Dear Ms Barker-Mawjee and Trustees,

My name is Liam Rondi. I am the gay man whose complaints and campaigning form part of the two Ofcom investigations that you and your organisation’s co-founder have publicly commented on. This campaign is not run by a law firm, a lobby group or a political party. It began with one gay man watching a broadcast, and it now carries the complaints of more than 15,000 members of the public. I write as the author of this letter, alongside the lesbian, gay and bisexual people co-signing below – the community your charity exists to serve.

On 11th August 2026, you described GB News as “championing the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals”, and characterised the segments now under investigation as calling out the “homophobia of the straight TQ+ movement”. Your organisation’s co-founder, Malcolm Clark, also posted in support.

We are collectively struggling to reconcile that statement with the broadcasts themselves, with Ofcom’s previous findings, or with what GB News has already conceded to the regulator in writing.

Investigations have now been opened into two programmes. Here is what was actually said:

On 20th June 2026, contributor Syntyche Djunga (also known as ‘Based and Bougie’) told viewers that gay men are “statistically more prone” to sexually abusing the children they adopt. Asked for those statistics, she said she did not have them to hand, but that she had seen them and that it had been “proven time and time again”. No source pertaining to the claim has been produced since.

On 5th July 2026, guest Caroline Farrow told viewers that Pride is “not about gay rights” but about “celebrating every single sexuality that isn’t heterosexuality”, including within that description “bestiality and even minor-attracted people – you know, paedophiles”.

I and many others have watched these segments repeatedly and carefully. We are unable to find a single reference to the “homophobia of the straight TQ+ movement” you named. What we find instead are two instances of gay men being directly associated with the sexual abuse of children.

As an LGB charity, we presume you are aware that the accusation that gay men are a danger to children is the specific mechanism by which our rights have been attacked for over fifty years. It was the primary claim of Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children campaign in 1977, which overturned an anti-discrimination ordinance in Florida. It powered the 1978 Briggs Initiative, which sought to bar gay people from teaching in Californian schools. It was the animating logic of Section 28 in the UK, which for fifteen years made it impossible for a teacher to tell a frightened child that there was nothing wrong with them.

This claim has never rested on evidence, nor has it ever needed to. Its function has always been to make our presence around children unthinkable, and every legal protection we have won over the years has had to be won against it. Ofcom recognised as much in October 2025, when it noted how well-established this is as a prejudicial trope against homosexual people.

In January 2025, GB News presenter Josh Howie said that the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people “includes paedos”. A record 71,582 members of the public complained. After an investigation spanning several months, Ofcom found the channel in breach of Rule 2.3 of the Broadcasting Code, concluding that the remark had the potential to be highly offensive. No sanction was imposed, as the regulator accepted an on-air apology as sufficient. In that apology, the presenter said “LGB” – he apologised, specifically, to the people your organisation claims to represent.

Most significantly, in its own submission to Ofcom, GB News stated that “the conflation or association of homosexuality with paedophilia is a harmful and homophobic trope.” That is the broadcaster’s own position, offered to the regulator in writing. A year later, two further segments doing precisely that are under investigation – and the charity that exists to defend gay, lesbian and bisexual people has described the channel responsible as “championing” our rights.

Over 15,000 people complained about these broadcasts. LGB Alliance’s only public intervention has been to commend the broadcaster. Thus, we put these four questions to you, and we ask for direct answers to each:

1. Does LGB Alliance consider the remarks described above to be homophobic? Yes or no?

2. Which specific remarks in these broadcasts do you consider to constitute the “championing” of the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals?

3. On what basis do you attribute a claim about gay men and child sexual abuse to the “straight TQ+ movement”?

4. GB News has told the regulator that associating homosexuality with paedophilia is a harmful and homophobic trope. Does LGB Alliance agree with that assessment? If your organisation has previously said so publicly, we would be glad to be pointed to the statement.

Here is what we would like you to do:

· Answer these four questions publicly.

· Issue a statement on the content of the programmes themselves, rather than on the channel broadcasting them.

· Withdraw or substantiate the characterisation of these complaints as the work of a “straight TQ+ movement”.

LGB Alliance is a registered charity, number 1194148, whose stated objects are the promotion of equality for gay, lesbian and bisexual people and the protection of human rights. When a national broadcaster is under investigation for how it has spoken about gay men, the organisation claiming to represent gay men might reasonably be expected to say something about it.

