“I feel like my connection to myself is deteriorating. My brain keeps trying to erase me.”

You can always trust a therapist to reflect back to you how sad what you just said is. Prodding me about the image I hold of myself in my head, I say nothing really. I’m a pair of legs on a bed watching a film, hands on a laptop, tangled hair that worries me when the hairbrush rips through it. I’m faceless to myself, and I mourn the loss like a friend that disappeared. Barely giving myself a glance all week and reproaching her when I do, I don’t think I’d stick around to be a friend either. 

I used to be able to draw myself by heart. In 2018 I’d trace the outlines of my hips with pride, dedicating time to obsessively commemorating myself with such a grasp on the physicality of me. I look at the lines now and they look like lies, with no evidence for the contrary I push them aside as false and fill the gap with nothing else. I’ve been wanting a new tattoo for ages but I can’t visualise myself long enough to try and imagine something new there, and now the photos of fresh ink three years ago mock me as a better, cooler me that got lost somewhere. I look back and wonder where my awareness went, thinking that’s a smaller thing to tackle than the confidence and intrigue that seems to have gone to. Pulling on black trousers and a black top, most days I think today is the dullest self I’ve ever been. A panic seizes up as if I’ve forgotten something and I realise it's me. 

A keep a little bit of it locked up in my phone. In a folder titled ‘burlesque’, 2019 me seems like a stranger. I remember the songs and the outfits, but the person that got up on stage is lost to me. Analysing the photos is a dissociative game of spot the difference that I’ve been trying to complete for a couple of weeks. Somedays she has my eyes and a faint tone of my hair; but the photos I remember loving feel alien to me now, capturing myself mostly in the ones I used to despise, caught in motions that haven’t changed and smiles I’ve never been able to train. I used to post them so proudly, not even caring about boundaries or backlash, I loved living on the line between sides of appropriateness. I remember that. I think. The feeling of toying with it, attaching the should-be-secretive to the social, melding mind and body, filling performances with film characters and plot and then taking my clothes off and not caring if no one realised the meaning in the first place. I knew the thought was there. I knew I was both things, I was all the things, I felt like everything. And I look at the photos now and wonder how I did it. 

I used to sing when I was a kid. Fighting solos in the school musicals I was never nervous. I’d strive for it, sure I was going to be famous. Praying to Hannah Montana like a god and telling everyone I’d be on the West End, my ambitions were so bold and I was so brave. 

8 feels lost in 24. What am I left with if I minus out my 21-year-old self? Suddenly so separate from her, I don’t know how to count her in. I couldn’t tell you what she was like or where the bravery came from or went, but if there are only 3 years or so in me now it’s not a lot to go on. When I say I feel like my brain is forgetting me, I feel like time takes some scissors and cuts off a year as they pass, and I don’t want to only be left with now. I want to hold it all, even if I never have the guts to be them again. 

Time has a way of making memories feel like lies, of making yourself feel like a liar. If I stepped out of myself like a stranger and informed me of my past, I’d shrug it off as false and go back to being what I am now as if I was never anything else. I am only what I currently am, in a body that is born and dies daily, what do I know? what can I learn? How do I love it? The days of celebrating it on a stage feel like fiction, like AI image creations found their way into my camera roll and burnt into hazy back corners of my brain like dreams that feel confusingly real when you wake up. Finding myself in a new place with new friends that never got to come along and clap to my song choice, no knowledge to feed facts back to me, I don’t think I ever moved all the past versions of myself down here. I wonder if anyone’s found them hanging about Manchester?

My sense of self swims around my brain like a fish tank, lasting four minutes and gone. Seeing life spans as cut and dry, I want to look at my past as reinvention rather than reincarnation. I want to reach into myself a pull out a little bit of 21 for a night, borrow some childhood bravery to announce something I’m proud of without an ounce of shyness. I want to sit my friends down and have them meet Sunday Girl the performer and not worry about how that changes or dulls Lucy now. I want to hold all my hands, finish spotting differences, look in the mirror more and see myself there. In what week of therapy do your long-lost selves reunite? I’ll post old pictures on my Instagram to coax them out and cross my fingers that it's soon. 

I live in East London, with 5 other girls.

My hair is still my natural colour as the fear of change grew back out with my roots.

