thinking of Me

2011-06-20T11:37:00.013+01:00

Dear Adrian

Thank you for your email asking if I'm ever coming back home. I'm pleased to be able to tell you that I've accepted a job in Ireland and I'm on my way back for the rest of the summer. I should be there as soon as tomorrow.

You know, it means a lot to me that there are people like you — real Dubliners — asking for me and referring to Dublin as my 'home'. When I left town back in March it was like the city no longer had a place for me. I felt crazy and lost, unrooted and alone, and it was all I could do to run away to America again... like I do whenever things go a bit wrong.

But this has been a very good time for me. I've spent many evenings pouring my heart out to my closest friends, and they've fed me baked goods and interesting things made out of spinach. I've also poured my heart out to many strangers, actually, and some of them even stopped in the street to listen. I drove it like I stole it on the freeway, I made it through Vegas without losing any money or sleeping with anybody, and I've photographed many rock bands and some babies. (Well, mostly babies to be honest. Apparently 'that is where the money is').

I've also spent some time in Oakland with people less fortunate than I am, and I've realised that just because I don't have a forwarding address right now doesn't mean I can swan off around the world referring to myself as 'homeless'. I am not homeless, Adrian. I am the opposite of homeless. I've been the guest of so many beautiful people in their beautiful houses; I've eaten at the finest roadside diners; and I've slept peacefully in a tent in a northern Californian forest. I've seen Nevada, Reykjavik, and wild, wild Oregon, and I've thrown up my arms on a rooftop in Brooklyn and I have taken Manhattan.

Oh, and I also hired a hitman to shoot dead the worst side of my personality in the Arizona desert — but that's another story.

So as you can see, Adrian, I'm not crazy anymore. I'm just a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and I just want to come back home and get some work done for a while.

Thank you, so much, for thinking of me.

Annie

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Er, yeah, that's grand Annie, I just needed your credit card details so we can charge you for the extra month you were away.

thanks

Adrian Jones, Manager

Storage World

Herdís Hekla

2011-06-19T10:43:00.003+01:00

This is my little goddaughter, the daughter of the previously mentioned "David the Postman" who moved in to my spare room all those years ago. David married Arna and had two lovely kids in a small town on the south coast of Iceland, where they built a shed and turned it into a cafe. Next time you're passing Eyrarbakki you should visit. He still bakes amazing bread.

Science not Romance

2011-06-18T12:03:00.000+01:00

Jovana says the sky is closer to the ground in Iceland than it is in other countries — that's why it feels strange here sometimes. She's not being romantic: it's science. Something to do with the atmosphere hugging the Earth just that little bit tighter nearer the poles. You know?

No, I didn't know, but it makes sense, I suppose. We sit down at Reykjavik harbour and hang our feet over the water. Jovana is from Serbia — she read my blog post about my first year here, and she wants to know how long it takes to stop feeling like an outsider.

"You were here four years, right?" she says. "When did you start to feel like you belonged here?"

I think 'belong' is a strong word that shouldn't be thrown around, but I don't want to scare her, so I say hmm, maybe after a couple of years or something? And then I trail off.

The truth is that, at first, living as a foreigner in Iceland is like being in a really heartbreaking one-sided relationship. The more you want it and the more you do for it, the more it backs away. I took Icelandic classes; I went to Kaffibarinn; I once ate an entire sheep's head for breakfast for christ's sake. Did Iceland ever call me? No, it did not.

"So what changed?" asks Jovana. She is 22: a year younger than I was when I first moved here.

I shrug. I think one day I just stopped caring so much. I threw up my hands and said yes, I love you... but guess what? I also kind of feel like I might be going off you! I started doing my own thing: I got a little camera and I learnt how to approach people to take their picture. I met a guy called Bjarni who suggested I start writing what he called "a blog". I stopped pretending to eat sheep's head for breakfast and I started publishing slightly rude but mostly affectionate anecdotes about Icelanders and my life as a perpetual outsider. I had my own voice for the first time in a long time and I didn't care who heard it — and that's when Iceland started paying attention. Oh yeah, all of a sudden there it was, calling me up every Friday night saying hey, want to hang out?

Jovana laughs. Yes: it was me, not them. It's just a case of breaking through a certain barrier, isn't it? Icelanders are aloof on the face of it, but it's mostly shyness. Underneath it all they're the warm, hospitable people that you always hoped they'd be. I think back to the airport in New York last week, when I'd suddenly realised I hadn't arranged anywhere to stay on my return, so I'd fired off an email to Rósa Björk — who I'd met only once before — asking if I could please crash on her couch for a night.

Of course, she'd replied. I'm going to Sweden for the summer today, so I'll leave my keys in the bus station and you can have my whole apartment for the week...

"Isn't that amazing?" I say to Jovana. "Only an Icelander would leave their keys for a stranger in a bus stop at the very last minute like that."

She smiles. Yes, that is very Icelandic. We look out over the water: it's past midnight and it's still daylight. This is the stuff — long summer days and genuine kindness — that make the first difficult years here worth it in the end.

"It's going to be fine," I tell her, throwing an arm over her shoulder, and I mean it. I'm so glad to be back here again: seeing old friends, visiting my goddaughter, even meeting up with Bjarni and his girlfriend. Is that 'belonging'? I don't know. Belong is a strong word and I'm not going to throw it around. There was a point when I thought I'd never feel at home here — but there have also been points in my life when I thought I'd never learn to drive a car, or ever fall in love again. Some things just take time, and courage, and patience.

That night, on the walk back through Reykjavik, I think about the sky being closer to the ground. It's science, not romance — isn't that what she said? I walk with my arms stretched up in the air and trail my fingers through the cloud above my head.

The Iceland Weather Report

2011-06-15T11:00:00.003+01:00

{ Alda Sigmundsdóttir }

An Empty House in Reykjavik

2011-06-14T00:23:00.004+01:00

There's a beautiful little stone cottage in Dublin that I want to rent when I get back, with a tiny overgrown garden and no furniture. This could be a problem because I have no furniture either — but really, who cares? I spent my first year in Reykjavik living in a wooden house with nothing but two empty crates, a mattress, and a set of fairy-lights to my name. And that was one of the happiest times of my life.

"Er, no it wasn't, mate," says Cathy on the phone. "I remember you telling me at the time. You said you were quite depressed, actually."

"I wasn't depressed!" I say. "That was one of the happiest times of my life."

"Hang on," says Cathy. "I'll get the email up."

She puts the phone down and searches her mail for 'I'm quite depressed, actually', but I can't believe she'll find anything. I'm often overwhelmed with joy when I think back to that beautiful, wonderful time in Iceland.

"Hello?" she says. "Here it is: March 2004. Dearest Cathy. I still don't have any friends or any furniture. All I have is two empty crates and a mattress to my name. I'm going to walk into the sea tomorrow with rocks in my pockets."

Oh. Really? That's strange. I don't remember writing that.

"I'll forward it to you," says Cath. "You don't even mention the set of fairy-lights."

Nostalgia is a strange thing, isn't it? Of course, if I think about it, I do remember being lonely in Reykjavik. I remember staring out of my kitchen window at all the people on the main street in the evenings, wishing they'd beckon merrily at me to join them. They didn't. It was a very long, dark winter. I drank tea. I ate sardines from a can. I took long walks through the freezing wind out to the old lighthouse and I sat in fishing shacks and drew clumsy, poorly-observed sketches in my notebook. I didn't have a camera, or a computer, or a blog. It was very cold and I slipped on the ice a lot. I was 23 and maybe I should have gone to Ibiza with my friends.

But I also remember that the empty house was where, eventually, I did manage to make some friends. I remember the girls from work coming over to drink Viking beer on the floorboards with me. They brought cushions. I remember them laughing at my (frankly ridiculous) stories, most of which I completely made up just because I didn't want them to ever leave again. Ursula started inviting me over, a mountain guide who I referred to as 'my Swiss Army Wife'. She cooked elaborate Italian meals with one hand, rolled smokes with her other hand, and opened bottles of beer with her teeth. A postman called David moved in to my spare room and baked a lot of bread. Spring came along, the midnight sun shone, and I loved everything about it.

I never did get any furniture, though.

"Well, then why not take this empty cottage in Dublin," says Cathy. "You already have some people there that you can start to fill it with."

"Yes, I think I will," I say. "And if I ever feel like walking in to the sea with rocks in my pockets, don't worry, I'll be sure to send you an email all about it first."

Quentin Fottrell

2011-06-13T00:01:00.000+01:00

{ West 22nd Street }

I Heart New York

2011-06-12T09:54:00.000+01:00

"You're a New Yorker," says Jeff, "if you've been in the city longer than the person you're talking to."

I've been here two days and I am quite clearly still the newest person on the whole island of Manhattan. We're at a costume party on the Upper East Side and I'm wearing my battered leather jacket and a trilby lent to me by Quentin, because needless to say I didn't have anything even vaguely glamorous in my rucksack. The party is confusing me because now I think everybody here drinks martinis and dresses like Mad Men characters all the time. Maybe they do?

Jeff and I eat pretzels and watch the inimitable Quentin flit around the apartment like a social butterfly. He moved here only three months ago from Dublin and it's like he's been here all his life.

I want to be a New Yorker, too, I think to myself. In fact, I won't be happy until New York shows up at this party wearing an I ♥ Annie t-shirt.

On a Rooftop in Brooklyn

2011-06-11T15:30:00.000+01:00

{ The Fantastic Ms Cox }

They Will Simply Feed on Your Eyelids

2011-06-10T06:26:00.010+01:00

The fleas turned out to be mites, the mites turned out to be bedbugs, and the bedbugs turned out to be a complete figment of my imagination. If you've never experienced bedbugs — or at least never experienced reading about bedbugs, alone, all night long on the internet — then you should probably stop reading this right now because you just won't understand. You probably think bedbugs are funny, or fictitious, or even cute. But they're not.

"Do you know anything about bedbugs?" I asked my friend Ed on the phone, after waking up covered in what looked like small insect bites one morning.

"Yes," said Ed, with a heavy sigh of apprehension. "I know they are an excellent reason to sell your house."

Bedbugs are insects the size of small woodlice that live in the darkest crevices of your home. They come out only in the hour before dawn, when your sleeping body is at its stillest, and use their long incisors to inject you with an anaesthetic so you can't feel them sucking out your blood for 10 or maybe 15 minutes. You might wake up an hour later itching like crazy, but by then the bugs will be gone back to their hiding places. It is no good changing beds, or sleeping on the couch: the bedbugs will find you. It is no good trying to poison them: bedbugs are almost entirely indestructible. It is no good sleeping with your clothes on: the bedbugs will simply feed on your eyelids.

"You done any travelling lately?" asks the exterminator — whose name is Vinny from Texas — when I call him in a panic.

"Um," I say, trying not to swallow my tongue. "Some."

"Yeah," he says. "They probably came in your backpack from a motel or someplace like that. I can come over first thing in the morning and give you an inspection."

"But I can feel them crawling on me," I say. "I'm looking after this house for my friends – they're coming back next week. I need you to come right now, Vinny, right away."

"Can you actually see any bugs right now, ma'am?"

Vinny doubts very much that I can. It is 10 o'clock on a bright Sunday morning and he wants to get back into bed with his wife. He wonders where I got his cellphone number from. Online, probably, on one of those hysterical bedbug 'forums'. He wishes he knew how to delete it. Isn't there some kind of service provider — not unlike Vinny's own pest control business — that can eradicate your personal phone number from the internet? He can hear Julie getting out of the bed upstairs. Dammit. There is no finer feeling to Vinny than lying pressed up against her beautiful warm body when she's sleeping in on a Sunday morning, and now he's missed it.

"No," I say, pacing back and forth in the empty house. "I can't see anything. But I can feel them. Crawling on me. Feasting."

"Ma'am," says Vinny, sighing. "You been under any stress lately?"

My stress is entirely centred around the fact that I am house-sitting for two of my closest friends and, after they have looked after me for two whole months — cooking for me, caring for me, listening to my shit — I have now gone and infested their house with indestructible termites. They are about to lose everything – everything! — and it is all my fault. Welcome home, closest friends.

"So, yeah, I'm finding that pretty fucking stressful to be frank with you, Vinny," I explain to him.

"Okay, lady," he says. "Until you've seen a bug, you don't know that it's bedbugs you got. And nobody has to lose their house. I suggest you take a valium and get some rest, and I'll come by first thing in the morning for an inspection."