To be perfectly clear – you are entitled to hold any position you wish, but you are not entitled to hold it in our name and call it representation.

We would welcome a substantive reply within 14 days of publication. This letter, and any response to it, will be published in whole or in part.

Yours sincerely,

Liam Rondi and the undersigned

This week, I had the pleasure of an anti-LGBTQ+ extremist making a video all about me.

I use the term “all about me” loosely, considering most of said video was my own footage, bookended by a quip about me having a 12-inch dildo up my rectum, and a gag about me guzzling semen – really riveting, insightful stuff.

The person who made that video is Tyson Pengelly, a so-called “researcher” for the Australian branch of Gays Against Groomers. For the uninitiated: Gays Against Groomers is a designated anti-LGBTQ+ extremist group, and the Southern Poverty Law Center specifically notes that they trade in racist and anti-Muslim rhetoric – hold onto that, because it matters.

Before anyone reaches for the obvious objection, GLAAD highlights that the label covers any organisation pushing false claims and conspiracy theories about the community, regardless of how they personally identify. In other words – and as any rational person would tell you – being gay doesn’t stop you from causing direct harm to gay people.

The Los Angeles Blade detailed in 2023 how Gays Against Groomers “peddles dangerous and misleading narratives about the LGBTQ+ community,” and GLAAD has also repeatedly documented its people turning up alongside the Proud Boys, an actual neo-Nazi outfit, as well as John Fournace, a white nationalist who told attendees of a drag show that “most of us want to kill all of you,” whilst wearing a GAG t-shirt.

A gay New York City council member spoke out against Gays Against Groomers in 2022, only to have members of the group vandalise his office and apartment building with accusations of paedophilia, before physically assaulting his neighbour. Three people were arrested and charged as a result. Google, PayPal, Venmo, Printful and Wix have all cut ties with the organisation for breaching their terms on hate speech, and TikTok removed their account entirely.

Now apply all of that to the comment section of the video in question, where Pengelly himself declares that “conservatives are not your enemy.” Beneath that, in the same thread, one conservative calls me a f*ggot. A second says I love being called that slur whilst “on my knees”. That same person then suggests I belong on a watchlist, and Pengelly rounds it off by claiming I’m linking myself to paedophilia. That’s just a portion of the bile thrown my way, all because I dared to claim that right-wingers hate gay people.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I came across none other than Alex Armstrong in that section, joking with Pengelly about how I come across as “obsessed.”

You might remember Alex Armstrong as the GB News presenter who, a fortnight ago, threatened me with legal action for campaigning against comments made by a guest on his programme – first in an Instagram comment, then in my DMs, then never again, because he didn’t have a leg to stand on. He also promised to put an Instagram repost he’d falsely attributed to me on air to the nation that night. That also didn’t happen. What did happen, two days later, was Armstrong reading a pathetic statement on television denouncing his own guest’s homophobia after I’d told him to fuck off, before launching into a tirade about how he would not be “smeared” by people with different “political ideologies” who were determined to “cancel” him, which all felt very predictable.

What I didn’t expect was Dan Wootton – former GB News presenter, now broadcasting from the unregulated wilds of YouTube – devoting twenty minutes of his show to attacking my campaign whilst inadvertently confirming it’s working. Armstrong’s statement, he said, was forced on him by his bosses. It doesn’t reflect Armstrong’s actual views, or the channel’s. Wootton also expressed how sorry he feels for Armstrong, comparing his “apology” to a “humiliation ritual” – but to be clear, there hasn’t been an apology. The word “sorry” still hasn’t been said once.

He said that as a criticism of us, seemingly without realising he’d said the quiet part out loud and confirmed the suspicion I had all along, which was that this repentance was simply saving face. To make it even more transparent, Wootton and Leo Kearse – a “right-wing comedian” and GB News regular, apparently – then went on to repeatedly mention the channel’s fear of losing its Ofcom licence.

So when Armstrong turns up beneath an extremist’s video to agree that the gay man campaigning against his homophobic employer is the unhinged one, I’d argue that’s how he truly feels without a producer standing over him. Incidentally, his programme is currently carrying over 11,000 Ofcom complaints, the most for any GB News broadcast in history.

Then there’s Syntyche Djunga (also known as Based and Bougie), who has racked up 3,439 complaints of her own since falsely claiming gay men are “statistically more likely” to abuse their adopted children while on air in June. She shared Pengelly’s video to her 51,000 followers on X, stating that I need to be “checked into an asylum” and that I’m “embarrassing myself online for free.”