My favourite things to wear are my velvet backless dress, my little black dress, my chunky loafers and my soft green jumper. I do my makeup far more now, regularly painting pink or blue lines over my lid.

My favourite books of the year were My Year Of Rest and Relaxation, Nina Simone’s Gum and Acts Of Desperation. I’ve started reading far more again since the new year.

I still watch too many films to have a favourite, but real stand outs this year were Summer Of Soul, Promising Young Woman and The French Dispatch.

My favourite albums to sing in the shower are Home Video by Lucy Dacus, anything by Taylor Swift and my Prince playlist.

My favourite smell is Karma perfume from Lush or my room after burning incense. 

My favourite things are movie nights alone, negronis, days out in the city, fresh nails, when an artist walks onto stage at a gig and baths.

I’m in love with my life in London, my friends and the ways we communicate, my silly little things, my writing.

I sleep on my left side with a scruffy bear tucked under one arm. 

To self-soothe, I stroke my side with my finger, breathe deeply and drink hot tea.

I’m still trying to drink more water, and I want to implement a habit of being easier on myself. I know how hard I’m trying, but only at the latter.

As I turned 23, I wrote about wanting to float. I wanted to let life take me while I sunk into it, enjoying the view, resting here a second. I think I did that, but not in the way she thought. I didn’t get any tattoos or haircuts or holidays, but the year’s lazy river drifted me to a different city, through two jobs, two homes, a brief period of relative homelessness and a brief period of unemployment. Like something out of a video game, the sky when from rainbows to rain, to crashing thunder to brightness again. And when my old self begged for a period to relax into fate, I don’t think she had in mind the kind of surrender fate demands of you.

More than ever now do I understand the cliché of what is meant to be will be. For year my tarot cards have been telling me to keep doing what I was doing, I kept pulling wands that said to work without a big show, keep going, define success in my own way, drive towards purpose without making a big deal of it. And I did, then this year they finally turned to swords, to the end of struggle and the opening of a period of knowing and outright creativity and excited work. Re-reading last year’s reflections, I can only mirror what she said. My emails continue to baffle me, as I collect gig tickets and think about the people I’ve met or spoken to, I want to race back in time to brag to 13-year-old Lucy, dance around excitedly with her in our red bedroom. A year on, it’s my job. Two months ago I became a deputy editor of a music magazine, and younger Lucy would lose her mind. On my actual birthday, we came together for a second to share a happy cry in the bathroom of Soho house at a film screening; I feel her squeezing my hand in moments like that, using it more and more as a grounding remind that this is happening, I floated right into this down a river of work.

But beyond that, at 23 I wanted more time to live life undefined by productivity, and I think I did that too. A major reason for the move, London demands far more time from you. It coaxes you out with parks and galleries and shows and all its neighbourhoods. The weekends I’d spend hidden away in my Manchester flat feel impossible now that theres Hyde park’s cycle paths down the road, Barbican martinis, the Tate balcony. And finally I think somethings broken through. After six months in a job that really wasn’t right for me, stripping me of the time I needed to write and feel productive, it was lost to survival mode. And while things were exciting and fun, now having a job that makes me feel productive within the daily hours is something I never thought would be enough for me, but I think this is what it’s all about. Logging out ready to stretch into hobbies, go out in the sun, spend Saturdays busy with fun and external interest. 

At the start of 23, I don’t think I would have ever imagined it. But at 24, I know for sure I wanted it more than anything, I just still can’t quite believe all the surrender and trust got me here somehow. So I only have the same hopes for my year; I’ll say I want a tattoo, a haircut and a holiday and see what life offers up next.

✿✿

I keep being struck by the symmetry of my life, the spirals I fall into without realising until the twos confront me. I got déjà vu on a wooden stool in Euston and realised my ass had graced it before. This exact spot, two year ago, I wrote pros and cons lists over the same coffee.

I know it probably isn’t true but I feel like cars have looked the same my entire life, every one seems familiar in its unremarkability as I remember everything and nothing at 23, both more and less burdened than at 21. My own familiarity regularly becomes the most changeable thing in my life, with new aches and the sudden noticing of grown inches making me a stranger in private seconds. My handwriting looks foreign every time I try and transcribe it. I behave like a new person in every conversation with my mum, hearing feedback from a stranger somewhere between London and Middlesbrough.

