Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
The Wax That Melts Our Wings

I’d say it’s what separates us, not from the beasts, but the bestial. Creating the future, renewing a learned past - these are reasons to strive. Writing for and with love, taking and framing an image, stretching new melodic skins onto old skeletons of song… it’s how we manage to fly. It’s how we stay you and me, not us and them.

The Wax That Melts Our Wings
Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
The Lady Jellypants Guide to Grace and Poise

Unlike Osk, who seemed to establish his own tactical task force wherever we lived, scooping up neighbourhood feline troublemakers as sidekicks (including the memorable ginger behemoth Watson, with whom he used to scope the street from the safety of the shed roof), Jelly has the intelligence gathering skills of a sponge cake.

The Lady Jellypants Guide to Grace and Poise
Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
Love Me Tender

Anyway, somewhere in between my 'and then you should've done this' and 'why didn't you say x and y, rather than z', and 'for the love of monkeys and the general public's eyesight, you didn't honestly wear that heinous shirt did you', something he was saying about the dating extravaganza we were picking to pieces finally penetrated my cloud of self-congratulatory cumulo-waffle. 

"Most people don't talk about how dates are progressing as a tender process, do they?" he asked. 

"What?"

"She said I was 'part way through the tender process' and that she was judging me on my submission. I'd like to think there was irony involved, and I think at the time I may have given an admittedly weak "haha, yesssss, quite". Looking back, I'd have to conclude, computer says no on the presence of Fabulon or other aids to achieving crisply pressed linen."

Love Me Tender

Kate the Grateful

When We Begin The Beguine...

So. The very first post on the new blog.

This had better be good hadn't it?

What to say, what to say...

Happy New Year would probably be a good place to start. 

I started being 'grateful' on New Year's Day in 2012 - in another life really, as a novice blogger on Tumblr, not knowing much at all about the whole shebang, going through enormous changes in my own tiny little world.

And here I sit at the dawn of a new year. 2013.

Well, it's not actually dawn.

It's lunchtime.

Blame New Year's Eve.

And I am adamant that I will not be making any formal resolutions this year, because every time I have, I have either broken them or regretted them. I do intend to give out more than I receive. And to live in the spirit of the two points below.

Grateful - and ready to write about it.

2013 will rock like a rocky thing.

Let's get it on.

And be grateful for a new year, without any creases in it, or toast crumbs or gravy stains sitting on its lap.

A fresh, crisp 2013.

Take a big bite out of it people.

It sounds delicious.