Djunga also offered me a full-time role as her “grammar and fact checker lol,” in a sentence with a word missing. Three days earlier, she’d shared that she could “already here Liam Gayondi crashing out” over one of her posts, only fixing it after I’d pointed it out on my Instagram story. Shortly after, she told people that China had “2x atomic bombs” dropped on it, but is now the “3rd most advance City in the World.” I think that says it all.

She also appeared underneath the video itself to accuse me of arguing with myself, and I have to hand it to her – it’s one of the first times Based and Bougie has been truthful. I’ve resorted to arguing with myself because everything this professional debater has sent in my direction has been a slur, one of which she left on a TikTok post of mine after unblocking and re-blocking me specifically to do so, and which the Met Police have since confirmed to me is a reportable offence.

I find it perplexing that Djunga’s entire schtick is that gay people make everything about sex, as she repeatedly states on social media. That seemingly only applies until a homophobic extremist (who happens to be gay) conjures vividly sexual images at my expense, at which point it’s worth boosting to her followers.

This is the same reasonable angle she attempted to take on LBC, when Lewis Goodall – and whoever works on the booking team – made the utterly nonsensical decision to bring her on. Sat across from Goodall and asked to account for calling people at Pride in London “degenerates” in a YouTube video she filmed at the event, she immediately shrank her stance into something more palatable. Suddenly, it wasn’t all gay people – in fact, exactly three people told her paedophilia was “okay” by her account – and some of her closest friends are degener– ah, no, sorry, gay men. A Freudian slip, apparently.

The thumbnail of the video in question, which is still live, reads “attending the degenerate festival.” In a follow-up video – captioned “more degeneracy” – she opens by tricking a gay attendee in his thirties into an interview under false pretences. She not-so-subtly mocks him when he says he knew he was gay from a young age, before once again confronting him with the false claim of “MAPs” being added to the LGBTQ+ umbrella. He audibly rejects the notion and clearly states his wish to leave the conversation, and Djunga lets him – before telling the camera that he is “definitely guilty” of being a paedophile. Sharing this clip to her X account, she said Pride has always been about “normalising degeneracy, perversion and sodomy” and “participating in darkness.”

Based and Bougie may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but she’s clearly smart enough to understand when and where to let her true colours show. This, for the avoidance of doubt, is someone who is booked as a legitimate commentator, given a chair on national radio after racking up thousands of Ofcom complaints, invited onto a licensed news channel, appointed a Youth Ambassador for CPAC UK – an outfit whose organisers and their US Christian-right funding ties were the subject of an incisive Nerve investigation – and, as of last week, sent out to debate on behalf of Turning Point UK, a British offshoot of the organisation founded by Charlie Kirk.

Out of curiosity, I looked up TPUK’s self-published guidelines, which are freely available on their shoddily-built website. They expressly forbid homophobia and any other form of discrimination, and require representatives to conduct themselves in a “friendly and respectful manner.” I’d love to know which clause covers repeated accusations of LGBTQ+ people being paedophiles, the usage of homophobic slurs and the resharing of a video about a gay man’s rectum.

I’d like to return to the video Pengelly made, because the choice of source material is not incidental.

On 25 July, a van was driven into the Christopher Street Day parade in Berlin by a radicalised Islamist extremist, killing one woman and injuring 29. Within hours, many British broadcasters and public figures who had spent the entire summer describing Pride as perversion, degeneracy and a paedophile recruitment drive discovered a deep and sudden solidarity, positioning the event as a cherished western value – just long enough to make it about Muslims as a collective. Nigel Farage’s immediate contribution was to state that the “strange left-wing alliance between Islamists and the LGBT community” cannot last.

I made a video pointing out that we were being used as leverage by people who also despise us, and have made no secret of it. The far-right has a long history of being verbally and physically violent against us, with a mere handful of examples detailed earlier in this article. In 1999 – when I was three years old – a neo-Nazi planted a nail bomb in the Admiral Duncan, a gay pub in Soho, killing three people and injuring 79. Just four years ago, two gay men were shot dead in a targeted attack outside a gay bar in Bratislava.

I should add that this is the same ecosystem that spent days politicising the Preston Davey case to indict gay men and Pride generally, before accusing me of making it about myself for pointing out the homophobia that followed. Those nonsensical rebuttals were very clearly designed to silence us, as are these current attempts to humiliate me into submission by labelling me “obsessed.”