And then he hangs up.

Bedbugs multiply like crazy, is what it says online. They are nearly impossible to kill. They carry no disease but have made many people psychologically ill: bed is where you should be at your most relaxed, not where you fear being eaten alive in the dead of night. I scratch at my wrists. There's a man on Craigslist in New York selling seven dead bedbugs for $200 each. He knows how much these things are worth: landlords won't get your apartment sprayed unless they have cold hard evidence. People get crazy in the summertime as the city heats up: families fall apart, relationships break up, everyone needs something to direct their anger at. Bedbugs just take the rap.

I close my laptop. I don't need to read this shit. I know what it is, I'm not crazy, it's almost certainly a bedbug infestation. I pull on my jacket and go out to the hardware store to buy some traps: twelve plastic cylinders that fit under the legs of the beds, each dusted with talcum powder. The bugs crawl in on their way to feed on you at night, and then they can't crawl back out again. Tonight, I will lie in the bed and wait for them to come to me, then pick them out of the traps in the morning. I can present them to Vinny as evidence, then he can spray the house with kryptonite before my friends even get back from their vacation. Yes, I'll just have to lie very still on the bed for six hours tonight.

"Essentially," I explain to Dharma, who lives across the street. "I am the bait."

"That seems a bit extreme," says Dharma, who had to comfort me earlier over all this and is beginning to worry about the state of my mental health. "Can't you just come and stay with us and throw a big old steak on the bed instead?"

No, Dharma, unfortunately I cannot. Bedbugs are attracted to the carbon dioxide in our breath, not just the smell of blood. I've done my research, I know what I'm dealing with. I'm practically the resident Oregon bedbug expert at this point.

Dharma sighs and shakes her head. "Well, good luck, Annie," she says.

That night I make sure the bedsheets aren't touching the floor: that's just like throwing a rope down to the termites and inviting them up for more. Each trap is set under each leg of the bed. My bites are itching and I smother them with calomine lotion, then I spread myself out star-shaped in my underwear, making sure plenty of skin is exposed so the bugs can smell my blood.

"Good luck, mate," says Cathy, calling to say goodnight, from way over on the other side of the Atlantic, where it is already light.

"Thanks Cath," I say, wearily. "I'll call you in the morning, with the new evidence."

Cathy doesn't say anything but she thinks that this may be the worst of my hypochondria that she's seen yet, possibly even worse than the deep vein thrombosis I had in Tibet, or the six months that I lived with breast cancer, yet refused to get a test. "Goodnight, then," is all she says, gently. "Please just try to get some rest."

Rest is a nice thought, but it's not going to happen. This is what I get for ever running away to America in the first place. An infestation; my friends' home ruined. This sleepless night, I'm afraid, is my punishment.

At 9.30 I'm woken up by Lola barking and a loud knocking at the front door. Fuck it, I've overslept. I pull on my t-shirt and jeans (that are hanging carefully from the ceiling) and run downstairs to let the exterminator in. Lola dashes out in to the garden to take a piss, then rushes back and bounds around him.

"Hey," says Vinny, giving her a good rub, and I instantly warm to him. "Ready for the inspection?"

He is shorter than I expected, and less Texan. I also expected him to have some kind of jumpsuit on — and a pack on his back with the kryptonite — but he just wears jeans and a sweater and looks like a regular guy.

"I'm ready," I say, letting him in. Vinny comes upstairs and together we inspect the traps. Nothing. Lola watches us from the doorway. Vinny pulls on a pair of surgical gloves, then examines the bedding. I feel strangely embarrassed that the bed is probably still warm. He goes through all the linen with a magnifying glass and a flashlight, then he goes through the mattress, then the furniture, then the picture frames on the wall, then he starts on the skirting boards. Nothing.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"But what about my bites?"

Vinny takes my arm and gently inspects the small pink marks.

"Could be mosquitos," he says. "Or a reaction to bleach, if you use that in your washing at all."

Suddenly, I want to kiss Vinny. I don't, of course: he's the pest control manager and I'm not crazy. I just pay him 50 bucks, thank him profusely, then he goes home to his beautiful wife and I start packing up for New York.

Oregon Ghost Town

2011-06-07T14:14:00.000+01:00

{ in the window }

What it is to Love and Care for an Animal

2011-06-06T17:00:00.002+01:00

David left town, too, to meet his wife and child on the East Coast, and I stayed on in Portland and looked after their house and dog. If Fiona took Summer with her then David took whatever was left of Spring, and the rain kept on until I began to wonder if there might be some kind of flood.

Lola doesn't seem that keen on getting wet but we go out anyway just so she can take a shit. I pick it up afterwards and put it in the bin, and even though the plastic bag stops any of it touching my skin I can still feel the warmth of it on my hand when we get back in. I get showered and put my pyjamas on because I feel like I'm getting a cold. That's okay. I'm tired of keeping busy and I want an excuse to just curl up into a foetal position for a while and mope.

I lie in bed for the day, then sneeze my way to the grocery store for enough food to survive a small nuclear war. Lola waits outside in a puddle, her ears pricking up every time she hears the automatic doors. A woman called Maureen helps me bag up my cans of soup then hands me a dog treat to give to her.

"I was brought up in a home with many pets," she says. "I know what it is to love and care for an animal."

Maureen looks and speaks like a robot, as if she never loved or cared about anything in her life, but I know that appearances can be deceptive and so I clear my throat and say thanks, that's kind. The only reason my voice still works is because of this dog. Sit down, good girl, come here. Let's make some tea and you can tell me all about your day. I very badly want her to sleep up against me on the bed at night, but she keeps jumping off and going back to Fiona and David's room as if they're still there, but they're not.

When we get in from the store I try to start packing up for New York, but just the thought of getting on a plane again exhausts me and I just lie there on the couch and stare at the wall. I decide to eat something and look online for a while, and a message pops up from Therese saying if I'm coming to NYC then maybe we could meet up? I'm excited by this because I like her blog, and I think she likes mine because she mentions the briefcase and the rogue dollars and stuff. I wonder if I should let my image slide and tell her that right now I'm lying on the couch with a bowl of mashed potato and just thinking about flying is making my legs feel paralysed. But in the end I write back and just say hey, yes, that would be great, maybe we can go out taking photos around Brooklyn. I include some exclamation marks then delete them again in case I put her off. Then I put them back in and hit send and immediately regret them again.

Eventually, Lola asks for dinner and I get up to feed her and give her fresh water. She's getting kind of old, I think. The rain seems to have stopped and sunshine cracks up the clouds so we go out to the porch together and I give her some fuss. Lie down, roll over, let me rub your tummy. Want to see a movie together this weekend? I wonder what I'll do tonight. Hot bath, maybe, then play the guitar. I forgot that my legs are supposed to be paralysed. I guess I just stopped thinking about that stuff when it was time to get up and feed the dog.

Fiona & David & baby Finn

2011-06-02T00:00:00.000+01:00

Pit Stop

2011-06-01T00:32:00.017+01:00

Fiona left with the baby to visit her folks back home, and it was like Summer got in her hand luggage and took off with her. The Portland rain is persistent and I now spend most of my time in damp shoes working at my laptop alone in coffee shops.

I got some work while I'm here making mood-boards for a film company back home, and I sat at the counter in The Fresh Pot every day for a week and treated it like my office job. Making mood-boards involves finding photos to illustrate the script, then working on the colours until they create the right atmosphere for the plot. This is exactly the kind of work I love, and when the director emailed me after seeing the final draft and said yes, we're done, that's it, I was almost disappointed. It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that I'm tired of being a fugitive and all I really want is to be working again. So when I got an email from an Icelandic client asking if I'd get some video footage here, I said yes, of course I would. But I have to work fast, I explained. My visa is running out and I need to get off the continent.

"We'll send the camera tomorrow," he promised.

"And will you fly me to Iceland afterwards so I can make videos for you there, too?" I asked, confidently, like an American might have done.

"Alright," he said, surprising me, and I had to reassess the direction I wanted to travel in. Iceland? Again? It's been four years since I lived there and I was sure I'd gotten over it and moved on. But suddenly I like the idea of going back, even if it's just for a short trip. I could get in touch with Ursula and see if she still lives downtown. We used to sit out on her balcony in the midnight sun, and I have romantic notions that everything will be exactly the same this time around. But I haven't spoken to her in years now and for all I know she got over it, too, and moved on.

Still, just the thought of Iceland is making up for the stupid yet crushing heartache I'm feeling about leaving the States. I love it here, I've always loved it here, and all of a sudden I feel panicked about going back to Europe. I didn't do enough; I didn't see New Mexico; I never took Manhattan.

"What about a pit stop in New York?" I asked, my new American confidence taking over completely. The windows of the coffee shop had steamed up and people came in off the streets, sheltering in the doorway from the latest downpour of Portland rain. I wondered what Manhattan Island looks like in the sunshine. "Imagine all the great footage I could get for you there," I wrote.

"Alright, Atkins," came the reply, eventually. "Just don't screw this up."

Things to Make and Do

2011-05-30T00:00:00.005+01:00

{ ETHER CIRCUS }

I took some promo pics of Jake's band down by the old railway tracks last week. They said this summer is going to be the best yet: they have so many shows lined up and there'll be all kinds of festivals and parties — I should go along if I'm still around.

I'd like to, but the truth is I'm not sure how much longer I'll be about. On the one hand, I love the idea of more West Coast. On the other hand, I'm beginning to feel like I'm treading water, and anyway, my visa is running out. I thought about going to Canada briefly and then back again, but I have to be realistic: I spent all my money on an imaginary hitman and I can't afford to "go to Canada briefly and then back again".

I think it might be time to move on.

Tall Tom featuring Jeff the Goat

2011-05-25T00:46:00.003+01:00

This is Tall Tom, who lives in the house next door and is a rapper and a farmer. When he told me this I didn't quite believe him. A rapper and a farmer? How is that even possible? But he just laughed and shrugged like anything is possible and invited me down to his farm to take some photos. Tall Tom has three goats, countless chickens, and a voice like magic jelly beans.

My Heart is a Cold Hard Stone

2011-05-22T02:10:00.003+01:00

Daniel thinks I should stop blogging about heartbreak. He doesn't want to sound like an asshole, he knows I'm going through something of an upheaval, but I'm not doing myself any favours by writing about it.

"Oh," I say, and we sit down on a bench on Mississippi Avenue. It's beautiful here at the moment: the sun is shining and the cherry trees drop blossom all over the place. It's the kind of time of year that would make your heart sing with joy, if you were happy. In fact, if you were here right now, and if you were happy, you might pick this exact moment to write one of those texts to your other half that just say: "I love you!" — just because you want them to know.

"Don't get me wrong," Daniel goes on. "I've written my share of angst in the past. It's just, maybe, you know…"

Yes, I do know. I'm suspicious of Daniel. I suspect he wants to kiss me. He'd already reached for my hand, some time ago, and I'd jumped back and said, uh, I'm sorry, but I'm not ready for this, I'm going through a process here, can we just be friends?

Daniel had lied and said yes, and one night I went along to his show and watched his band play songs about, yes, you guessed it: heartbreak. Why is it okay for musicians to go on and on about their failed romance, but not for me? I wish I were a country music star. I'd write sad songs about walking away from love and then I'd go and sit out on the porch and play them again and again, day after day after day. Blogging is the worst type of writing because once it's out there you can never play it again. You can't take your pain on tour and every night have a different crowd sing along. You just have to pick yourself up and find new content and try not to censor yourself and carry on.

Fiona and I sometimes play guitar together in the evenings. She tries to teach me to sing and play at the same time, but I keep losing my rhythm and the notes go all over the place. Fiona has natural musical ability and I have none: I feel the same way about music as some people feel about drawing stickmen. But Fiona also has great patience and eventually, together, we play Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson and anyone else who ever sat out on their porch in the name of love — and love long gone.

Daniel sighs. I think he's losing patience. But I'm not interested in placating him. I'm finding it difficult to feel anything for the opposite sex right now other than indifference. My heart is a cold hard stone.

"My heart is a cold hard stone," I explain to him. "I already told you I'm going through a process. Don't think you can speed it up just so we can kiss."

"Jesus, Annie," says Daniel, getting up off the bench and going off me. "I'm not trying to kiss you, I'm trying to help you."

"Oh," I say, again.