*This is a side note to memorialise the old woman at the coffee counter whose warm voice echoes into the walls like she’s hugging the concrete as an old friend. The barista stamps a loyalty card and I wonder if she’ll feel familiarity in her legs too.

Lately I’ve been thinking that my face has irreversibly changed. I can’t pin point a single reason why but something seems shifted. I can picture the person my body senses here, like a separated memory – allusive, elusive. She had blonde hair two years ago, wore the same coat. It was short and different two years before that. Three strangers circling a block in gaps of twos, all getting different trains to different homes, two of us weighing up how it would feel to live here and me the consequence.

If we sat in a row, I’d look secretly from the corner of my eye, wondering where I’d seen them before. Like every car on the road, like every café mug, I know you but don’t but do, as I return to the same places you recommend me in the past, from personal experience. 

After ending 2021 complaining about the way my reading had slowed, the love came back thick and fast with the new year. Maybe it’s the way that the stress of a social media job had me desperate to do anything but look at a screen throughout January, or maybe just the fact that nothing helps reading quite like being patient and kind to yourself, but 2022 has brought back all the cosy moments I’d been missing. Sinking back into a routine of morning commute pages and evenings spent soaking in a bath while the paper gets damp, I’ve already ticked off some books I’m been desperate to read for quite a while and some I’d never heard of before now.

#1 Song Of Achilles – Madeline Miller

I’d seen this book everywhere, with TikTok claiming it would be the most heartbreaking read ever. Having read sections of the Iliad in university, I’ve been searching for a way to dive back into Greek mythology while doing everything possible to avoid picking up the big, intimidating classics. Realising I’d forgotten to bring a book home for Christmas, I wandered down to Waterstones on the hunt for My Year Of Rest And Relaxation, and when I couldn’t find that, I pick up this instead.

With a lot of complicated names and places and a massive cast of people, Song Of Achilles is a slow burner and I’d forgive anyone for giving up before it gets good. The relationship between Achilles and our protagonist Patroclus sways between endearing and dull for the first couple of chapters, but as the Trojan War begins and we get fully situated within the legend, I couldn’t put it down. Laid in the bath for nearly 2 hours while the finale kept me gripped, I felt my pruned skin tightening with the tension. It’s strange as you know the outcome, the fates of the characters are revealed pretty quickly into the novel but you wouldn’t expect the curiosity of how they’ll get there to provide so much suspense. Also, unlike other books, Madeline Miller has a way of using boosted action to slap the accelerators on character development. In comparison to the slow start, you learn so much more about Achilles and Patroclus as they’re in the throes of war, doubling down on excitement and emotional attachment all at once as it barrels towards a gut-wrenching ending.

I will say, it didn’t quite live up to the devastation I was expecting after seeing so many reviews. Sure I shed a couple of tears and laid in the bath for a little longer cradling the book after closing. But a day later I was recovered and onto the next.

#2 My Year Of Rest And Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh

Thanks to TikTok, this book is IMPOSSIBLE to find. I scoured Waterstones across London to find nothing, and then one day while wandering the Barbican, there it was.

I can’t remember the last time I read a novel this fast. Sitting at around 300 pages, I flew through it in just over a week, taking any chance I got to return to the narrators odd situation. With very little actual plot, the story centres on an unnamed main character and her mission to sleep for a year. You never really know what truly has led her up to this point, but she touches on odd flashes of memory from parental trauma, bad relationships and strange jobs. But the only concrete knowledge we have about the character is that she’s beautiful, miserable and a terrible friend. Doped up on sleeping pills given to her by a questionable therapist, the story is told in glimpses as the character drifts in and out, hallucinates, sleepwalks, attempt to push away friendships against her subconscious actions, and tries to rest.

For a purposefully awful character, I’m one of the people that found the protagonist oddly endearing in her toxicity and I think part of the reason I read it so quickly was due to a strange desire to check in on her. As the book began to draw to a close, I desperately wanted her to be okay, and to complete her mission to finally wake up rested and changed. I also found myself wanting to rest with her, going beyond my usual bath and train reading spots and finding myself curled up in bed, café corners and sofas to join her. Incredibly readable and easy while being so odd and complex in its subjects, Moshfegh’s characters felt so vivid and full and real even when told through the protagonist’s biased eyes. I could’ve read this book forever, like an ongoing diary that I wanted to snoop on constantly.