In the last five weeks alone, Syntyche Djunga has posted 21 videos to Instagram attacking gay people, and 25 more to YouTube doing the same. It’s odd, then, that this doesn’t seem to constitute an “obsession” to these people. Incessantly demonising LGBTQ+ people at every given opportunity is simply a job, and objecting to it is a disorder. A gay man sides with his oppressors to joke about me using sex toys and ingesting bodily fluids, and I’m the one who needs sectioning.

Alex Armstrong will find that the right word is “persistent,” because not a single one of these hacks will take any genuine accountability, and have instead been operating on the assumption that nothing will happen. Knowing I have them even the slightest bit rattled only fuels my desire to seek some form of justice.

It’s understandable why these people are acting like they’re untouchable, as Ofcom has predictably issued no decision on any of it. In the meantime, it has declined to investigate a GB News presenter who disputed footage of a burning house during the Belfast riots, which tells you everything about where the bar is currently sitting – as does the fact that Ofcom’s Wikipedia page has a dedicated section for its inaction towards the channel.

Even those who are opposed to GB News do it a favour by parroting the line that it’s licensed as an “entertainment channel,” which isn’t true – but it does suggest to people that complaining is pointless. Ofcom doesn’t hand out licences by genre, the channel is bound to the same rules as every other news broadcaster, and it has somehow won Best News Programme at the TRIC Awards for four years running.

The only thing that will move the needle at this point is continued pressure, and I am beyond thrilled with how far we’ve come. I had a fantastic chat with Bimini for their podcast, in which we discussed this campaign at length. It was written about in the latest issue of Private Eye magazine, which is a genuine honour. The likes of PinkNews and Attitude have covered it consistently, the Good Law Project has taken an interest after their successful campaign against GB News last year and, as mentioned, we’ve broken the record for the amount of complaints levelled against the channel.

All of this has happened in the last six weeks, during which GB News has made their stance clear. Here is a non-exhaustive list of everything they’re seemingly fine with, haven’t apologised for, and have apparently deemed not worth acknowledging:

• A segment drawing over 11,000 complaints in which Caroline Farrow says Pride is about “celebrating paedophiles”

• A second segment collecting more than 3,000 complaints due to Syntyche Djunga falsely stating gay men are “statistically more likely” to sexually abuse their adopted children

• A third segment receiving over 2,000 complaints after Sharron Davies voiced concerns over teachers with “LGBT agendas” grooming children at school, with presenter Nana Akua in agreement

• A presenter from the so-called “bastion of free speech” trying to silence me with legal action

• A contributor using homophobic slurs, calling innocent people paedophiles, stating she “despises” the LGBTQ+ community and attending Pride events with the sole purpose of using deception to antagonise people

• Those same two figures teaming up with a documented anti-LGBTQ+ extremist, with ties to Nazism, to attack a gay man campaigning against homophobia

That’s without mentioning Ben Leo, GB News’ US reporter who recently took to social media to attack transgender people. By his account, his child was telling his younger brother that “girls can become boys” and vice versa. Leo followed this unverified anecdote up with the bold claim that “no child is safe from this demonic crap,” before later confirming that his son was not indoctrinated, but had instead walked past a trans woman in public with no interaction whatsoever.

That didn’t stop Leo from replying to none other than Tristan Tate, the influencer who is in custody in Florida alongside his brother while contesting extradition after even more allegations of rape, sex trafficking and indecent images of minors. Tate told Leo that “attack is the best form of defence” when it comes to transgender people and Leo saluted in response, saying “nothing else matters more than this.”

When Tate was arrested just a couple of days later, Leo covered the story overnight on GB News. Failing to touch upon many of the heinous crimes they’ve been accused of, he instead brushed over the alleged offences in favour of getting onto their main story of the night – diversity initiatives in British police forces. The machine is working in plain sight, and I can’t quite believe how many people are happy to let it do so.

That’s why I’m urging you to keep speaking up. You still have time to make your complaints to Ofcom over Farrow and Davies’ comments – the deadline has passed on Djunga’s, and we’re waiting for a decision. At the time of writing, the regulator’s latest decisions bulletin should arrive tomorrow, which will hopefully detail what they’ve chosen to do (unless they continue to drag their heels, in which case I’ll continue to make noise).