Yeah, well. I get up, too, and we walk together in silence, down to the end of Mississippi. We pass the street cafés and the food carts and the people sitting around with beers listening to reggae. If you catch anyone's eye in this town they smile at you and you smile back: that's the rule. It seems like spring is turning into summer despite everything, and sometimes I can feel myself turning with it, too. But it just takes time to accept certain things, doesn't it? Life goes on; seasons change; people come and go.

If you love someone, and you're thinking of them, now might be a good time to let them know.

The Briefcase

2011-05-19T00:41:00.006+01:00

A Photo Love Story

David & Lola

2011-05-10T08:26:00.001+01:00

Rolling Around in the Hay

2011-05-09T00:07:00.005+01:00

There's a sign at the supermarket checkout making me feel anxious. "Bring your own bag," it says. "And win a tree".

I do not want to win a tree. Where would I put it? Almost everything I own is in a storage locker in Ireland and here I am still rolling around in the hay with the west coast of America. A tree is the last thing I need.

On the train back through California from Oakland, I'd sat and stared out of the window at the mountains and the pines and felt something happen in my chest. It was a familiar feeling: elation and nerves and unrest. Oh God, not again, not yet... I can't let myself fall in love with America. It's okay to have this stupid crush, yes, but I don't have a work visa and I'm not in the mood for unrequited love just yet.

But my flight back to Ireland left yesterday, and I lay in Fiona and David's garden and watched the aeroplane fly over my head.

"I think I'll stay a little while longer," I called out to them through the open kitchen window. "If that's okay with you guys...".

Luckily, they said yes.

Oakland We Love You

2011-05-06T03:52:00.028+01:00

There were only so many pieces of graffiti we could film before Astrid looked at me and said: "We need to meet more people." These are some of the stories we heard after we started getting out of the car and introducing ourselves:

Gordon

Gordon lost his right leg last July after it went gangrenous. He was on his way back to the hospital when we met him, although he didn't want to go: it's been hard, living like this, and he's scared they're going to want to amputate his other leg now, too. "There's a hole in my foot this big," he told us, shaking his head. Gordon is homeless and spends his nights trying to get some sleep in bus shelters. He has a cousin in Oakland, but he doesn't want to bother her. "She don't really like having me around," he said. "And I don't want to be a burden." Astrid hugged him before he left, and I wondered if the last time someone touched him was when they cut off his leg.

Tevere

Tevere is six years old and the only thing he's interested in is dinosaurs. "This is a Triceratops," he said, holding up his drawing for the camera. "He ate plants and lived in the Cretaceous period." Gordon wondered where the hell Tevere learnt to say all these crazy-ass names. "Didn't you like dinosaurs when you were a kid?" I asked him. "Well, yeah," said Gordon, closing his eyes like he was trying really hard to remember being someone's child. "Yeah, I guess I did."

Chonkie and eNinja

Chonkie and eNinja are turf dancers, marking out their territory on street corners. They've been dancing for years, but it's only in the last while that they've been getting paid for it. Now everybody wants them on their tour. "We're going to Europe this summer," Chonkie tells us. "They're flying us to London in a private jet."

Toni and Antoinette

Toni and Antoinette stopped to watch us filming the dancing. "I've seen those kids on TV," said Toni, and I told her we were making a music video for an English band. "What? You've heard of them in England?" she exclaimed. I said she could be in the video too, if she wanted, and she picked up her baby girl and they smiled for the camera. "We don't have any pictures of us together yet," she said, and I promised I'd print her out a copy and mail it to her.

Nathan

Astrid asked Nathan if he was proud of Oakland and he shook his head and said no. Why not? "It's so violent," he said, like it's obvious. And it is. The mural behind him is a tribute to two young girls who were killed in the building last year. One of the girls was shot in her bed, when a bullet fired through her bedroom window. But Nathan doesn't want to talk: he wants to dance. We filmed him for a while until the yellow school bus pulled up. "That's my mom," he said, pointing at the driver, and we felt a little odd, like we'd just been caught doing something we shouldn't have – filming someone's son. But Nathan's mom just laughed and said oh yeah, he loves to dance, that kid.

Tanisha

Tanisha's housing block has been taken over by gangsters, who broke in in the middle of the night and shot a tenant in front of his kids, telling them they had one week to pack up all their things and get out. Astrid filmed an interview with Nanci: aren't you scared? "No," said Nanci, looking pointedly at the camera. "I'm not scared. I know the police will do right by us, because that's their job." A cop pulled up on a motorbike and Nanci told him the whole story. He listened, he understood, he got them an attorney. It made no difference: every single tenant in the complex has since been evicted.

Monetta and Tachelle

I started talking to these women after the car pulled off, but just as I was asking them if I could take their portrait their pimp appeared from around the corner wanting to know what the fuck was going on. I backed off.

DD and his Cadillac

"May I take your photograph?" I asked DD, after spotting him across the street working on his Cadillac. "Hell no," he said, pulling his cap down over his face. "Well, can I take a picture of your car, then?" I asked, and all of a sudden it was a different story. He turned up the speakers so loud the whole street could hear, and then he stood there posing for me, letting me take as many photos as I liked. "You gettin' those rims in?" he asked.

[Astrid's back in London now, editing the footage, which will be released in September as a video for the new Cornershop track "Milking It". More photographs from our three days together over here.]

East Oakland

2011-05-04T14:56:00.004+01:00

Driving around Oakland's Eastside is unnerving. On International Avenue we'd driven past a man loading a gun, crouched behind a car door, and I'd sank lower into the passenger seat and felt my heart leap in my chest. Astrid tells me that two people were shot dead last night just around the corner from the hotel. Today, in the glaring sunshine, the streets are mostly deserted — except for the obligatory dealers and prostitutes sitting on the corners.

We'd met up with a mural artist called Desi W.O.M.E. who said he'd take us to see some of his paintings (don't call it graffiti: it's art, not crime) so we could get some footage for this music video for Cornershop that Astrid is directing. But then at 2 o'clock he'd had to go and he'd left us on our own.

"You'll be fine," he'd said. "People don't be trippin' on neutral people."

"But how will anyone know that we're neutral people?" I'd worried, wondering what exactly 'trippin' meant, and Desi had looked at us — two pasty white women in a hire car — and laughed.

"At the very worst, they'll just think you're cops."

Astrid had arranged to meet a guy called eNinja on the corner of 88th, so we made our way up there together to give him some money. In exchange, he and his friend Chonkie will dance for the video out on the street the next day. I was excited to meet them – I'd seen a beautiful film of them "turf dancing" on the day of their friend June's funeral. June, they tell me, died when he was shot in the back of the head through his car window, driving through someone else's territory just a couple of blocks away.

Yes, driving through the Eastside is unnerving: but I left all my fears in the desert, didn't I?

"If I do get shot at in Oakland," I thought to myself. "After making shit up on my blog about getting shot when I was in Arizona… then be it on my own head."

eNinja

2011-05-04T08:16:00.008+01:00

The Wait

2011-04-29T00:58:00.005+01:00

What Happened in Arizona

2011-04-27T06:53:00.005+01:00

Before I left the desert I took the worst side of my personality — the side with my temper, each of my insecurities, and my propensity for over-sharing and for being swallowed whole by emotion — and I locked her in the trunk of the car and drove her over the State border into Arizona, where a tall man in a stetson named Emmett Marking shot her in the head and left her for dead.

I'd arranged to meet Emmett in a diner in Nevada, in a small town called Boulder City near the border. I like the way Americans name all their towns 'cities', even when all they have in them is a junk shop and a hardware store. This means I must be from a city of 300 people in rural north Wales, I thought, nervously sitting up at the counter with a strawberry milkshake and trying not to stand out.

When Emmett arrived he walked right up to me and said "Where's the client?" just like that, like he really didn't care who heard him.

"In the trunk of my car," I said, handing him the case of money which he opened right there and then, counting out the dollars like he didn't care who saw him.

We drove in silence, across the Hoover Dam and into Arizona, and when we pulled over I popped open the trunk and Emmett seemed caught off guard all of a sudden. He was shocked, I think, to see that the 'client' — lying knocked out — looked exactly like me. Same hair, same clothing, same face, same frame… same thin white skin made for small Northern islands and the constant threat of rain.

"This is her?" he asked, dumbfounded, and both his posture and the pitch of his voice changed, making him seem a little frightened. I was relieved that he was showing a pathetic human side because, as I'd written his character in the silence of the car, I'd briefly considered having to fall in love with him. Be careful, ladies, of being a woman who is attracted to confidence. One day you may end up falling for an imaginary hit man.

Emmett composed himself, threw the body over his shoulder, and walked off with her behind the boulders. I waited at the car. I was curious, of course, but really — who wants to see something that looks exactly like you get shot in the head, even if it is only the very worst parts of your personality?

The car was too hot to sit in, so I stood in the sun and kicked the sand around for a while. The road was empty and stretched from one horizon to the other and I wondered what was taking so long. I spotted a lizard sitting on a rock and I lay down on the ground and got close to it, really close, right up to its face with my camera. I was just about to reach out my hand and catch it when a gunshot sounded out behind me. The lizard darted off and I knew it was all over. I got up, dusted off my shirt and jeans, and felt better.

On the drive back to Nevada, Emmett twisted and fidgeted in the passenger seat and started to irritate me.

"So, she was your twin sister or something?" he said, eventually.

I was quiet for a moment, just staring straight out at the road in front of me, then I said: "Yes, something like that," and I turned up the radio so he wouldn't keep on talking to me.

The Meeting

2011-04-27T06:30:00.003+01:00

Leaving Las Vegas

2011-04-25T05:43:00.025+01:00

If you ever feel like you've been reading too much meaning into things and everything you see fills you with nostalgia and/or regret, just find a large group of young gay men from Los Angeles and go walking up and down the Las Vegas strip.

How did you end up here anyway, sweetness?

I think she said she's a fugitive of love or some shit.

The fuck? A fugitive of what?

I don't know. I guess she's an asylum seeker or a refugee or something.

Oh, okay. Well, that's cool man, that's cool.

Vegas is everything they say it is in the movies, so if you've ever seen a movie then congratulations: you're excused from ever visiting. Out on Route 395 I check in to a small roadside motel by myself. It's good to be alone and I take a lukewarm motel shower, wonder what I'm going to do next, and then lie down on the synthetic motel pillows and check my phone for mail.

There's an email from Cathy (I kiss the screen), ten corporate messages about nothing (delete, delete, delete), and one proposition from a woman I know in London called Astrid. She's flying to San Francisco to make a music video for Cornershop: do I want to shoot some footage? She's going to film life in Oakland and she's attached references of people 'turfing' – a mixture of breakdancing and bodypopping. She has a Lumix GH2, one local guy called Desi to act as an escort, and she's arriving next week. Am I interested?

I write back and say yes to Astrid and goodbye to Las Vegas.

Motel California

2011-04-24T07:09:00.002+01:00

In the Canyon

2011-04-23T07:34:00.007+01:00

Sam is an old dog and the sun is hot and after a while she's panting so hard that she actually starts throwing up. I try to give her some of my water but I have nothing to pour it into except my cupped hand and she laps at it with her crazy tongue until it's all over the ground. I wonder if maybe we'll meet a hiker, but we haven't seen anyone for over an hour since we started walking.

A thin river runs down below us at the bottom of the canyon, so we slip and slide down the rock until we're at the trickle of water. Sam drinks for a while then drops down under the shade of a boulder and I lie on the ground and look up at the sky above me. I can feel the sun burn into my skin and I wonder what I'm doing here because I know I wasn't made for the desert and the desert wasn't made for me. I was made for the constant threat of rain on small islands in the North Atlantic.

Two eagles circle above me and remind me of being in Tibet, which reminds me of being in China, which reminds me of all that heartache, and I wonder when everything is just going to stop fucking reminding me of something.

On one of my last nights in Chengdu — as it was becoming clear that things back home were not well — I'd hired a Tai Chi teacher to come to my hostel. The sickness in my stomach was stopping me from eating and the language barriers were stopping me from communicating and I was prepared to do anything just to get some rest from thinking.

It was apparent as soon as Xiao Chen arrived that I was in the presence of a great master. He was in his fifties, wearing loose black clothing, and floated rather than walked. As we stood together on the roof garden, with the hazy Chengdu sun setting over the city below us, I felt a little calmer. Or did I? He didn't know any English, but he spoke softly to me in Chinese and gently straightened my posture. When our time was up he took my hands in his and said something to me so very intently that I knew it was sure to be of great help to me. Had he sensed my anguish in my posture? I gestured at him to stay where he was: Please, wait here Xiao Chen, while I get someone to translate for me. Xiao Chen had smiled and bowed his head and I ran off down the steps and in to the hostel.

