In Amongst It

Once seen, you can't unsee these beautiful golden flowers, blooming amidst a dark February in the northern hemisphere. I have taken to foraging more and more recently. It's allowed me to remain creative in the kitchen while giving me access to ingredients that cannot be bought, no matter how desperately I may at times search. I have also found such peace and solace in nature whilst going out foraging. It forces one to notice what is going on around you, what exists around you. It's important to understand the environment in which you live, to see the power and beauty of the natural world. In a world that is feeling more and more dissociative and placeless, to go out into the wild and find nature's produce is simply enriching. I have also, over the past few years, jumped aboard the fermentation train. The gut health and all that. I've been jumping into science-based books that would shock the chemistry teacher from whose class I quit just before our final school leav...

 I'd anticipated some lighter subjects for this blog before I woke yesterday morning and read the news about Alexei Navalny's death. When I first read it, I doubted it, dismissing it as Twitter doggerel and nothing more. That is, until respected historians like Simon Sebag Montefiore and Peter Frankopan started sharing it and commenting on it. Then people like Clarissa Ward and Anne Applebaum chimed in as well. It was in disbelief I read the varying attempts at hagiography, watched the prison video taken, apparently, only the previous day. This was a day I always knew was coming, and knew that it would come sooner rather than later. I just didn't think it would be today. I won't pretend that my freedom is under attack or that the situations that Alexei Navalny protested in any way resemble anything that I have gone through. I'm writing this in front of a TV in Dublin, Ireland. I'm not knee-deep in repression in Vladivostok or anything like that. The work of Alex...

I still remember vividly watching my first Chelsea match, as they romped to the tital in the 2005-06 season, defeating my father's beloved Manchester United 3-0 at home on the second last gameweek of the season. I was hooked, addicted, in love with the royal blue club and the barnstorming players and the funny, stylish, foreign manager. I tried countless times to recreate Joe Cole's skillful finish from that match when I played for Cabinteely F.C., but never to any avail. The club has given me such joyous times and such heartbreaking ones as well. From crying when my dad and his team got revenge way past my bedtime in Moscow in 2008, to rejoicing alone as I isolated from COVID when we won the Champions League in 2021 against Man City. There was always something poetically and beautifully unpredictable about the club, bordering on the illogical. We would sack a successful manager, bring in a new one and win all the same. It defied all that I thought I knew about sports managemen...