me

Thank you, Pokefriends

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Today the very last Pokemon episode with Ash, Misty, Brock and Pikachu aired. It’s like bidding farewell to old friends. Seems like a lot of people feel the same way?

When I was a small child using the name “pokeprincess” online (I was among the first generation to grow up on the internet, for better or worse, I mostly survived it) Ash, Misty, Brock and Pikachu were EVERYTHING to me. Look! Look at these terrible, beautiful “drawings” I did as a kid!

My room would’ve been a shrine to Pokemon if my parents had allowed it. But check out the posters!

My 35th birthday is just over a week away. It’s the 1st April and I discovered just yesterday that Ash’s first Pokemon episode aired in Japan on the 1st April too. So all this time I’ve been sharing a birthday with Ash Ketchum! What a great way to end the journey! Thank you guys. You really were the very best, like no-one ever was.

life updates

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So things are a lot better this year than last year. I’m a freelance writer with The Mary Sue now which is fantastic! And I’m pretty sure my mental health has improved. Fingers crossed I can keep that up. I really, really hope so.

I stumbled across this old tweet thread I made, initially a stray thought on a Pokemon plushie sales tweet, and weirdly it seems to sum things up quite well.

The very best

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My childhood hero Ash Ketchum is now World Pokemon Champion!

Brock has become a Pokemon doctor. :’) and Misty is a gym leader!

Seeing that the episode was shown on the big screens in Tokyo, man I love that! I’ve always wanted so badly to see Tokyo for myself as well.

Man, 12-year-old me would so happy to hear about this.

(Look at all that stuff! I still have some of it! Maybe some day I can pass it down to a kid.)

back from Nana’s funeral

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It’s been a very strange few days really. Not even necessarily bad in some ways, just… strange. I went to Nana’s house (without her, obviously) for what’s presumably the last time before it’s sold and that makes me pretty sad to think about. It’s funny but the house I now live in is very similar to the one my Nana and Grandad lived in once upon a time. I guess we’re all always trying to recapture our childhoods.

Sep 11

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9/11 has rolled round again. Everything that happened there is still one of the most terrifying things I can imagine, although maybe not for the reasons you might think. Just like, imagine dying in a horrible way and *then* your death is used to justify years of atrocities. Doesn’t matter who you were or what you thought. For the rest of eternity you’d be at best a statistic and at worst a symbol of nationalism and racism. You’d be warped forever without your consent. It haunts me and it could happen to me, to anyone at any time. Even if you *want* to dismantle the systems that made it happen, it means nothing in the face of war. Nothing you ever did would mean anything.

I hate 9/11 jokes.

The Queen Died

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What a strange day it’s been. One day before my wedding anniversary actually. I saw “Balmoral” trending on Twitter and it turned out to be a news story about how the Queen was in ill health. Lots of wisecracks scrolling down. (My favourite was “She meets Liz Truss and starts dying the very next day, I respect that.”)

Later on today I marvelled at how much better I was feeling post-breakdown, I’m on some fantastic new meds. I decided to fix the TV box since it had been messing up since pre-breakdown and making the image flicker on and off all the time. I got it working properly and immediately, a black screen and an announcement saying “Stand by for a message from the BBC” like I’ve heard in World War II-set movies.

“Holy crap, she’s actually dead!” I told my husband.

She was indeed Actually Dead. But I suppose the Queen isn’t really what I want to talk about. There’s not a huge amount to say, I’ve never met her (a few members of my family have gone to special Palace events where she was there, but that’s all) and she lived a long, charmed life.

Actually I want to talk about my grandmother. She was born two weeks before the Queen was in April 1926. She went through World War II at the same age the Queen did, but in considerably more danger than the Queen was, because she was working class and from a working class area that was very heavily bombed. She ended up joining the Wrens, I think, though I don’t know what she did there. Here’s a pic of her, clumsily colourized by an app:

I just take a weird sort of pleasure in knowing that a working class woman outlived the Queen, I guess. She’s in a care home now on the other side of the country, I plan to visit her soon.

A lesson

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Me in 2005, looking at pictures of myself in 2000: I was so pretty back then. Too bad I look so ugly now.

Me in 2010, looking at pictures of myself in 2005: I was so pretty back then. Too bad I look so ugly now.

Me in 2017, looking at pictures of myself in 2010: I was so pretty back then. Too bad I look so ugly now.

Me in 2022, looking at pictures of myself in 2017: I was so pretty back then. Too bad I look so ugly now…

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