"Does anyone here speak English? Please? Somebody? I need someone to translate for me – it's an emergency!"

A girl at the bar stood up and said I do, I speak some English, and she ran after me, back up to the roof garden, two steps at a time, come on, please, hurry.

"Here," I said, out of breath. "Please ask this man exactly what it is that he needs to tell me."

The girl nodded and Xiao Chen spoke to her directly, and then she turned to me.

"He wants you to guess how old you think he is," she said.

I cried myself to sleep that night and I didn't care who heard me. I didn't know which part was worse: that my relationship was over, that I was still in China, or that every single one of us is as vain and as shallow and as self-absorbed as the next great Tai Chi master.

No, not everything you encounter in life has to mean something. I look at Sam lying under the boulder — calmer now she's had water — and she licks her lips and thumps her tail at me. The eagles are just two birds above a canyon in the middle of nowhere. It is what it is in Nevada: the rocks, the sky, the dog, and me.

Birds

2011-04-22T16:56:00.000+01:00

In the Darkness of a Northern Californian Forest

2011-04-21T23:54:00.017+01:00

We drove over the Cascades and into northern California and I was glad we weren't taking the coast road because, as any fool knows, coast roads are only for couples and happy people.

The shadows of the mountains suited me and I sat in the back of the van with the dogs, leant my face against the window and looked out at the moonlight flashing through the forest. The Magnetic Zeros played on the stereo — home, let me come home, home is wherever I'm with you — and Lauren said hey, let me know if you want to change the music.

Do you have anything that isn't about relationships? I asked, already knowing well that no such music exists, and Lauren spent a long time scanning her iPod until she turned to me and said I'm sorry, but no, it doesn't look like we do.

Eventually we were all too tired to drive anymore and it was gone 2am so Chris pulled the van down a track through the trees until we found somewhere to park. They set up their bed in the back and I took my tent and my backpack and walked a little further until I found a clearing. The Californian pines are massive and they blocked most of the moonlight and I was glad I had a head-torch to wear while I pitched my tent in the dark.

I put on all my clothes — three pairs of socks, two sweaters, my fleece — and got into my sleeping bag and sat up at the edge of the tent long after I saw the lights in the van go out. The last patches of winter snow were still clinging to the base of some trees and it was hard to believe we'd be in desert the next morning. I listened to the stillness of the forest and the occasional rustling in the bushes and wondered if it was raccoons, or owls, or bears? Eventually I began to feel sleepy so I zipped up the door and lay down and tried to figure myself out.

I'm afraid of rejection, but I'm not afraid to say it. I'm afraid of getting hurt — of pain and loss and anguish — but I'm not afraid to sleep by myself, in a tent, in the darkness of a northern Californian forest.

Crossing Nevada

2011-04-18T09:48:00.002+01:00

Learning How to Drive

2011-04-17T00:03:00.006+01:00

Lauren's been working all day and by the time we leave the interstate it's dark and she's asleep in the back with the two dogs. The van is bigger than anything I've driven before but it's okay. The moon is nearly full and it lights up the lake and the warning signs that just say ROCKS up ahead of me. The headlights on the van are weak and Chris shrugs and says he doesn't mind driving if I'm uncomfortable but it's okay, I like it: I feel good and in control and free.

On my first night back in the States there'd been a terrible storm and I'd woken up to the sound of something knocking. I'd got out of bed to investigate and found America sitting in the basement. She was up on top of the dryer, swinging her bare feet and banging her heels against the metal. She looked about ninety years old, wearing a red silk slip and smoking a cigarette, but her skin was so creased and her chest was so flat that for a second I couldn't tell if she was a woman or an old man in drag.

"Where've you been?" she'd snapped at me.

"I was away," I said, afraid of saying the wrong thing, trying to think of something that might excuse me. "I was learning some long, hard lessons about life."

America didn't flinch. "And during recess?" she asked.

"During recess?" I'd repeated, giving myself a moment to think. "During recess, I was learning how to drive."

On the Road

2011-04-16T00:00:00.002+01:00

How to Say Yes

2011-04-14T11:50:00.000+01:00

Chris and Lauren are going climbing in Red Rock Canyon, just outside of Vegas, and I'm welcome to ride with them through California if I'm prepared to share the driving. I'd met them at the party last weekend.

"Can you drive stick?" asked Chris. "We're taking the van."

I said yes, of course I can, and I didn't mention I've never driven here before. This opportunity is too good to miss. Nevada is an 18 hour drive away, but that's without any stopping. I'll need to bring a tent – we'll camp in the Sierras on the way.

"Do you climb?" asked Tom, and I'd hesitated and then said no. It's one thing pretending to be able to drive an American van on the other side of the road, but I don't want to find myself caught halfway up a rockface in the desert just because my mother never taught me how to say no.

"But I'll bring my camera," I say, and they say okay then, neat.

I like that they used the word 'neat', because of course what I really am right now is an unhinged mess. But that's between you and me. It's the weekend on the west coast of America, and there's no reason why any of them need to know that about me just yet.

Route 97

2011-04-14T01:48:00.004+01:00

Correspondence

2011-04-13T19:25:00.006+01:00

Dear Annie

You may remember me from having contacted you some years ago after searching for knitting patterns on the Internet. I didn't find quite what I had in mind, but I did find your blog.

I am sorry to hear of your recent upset. I followed your last railroad trip here with great interest as I too had taken a similar journey, albeit by automobile in the 1970s. I read now with some excitement of your intention to head south towards the Nevada desert. It is a long, lonely route and you must take good care not to run out of gas. Don't assume that you will make it on what you have left for another 40 miles — you most likely won't reach a filling station for another fifty.

After my husband left it was all I could do to sit and sift through the letters and photographs of the time we shared together. It was many months before I too found it in myself to pack my case and move on. Annie, you have taken many beautiful pictures of the men and women who have graced your life, but you should be cautious not to look back with rose-tinted glasses. May I suggest that in your next relationship you try photographing petty arguments, inertia, and eating crackers in front of the television.

I think you will find what you need out in the desert.

Yours,

Esther M. Clarke

Mail

2011-04-12T07:38:00.003+01:00

Telepathy and Airmail and Love and Stuff

2011-04-11T10:50:00.020+01:00

Portland is good and friendly and it feels like living in a never-ending music festival. There are bands and food stalls and vintage shops everywhere and I'm pretty sure I won't be leaving without getting some kind of a face tattoo.

On Saturday I was cycling around the city when Fiona texted me. There's a letter for me at home, arrived via airmail. She'll leave it by the telephone. I sat down on a bench at a farmers' market and wondered who it might be from. Dearest Annie...

No.

Farmers' markets, I'm going to warn you, are for couples. Do not go there alone. Do not sit there, alone, thinking back to how this was something you used to do together. Things get divided in break-ups, you know. If he's going to keep making elaborate breakfasts then I'm going to keep wandering around sunny markets. He can keep New York, and I will keep the Wild West. He can keep the cinema, and I will keep listening to lonely country music late at night when everyone else has their heads down getting some well-deserved rest.

But really, late last night I was at a party, with a guy called Tom from Los Angeles who owns the cowboy boot store down the road. I wasn't going to accept the invitation — I did not come here to party, Los Angeles, I came here to brood — but my mother's voice rang in my head: sweet suffering Jesus, Annie, just go.

We arrived early and stood in the kitchen with a handful of people and I wished there was a dog to stroke. Tom broke the ice and said: “Annie has a great story... do you want to tell it or should I?" I didn't quite know what he meant by 'story' but seems my special superpower is oversharing I jumped right in with all the details anyway. I took them to Everest and back again, right up to the anxiety attack at Shanghai airport when I realised I was going home to no home. That's the story you meant, right Tom?

Er, not exactly, no.

Oh.

But my audience was understanding. Especially the blonde girl from California who later grabbed me on the sweaty dance floor and ground her body up and down against mine – ice well and truly broken. “Oh girl,” she said. “You are in so much trouble.” Alright California, I know.

Yes, Portland is good and friendly, even if I can't always tell if I'm happy to be somewhere good when I'm sad, or sad to be somewhere good when I'm unhappy. It shifts, and there are better days and bad. I made David and Fiona laugh three times today. Three times! Each time I went upstairs to make a note of it in my journal. Dear Diary: I just made David and Fiona laugh. Am I getting my sense of humour back or do they just have gas?

Another thing I like to note is that despite this sorry, sorry break-up stuff, I'm not always missing the feeling of love. I can feel it in this house that I'm staying in and I felt it when Jacob helped the widower with his dead wife's stuff. I feel it in the emails from friends, when unexpected letters arrive via airmail, and whenever a stranger gets in touch.

I can feel it inside me, too, you know. I felt it, eventually, on that bench at the farmers' market, where I broke all the rules of our no-contact agreement and telepathed at him very hard. “I don't want to divide up the world,” I said, with my head down and my eyes shut. “I want you to have everything you want. I hope that right now this very minute you're having an elaborate breakfast and wandering around a sunny foreign market.”

Then I opened one eye, checked the time, and added: “Even if it's three in the morning wherever you are, over on the other side of the world.”

The Letter

2011-04-09T22:49:00.004+01:00

A Pair of Boots & Two Sacks of Clothes

2011-04-06T20:01:00.034+01:00

There's a pair of cowboy boots sitting in the window of a shop downtown. The heels and the toe are a little scuffed and I wonder who they belonged to. The label says $89 and I decide to go in and try them on. Who knows?

The store's owner, Jacob, says of course I can try them on. They're a real bargain — hardly worn. He reaches for them from the window and I sit down in an old armchair to pull them on.

The door jangles and a large, nervous-looking man squeezes in with two old sacks of clothes.

"I'm sorry," says Jacob. "But we're not really in a position to be buying any more stock right now."

The man puts down the sacks and takes off his hat. "I thought you might just like to take a look," he explains, and I think I hear his voice crack. "They were my wife's clothes."

Jacob is not the kind of guy who turns away a man whose voice is cracking while he's walking around town carrying two sacks of his dead wife's clothes. He says well, let's have a look and see what you've got there, sir, and I leave them to it and walk up and down the shop floor. The boots fit, and I'm beginning to look better. Do I really need another pair of shoes to make myself feel tougher? I have limited funds and I was hoping to get on the road — maybe through the desert as far as Nevada. I think about the case full of dollars. How much is left? I don't know.

Jacob and the man go through the sacks of dresses. They don't look like much, and I think that this must be the difference between vintage and just plain old. But Jacob is gentle: he says hey, look at this one, and this one, and this one here is beautiful. Yeah, Jacob is a good guy, maybe he'll write out some kind of a cheque after all.

I can't watch and I don't feel I should be here anymore. So I quietly put the boots back in the window, sneak out of the store, and close the door. When I get back to the house I pull the case out from under the bed and count out the dollars. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty... There's $860 left. It's enough: enough for boots and the next two months and enough to get to Nevada through the desert, I'm sure.

But when I get back to the store the next morning, the boots aren't there anymore.

$860

2011-04-05T00:04:00.000+01:00

That Way Around

2011-04-03T18:26:00.012+01:00

David and Fiona's spare room in Oregon is sunny. They'd put a large vase of flowers on the dresser and marked three drawers with my name on them, so I knew to make myself at home. I woke up late for the first time in weeks, and I could hear them laughing with their tiny, beautiful new baby. Lola's toenails tapped across the floorboards outside my door, and for a split second I felt peace and warmth wash over me, and I tried to hold on to it for a while.

They'd all come to meet me at the airport the night before, and Fiona had said hey, you don't have to do anything for the next few days except bunk down and get some rest. I know I look like shit. My skin is bad, and I have large bags under my eyes from waking up early every morning just to fit in a few extra hours of missing him. There's a map of the world hanging on the wall, and I lie there in the bed for a while just staring at the impossibly massive distance between Beijing and Portland. It's been a long journey, this separation, and the two cities couldn't be further apart. I know, I know, they're actually quite close in terms of the globe... but I didn't get here that way around.

