Spend forever with me, Winnie?

"A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. You think more people would listen to what he had to say. I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo? The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we hadn't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying."

I fell in love with Tuck Everlasting many summers ago. It's a beautiful, bittersweet story of love, immortality and perhaps, the meaning of life: our purpose, and what we are really living for. The words 'escapism' and 'films' are intrinsically interlinked, no matter how much we deny it. In the end, the truth is, we all love to be momentarily lost for an hour and a half in a world so removed from reality that it can't be real, not even movie-real, yet everything feels so close that you can almost feel the tall, tall grass quickly brush across your legs as you run daringly through a field on a hot day during the peak of summer. When it all ends, and as you leave the air of anticipation, of magic, and the limitless possibilities swirling in the dark, dark cinema theatre, sometimes, just sometimes, you also leave with wonderful thoughts and lessons and realisations that are real. Now, that's magical.

Tuck said it to Winnie the summer she turned fifteen: do not fear death, but rather the unlived life. You don't have to live forever...you just have to live. (And she did.)

The Little Glass Slipper and other stories.

“My great-great-grandmother's portrait hung in the university up until the Revolution. By then, the truth of their romance had been reduced to a simple fairy tale. And, while Cinderella and her prince did live happily ever after, the point, gentlemen, is that they lived. “

We’ve all heard the fairytales, the happily ever afters. As children, we didn’t just believe in them, we thought they were real. As we grew older, the perfect sized glass slippers, the one kiss that cures a hundred years of sleep, the carriage ride with Prince Charming into the sunset gradually dissolves into nothing but a fairytale. As adults, we consider the greatest love stories to be oddly the ones twisted in tragedy: Romeo and Juliet, Heathcliff and Cathy, Odysseus and Penelope, even Jack and Rose, Christian and Satine. Yet, the truth is, even the most cynical of us undeniably want that happily ever after, its form somewhat different to each individual. I don’t think we no longer don’t believe in happily ever afters, but instead, the truth is, we are too afraid to. As children, we were fearless.

A few days ago, as I was walking home, I saw a man climbing up a ladder on the outside of his home, reaching the first floor window, with a paint brush and paint in his hand. As he began to re-paint the outside of his house, a woman appeared on the first floor window, arranging a bouquet of flowers on the windowsill, while a little girl was in the front garden, picking more flowers in a shade of bright purple. To my surprise, the husband extended a hand out towards the wife, and began to sing a nonsensical form of opera, jokingly adding ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’. It was in that moment, as the husband ended the serenade on a painfully out of tune note, as the wife laughed and the daughter giggled, and as the sun projected a magnificent golden colour on their half-painted house on a quiet, suburban road, the gentle summer evening breeze causing the wind chime to playfully dance and tinker, that I realised this was the true definition of a fairytale. That forgoing unrealistic expectations lost in the world of Walter Elias Disney, or star-crossed lovers and tragic love stories, in reality, this was, in essence, everything that anyone could ever wish for.

You say the things you know will sparkle after.

I hate to begin with a much exhausted cliché, but it's hard to believe that the end of June is here already. Between revising for exams, end of term festivities, job hunting, volunteering, meeting up with friends, enjoying London in the sunshine and arranging holiday plans, I haven't had much free time recently. Which might explain the speckles of dust slowly gathering on my camera and dvds on the coffee table and why I'm uncharacteristically behind on the latest happenings in Sunset Boulevard. It's been a very good kind of busy though as it's been a fantastic start to summer, and I can't wait for the rest. Typically, I often choose the most inconvenient times to write anything as I have to leave tomorrow at 7:45 to catch a train, so I think I'll keep it sweet and concise and end right here.

On another note, lately, I've been in a time and space kind of mood, if there is such a wondrous thing. Right now, I'm sitting by the window sill, listening to 'Melancholy Astronautic Man' by Allie Moss and stargazing (or in other words, capitalising on my never ceasing imagination and pretending that there are more than one or two stars overlooking lively, animated London at night) in the summer evening breeze. There's just perhaps one thing missing. And what's that, you may ask? A 907 year old time lord of course, what else?

Stage wings, hair slides and growing up.

Let me tell you a story. At age seven, I took part in my first ballet show. I remember, as I waited anxiously by the stage wings, I became mesmerized by the ballerinas who were performing on stage. Truth be told, I’ve long forgotten their faces, their dances, the music, the costumes. What I still remember are the silver hair slides. The silver hair slides surrounding their buns, arranged in a manner reminiscent of a crown, occasionally catching the light of the sparkly bright spotlights whenever they glided across the dance floor. It was in that moment, between their regal reverence and the air of sophistication emanating from them as they exited effortlessly off stage (which I could not help but stare transfixed), that I had decided, when I had reached Grade 8 ballet, that is, in other words, when I had transformed into ‘a ballerina with the silver hair slides’, I would be grown up, in every sense of the word.

A few years later, after having watched The Sound of Music, I had changed my mind. I now thought I would be grown up when I blew out the sixteen candles on my birthday cake. I couldn't wait to be sixteen. I had decided that I would wear light pink tulle dresses that swirled around magnificently as I danced in spectacularly elegant country houses, sing 'I am sixteen, going on seventeen' every single day (just because I could), and be every inch as fabulous as Liesel. After, growing up became synonymous with studying for A levels, turning eighteen, or learning how to drive. Last year, I was absolutely certain that going to university was when I would be grown up. When I arrived, I realised that I still didn’t feel completely grown up, I thought, when I have a job, a house, when I’m married and have children…surely I would be grown up then? It’s taken me nineteen years to realise that growing up is endless, limitless process. It's not a destination, it’s a wonderful journey and an invaluable education. It is true that as the years pass, we become older, and perhaps wiser, but the matter of the fact is, we never lose ourselves and who we are.

Sometimes, I still feel like I’m the seven-year-old ballerina in a tutu the shade of a forget-me-not blue, wearing ballet shoes with my name that I had written half-legibly on the soles, with bright eyes and a wide gap-toothed smile. Sometimes, I still feel the same rhythm, the rhythm when the butterflies in my stomach and the thumping of my heart collide as one, as I stand there, with that indescribable feeling exclusive to stage wings, anticipating to reach centre stage, for the spotlight, for my time, for that fearless moment. I couldn’t wait.

Tomorrow can wait for some other day.

‘Right here, right now’ came on shuffle and I felt compelled to write a little something.

I cannot believe it’s been a year. It’s gone by frighteningly fast and yet feels like a lifetime ago because so much has changed. So much. During a period when I had never experienced so much rejection, uncertainty and a lack of self-confidence, in many years, when I look back, it’ll be a contender for the best months of my life, I’m sure. Memories of 4am giggling fits, an indescribably insane night at a premiere, countless viewing and listening sessions, screaming at buses and merchandise, two hours spent on the grass of Wolsey Drive discussing the logistics of a particular scene…

It was truly magical. I have two very special people to thank for this. You know who you are. (Or, well, at least one of you do, because the other doesn’t know that I exist.)