Sometimes, my dear queer diarists, you are fortunate enough to go on a vacation. These occasions, I know, are sadly few and far between. Even fewer and far betweener are the occasions on which we are cast adrift without the comforting cocoon of the internet — clutching our journals hopefully and praying that we find our ways without the help of our friend Google maps.
Such have been the last few weeks in Dear Queer Diary-land, my fearless readers — hence the long silence from these parts. I hope that your journals have been filling themselves with brilliant thoughts in the intervening period.
While you have been filling your journals with words, I have been filling myself with scones.
As I suspected as I packed up my Moleskines in preparation for this trip, my own pages have remained fairly empty, but for a few games of tic-tac-toe (my favorite feature of the signature AS notebook) and some smeary recollections penned in my very worst train handwriting — which, I have learned, is only moderately more legible than what I attempt to write with my non-dominant hand.
The only thing worse for my pen(wo)manship than a train is a bus.
Other recent additions to my notebook include the guest list for an apartment-warming party my girlfriend and I planned on one of the aforementioned train rides and an exhaustive chart of who will receive which of the seven million postcards I have not been able to prevent myself from buying.
As it turns out, this is only a fraction of the trip’s gross postcard intake.
In addition to filling the inside of my journal, I have also taken a few choice opportunities to document the outside of it, in the style of the immortal Flat Stanley and his ilk.
Here, my Autostraddle notebook poses seductively with a fruity cider.
I shall no doubt have more to say upon my full return to the World Wide Web, but in the meantime, keep journaling as queerly and dearly as possible. Do you have upcoming summertime adventures you will be able to document?
Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!
Header by Rory Midhani
Gosh, that scone picture makes me (Brit living abroad) really miss cream tea. Cream tea is probably the pinnacle of British culinary achievement.
I really should get back into the habit of documenting my trips – it’s something I used to do – but worry that if I sit down and write about the things, I won’t have time to actually do the things. And then I think I’ll write about the things when I get home, but that doesn’t happen. At least I always take tons of photos and buy postcards for my collection!
I am in Cornwall right now having all the cream teas on your behalf. :d
Betty’s afternoon tea in yorkshire… amazing. Ridiculously expensive and upper crusty but so damn good.
My mother just sent me this recipe, so I am going to try to recreate cream tea in the U.S. now that I am back. However, something tells me that getting clotted cream will not be easy…
http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/7776-british-style-currant-scones
My main takeaway from this: DID YOU GO TO ALNWICK CASTLE?!? Is it not just the best? I went there a few years ago and needed out, hardcore, about all things HP. And also the gorgeous scenery. And also the awesome gardens!
Yes! There were even small children “learning to fly” when we were there!
All this talk of cider and scones sounds suspiciously southern to me, but if you’re heading north on your UK trip drop me a line, you could come have a night on my boat and I could take you to see Sylvia Plath’s grave and the Bronte’s house… and I’m sure Het would come along too :D
*HAT! Not Het. Sorry Hat.
SIGHHHH. We were in and around Durham at the beginning of our trip, but will have to make a return trip to take you up on your amazing proposal! Women writers and boats are two of my favorite things!