In almost two months now I've only spent two short hours with him — the man I used to begin and end every single day with — just so we could say goodbye. It's been hard staying strong and I'm exhausted. The worst is over though, right? I'm away again, new city, no memories, China is dead to me, and all my stuff back home is packed up in boxes. Louise had helped me shift them across Dublin, where we'd overshared with the guy at Storage World, Aidan.

"She's running away to America," said Louise, as we unloaded the boxes. "And she doesn't know when she'll be back."

Aidan had nodded and ticked the form: No Return Date Specified. Of course I'd mistaken this for compassion, and carried on talking.

"I promise you, Aidan," I'd assured him. "One day I'll travel the world when my heart isn't breaking."

An Old Brown Briefcase

2011-03-31T01:58:00.006+01:00

I packed light for America: jeans, boots, three checked shirts, and an old brown briefcase stuffed with dollar bills. Cathy had given me the money at a small railway station in northern England, the day we parted ways again.

“I can't take a thousand pounds from you,” I'd said, when she told me she wanted to lend me enough to get away.

“But you have to,” she said, handing me the case. “I got it all out in single dollar bills and they won't exchange them again.”

This year is the twentieth year of our friendship and I cried when I got on the train. She kissed me on the forehead, then stood there on the platform until we'd disappeared around the bend.

Back to America

2011-03-29T07:27:00.002+01:00

I should be working again by now, or at least have somewhere to live. Tibet is already a fading memory and China, well, China is basically dead to me. But then one night, Fiona calls.

Hello?

A job and somewhere to live?

Are you crazy?

This is no time for such trivial things, girl.

This is time to get back to America, head west and get the old band back together.

Are you still there?

Annie?

Hello?

Regan in Stoneybatter

2011-03-28T23:04:00.000+01:00

Rosemary's Bedroom

2011-03-27T17:32:00.008+01:00

I still haven't decided on where to live or what to do next, and Regan says well, Rosemary's going to Boston, why not come back here for the weekend and sleep in your old bedroom?

It's strange being back in the cottage. My towel is still in the bathroom, and there's a long rail of beautiful clothes where my desk used to be. Rosemary said make yourself at home, help yourself to whatever you want, but I'm too apprehensive about being back here to touch anything. I put my bags down softly, close the door behind me, and then just lie on the bed for a while in what is now Rosemary's bedroom.

I used to live here with David and Fiona, over a year ago, after falling madly in love with them. They kept the house open to a steady stream of people, and Fiona — whose special superpower is chatting — would hold court while David started cooking. Usually I'd join them and share their friends with them; other times I'd be happy to stay at my desk, hearing their laughter come in from the kitchen. Sometimes Lola would come in to me with her tail thumping and we'd sit here quietly together: me working; dog panting.

Fiona liked to play guitar, and I liked to piggyback off her talent and talk about starting a band. We'd sit up late together playing and singing, but mostly she'd take care of the music and I'd get busy designing the tour posters and the fame and the glory. Fergal once asked had we ever recorded? Fiona said YES! and David laughed and said guys, just because you once made a webcam video of yourselves for YouTube doesn't make you actual recording artists. And then we laughed too and made up another stupid song.

But people grow up and move on. When they told me they were having a baby they took care to break it to me gently. “Maybe,” Megan had teased me, “they'll take you for a day out at Alton Towers so you know you're still special.” They got married, packed up and left for America, and I moved across town to live with a man in Portobello.

Yep, people grow up and move on, and sometimes it works out, and other times you end up remembering things very carefully, up in Rosemary's bedroom.

Tibetan man and his terrific horse

2011-03-25T08:28:00.010Z

We met this guy on our way back down from Base Camp. He was on his way, Wangden translated for me, to visit his girlfriend in the next village.

I found it quite difficult photographing people in Tibet because I didn't have the language skills to say "hey, do you mind if I point this camera in your face until I get a satisfactory picture of you for my blog?". But people with animals are easier, because I love animals. When you've just spent ten minutes admiring someone's terrific horse they'll let you take as many pictures as you like.

EDIT: I sometimes get quite confrontational replies from Free Tibet groups on twitter saying that posting these pictures is just adding to Chinese propaganda that Tibet is a happy, peaceful country.

Tibet is, of course, under occupation. I just don't have any photos to communicate that. Why not? Because it's also a beautiful, rugged country full of beautiful Buddhists, and that's what I was there photographing. Yes, there were soldiers with guns marching all over Lhasa, and yes I was forbidden to point my camera at them. Most people in Free Tibet groups have never actually been there, but I don't really subscribe to the view that tourism in Tibet is unethical. I think if you go with a grassroots agency like Wangden's, whose priority is to pay back into local native communities, it's a huge contribution to them maintaining their own society and identity.

I did get quotes for my trip to Base Camp from some cheap Chinese agencies that were half the price, but the guides don't speak Tibetan and so I would never have had the opportunity, for example, to sit drinking tea with the nuns in Rombuk Monastery. Also, I doubt these (unpaid) guides would have sat up with me all night when I got sick like my guys did; and they certainly don't donate any of their profits to orphanages like Wangden does.

If anyone is looking for guides (and it's not legal to be in Tibet without them) then I totally recommend Snowlion Tours. I was looked after so well and invited in to so many places that I just would have missed if I hadn't have gone with them. Also, they were just great, funny, nice, warm guys. Wangden told me Sonan had said to him: "guiding this girl is easy, it's just like going on a road trip with a friend". I liked hearing this, because by the end of the trip that's how I felt about them.

Thank you

2011-03-23T12:56:00.005Z

I'd like to say a massive thanks to everyone involved in this year's Irish Blog Awards. I'm so sorry I couldn't be there on the night, but I was at a Buddhist retreat centre in England trying to let go of attachment to material things. (Needless to say, I wasn't quite able to avoid the gift shop).

I've been going on and on about myself on the internet for five years now. Every so often I get cold feet and wonder if I should just, eh, stfu. Other times I am so extremely boring [read: happy] that I have nothing really to go on and on about and I kind of trail off. But most of the time I do love blogging, even when it gets me into certain kinds of trouble (like offending my mama, for example, or falling in love).

I really wasn't expecting to win again, so thank you to everyone who nominated me, everyone who comments, Karen for going up and collecting my award for me, all the other Irish bloggers who make it such a great and weird environment (particularly this one), and everybody else who's just lurking in the background. Thank you!

Rocks

2011-03-22T00:43:00.000Z

It's hard being back in Dublin because there are memories on every street corner like small piles of stones just waiting to get me.

Walking down Fade Street I tripped over a rock shaped exactly like the first time we went out for dinner. I picked it up with both hands and suddenly I was right back there sitting across from him. We'd talked about sharing a lobster, I remember, but then we didn't. I didn't trust myself with it. It was hard enough trying not to spill my drink and my emotions and this crazy love I already felt for him all over the table.

The rocks up near Ranelagh are smaller but smoother. I kicked one along the footpath in yesterday's evening sunshine, remembering how I'd race down here beside the canal every day after work on my bicycle. Each day I would make it a little bit faster, just so I could burst through the door just that little bit sooner. Then I'd hang around the kitchen while he made dinner: steal a carrot, and life felt good and warm and familiar.

But there are already too many rocks in this story. What can I do? I can't pick up every single one and fling it in the Liffey. Shouldn't they be cleared away by Dublin City Council? I've paid my taxes just like anybody. I sigh and pull the covers back over my head in Jenna's spare bedroom. This whole town is a complete and utter shambles.

Lost or free

2011-03-21T08:16:00.008Z

My parents want to know what I'm going to do next and I don't really know.

"I don't really know," I say, from Cathy's house in England on the phone. We'd stayed up late last night talking about love, in all its stupid forms, until eventually I'd got my appetite back and Cath had gone and heated up some soup, even though she had conjunctivitis and it was 4 in the morning.

"Is there anything on the horizon work-wise?" my father wants to know.

I sigh. Not really, no. "I heard there might be some action thriller coming up sometime in Eastern Europe," I say. "I might try to get on that."

"Well, that sounds encouraging," says my dad, and both of us sit there on the phone wondering what part of "hearing" that there "might be" some kind of "action thriller" coming up "sometime" that sounds all that encouraging.

I don't know. Do I feel lost or do I feel free? Sometimes they're the same thing and I wonder if maybe I should just keep moving. I'd said to him, as we'd broken up and he'd wondered where I'd live, that I might not be very good at relationships but that I am really good at being single and homeless. And it's true: I have no house but I have good friends. I have no plan but I have a car. I have no money but I have this great black leather jacket and I can play Life Goes On from beginning to end on my guitar.

If anyone wants to buy two pot plants, a map of the world, and a bin-bag full of greying knickers: call me.

Woman in Xining

2011-03-20T16:13:00.001Z

Back

2011-03-19T11:55:00.008Z

From: Megan
To: Annie

Annie! I'm so sorry to hear about you and C. Where are you? Are you back? Do you have somewhere to live?

I want to lend you Mog for a few weeks for cuddles, I find she really helps.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

From: Annie
To: Megan

Megan! Thanks, but doesn't Mog hate cuddles? Last time I tried to touch her she hissed at me, scratched my wrist, then went and sat behind the fridge. I'm not sure that feeling rejected by your cat is going to help me get over the end of my most beautiful relationship, but you are sweet and kind for thinking of me.

And yes, I am back :)

.

Endings

2011-03-17T11:25:00.001Z

My relationship didn't quite survive the winter. It started coughing around December and then ground to a halt last week somewhere in deepest darkest China. Now it's my last morning here and I'm lying in my hostel bed, listening to backpackers below the window chatting and smoking. Tomorrow, they're saying, they'll climb Qingcheng Mountain — which is what I did last week on my birthday. They sound glad to be here: good and alive and happy.

Sometimes I like to imagine living out the rest of my life alone in a Wyoming cabin, one hundred miles from nobody. Then there'll be no more relationships and no more break-ups: just lighting fires and fixing punctures. But really, I don't think I actually want to live my whole life alone. How can I? I have all this love inside of me. I want someone to care for; someone to do beautiful things for. Maybe I just need more practise.

"No, no, you don't have to be alone," Cathy had said, softly, last night on the phone. (I love her).

I go to the window and watch three girls holding hands crossing the road. Chinese kids are so affectionate with each other: even groups of teenage boys will walk down the street with their arms around each other. When I get back to Dublin I'm going to start holding hands with Megan. I check the time on my phone (should I let Megan know?).

There's a knock at the door – it's Wangden. Somehow, after saying goodbye in Tibet, we'd ended up at the same hostel together, in the third biggest city in China. He says it's karma, but this is my own personal Buddhist mentor so of course everything's karma.

"Are you ready to go?"

Kind of. My rucksack is packed and I need to fly to Shanghai, and then home. Or at least, fly back to Dublin and find somewhere new to call my home.

Wangden comes to the window. "I know this has been a big trip for you," he says. "First time in Asia and everything."

"First time to Everest and everything," I add, shaking my hair and getting all cocky.

Wangden laughs but it's too late, he already knows me. He knows I've had sadness swelling up inside of me since landing, on the night trains and in the hostels all the way from Beijing. Is it possible, does he think, for a relationship to end without feeling any kind of suffering? [This is the third or fourth or fifth time that I've asked him]. He shakes his head again, no. Not even the highest Buddhist masters can ever just completely let go. Two years with one person is a lot of attachment: this will take strength and time and patience.

I pick up my rucksack. I'm ready for strength and time and patience. Despite wanting different things in life, I know that we can be kind and gentle with each other, at least.

Everest Base Camp

2011-03-13T08:41:00.000Z

Where the Mountain Used to Be

2011-03-12T08:40:00.002Z

It takes two hours to get to Everest the next morning, over the high mountain pass and through two military checkpoints. But when we get to Base Camp the crisp blue sky has disappeared and thick cloud hangs on the horizon. It blocks everything from sight, except for a flock of crows and Rombuk Monastery, the highest monastery in the world.

"That's the space where the mountain used to be," Wangden shouts over the wind at me, pointing at the cloud as we jump out of the jeep.

"I'm so sorry," says Sonon. "But you know they say Everest just looks like a fat old man in a group of beautiful women? There are better mountains."

We mess around in the fog for a while, Wangden and Sonan and Yeshi and me, taking pictures of each other by the plinth — Mount Qomolangma Base Camp, Altitude 5300 Metres — but the wind cuts through the blankets tied around our waists and stings our faces. There's nobody here but us and the cold: the tents have been packed up for the winter and everybody's gone home.

