UPDATE/TLDR: I’ve been busy!
I love this site so much and really appreciate the freedom of having my own platform. As platforms go, it’s more a teensy Roger Vivier low heel, than a towering Terry de Havilland wedge, but that suits me fine – I’ve always been one for niche and intimate. Unfortunately, when I have world enough and time to write here it tends to be when I have nothing in the diary that pays! And I had a lot of work on last year …
Bad News from The Stars
Consultancy work that I had begun in the spring built steadily, and left me little time to work on anything else. But I did manage to revive Calypso Royale (one of my old identities, under which name I practiced tarot) and opened a little tarot account on instagram that I intended to develop when there was more time available.
When the consultancy work ended at the end of November I dipped my toes into editorial work again with a fashion interview for a publication I hadn’t worked for previously – that was a bit like having a new boyfriend after a few years of monogamy: fun, with the added frisson of wondering if you can turn in a decent performance having grown accustomed to someone else’s expectations.
A very exciting business partnership was due to start in January. Being excited about one thing always leads to me being excited about all the things, so Christmas was spent giddy with anticipation of interesting work to come, and therefore feeling exuberant enough to set up another new venture …
Flirting and Snogging
Years ago, I and a more glamorous friend of mine worked as DJs under the name Pomme et Granitte. Although that involved being almost sick with nerves en route to whoever had booked us, we inevitably had a lovely time and went home with gorgeous, crinkly money in our pockets, feeling replete with smugness and compliments.
I wanted to do that again.
So with another friend, I sketched out an idea for a DJ Collective: and the Oochie Coochie Collective concept was trialled at my birthday party in January. Even though I bailed out of DJ-ing just six songs into my set (the decks were on a stage, far from the dance floor, and I wanted to wiggle and gyrate with all my friends) I had a fabulous time, and we were all set to move forward with it …
But it turned out that spring of 2020 wasn’t destined to see the full-on launch of any DJ collective. As I write we’re still (just about) in lockdown, but it will be a while before parties become what they were. And as you can see from the flyer – designed by fabulous live and graphic (who also manage all my Eye of the Beholder visual stuff, including this site) – FLIRTING and SNOGGING are an essential element of any party in my opinion, and heaven only knows when we’ll get back to that … but one day we will, and the Oochie Coochie Collective will be ready when that great day dawns 🙂
If you’re nosy about what kind of music I like to play, these Calypso Royale tarot themed playlists will give you an idea.
Imagine a tearful cat-face emoticon here, please
With sadness, the professional partnership that had begun so well in January, the one that I was so excited about, had to be suspended. Now is not the right time for that work, valuable and rewarding though it is.
What Goes On
I’ve spent the past few months attempting to navigate this new reality: keeping up my tarot, and working on my fiction. I’ve not enjoyed the financial insecurity of the last few months, and been genuinely heartbroken about some of the work opportunities that just can’t happen right now, BUT I’ve loved being in lockdown with (almost) all of those most important to me; been grateful that I have good friends to talk with online and on the phone, and really enjoyed the space and licence to work on creative content.
So far that’s been fiction and tarot, not EOTB, but hopefully, this site will see more content now. Or, stating that wish will be like lighting a fag while you wait for a bus to arrive! Your act of resignation jinxes the fag and the bus comes at once – maybe I’ll get a ton of paid work that will scupper all my plans, but at least allow my one pair of skinny jeans to fit closely again, rather than fall off my lockdown-self as though they were slouchy boyfriend cut …
One of the things I’ve rediscovered in lockdown is Twitter. It’s quite invaluable for getting updates on stuff like your water going off unexpectedly, and often the only way to get a company to respond to a time-sensitive problem with orders or accounts. It allows you to rant bitterly about current issues (please see my feed in sidebar for evidence, lol). But most importantly, there are some really fantastic people on there, who can make your whole day better in less than one paragraph of text. I’ve made amazing real life friends through Twitter and if you abandoned it for a while, I urge you to get back on there!
One of the most extraordinarily nice things that’s happened to me in the last year was getting involved in a fascinating conversation about perfume with my twitter-friend Socky (who I think knows way more about perfume than I ever will, and wears her expertise with far more grace than many blue-ticked individuals I can think of) who then – knowing my love of packaging – sent me this beautiful old Dior bottle and box in the post.
Please feel free to let me know in the comments how this unprecedented time has been for you – or maybe through Twitter!
