So from the beautifully sublime writing prompt of yesterday, to the frankly ridiculous of today! I must say I am enjoying the variety of these writing prompts, I hope you are!

My first celebrity crush, that I know was definitely a crush, was Simba. Yep, you read that right! Simba the lion from Lion King. At the time, I don’t really remember thinking it was weird, I was 4 when it came out. I just know that I loved that lion. And it wasn’t just “Gosh he sings well” or “Ah he’s nice”, it was definately “He’s attractive”!! And you may judge me for this, and think it’s weird, but I know others who fancy Disney’s Robin Hood (the fox), so I’m allowed to fancy a lion. Just look at him: 



If the lads are allowed to fancy the Little Mermaid (who is half fish) then I’m allowed to fancy a lion. Actually, while we’re on that thought, Ariel is definately the hottest Disney Princess and in retrospect, probably fancied her too… 



But if I’m asked for my first human crush, if I have to be conventional, then I guess it was Ben from A1. He was definately the first guy who I had a poster of on my wall… I say wall, it was a life sized poster of him on my ceiling. Wow, I can practically hear people’s opinions of me plumitting as I type!! 

Looking at him now, mainly the hair, Ben looks a bit similar to Simba, so maybe I had a type even in my formative years! Let’s just take a minute to appreciate Ben’s beautifully manicured 90’s curtains… 



Anyhoo, I’m just off to die of shame, bye! 

Lex xx



A beautiful writing prompt for a lovely chilled Sunday blog. 

There are so many wonderful pieces of music that move me for all manner of different reasons. There are pieces that remind me of specific events or people. Pieces that evoke certain emotions. Pieces that make me happy to be alive and pieces that cause me to weep. 

Music makes my world go round and often I become infatuated with a certain piece of music for a short while, then the obsession will wane slightly until I hear it again a couple of months down the line. But the particular piece that I’m going to share with you today I never tire of. I think it is as beautiful now as the first time I heard it and fell in love with it. (I’ve listened to it 4 times while writing this!) 

It is a piece called Ashokan Farewell and is by Jay Ungar. It is a beautiful piece of classical/folk music that shows just how wonderful a violin can sound when played properly!! I heard a story that Jay used to run music camps for young people and one camp, when the kids had gone home and he was walking round the empty site he picked up his violin and started playing this beautifully haunting tune, and that is how Ashokan Farwell was written. Makes me love it about 10 times more. 

This is top of my “I’d like this at my funeral” list of music (we all have those lists, right?!)… mainly because in my ridiculous mind my funeral will be very dramatic, on a Wuthering Heights-esque moor, while Jim Broadbent gives a somber eulogy… Yes i am describing the funeral of Aragog the giant tarantula in Harry Potter, problem? 

Anyway, get yourself a cup of tea, pop your feet up and let this beautiful piece of music speak to your soul…

Lex xx

So, again I have grouped two writing prompts together. Because being asked to pick 5 favourite films is harder than having to pick my favourite quote. So adding on “that you’ll never get bored of” makes it a little easier. I decided that I’m going to include some of my favourite clips form these movies to show you ehy I just can’t get enough of them…

1) Hairspray. When I first saw Hairspray I watched it everyday in the cinema for a week… that is love!! And I will never get bored of it, ever!

2) Juno. Again, I watched multiple times in a the same week when I got it on dvd.

3) Princess Diaries 1 & 2 (Not cheating). There are so many reasons that this film is one of my favourites, the main one being it was the origin of my fantasy that Julie Andrews was my long lost Grandma and would tell me I’m a princess and give me a makeover.

4) She’s The Man. This film redeems itself in being a super American, cheesy teen film by it being a modern retelling of Twelfth Night (highbrow). If i could, I would quote She’s The Man all the live long day, my favourite’s Gouda…

5) The Railway Children. No reason needed here. If you haven’t seen it you need to and if you don’t cry you’re dead inside. 

Hope I’ve maybe given people a few new films t add to their must see list, or reminded you of some old classics. 

Lex xx

This is somewhat of an ambiguous writing prompt. I’m not sure if it’s asking if I agree with them on an ethical level or if it’s asking about any tattoos and piercings that I have. I’ll do both and cover both bases. 