"Look," says Wangden, pointing towards the building. A woman in long red robes waves at us through the fog. She calls out to us in Tibetan and beckons us to come in, and we follow her up to the monastery. The courtyard is brightly painted; quiet and still and sheltered from the wind, and we take a minute to rub the blood back into our fingers.

"She says the weather has been like this for days," Wangden translates for me. "And they haven't seen the mountain in nearly a week. Do you want to go inside and drink tea?"

Yes, I want to drink tea. The guys go to the temple to bless themselves, and I let the nun lead me down a narrow stone corridor and through a small door, which is more like a hole in the wall. The room is low-ceilinged and dark, except for thin shafts of light beaming in through a low window. At first I think there's strange music playing, but as my eyes adjust I realise it's a group of nuns and a monk sitting around the stove, chanting. The music I'm hearing is their voices and the sound of the wind outside harmonising. One nun locks eyes with me and smiles, and makes the international sign for: Please, warm your hands by the fire, child.

I sit on a bench and drink the butter tea that's handed to me. I can feel the altitude in my head and in my stomach, but I'm so exhilarated to be here and this room is so peaceful that I just ignore it. Outside, the cloud still sits low and thick over the mountains and nothing seems to be changing. The guys come in from the temple and join me, and we all stay there very quietly for a while, absorbed by the chanting.

Eventually, Sonan says we can either stay at the monastery for a couple of days and hope the weather clears, or head back down to Lhasa. Of course I want to stay, but Wangden points out that the Chinese are closing Tibet to foreigners for the entire month of March. I have to get out of here and back to China.

It's okay. I'm just so happy to have been here, and the world really doesn't need another photograph of that mountain.

Boys on the cliffs above Shegar

2011-03-10T02:45:00.002Z

Feeling the altitude

2011-03-09T04:30:00.009Z

Shegar is 4300 metres above sea level and I'm beginning to feel it. There's a woman in the bar who wants to sing for me, but Wangden warns me that if I agree then she'll expect me to sing for her, too. But what Wangden doesn't know is that I'm my mother's daughter: of course I'm going to sing.

But when it's my turn to stand up the altitude goes to my head and I have to sit back down again and catch my breath. My stomach turns over so I stagger outside and try to get some air. It's cold in Shegar. It must be minus 10 out here, and it hadn't felt that much warmer inside the bar.

I find my way back to my room — a stone outhouse — in the dark. There's no electricity, and Sonan comes in with a candle and a hot water bottle. Wangden sits on the edge of my bed. He presses his hand to my forehead, which I find calming, and then he takes my pulse, which I find alarming.

"Is it normal?" I whisper, hoarsely, trying frantically to remember if a slow pulse or a fast pulse is better.

"It's okay," says Wangden, my own personal Buddhist, smiling at me gently. "But if you're still feeling ill after one hour, I think we should go lower."

He goes outside and talks to the guys. I shiver in the bed and listen to Yeshi packing up the jeep again. Sonan had already told me that last summer his whole group ended up on oxygen tanks in hospital back in Lhasa. But I don't want to go lower! I came all this way to see Everest in the sunrise tomorrow morning. I'm 5000 miles from home and only two more hours away from that mountain.

Wangden comes back in and puts his hand to my forehead again. He says he'll stay with me, and I tell him about not wanting to miss the mountain.

"My father is very proud of me," I explain. "He keeps saying to people 'my daughter is going to Everest by herself', even when he's talking to my mum and my best friend, in case they've forgotten who I am."

Wangden laughs. He gets up and finds me yet another blanket and puts it over the bed.

"But you're not by yourself, Annie," he says. "I don't think you ever really will be."

Just having him here is calming. We talk for a while in the moonlight coming in through the window. I show him pictures of my family, and he asks if my mother is an artist. How can he tell?

"She's wearing a peculiar hat," he says, as if it's obvious.

Then he shows me pictures of his own parents, who are also wearing peculiar hats, I point out, but their excuse is that they're Tibetan nomads. I ask him about his childhood and he tells me about travelling the grasslands with their forty yaks. Eventually my legs stop shaking: I think I must have acclimatised because I can breathe again without concentrating.

"Maybe it was just hypochondria," I say, sitting up and drinking some water. But Wangden's never heard of hypochondria so I have to explain it to him.

"You know, it's when you worry that you're ill when you're not ill, and that makes you feel ill?"

Wangden smiles and shakes his head. "I think this must be a Western thing," he says.

Tibetan Monks

2011-03-04T16:54:00.000Z

How Sonan ended up in prison

2011-03-03T16:27:00.004Z

Some years ago, Sonan decided to leave Tibet forever and cross the border. He'd heard there were two Nepalese guys bridging the Arun river with a rope and a harness, selling freedom for only 8000 yuan per person.

"So," said Sonan to his friend, the Monk. "How about it?"

The Monk was interested. He'd had enough of living under occupation, and leaving legally was out of the question. The Chinese Government don't just go handing out passports to Tibetans.

"But you can't go dressed like this," said Sonan, tugging at the Monk's red robes. "The Nepalese soldiers will know we're Tibetan. They'll send us right back over here and straight in to a Chinese prison."

The Monk agreed. He'd buy some ordinary clothes from the market and they'd wait a week for his hair to grow out a bit. In the meantime, they'd both brush up on their Nepali so as not to stand out too much when they arrived at the first village.

* * *

"You really wanted to leave Tibet so badly that you'd risk jail?" I ask Sonan up in our guesthouse bar in the middle of nowhere. The four of us are huddled around the stove in the middle of the room, rubbing our hands together and waiting for our food.

"I was 23," says Sonan, pouring yak butter tea. "I wanted to see something."

"Okay," I say, taking the hot cup from him. "Go on."

* * *

It took all day to get to the border. They abandoned their car and found the two Nepalese guys waiting for them, one on either side of the river as promised. The rope looked safe enough tied between two trees, but Sonan hadn't known how fast the water flowed there. The gorge wasn't wide, but it was deep and dark and loud, and the sound of the water crashing over the rocks below unnerved him.

"It's okay," shouted the Monk, handing him two wads of cotton. "Stuff these in your ears so you can't hear it."

The Monk went first. He said goodbye to Tibet forever, put on the harness, and pulled himself across the river. Sonan looked back at the Tibetan desert fading in the sunset and wondered if they were making a mistake by leaving. But the Nepalese guys were getting impatient. The Monk waved at him from the other side of the Arun. It was no time to stand there looking at the desert. And so Sonan also said goodbye to Tibet forever, kissed the ground, and crossed the river.

* * *

"But how did you know where to go," I ask. "When you got to the other side?"

"We didn't," says Sonan. "The Nepalese guys packed up their rope and disappeared. It was just me and the Monk and the forest."

Sonan stands up and pours more tea. The bar doesn't seem to be getting any warmer: I can see my breath in front of me when I speak. But this is the Tibetan highlands in winter, and this is what I signed up for.

"So what did you do?"

"We started walking."

* * *

Sonan and the Monk walked on and on through the forest, further and further down the hill, until they found a cave. They lit a fire to keep away any tigers and decided to try and get some rest. They would walk again in the morning.

But Sonan couldn't sleep. All he could think about was Nepal right there outside of the cave. It sounded different and it felt different: he was sure he could smell fruit growing on the trees. But he wasn't going to stay here. His plan was to keep going until he reached India, where he'd take his first look at the sea. Tomorrow, he thought. When we get to the first village, I'm going to sit there in the sunshine drinking fresh mango juice.

* * *

"Weren't you scared of the tigers?" I ask.

Sonan and Wangden laugh. When you've just escaped China over the Nepalese border, you're not afraid of tigers. You're afraid of soldiers.

"Did you think you'd get caught?" I ask Sonan. "Were you afraid?"

"We did get caught," he says. "And yes, I was very afraid."

* * *

By the time they reached the first village they must have dropped 2000 metres just from walking downhill all day.

"Can you hear me?" shouted Sonan to the Monk. "I can't hear anything!"

"Do you still have the cotton in your ears?" shouted the Monk, but Sonan didn't. Their ear drums had popped in the change of altitude. They felt light-headed and dizzy and they held on to each other and tried to walk steadily.

"I think we have low-altitude sickness," said Sonan, although he hadn't even realised it existed.

The village was a small pile of shops and houses on the edge of the forest. Nepalese children ran out to meet them and took them to a hut where they could buy a drink.

"Do you have any fresh mango juice?" asked Sonan in his best Nepali, unaware that he was still shouting.

"I think you're shouting, Sonan," shouted the Monk in Tibetan.

The barman looked them up and down. Tibetans! If he helped them he'd be thrown into jail by the military.

"You can't stay here," he said. "You'll have to keep going."

* * *

"But that's terrible," I say. "He wouldn't even give you a drink?"

"There are spies all around the border," Sonan shrugs. "Nepalese spies and the Chinese Government. Nobody wants to end up in prison."

"So what did you do?"

"We kept walking until we found a guesthouse that took us in," says Sonan. "And in the morning two men came in to our room with guns and that was it, we were saying hello to Tibet again."

* * *

After a short drive back to the border, Sonan and the Monk were met by Chinese soldiers and thrown into jail. They shared a small cell with ten other Tibetans and a hole in the ground to shit in. They weren't given any food to eat and they didn't know when, if ever, they'd be freed. The Monk marked the days on the wall one by one, and in the end they calculated that they'd been there for five months before they were released again.

"What an awful, awful punishment," I say, shaking my head. I'd really thought they were going to make it as far as the Indian ocean.

"No, no," says Sonan, quickly. "We weren't punished. We were just put in prison. No torture."

This makes me laugh. "In Ireland," I say. "Being thrown in jail with no food for five months is kind of considered punishment."

Sonan laughs too. "Okay," he says. "But the local Tibetans brought food to us every single day. And my mother never found out. She still doesn't know where I was to this day."

"So what did you tell her when you got out?"

"I told her," says Sonan. "That I'd been staying with my friend."

Wass your name

2011-03-02T07:21:00.002Z

Every time we stop at a village a giggle of kids come running out at us. In a hamlet outside of Shegar two tiny little girls throw their arms around my neck and I let them hug me and play with my hair. They're filthy with dirt from the desert and their noses are dripping with snot in the wind, but their skin is warm from being out in the sun all day and it feels good just to be getting a cuddle, so I don't care.

"Wass your name, wass your name," they say, imitating the Westerners that pass through here in the summers.

"It's Annie," I say, and then I ask them for their names, too, but they don't answer me.

"Wass your name, wass your name," they just keep saying, and then Wangden and Sonan hand them chunks of yak meat and candy and I climb back up in to the jeep because we have to keep going.

On the road to Everest

2011-03-01T13:31:00.002Z

In a jeep full of boiled yak

2011-03-01T13:18:00.002Z

In the morning the guys pack up the jeep for the three-day trip to Base Camp and Tashi the housekeeper gives us two baskets full of yak meat.

"If you want to stop at villages for pictures along the way, you have to tell Yeshi, okay?" she says. "Otherwise he's just going to drive right by."

I get it: the villages don't interest the guides. It's like a Tibetan coming to Ireland to photograph Crumlin rather than the Cliffs of Moher.

"And be careful up there," says Tashi, waving us goodbye. "You feel sick you just come back."

It's okay, I don't need to be told. I'm too much of a hypochondriac to let myself die alone at the bottom of a mountain. And anyway, last night's fears have faded in the sunshine: I'm in a jeep packed with potatoes and candy and boiled yak, sleeping bags and blankets and hats, and three Tibetan Buddhists for guides.

My Three Tibetan Guides

2011-03-01T12:41:00.004Z

Yeshi, Wangden, and Sonan.

The night before I leave Lhasa for Everest

2011-02-28T15:56:00.002Z

It's the night before I leave Lhasa for Everest and I'm in bed when suddenly I feel a pain in my lower leg. It's late and I'm tired and I don't think anything of it because come on, it's just a pain in my lower leg, but then I remember that this is the first sign of Deep Vein Thrombosis and I sit up straight and I start to panic.

It must have been the cramped conditions on the train, I think, after the long haul flight, I think. It's getting worse. I can feel the blood clot moving up my calf and I get up and pace back and forth and try to calculate how long it'll take to get to my heart.

