Anna Loves.... More Spring Blooms

blossoms in my uncle's garden

bluebells on the roadside in Clifton

pansies on the roadside in Clifton

I've spoken about my love of spring before a couple of times, and it's probably starting to sound like a broken record, but as the season progresses more and more blooms are appearing in gardens and alongside the roadside that I simply can't resist pausing to snap pictures of! I'd promise that this was my last post with poorly-labelled flowers all over it, but that would be a very pie-crust-like promise to be making. I've been holed up in cafes and libraries and hunched over my desk working on essays and research proposals, so the moments when I run into blooms on my daily errand-wanderings are little spots of happy in my city life. Speaking of my predilection for the countryside, I spent a very pleasant Easter Sunday out in the Cotswolds with family, pottering around the fields where my aunt and uncle live - which is where we caught this little lady (it's a good thing none of my tribe are squeamish about pond life):

female great crested newt

Anna Hears... Sun Culture

Sun Culture's eponymous debut album has been described as 'the perfect soundtrack to usher in the sunshine and warmer weather' (available free here). Considering the band's name, this sunshine-y nature is far from surprising, but it's the kind of blue-skies-from-here-on-out attitude that doesn't end up being slightly cloying when the clouds inevitably roll in on the British spring, in the way that 'summer tunes' often do. Rather than written for summer, they seem like they've been written with the memory of summer in mind, and are not unconvincingly happy. The happiness in the tracks is bolstered by the upbeat nature of the music, with the right amount of quasi-nostalgia in the lyrics to prevent the summer feelings becoming teeth-achingly sweet.

Anna Eats... Courgette á la BTP

Boston Tea Party, my preferred study spot on the days when the university study spaces are too quiet, has just updated its menu. Although jacket potatoes are gone, they've added a selection of sides to go with the menu. Now, I'm not a fan of a big lunch, so a side is often the right sized amount of food for me. In fact, now that a side salad is an option I suspect my study-lunches might actually get healthier. But on this occasion it definitely did not. One of the sides is 'Courgette Fritters with Harissa Mayo' - and anything that involves both fritters and mayo isn't exactly the healthiest option. If you need an excuse, this probably does count as one of your five-a-day. As the picture above shows, it's a pretty generous portion - perfect for my lunch habits. I wouldn't have thought that courgettes were a match for fritter-isation, but these were lovely. The crispy batter combined with the softness of the courgettes, which were pretty much perfectly cooked (I can be pretty fussy about the level of 'done' that my veg turn out as). Plus, the harissa mayonnaise was pretty incredible; I'm on a bit of a 'hot' kick at the moment,  mostly in the form of jalapeño bread and 'mexicana' cheese, so the addition of a bit of heat to quite a 'meh' condiment was wonderful. I'm pretty convinced that this should only be a treat-lunch, rather than a regular lunch habit, but it's delicious.

Anna Reads... A Possible Life

Sebastian Faulks is one of my favourite authors; he's one of the ones whose books I scout for in second-hand book shops and charity shops. I deliberately make sure that I have my own physical copy of the books, no library loans or kindle downloads there. A Possible Life is the most recent of his books, from 2012, that isn't a James Bond or Jeeves add-on, but I only just (due to my preference for pre-loved, paperback editions) got my mitts on a copy.

Although Faulks has written books encapsulating the stories of various individuals, such as A Week in December, A Possible Life read a little more like a collection of short stories than a coherent novel, due to the unconnected nature of the various 'parts'. There are a couple of minor threads that appear in several stories, such as a particular statue, but none of the characters are directly linked, and the tales take place in several time-frames, including the future.

