Personal

Keys have always played an important role in my life. I sometimes think it embarrassing how my love for keys came about, but such is the case with childhood memories and behaviour as you grow older. During the period where I was living in Barcelona with my family (around age 7/8), I became entirely engrossed in the magic behind keys. I say it is embarrassing because where most children would play with not only expensive toys, but each other, I become entirely interested in being alone and feeding my imagination with stories of giant castle doors that could only be opened by my key. My parents had made friends with a local bar owner, Juan, and we would often visit Juan’s Bar in the evening where my parents would socialise, and my brother and I would have the opportunity to meet the other children. I distinctly remember walking past a bollard and on top of it was this random key, balancing. I picked it up and became convinced that someone had left it there, bronze and smooth, for me to discover its magical powers. I remember being entirely content racing around the city, and much so when I returned home, with my magical key.

My mother always had a huge set of keys hanging in the hallway. The kind of keys that open grand church doors, a dirty deep bronze colour that when held up to child-sized hand, would dwarf them. I would often pick them up, jingling them and listening to heavy clunking sound of them, wondering what wonders they could give a person access to. There are few symbols that I find interesting (although I do love pi), but keys seem to jump out of me at every opportunity. I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s out there collecting keys of all sizes. I often wear a necklace of two/three small, beautifully crafted keys (as seen in this photo).

I have been thinking more and more about keys, and how I can work them into my skin, my being. Whilst I don’t mind tattoos on other people, I’m not interested in them myself. The idea of putting something (ink) into my skin, forever, is a really unsettling thought. However, the concept of scarification, or more specifically branding, is something that I have been thinking about for a long time but with no concrete idea of how I would like it to work. Becca, long time key and scar lover also (check out this photo of both her key & scar), recommended that I take a trip to see Quentin at Kalima Emporium to check out their diathermic branding. I think I may well do this.. The magic of keys continues.

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The initial weekend plans kind of got left behind, sadly, but I still had a lovely weekend and I keep thinking back about things and smiling to myself, all a bit smug. After a terrible journey to Brighton I finally arrived to meet a nice boy. Went out for some delicious Japanese food (favourite) and had some champagne and nice times. Our sunrise adventure was aborted after the utter downpour on Friday night. Had sushi for breakfast (double favourite) and then with full intentions of taking some wonderful photographs, we headed off to Seven Sisters to explore the forests. After cramming on to a bus packed with nobody under the age of fifty, the bus promptly broke down in the rather weird little seaside village that is Rottingdean. Deciding against hanging around with the oldies for the next bus we had a mini Tuaca pub-crawl before settling for the afternoon in what was the epitome of a strange rural pub.

The day just got weirder and weirder. After finding out that they had a “meat raffle” I was totally into it! I’d never heard of a meat raffle before! Of course it’s totally confusing because I don’t understand why people don’t just go and buy the meat, but I thought it was really weird that people used meat as a prize, as opposed to a bottle of champagne or something equally as traditional. One of my favourite hobbies is just watching people and listening to conversations, so when two neighbouring tables started competing to see who could show off about their previous meat winnings I thought it a little hilarious. “Well we had the pork. And the chicken!” .. “Well we had the beef. It was gorgeous, GORGEOUS!” We didn’t win any meat, but needless to say we were inspired to have a good slab of pork when we got in…

After battling with ourselves about whether to go out or not (I was so tired, still got demon cough and was beginning to lose my voice), we decided to do something we hadn’t done before: go to a strip club! My old housemate is a stripper and ever since her moving in I kept meaning to go down to the club to see what all the fuss is about. I think since I saw a scene from Striptease when I was younger, I’ve always been really interested in pole dancing. I find it fascinating! It’s such a good sport – you’ve got to be really strong to hold yourself, yet also move fluidly to make it sexy (something I’ve not quite mastered yet). The club in itself was nothing like I expected it to be – I thought it’d be incredibly sleazy. The strangest thing was watching naked people being so overtly sexy, but being there in a completely non-sexual manner. I even got a special dance to ‘Daniel’ by Bat For Lashes which was great. Admittedly, I did freak out when a girl came and stroked my thigh and I thought I was going to cry with embarrassment and told her I was just here to see a friend. Most of the time I was just thinking, that’s a nice skirt she’s got on..

On the way home last night I had a big smile on my face and couldn’t stop thinking about the wonderful things that keep happening. I’m really super excited about going to Paris this weekend. To get myself in the French mood I’ll be seeing Martha Wainwright performing a dedication to Edith Piaf on Wednesday. Time to start planning places to go on the trip. Any ideas welcome!

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