Now I can feel a slight headache start. I go to the mirror and check my nose for blood: altitude sickness. Nothing. I wonder if I should take some aspirin. Why didn't I bring any aspirin? Maybe they have some down at reception. I put on a robe and sneak down the stairs but it's 2am and the lobby is cold and dark, so I take my altitude sickness and my Deep Vein Thrombosis and the three of us creep back up the stairs again and get back into bed again until eventually, thankfully, we all fall asleep together.

When I wake up in the morning I'm all alone. Any pain is gone and it's bright outside and it's time to get going.

Dodging taxis and donkeys and cops

2011-02-28T02:12:00.002Z

Sonan and I ride back through Lhasa on a rickshaw, dodging taxis and donkeys and cops. I still don't understand any Tibetan but I notice people say something that sounds like "allez" a lot, so I say it, too, in an attempt to fit in. When I get back to Ireland, I think, I'm going to start wearing two long plaits in my hair and when people comment on it I'll just say, oh, what, these old things?

I ask Sonan if he'll be trying to get a passport, and he says yes he'll try but he thinks he blew it by escaping to Nepal when he was 23 and getting caught by the Chinese military. But that's a story for another time, he says.

"You'll have to ask your mother when your birthday is," I say.

"I already did," says Sonan. "It's March 15th."

This sounds familiar. "I think that's Wangden's birthday too," I say, surprised.

Sonan doesn't bat an eyelid. "This day is a special day in the Tibetan calendar," he laughs. "I think every mama in Tibet tells her son that's when his birthday is."

Lhasa, capital of Tibet

2011-02-26T12:44:00.001Z

Tibetan Sky Burials

2011-02-26T04:09:00.001Z

"This is where the bodies are fed to the eagles," says Sonan, my guide, above a bright blue river in the mountains outside of Lhasa.

"I don't understand," I say, confused. "Which bodies?"

"The dead bodies, of the people," he says, and goes on to explain sky burials to me.

When a Tibetan dies, the family take the body to the mountainside where a monk breaks it into pieces with a knife and an axe. Eagles start to gather on the cliffs, while the monk's assistants use rocks to pound the flesh and bones to a pulp. Eventually the birds are summoned, and they fly down and take the lumps of flesh back into the sky with them, until there's nothing left.

I'm shocked. The prayer flags on the rocks whip in the wind, and I look up and watch three beautiful eagles gliding overhead.

"But this only happens to the monks and the lamas, right?" I say, eventually. "Not to people like you?"

"Yes, of course this will happen to me," says Sonan. "It happens to nearly all Tibetans when they die."

"In front of your own mother?" I exclaim. I just can't believe it. I can't believe someone would actually be fed to eagles in front of their own mother.

"Yes," he says. "In front of my own mother, if she's still alive." He looks at me curiously. "Why? What happens to you when you die?"

"I'll be put in a nice box and buried, thanks, or I'll be set on fire," I say, shaking my head. "Definitely no birds involved when I die."

Sonan laughs. "Okay," he says. "No birds for the Europeans."

"That's right," I say, looking back up at the eagles circling us in the sky.

Everything Happens for a Reason

2011-02-25T12:21:00.001Z

The rush of peace I'd felt on the train was quickly replaced by a rush of disorientation when I arrived in Lhasa. I was expecting the city to be something like Reykjavik — small and quiet and serene — but I want to inform the world right now that the city of Lhasa is nothing like the city of Reykjavik. I don't know what I was thinking: Lhasa is hot and noisy and crowded, a blur of market stalls and incense and pilgrims and monks and Chinese and Tibetans all sharing a space together in the middle of the desert.

I'd met an American woman back in Xining who'd been travelling for the past six years. Lucy is almost 60 years old and I'd wondered out loud how the hell anyone could have been travelling alone for so long.

"Don't tell me," I'd said, interrupting her. "Broken hearted, right?"

Lucy had laughed. "I wasn't going to put it quite like that," she'd said. "But yes, I certainly went through a divorce."

On my first night in Lhasa, still completely disorientated, I happened to bump into her again in a cafe down a little back alley.

"You got my message then?"

No, I didn't get any message – I hadn't had any net access for a couple of days. But it turns out she'd emailed me to say that she'd be in this cafe at this time if I wanted to meet for tea – and I just happened to choose that cafe and that time to wander in.

"Everything happens for a reason," said Lucy, smiling and giving me a great big hug.

I don't know about that, but it was really good to see her again.

Yaks in Tibet

2011-02-22T11:40:00.003Z

The Train to Tibet

2011-02-21T11:35:00.000Z

I woke up in the night with a hot forehead and a headache and a tight chest. I could feel we were gaining height: the train had slowed down and the coats in the cabin were all hanging diagonally to the right. The digital display said we were at almost 5000 metres above sea level and I thought for a while about dying but then I must have fallen back asleep.

In the morning, the beautiful Chinese children I was sharing the cabin with shared their breakfast with me. They didn't have any English except "hello" and "I love you", but they taught me the names of all the farm animals we passed along the way. We ate oranges and cinnamon cake and hot jasmine tea, and outside the land started to look less like China and more like Tibet. Yaks grazed on plains below snowcapped mountains, and all of a sudden I felt an enormous rush of adventure and gratitude and peace and happiness.

Rubbishman in Xīníng

2011-02-20T05:13:00.003Z

After a day and a half on the sleeper

2011-02-20T00:24:00.002Z

After a day and a half on the sleeper I got off at Xining, a town at the very edge of the Tibetan plateau. I'm meeting Wangden here, the guy who's getting my permits for Lhasa. He's suggested I stay a couple of days to acclimatise to the altitude — Xining is already 2200 metres above sea level and there's another day and a half uphill on the train to go.

"I got my own passport this year," Wangden tells me, checking my documents. His parents are nomads: before he started his travel company he spent his life on the grasslands with their yaks. "I had to ask my mother when my birthday is so I could fill in the forms."

They don't celebrate birthdays in Tibet, he says, which reminds me that it's my own birthday next week and so I probably won't be celebrating it either.

"So when is it?" I ask.

"She said it's the 15th of March because she remembers a big moon," he shrugs. "But she's just saying that – she doesn't really know."

"But that would mean you're Piscean like me," I say, pleased for some reason, even though I'm actually a typical Aries and I don't believe in any of that shit.

"What does that mean?"

"It means we both like long walks on rainy beaches," I say, channelling Cosmopolitan. "And we cry easily."

"You cry easily?" asks Wangden, surprised.

"God, no," I say, laughing and flicking my mane. "Of course I don't."

That's the great thing about travelling alone: you can invent a whole new personality for yourself and nobody ever needs to know.

Morning

2011-02-19T01:19:00.002Z

I woke up with my clothes all stuck to me with sweat and it was light outside again and the train seemed to have emptied out a bit overnight. A man and his baby were sitting on Chan Mei's bed and Chan Mei was gone.

The land we were passing looked empty in the snow and I wondered how far we were from the Mongolian border. I wished that I'd brought some kind of rail map with me just to try and place myself somewhere. But all I knew was that we had left the east and we were heading west and yes this country is bigger than I'd thought and maybe the earth really is flat after all and China just goes on and on and on forever.

Xú Kang & Cui

2011-02-19T01:05:00.002Z

On the Hard Sleeper from Beijing to Xining

2011-02-18T10:07:00.003Z

The bunks on the train were more like shelves than beds and every time the man sleeping above me squirmed his shelf would creak and groan and I was glad that I'm many things but that I'm not claustrophobic.

I actually found it strangely cosy. The term 'hard sleeper' is misleading as I had a thin mattress and a blanket. I arranged my water and my oranges and my hand sanitizer next to me, and having them lined up on the table like that made me feel at home.

There were windows either side of the carriage and for the first couple of hours I sat up and watched endless shabby apartment blocks flash by in the smog, waiting for the city to end and the beauty to begin. I had no map and I couldn't tell if this was all Beijing or if one town just became the next. I wanted to remember Beijing as the hutong I'd stayed in, which was full of little homes and market stalls and the man who walked his magnificent goose up and down the tree-lined street every day for all of Dongcheng to see. I decided to ignore the shabby and endless apartment blocks and save the batteries in my camera for the dramatic Chinese countryside instead.

But five hours later it was dark and we were still rolling through urban scrawl. The man on the shelf opposite wanted to chat and I wanted to, too, but all I could manage was ni hao and I'm not sure if his name was Chan Mei or if chan mei means 'my name is', but he gave me a sesame snap and a tangerine anyway. I was thankful: I'd been feeling a bit panicky that I hadn't packed enough snacks.

I dozed off for a while and when I woke up the carriage was dark and Chan Mei was asleep. I fumbled around for the time, hoping that it was nearly morning and I'd be able to see the beauty outside, finally, but it wasn't even midnight. The shelf above me creaked again and I wondered if maybe between now and then I could still end up developing claustrophobia after all.

My last night in Beijing

2011-02-17T01:00:00.001Z

Will and I begin to lose interest in each other around his fourth beer as I stopped drinking two years ago and he's only just begun. "I'm a lightweight," he explains, his head lolling in the original sense of the word.

I start looking around for newer, more sober company and I meet a man whose car once broke down in Naas, and a young farmer who landed in Beijing two days ago to study Mandarin at the University. "Back home I work in a field," he says, wide Italian eyes looking up at me. "And now I have to find somewhere here to live." He takes a sip of his tea and leans in, admitting: "I only know the word for 'house'." I try to reassure him with my tale of turning up to live in Iceland without a word of Icelandic but we both know it's not really the same thing.

Eventually I decide to leave the bar early and go and get packed up for the train.

"One last word of advice before you go," says Will, giving me a bear-hug. "Don't take the lower bunk."

But I do have the lower bunk! It's the only ticket left that Qing could book for me – the train is full.

"Oh well, that's alright, don't worry," he says, backtracking quickly. "You'll be well looked after in that case. You're going to be sharing that seat with every Chinese mammy on the train."

No Offence

2011-02-16T15:42:00.002Z

There's a new guy asleep in the bunk above mine when I go back into the hostel this morning. I try to get my things quietly so as not to wake him, but he sits bolt upright in bed and says WHAT TIME IS IT? nearly hitting his head off the ceiling.

"Almost noon," I say. "Are you jet lagged?"

"No," he says, rubbing his eyes. "Just lazy."

He reaches out a hand to introduce himself and I take the opportunity to interview him. He's from Quebec, he tells me, his name is Will, and he lives with Buddhist monks in a monastery a couple of hours outside of Beijing. He's been up there in the mountains all winter, but today is the day of their road trip so he decided to get a lift. He wanted a warm room and a hot shower for a couple of days. And now here he is.

"Monks go on road trips?" I ask, dubious.

"Yeah," he says, laughing off my cynicism. "Road trips to the book market. You want to go for some lamb stew?"

I do want to go for some lamb stew, but I don't entirely trust him. He looks about 25. Why the hell would he leave his home in Quebec to live with monks in a monastery outside of Beijing?

"Alright," I shrug, putting on my coat and deciding to keep my belongings firmly on me at all times.

* * *

It's totally acceptable to eat lamb stew in China by holding the bowl up to your face and using your chopsticks to shovel the noodles into your mouth as fast as you can. In fact, says Will, if you don't eat like that they might think you don't like it. He calls out to a waitress and orders something else, entirely in Mandarin.

I'm still curious as to how he ended up here, so I continue to quiz him. It doesn't take long to come out: he'd had his heart broken once, of course, by a Chinese girl he met in Montreal. She'd taken Canada in the divorce and now here he is, trapped for all eternity in Beijing. It wasn't until he learnt to meditate that he began to get over it, he says. The monks helped him.

"This your first time in China?" he asks.

"It's my first time in Asia," I admit, less defensive now that I know he's a broken-hearted human being. "I haven't travelled all that much."

"No offence," says Will, offending me. "But I can tell."

"I've been to Memphis," I say, indignant. "Rolled up around midnight all by myself!"

"Alright," he laughs, draining the last dregs from his stew. "Don't worry, it's not your demeanour. It's just that you already told me you'd hired a guide for Beijing."

Hello

2011-02-16T03:47:00.002Z

I got burnt out on the Great Wall. The sun was high but as it was cold and I'm celtic I didn't think to use sunblock. I stood at the highest point taking pictures of the mountains until I heard whispering behind me, and I turned around to see a small group of Chinese people giggling at me.

"Ni hao," I said, flashing them a smile. Perhaps they'd invite me back to their home for some lunch, I thought.

One woman shrieked. "She said ni hao," she said, delighted.

I stood still for a while so they could photograph me. Then they turned around and walked off.