First of all, let me take you on a body modification tour of myself. At the tender age of 11 (well I disagree it was a tender age, I wish I’d been younger) I had my first piercings in my ears. At 14 I convinced my mum to let me have a second hole in my ears, my dream was to rock the one stud, one hoop look… Oh yeah! However, because of my stupid school’s rules about absolutely no jewellery, and my ear’s relatively slow healing skills, those second holes closed up and I was a bit gutted. 

At 18 I decided to pierce my own nose. It was a boring Friday evening, it seemed simple enough. I got the needle through the first couple of layers of skin, but couldn’t pop it all the way through. Turns out it’s quite hard to pierce one’s own nose. The following week, I went and had my nose pierced professionally and have been in love with the little chunk of metal in my schnoz ever since. Well apart from when I have a cold. 

Also at 18, as a treat for finishing school and passing my driving test, I stretched my ears for the first time. I’m now at a 12.00mm gauge in my ears (just about big enough to fit my little finger through). My stretched ears are of endless interest to my nephew. 

At 22 I got my first tattoo. It was using some money from my grandad which was meant for “something that would last and that I’d always wanted”, in my head that obviously meant a tattoo. I have a small Chinese symbol on my left arm, it says mum. I love it. 

A couple of years ago, while out for the day with some friends in Oxford, I got my tragus pierced on a whim. I fall more in love with this piercing every day and desperately want my other tragus done, so I match. This was my first cartilage peircing though, and the most painful to get done and healed of anything I’ve had. 

The latest addition was my new tattoo that arrived on New Years day this year. A quill on my right wrist to celebrate publishing year. It is the design of the guy who did it in Camden and it is completely beautiful. I love it. 

So to summarise, it pretty much goes without saying that I’m relatively for tattoos and piercings. I’d be the hippoest of all hypocrites if I said I was against them!!! 

Lex xx



My biggest guilty pleasure, one that I partook in this very evening, is that if there is no cream/ ice cream/ custard available I put milk on cakes and puddings. I was going to take a picture of my pudding this evening to illustrate how beautiful and not gross this particular guilty pleasure is, but it was too good and I ate it before I took a photo. 

People react very strongly to my guilty pleasure, in fact it has caused people to publicly disown me. But I argue, don’t knock it until you try it. Its a habit I learnt from my uncle, so I’m also arguing that it’s genetic. 

I could write more about my guilty pleasure, like my secret love of Mrs Brown’s Boys and American Pie, microwaved cheese sandwiches and the feeling of taking an eyelash out of my eye (it’s almost worth putting them in, just to take them out), but I’m crazy tired and need to hit the hay. Night night.

Lex xx



My earliest childhood memories are pretty fragmented. I remember bits and pieces from pretty early on in life, a fact that I find frustarating as someone with a generally very good memory! 

Probably the earliest thing I can remember is half a memory from when I must have been about 2 and a half. I know I was that old because it is our old house and I turned 3 in the house in which I currently live. I say half a memory, because that is really what it is. I remember a storm outside. I remember being in bed and being scared. I remember my mum sleeping in my bed with me. That’s it. 

I remember my 3rd birthday cake, it was Zippy.

When I was about 3 or 4 I remember having my photo taken while on holiday and suddenly realising that while I was posing for the photo I had been sat in an ants nest. I literally had ants in my pants. 

I remember racing my brother down the (ridiculously steep) stairs in out new house. We were racing to watch the Adams Family, important obviously. I fell down the stairs. 

I remember a holiday to France when I was 5. I fell out of bed in the middle of the night, banged my head and got a conclusion, a French doctor came to talk to me which was more disorientating than my bumped noggin. That same holiday I watched some cows being milked, I got poo all over my new pink shoes. Theirs not mine. 

Rest assured my memory has got a darn sight better over the years, but thanks for meandering down memory lane with me. 

Lex xx



A: Auntyhood… I love being someone’s slightly mental auntie, it’s the best things I’ve ever been 

B: Bootcamp… I love crawling around in the mud

C: Cheese, of any variety other than blue. 

D: Driving

E: Ears, my ears. My ears and their additions. 

F: Films

G: God

H: Helping (Ooh that was twee wasn’t it?!) 

I: Ice cream

J: Jelly… I flipping love jelly. 

K: knitting 

L: Laughing. Simples.