The best thing I’ve read in a long time.

#3 Woolgathering – Patti Smith

Continuing my mission to read everything Patti Smith has ever written, I found a beautiful copy of Woolgathering in a rare books shop in London Fields. Written in a relatively mysterious part of Patti’s life, as she retired to raise her children in Michigan. Inspiring an oddly pastoral piece in her library of NYC-centric books, Woolgathering is a mixture of child-like fairytales and odes to the people she loves. Mixing up past and present, the book seems to nurture her childhood self, using her voice and imagination to tell mythologised stories of her favourite cafes, the birth of her sister and her various moves to and from New York.

In comparison to other books like Just Kids and The Coral Sea, Woolgathering doesn’t hold a candle to them. But it’s still beautiful, as is everything she does. In all her earlier works as she begins to settle more and more into prose, I love that you can see her warming up for Just Kids. Perfecting her memoir-style and learning to merge it with magic and all the literary references she loves, you can feel her learning how to be the Patti Smith I adore.

Still a worthy read for Patti Smith fans, I wouldn’t recommend starting with this one though.

#4 Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass – Lana Del Rey

I finally caved and bought Lana’s poetry book when it was 50% off in Waterstones. Having heard a couple of spoken word readings of the works, I really loved the style. LA Who Am I To Love You feels Ginsberg-ish, or like Frank O’Hara for the modern celebrity age. I love the complexity in Lana’s ability to be both so open and so mysterious as she shares a lot here but still the image of who she is remains blurry.

Like everything Lana does, there are moments of cheesiness. When she mentions vaping and calls lovemaking her legacy, I definitely rolled my eyes. But for fans of her work, I think this is a really interesting look into her voice and process. At points you get to see several drafts of the same piece, complete with crossings out and handwritten changes, you begin to see the thought process behind her work, and the tone of her music carries through completely in even the shortest, simples haikus. The queen of incredible one-liners and a magician at building a full atmosphere while saying so little, the book is encased in the same kind of glamour and beauty that holds all her albums. Reminding me of her demo recordings with their ever-changing lyrics, it’s nice getting to look at Lana as an artist while so many shrug her off, and the effects fame can have on the purity of work.

A nice little read that you can take as much as you want from, I’d recommend listening to the recordings after or during.

#5 We Had To Remove This Post – Hanna Bervoets

A novella about the trauma faced by content moderators, this book is already out in Dutch but not yet released in English. Slipping through my letterbox after a particularly bad day as a social media manager, it couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. Despite touching on some heavy subjects, Emma Rault’s translation is easy to read and endlessly engaging as we step into the main character, Kayleigh’s life and workspace at a big social media organisation. I don’t think we really consider the fact that actual people are involved in content moderating, assuming it’s just a bot or a computer program. But the fact that this book is informed by real-life stories of content moderators makes it all the more shocking and opens up loads of thoughts about the traumatic jobs low-wage workers face and the way capitalism will exploit people’s money struggles as Kayleigh discusses her debts.

While being really conversational in tone, there is so much subtext here as you gradually see the characters be changed by their work. Slowly being affected by what they spend their days seeing, I like that it focuses more on the outcomes of trauma rather than sharing too many upsetting scenes of what they saw- leaving it up to the reader’s imagination definitely makes it worse.

Despite only being around 130 pages, I feel like this book has changed my perception, making me want to complain less about my social media job and consider more about the trauma behind the scenes. I think it’s a really important book and I’m so glad it’s finally being released in the UK!

Next up...

And The Ass Saw The Angel – Nick Cave

✿✿✿

It’s the strangest time of the year, when activity threatens to resume while the weather still says no. The winter lull stretching its legs all the way out from the end of December, it’s still hard to do anything productive other than tidy up and throw out January 1^st’s resolutions. What is there to do other than go to bed early and wake up late? Hide away in a duvet and pass up on Saturday night plans? Well, here are some films to accompany you through that January/February slump.

