Silly Thoughts, volume 5

The summer is drawing to a close. It felt long, didn't it? Heatwaves way back in May have made this summer feel endless. And yet here I am. Labelling uniforms. Switching the lamps on in the evenings. Pulling a hoodie on to make my coffee in the mornings.

I find the end of the summer to be emotionally challenging. I'm not devastated, because we all need the routine, but I do feel a little bit low. With my children going to different schools now, there's some apprehension for both of them. And I didn't deal with the colder months very well last time around. I've been putting emotional scaffolding up to prevent it from happening again: a SAD lamp, a list of plans and hopes for the last three months of the year, professional mental health care, that kind of thing.

Every year, the dragonflies start coming out, and it gives me a pang whenever I see them. It makes me think of my daughter's birthday. It makes me think of myself, as a teen, being obsessed with dragonflies, plastering them all over my bedroom, and doodling the dragonfly tattoo I would surely get on my lower back the moment I turned eighteen (thank goodness I didn't do this). Something about them makes me think about childhood flashing by.

This end-of-summer feeling reminds me of sitting cross-legged on the floor in our old house in Hastings on a Sunday night, watching Heartbeat with my parents, and feeling the slow, creeping dread of school coming around in the morning.

But you know what? September offers stability, and a slow dip into the cooler weather. And I'd like to make the most of the remaining days of 2025. It's been a year of slow healing for me, and there is more work to be done.

It's been a good summer.

Some things I've enjoyed in this slightly chaotic month:

• Hayley Williams dropped Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. No more words needed, you know how I feel about this. (Alright, a few more words: True Believer made me cry in a way that only someone who has deconstructed can understand)
• We saw Jack Garratt! We met him! I didn't make a complete arse of myself! Anyway, his new album, Pillars, is great.
• Also, Låpsley's album I'm a Hurricane, I'm a Woman in Love is so good.
• I watched Netflix's Unknown Number: The High School Catfish. Gobsmacking.
• We're also watching Alien: Earth. It's fantastic, gripping sci-fi. I've only ever seen Alien so I'm not hugely into the franchise, but I'm enjoying this a lot. The fourth episode is less physically violent but more emotionally suffocating, I can't stop thinking about it. And it has Adrian Edmonson in it! What a bonus.
• I've been listening to Winning Isn't Everything, the podcast by last year's Strictly winners Diane Buswell and Chris Macausland. It's great. Their personalities (sunny and bright and slightly grumpy respectively) somehow gel incredibly well, and I could listen to them laughing together all day.
• Gaming-wise, Stardew Valley. You can't stop me.
• Plus, My Friendly Neighborhood is like a bananas Resident Evil 2/Sesame Street mashup, and it's extremely fun. I might write about this more another time.
• K-Pop Demon Hunters continues to dominate our minds and ears. Took my daughter to a sing-along screening. This is a force to be reckoned with, I think. Bring on the sequel (but please don't ruin it).
• Also, I took my kids to see Dogman for the second time and honestly, I think this is one of the best animated movies I've seen in a while. It's manic and funny and unexpectedly emotional. 100% recommend.

Bye-bye, summer. You were a vast improvement over the last one.

Thanks for sticking with me and my erratic posting schedule. I'll be back to a more steady rhythm now. If you like, you can check out my Ko-Fi. It's where my more creative writing attempts live (or at least the process of writing). The other day on there, I posted a 22-minute vlog in which I desperately tried to fit any kind of writing into my life in the small pockets of time that I have. So if I'm ever not posting on here, I'm probably posting some sort of nonsense on there instead. <3