In Beijing with Ye Qing

2011-02-15T14:48:00.002Z

Qing is my guide for the day in Beijing and she says I'm crazy to take the train all the way to Tibet. Do I even know how big China is? The plane is cheaper and that hard sleeper could take four days!

I know, it's a long time to be on a train, but I need to dedicate time to my favourite hobby: staring out of the window. Qing says okay then and books me the ticket. "But it's just a bunk in a corridor," she says.

Earlier we'd been to the markets to buy a camera case, where she said she could haggle for me if I liked. Ah no, I'd said, I'm sure I'll manage fine. "Alright," she said. "Just start at 50 yuan and don't pay anything over 100 or it's a rip-off." The first seller we met offered me a fake Sony case for 250 yuan. Thank you very much, I'd said, immediately handing over the money as Qing laughed and shook her head.

We ended the day at a restaurant with her husband, Wong Chan, sharing three bowls of dumplings which I dipped in soya and vinegar.

"You know Chinese girls won't eat soy sauce?" Qing said, looking at my plate. "They worry it makes their skin darker."

"Oh really," I said, pouring another good bit into my dish. The grass is always greener, I thought.

The Forbidden Cat

2011-02-15T05:20:00.002Z

Krav Maga and the Year of the Sheep

2011-02-13T21:01:00.002Z

The day before I flew to Beijing, Conor bought me a two-hour Israeli self-defence session for Valentine's day. I had stupidly read out the bit in the back of the Lonely Planet that warns of the dangers to women travelling alone and he'd immediately booked me private tuition with a large beast of a man called Ray.

I'd been worried about leaving. My tummy had been upset for three days. I just couldn't shake the fear of getting on a plane and landing in China by myself. You know I want very badly to be the tough stuff that I've spent many years on this blog pretending to be, but sometimes I have to tell you it feels like I was born in the year of the sheep.

"Ray" turned out to be a petite, pretty young woman who spent two hours teaching me to hit her very hard in the face. By the time Conor arrived to pick me up I was down on the ground, booting her unsheepishly in the stomach as she tried to choke me in my sleep. It's 4am now in Beijing and I'm lying here in my bunk thinking that that was the sweetest Valentine's gift I've been given.

Quentin Fottrell with Dublin and Manhattan

2011-01-24T10:21:00.007Z

Quentin is moving to New York to start a new job next month, and he asked me to take a portrait of him in Dublin that he could use on his leaving party invitations. When Irish people emigrated to America the first time around they called their goodbye parties ‘wakes’ — as it was pretty much accepted that if you left on a boat you’d never be seen again. With this in mind, we decided to take the shot with vintage clothing and props out on the harbour in Howth, with Manhattan Island on the horizon. America is just that bit closer than it was back in the day.

Here Be Dragons

2011-01-06T16:13:00.005Z

I spent much of the Christmas worrying about my travel plans — money and equipment and altitude sickness — to the point where one day I said to Conor: "Do you mind if we don't talk about Tibet today? I need a little break from it." Which is ridiculous, I know.

I managed to calm myself, though, by drawing an illustrated map of my route. I'm flying to Beijing in February and starting from there, travelling through China to Tibet and Vietnam by sleeper trains.

Seeing the places I'm going in a nice sans-serif font and colour-coded countries gives me a great deal of comfort. I'm not sure it's entirely accurate, though, so don't set off with it folded up in your pocket just yet, hey.

Further East than Streatham

2010-12-12T23:08:00.008Z

There's a video up on the Leica site in which I talk about going on my trip to Tibet. Big thanks to Conor for shooting it — in a Tibetan restaurant in Paris, no less — and editing out all the bits where I giggle and say things like: "Er, I don't think I've ever been further east than Streatham."

Oh, hang on, we left that bit in. But it is definitely NOT true. Obviously, Paris is much further east than Streatham.

Tibet

2010-12-06T11:22:00.013Z

My plans to cosy up all winter by the fire were put on hold this week, when I got an email telling me I'd been chosen to take photographs in Tibet for Leica cameras. Eep! I'd entered a writing & photography competition, and, not really thinking I'd ever actually win, lazily picked "Tibet" from a choice of ten sunnier, more accessible destinations. Leica will give me money, a camera, and warm clothing, and as long as I send them pictures from Lhasa before the end of February then my route, bookings, and travel plans are entirely up to me.

Well, I may as well have stuck a pin in a spinning globe. I knew nothing about Tibet until this weekend, when I started googling it with a rising sense of panic and alarm. And now I'm going there, in February, on my own. I know! I'm as startled as you are.

Grow it, Show it, Stroke it, Mo' it

2010-11-10T08:51:00.009Z

I had my lovely ginger moustache "threaded" at the weekend, which involved an Indian woman ripping the hairs off my upper lip with two bits of string. I know, I don't understand it either, but it worked. Although now my cheeks seem alarmingly furry in comparison. Will this never end?

I feel it was bad timing though, as I now have no moustache to speak of for Movember. It's not fair! Why can't women have an equally entertaining fundraising equivalent to growing outrageous facial hair? This year, we were encouraged to "raise awareness to breast cancer" by updating our Facebook statii with a line about where we keep our handbags. "I like it at the end of the bed," said one friend. "I like it hanging on the back of the door," said another. The idea was to trick men into thinking we were dropping hints at where we liked to have sex, and the joke would be on them.

Needless to say, it didn't work. "I want to try that game the ladies are playing on Facebook," said one guy on Twitter. "I'm not sure I've got the hang of it, but... I like mine in a vagina."

Sign up your tache at Movember.com, or just sponsor our very own Irish blogger Andrew and raise some money for Cancer Research.

I could have been a novelist instead

2010-10-17T20:10:00.005+01:00

I went to the cinema to see the Facebook movie last week, which I wasn't planning to do because I usually go to the cinema to get away from Facebook, but I liked it despite myself. It's a good film — I think the correct term is "zeitgeisty" — if a bit depressing. Is this it, I thought afterwards. The art of our decade: social networking? Sometimes I wish I'd been born in the forties instead. I could have been a novelist or a punk or... or a beat poet! I think I'd have been quite good at going on and on about myself in a café dressed up in a leather waistcoat.

But it's not the fifties and I'm not a beat poet: I just went to see the Facebook movie, and I'm a blogger. On Wednesday I'm going to be part of a "blogging panel" at Fingal Writers' Festival, in which we will introduce an audience of actual writers (who, I assume, write things to be published on paper) to the joys of putting it all over the internet instead.

I feel a bit shifty about this. Surely I should be the one attending a festival in which a panel of actual writers introduce me to the joys of locking myself away in an empty room for five years with no internet access so that I can write a book instead?

I actually started writing my first book when I was nine years old. "What kind of a book is it?" my mother had asked, hovering in the doorway. "It's a novel, for teenagers," I had explained, showing great patience at the interruption. "About death."

"I see," my mother had said, showing equal patience. I then went on to regurgitate the entire first chapter of Judy Blume's Tiger Eyes, only relocating the story to rural North Wales instead.

Fifth Gear

2010-10-13T12:59:00.008+01:00

Of course Megan went up to fifth gear. She did it out on the dual carriageway early one morning when there was nobody else around.

“But it was only for a minute,” she consoles me. “And it was only the once, I swear.”

I look back at her glumly. Fifth gear! Without me! I haven't ever gone over 60 kilometres an hour — even being in fourth gear feels a little reckless to me. I used to have to get the bus, now I just get overtaken by the bus.

“What was it like?” I ask, curious in spite of myself.

“Terrifying," she says. Although she doesn't look terrified. In fact, she looks quite excited.

“Well,” I say. “I hope you never do anything as foolish as that again.”

Megan looks at my cross face and laughs. “Oh, come on,” she says. “We can't spend the rest of our lives driving around like elderly people. Watch out, Granny Annie is on the road again!”

She rummages in her bag for a flyer and hands it to me. DRIVE LIKE A MANIAC, says the headline. ON OUR PURPOSE-BUILT RACE TRACK. Underneath, a picture of two young men leaning on a go-faster-striped Ford Fiesta grin at the camera.

“What do you think?” says Megan, her sudden enthusiasm for speed alarming me.

What do I think? Obviously what I think is that there is no way in hell that “Granny Annie” wants to “drive like a maniac” on a “purpose-built race track” with two young men wearing “baseball caps”. And so I say, in no uncertain terms: “Er, alright then.”

“Great,” says Megan. “I'll book us in.”

There are too many exclamation marks in this post, I'm aware of that.

2010-10-03T00:01:00.003+01:00

"What is this Street View thing that everybody's talking about?" asked Carla in work.

"It's a new online map," explained Anna. "That means you can look at your own street in three-dimensions."

Exactly. You may have thought the point of Google Street View was to look at other people's streets in three-dimensions, but no. I've spent seventeen hours on the site so far and I've only looked up two addresses: the street I used to live on, and the street I live on now. Needless to say, they are both fascinating. There's my car! On my street! It's almost as if I stepped away from my computer for a moment, opened up my front door, and looked outside. Thrilling!

"They must have taken the images on a Tuesday," observes my good friend and neighbour, Rosie. "Because the bins are out."

Yes, she's right, there are the bins out on the footpath. I had been somewhat disappointed that my lover's car wasn't parked outside my house the day they took the images, too, but seeing the bins makes up for it. I feel disproportionately excited. And there's my car, still there! And the road! And the walls and the windows and the front door!

"Did you hear that Twenty Major saw himself?" I say, slightly breathlessly at this point. "And he wasn't even on his own street!"

Rosie looks awed, if a little jealous. Then she turns and looks back at her screen. "It's just like a giant Where's Wally," she says, happily.

Safety first

2010-09-27T00:02:00.002+01:00

Driving to work feels like a 90's video game in which I have to get across the land without bumping into anyone and dropping all my magic coins. One day I look forward to being able to do this without hunching over the steering wheel with a gritted jaw. Although, I will never listen to music, or go over 60km an hour, or use fifth gear.

Megan learnt to drive this year too, and swore she'd never have music in her car either. “Too distracting,” she'd declared. “Safety first.”

I was pleased about that. It's nice having a sensible friend like Megan who I don't have to pretend to be cool around. “Right,” I'd said, nodding happily in agreement. "That's us. Safety first.”

The next week Megan pulled up outside my house with Snoop Dogg's 'Bitch Please' blasting from a boombox in the back.

“But you said you'd never have music in the car!” I exclaimed, my little heart pounding in my chest.

“Oh," said Megan. "But...”

“But nothing! What happened to 'safety first'?”

“Look,” she said, giving me a reassuring arm-touch. “I promise I'll never, ever go up to fifth gear...”

My first week without L-plates

2010-09-20T00:01:00.009+01:00

Day One: I am terrified
I am terrified: tomorrow I will have to drive 20 kilometres all by myself in a small blue car that I feel I have no control over whatsoever. It doesn't feel like a small blue car, it feels like some kind of... some kind of killing machine! I realise the chances of me murdering somebody have just multiplied considerably. There was no way I could have killed a small child yesterday. This week, I probably will.

Day Two: Yes, still terrified
It occurs to me that I've never been alone in a moving car in my whole life before now, and I suddenly feel a terrible mix of claustrophobia and agoraphobia. At a junction on the N11 I look at the man in the car stopped next to me. Should we acknowledge each other? I wave at him, nervously. He pretends not to see me. The lights change and I stall the engine trying to move off. Twice. I panic as two cars behind me beep their horns.

Day Three: I think I'm getting the hang of this
Oh my god, I think I'm getting the hang of this! It's still terrifying, of course, but it's my third day on the road and I'm alive — and so is everyone else. Could it be that my dream of one day driving Route 66 with a dog called Sorry will come true? I stop at the lights and admire my reflection. Yeah, I'll wear my aviator shades and a dark tan leather jacket, right through the State of Oklahoma. Oh Annie, I say to myself, shaking my head in admiration. You are just so fucking cool. Back on the N11 the lights change and I stall the engine trying to move off. Twice. I panic as three cars behind me beep their horns.

Day Four
Okay, definitely getting the hang of this now.

Day Five: I get clamped
Clamped! Outside my own house! Well, I don't know anything about "parking meters". Everybody knows that when you're the passenger you can leave all that stuff to the driver, letting them feed coins into a machine even though they were only driving you around in the first place because you needed help moving house. And now I'm the driver. This "car ownership" thing is a whole new world.