#1 Another Round (Druk)

Helping you feel like you’ve achieve something in your day, subtitled films always give me a sense of productivity. Another Round is the best kind of subtitled films, centring its plot around recognisable suburbia so you never get lost if you fall slightly behind on the dialogue. Taking an interesting look into our relationship with alcohol, another round is about a group of teacher friends than decide to test out a hypothesis of keeping their blood alcohol content at 0.5% to boost social skills and happiness. For a relatively calm and oddly cosy film, I had so much to say after watching this. For one, the relationships between the men made me want to cry, feeling like the first showing of male friendship that felt real and tangible, more akin to what I feel with my own friends than boring laddy banter. It was also lovely seeing totally normal older men, obviously Mads Mikkelsen is a heartthrob, but overall these men look like men you’d see in your day to day life, entirely centring the film in our society. And then the presentation of alcohol, managing to be as complex and intricate as it truly is, with the film managing to show the tragedies it can bring without demonising its place in joy and celebration.

Filmed in Copenhagen and all in Danish, the complex relationships are all set in a beautifully cosy scandi setting that makes it a perfect late winter watch for a night you’ve cancelled drinking plans.

#2 Man On The Moon

The iconic Jim Carrey playing the iconic Andy Kaufman. I finished watching this film and immediately did my favourite chaotic past time – rating films on Letterboxd purely on how much I enjoyed them. Man on The Moon got 5 stars.

Walking you through the silly complexities of Andy Kauffman’s subversive career, this is the perfect comedy film to watch when you don’t want to watch a comedy. It’s never cheesy and, if you don’t know much about Andy Kaufman like I didn’t, it remains totally unexpected and surprising from start to finish. At points I laughed out loud at the sheer absurdity of it all, but I never felt silly for letting myself sink into it and enjoy. All balanced out with a sad commentary on fame and purpose, the silliness goes hand in hand with the sombre in a perfect Sunday night in January way.

Jim Carrey is absolutely incredible and totally perfect for the role – but I’d skip the urge to follow the film up with his documentary about it, because it makes him seem dead annoying.

#3 Eighth Grade

What better subject to dive into during the cold months than old school trauma. If ‘written and directed by Bo Burnham’ isn’t enough to instantly hook you in, Eighth Grade is genuinely one of the sweetest films I’ve ever seen. Its so simple and tender, using a story of a girls struggles to make friends as a universally relatable tale of nervousness. Focused on Kayla, an eighth grader who makes motivational YouTube videos about confidence while simultaneously having none, its full of all the feels like encapsulate growing up and our school experience. I think Kayla, played by Elsie Fisher, might be one of my favourite character I’ve watched in a long time. While obviously being written in Bo Burnham’s classic dark yet silly comedy style, she feels so real as she walks through experiences we’ve all felt. Blowing up the relatively minor tragedies of teenage years into the end of the world emotional experiences we thought they were at the time, Eighth Grade is emotional and sentimental without ever becoming too heavy. 

If you want to really root for a character and have some time to reconnect with your past self, press play on this.

#4 Summer Of Soul

The total other end of the spectrum, this is one for people who want to get out of winter as quick as possible. Half way through watching this film, I genuinely remarked out loud how happy I felt, as this entire documentary is just so joyful and endearing. Using forgotten archive footage to tell the story of the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, there are performances from a lineup of legends including Nina Simone, Sly & The Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson and more. Interviewing people who were there and looking into why this massive festival was forgotten and lost under the shadow of Woodstock, its simultaneously a massive celebration of the event while analysing the society that birthed it. Doing an amazing job of joining the dots between the 60s massive cultural moments that always feel so disconnected, Summer Of Soul immediately became one of my favourite documentaries I’ve ever watched. 

The perfect film for a Friday night when you just wish it would warm up – put the heating on, grab a drink and prepare to listen to the soundtrack for weeks to come.

#5 Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Never, ever in my life did I think I’d get emotional over Melissa McCarthy. I was so reluctant to watch this as Melissa is so associated with family friendly mind numbing comedies, but I’m so glad I got over my own snobbery. Telling the true story of Lee Israel, a biography who turned to forging letter between celebrities and literary legends when she could no longer get published, McCarthy’s performance as the figure is both painfully frustrating and totally devastating. A totally underrated gem of a film with incredible performances from McCarthy and Richard E. Grant, I was stunned when it finished, wondering how I could’ve let the film go unwatched for so long. With enough drama to keep you hooked and enough complexity to make you think, you’ll probably cry then instantly google Lee Israel after.