I'm not really a fan of short stories, as this book seems to be, because I often find that the characters aren't as fully developed as they are in your traditional novel. It takes a different kind of author, I suspect, to write a fully developed short story than it does to write a typical, 200 page novel. However, despite the difference in writing style to usual, I actually feel as though Faulks achieved short stories that actually left me thinking. It might be because I could spot themes common to his stories, like adultery, that gave them greater depth in my mind. It might be my bias towards liking Faulks' writings. Regardless of those potential influences on my attitude towards the story, I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

A Possible Life focuses on love stories. Never entirely conventional, sometimes of dubious morality, and not always of a romantic persuasion, Faulks frames the characters' relationships in the greater context of their lives, which somehow makes the works seem more realistic. The all-consuming love affair that leaves its fingerprints on your life long after it ends, the maternal feelings towards other peoples' children, the lingering 'what if' of a flame despite its unhappy ending - all these ideas are familiar, grounded in the way that people live their lives, rather than the unrealistic optimism of the 'happily ever after'.

Love stories like this seem to be increasingly en vogue in recent years, but the idea is one that Faulks has been playing with throughout his works. Love is always more complicated than boy-meets-girl-and-falls-in-love, but rather than portraying these complications as obstacles in the path of true love, Faulks makes it clear, throughout A Possible Life,they are sometimes what makes the love story worth telling. And, in the long run, worth reading.

Anna Hears... Songs for the Friendzone

The "friendzone" is a particular internet trope that won't die and is one of the many that I disagree with because, at the end of the day, what is so very wrong with wanting to be friends and nothing more?

Anyway, thanks to the wonderful people over at Noisetrade I stumbled across a song that mirrored another song I became aware of last summer. Both of them are about wanting to friends with a member of the opposite sex, one from each side of the 'gender divide', both are the right amount of angry about the idea that more than friendship should be wanted, both make me utterly unrepentant about having been one of those "girls that the internet hates", as my brother jokes...

Those Darlins, Be Your Bro (thanks noisetrade!)

Palma Violets, Best of Friends

Anna Eats... Summer Salad

I feel as though I ought to whisper this statement: I really like salads. Partly because it's a super easy way to do "packed lunch" for a day in the library - one box, 2/3 portions of veg (in about 5 veg types) some couscous or the previous days potatoes and a drizzle of dressing and I'm done - and partly because I genuinely think you can do some quite interesting things within the confines of salad. The restaurant I work at, when the chefs remember the veggie staff, makes some pretty scrummy salads out of whatever they find lying around (beetroot, salsa, and spare veg is the usual recipe), which makes me happy. Plus, they're easy to throw together! I feel like I'm living up to that awful media stereotype of girls laughing while they eat salad, but it's more than a 'health thing'.

Take the above - I'm not pretending that the pile of cheese on toast is healthy, I know what I'm doing to myself - but look at the salad. If it had just been rocket, beetroot, spring onions and radishes, it would have been a disappointingly dull salad in the grand scheme of things, even if those are my favourite salad ingredients. Strawberries though. Throwing in those strawberries made the whole 'dish' a different kettle of fish. Eating them with balsamic vinegar is the sort of thing that foodies talk about every summer, starting from about now when British strawberries are appearing in the shops, but putting them into a savoury salad felt a little rebellious and decidedly luxurious. 

And salad should, at least occasionally, be more of a luxury than a diet.

Anna Wears... A Small Challenge

Jacket: "thrifted" / Dress: ZARA / Bag: Accessorize / Shoes: Red Herring

That is, indeed, a flash of midriff. Stop the press, I'm embracing the crop. Ish. My sister got me a couple of crop tops for my birthday, but I took one back as it wasn't very...me. But this version, in a dress, with a fun print and high waist on the skirt, seemed like a pretty easy way to edge into a trend that I can apparently pull off physically, but don't feel confident enough to on a stylistic/emotional level. Word to the wise though - don't go out and eat half a pizza and expect it not to feel a little snug if, like me, you tend to lean towards food babies...

My birthday dinner/cocktails/'do' last week felt like the perfect moment to get this dress out of my wardrobe and into the wider world. Apparently it has already left the Bristol store, so I'm pretty glad I was in an impulsive mood the day that I got it!