M: Murder mysteries

N: Nigttime. When it’s bedtime and you get to sleep. 

O: Ovens… When I’m cooking in them or on them. 

P: Peanut butter- seriously the way to my heart. 

Q: Queuing… For something exciting

R: Reading… Currently ‘Billy & Me’ by Giovanna Fletcher

S: Smiling

T: Tattoos… Mine, other people’s.

U: Ukuleles 

V: Vans… And by that I mean VW campervans

W: Writing… Look I’m even doing it now, I’m happy! 

X: Xercise…. Ok that’s one cheating slightly! 

Y: YOU!! You’re probably my friend, you make me happy.

Z: Zzzzzzing… Do love my sleep, I’m headed that way soon. 

Nice and simple today

Lex xx



I live my life through quotes. Whether it’s asking, when someone shouts “stop!”, if it’s hammer time or in the name of love; forever screaming pivot in people’s faces; telling people they’ve got red on them, or working on my night cheese. Whether it’s telling people they’re a wizard, wishing someone would tell me that I’m a princess (shut up!) or reminding myself that I’m a dude, I’m a hunky dude, I’m a badass hunky dude. Or if it is simply delighting to remind people that they don’t even go here! I love quotes. 

(Incidentally if you can name all the movies/shows/songs the above quotes are from, I might marry you) 

So being asked to write a blog about my favourite quote is like asking me to write a blog about my favourite child… Although harder because I don’t have any children, but you know what I mean. 

And it isn’t even just the countless, frankly ridiculous, nods to film and television that litter my supposed adult life. I love serious quotes from theologians and inspirational people. As something of a wanna be wordsmith, and someone who sees beauty in the written and spoken word, I love a good quote. One of my (not so hidden) talents is that last year me and a friend taught ourselves 150 Shakespeare quotes and the plays they appear in (we had some time on our hands). Nothing pleases me more (or makes me feel more high brow) than littering my thoroughly mediocre interactions with other people’s beautiful words. 

If asked to plump for just one though, I think I’d have to come back to the quote that I found 8 years ago when searching for something to kick off my personal statement for UCAS. It sums up my belief about God and continues to bring real truth and comfort to me about his character and faithfulness. It is from the timeless C S Lewis… 

“I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun. Not because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” 

There are times when you can’t actually see the sun, but it is by it’s light that we are able to see and carry on living. There are times, during the dark night of the soul,  when it seems impossible to see God. But it is by his light that I can see and carry on living. 

Lex xx



Ooopsie, missed another day, sorry about that! But, in my defence there is a bit of method in my madness. I saw a way to group these two prompts together, so I went with it. 

Do you know what little word I like and think gets a bad press? Nice. I really like the word nice and think it is underrated. Let me explain…

When I worked in boarding, the day I used to hate most were Sundays. Even on weekends when I wasn’t on duty, I hated Sundays because I had to go back to work at 4:00. I spent the little bit of afternoon that I did have clock watching, packing my stuff up for the week and resenting my stolen Sunday afternoon and evening. In fact, the whole weekend used to feel a bit weird. Because I lived at school during the week, not having normal evenings, I used to feel pressure to try and make my weekends as awesome as possible, cramming all the friends, all the events and all the fun I possibly could into my one precious day. 

But now, now I have a normal job, now I don’t live in a convent, now I have evenings, I have nice weekends. I don’t feel the pressure to squeeze it all in to one 24 hour period and have awesome, incredible, unforgettable weekends; I’m ok with having nice weekends. Chilled, relaxed, simple, gentle weekends. Sometimes they are big and crazy, but it’s ok (and often needed!) just to have a nice weekend, full of space. Sunday afternoons have become my favourite time of the weekend, post dinner, when I know I have a full afternoon and evening to relax befor work starts agiain.Having spent two years without that, I value that time so much. 

So nice is the one little word I’ve chosen to write about today. Nice. Its quiet. It’s gentle. It’s relaxed. There’s no massive expectation in nice, meaning there’s little disappointment in nice. It is what it is. 

I’ve had a really nice weekend. I’m having a really nice afternoon: there is a new book, there’s a teapot, there will be cheese on toast later. Nice. 

To illustrate the niceness, here is my nice self portrait for day 12…



Lex xx