✿✿✿

I don’t think I was quite prepared for how often someone would ask me what my hobbies are. I thought it was a primary school thing, scribbling down our favourite activities and assigning them to ourselves as identities or future careers. If you liked to play with your pets, you were the class vet. Those who liked being part of the choir were destined to be stars. And I picked writing stories, still wearing my badge at 23. I didn’t think people asked, as I floated through years of friendships and life situations defined by my one big academic interest, and now I feel like I should have a better answer prepared. ‘So what kind of things do you like doing?’ – dates, interviewers, prospective housemates, I don’t really know what to tell you.

This was the first year in a long run that I haven’t written about new year’s eve. Never really knowing what else to do with my reflections, I pour them out into a blog and click publish to tick off an imaginary quota that I’ve engaged with it. I started one and stopped at just under 300 words, a pattern I’ve been seeing a lot. 1000 words used to mean about two hours and now is more like two days, I didn’t used to take breaks and now I’ll procrastinate between every paragraph. I reckon I’m just out of practice now my job doesn’t see me stretching my writers hand all day, but I’m shocked how quickly my lifelong identity as a writer feels threatened after 6 months of reduced output. The voice that used to yell at my lack of ideas or accepted pitches has nothing else to focus on but me, scratching away corner of my perceived self every night I don’t write a word.

For 6 months I’ve clocked off around 6:30 or 7, ate, and seen sinking into a bath for 45 minutes or so as the height of daily luxury. I felt like I read constantly and made no real progress to my to-read pile, I ate the same meals on repeat, melted my brain over hours of Gilmore girls, and didn’t write a single poem.

In December, I remedied it with cross-stitching, a skill I picked up years ago to busy myself after a big heartbreak. I spent a month dedicating every night to a variety of floral patterns and my sisters initials, and had them finished just in time for Christmas day. On the 29^th, my mum taught me the basics of knitting and I found something new to be hooked on that managed to silence the voice that keeps slicing me up. I knitted in the car from Middlesbrough to Sheffield. I knitted on new years eve only half aware of the calendar changing. I knitted all the way back down to London and every night since, until the 16^th. I ran out of wool before my last step, I’m still not over it. I cried when I realised, desperately face-timing my mum to see if she knew some magic fix that would require a week long wait for new wool. I held my breath and waited for the voice inside me to find the mistake to fixate on, woke up the next morning tensed ready. Put on my old scarf in the absence of a new one and waited all the way to work. But nothing came, I just ordered more wool.

When people ask me what my hobbies are, I always lead with writing, hyperaware that I sound like a person that can’t rest. I am that person. I tag going to galleries and gigs onto the list, but for years my weekends have felt wasted if I wasn’t finishing a piece. I struggle to go a week without needing to tick some work off my list, and will sacrifice all other activities to settle that need. I hear my housemates go out running or do drum lessons, my sister jets off for weekend breaks, my mum finishing making a cardigan, and I see all their hobbies as the most beautiful little decoration to their life. On them, it’s a thing of awe, I love the facets of their being, multiplying year on year with some new interest nurtured. And I want it for myself, feeling the blossoming begin each night I let a film soundtrack a stress free creation with no deadline or consequence. The soft wool seemed able to soothe anything, silencing that voice and letting me live in 20 stitch rows, smiling each night at new progress that cost me nothing in terms of strife. I loved how my hands moved without me thinking, feeling like writing on a good day, giving me a dose of that identity-affirming automatic action without any pressure. The needles clicking together was a calming hypnosis, the rows bobbing up and down like waves. I wish my new wool would hurry up and arrive.

After a week without it, the voice is getting louder. Even now, this piece has taken me two hours and I’m at 846 words and I hate myself for it. I have plans to go out and wander and I can’t help feeling like for some reason I don’t deserve to, like there’s a more pressing task I’ve forgotten about, stupid girl.

But knitting into a new year, feeling freshly in love with a task that was never a chore or a stress, my only resolution was to do more no-pressure things. I want to decorate my identity with little badges that have no need to become anything more, no quota to meet, no punishment for a week off. At 23, I want to pick up some hobbies, remedying my younger self that stuck too close to one thing and could never last at anything else if it didn’t mean something bigger. Knitting means nothing bigger, just calm and sweet and soft.

And my new wool has just arrived.