Whilst you’re here, please also sign the Section 28 public inquiry petition. It’s open until 24 September, and we want to reach 100,000 signatures. The lie that law was built upon is the exact same lie being broadcast now, by people who aren’t yet embarrassed enough.

I understand that all of this may feel tedious, but I personally believe all of the actions detailed above to be utterly untenable. The climate we’re living in is such a regression from how far we’d come in recent years, and the hatred is spreading at a velocity people aren’t fully aware of. Homophobia is becoming profitable again, perhaps because they expected us to roll over and take it. For as long as I live, I will never let that happen.

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You know your efforts are paying off when the legal threats start rolling in.

A little under a fortnight ago, I wrote asking why nobody with any real power would do a single thing about GB News and its ever-expanding repertoire of bigotry, specifically its homophobia. I have also been posting daily on social media, carefully documenting each flagrant breach of the rules and demanding that something actually be done about it.

Since then, things have snowballed beyond my wildest imagination, to the point I had one of the channel’s flagship presenters sliding into my Instagram DMs to inform me I’d be “hearing from [his] lawyer”. Oh dear!

Unfortunately, given the circumstances, I’m calling his bluff. I refuse to play his game, nor will I be intimidated into silence. Here’s the full story as to how we got here.

Let’s go back to Sunday, 5th July. On Alex Armstrong Tonight – keep that name in mind – GB News predictably ran a segment about London Pride, which had taken place a day prior.

On the panel alongside Armstrong was former Liberal Democrat councillor Matthew Hulbert, and Catholic commentator Caroline Farrow. During this segment, Farrow told the nation, word for word, that Pride has become about celebrating “bestiality and even ‘Minor Attracted People’ – you know, paedophiles.”

If you read my last post, you’ll recognise the pattern. It’s the third time in three weeks that GB News has put a version of the very same smear on air – that gay people are an inherent danger to children – after Based and Bougie’s invented statistics and, most recently, Sharron Davies’ turn (which we’ll come to later).

After I drew attention to this second instance of shameless homophobia, things quickly began to pick up. The complaints started rolling in thick and fast, and Farrow’s comments were being discussed by the likes of PinkNews, to whom GB News very graciously issued a statement: her rhetoric, they insisted, had been “robustly and repeatedly challenged by two other contributors.”

What I find interesting, though, is how they pulled the entire episode of Alex Armstrong Tonight from their YouTube channel at the same time. Thankfully, their apparent company-wide ineptitude meant they left it up on their own website, where you can go and watch it for yourself.

I certainly have – more times than I care to admit – whilst also making sure to carefully transcribe all six minutes of what was said following Farrow’s accusation.

In total fairness, I’ll address the one line of defence they might strain to reach for. If you listen carefully, you can hear Hulbert say “not at all” at one point – but listen to when he says it. It lands before Farrow ever reaches the word “paedophiles”, muffled and uttered underneath her while she’s still speaking – which is why it won’t appear in any subtitles or transcript. It definitively was not a “robust” challenge to the slur, because it hadn’t been said yet.

So, what happens after she does say it? Farrow says Pride is about “celebrating paedophiles” on live television, and here are the “robust”, “repeated” challenges: Hulbert shakes his head silently, saying nothing. Armstrong, the presenter, smirks, nods, says “yeah” twice and offers a stirring rebuttal with, “I went to Pride last year… I don’t think it was full of paedophiles, but I’m sure there are nefarious people.” He then follows it up with an unverified anecdote about children near a sex toy stall.

That’s it. The claim isn’t referenced again during the rest of the segment. I’ll let you decide whether that qualifies as “robustly and repeatedly challenged”, because I can confidently argue it doesn’t.

Which brings us to the threat of legal action.

Alex Armstrong – a gay man himself, no less – sat on a panel while his guest equated LGBTQ+ people to paedophiles, said “yeah”, and chipped in with his own affirming story. Despite that, he has somehow concluded that the villain of this story is me, a mere content creator who shared a clip of Armstrong’s own words verbatim.

It started as a response to a comment I’d left on Armstrong’s Instagram page four days prior, telling him to have some shame over the segment that had aired the night before. He informed me I’d “deliberately cut off a clip” to spread “misinformation and fake news”, that “no Ofcom rules were broken”, and that “due balance and impartiality were shown – something you may not be familiar with yourself.” That’s a very self-aware dig from a man shilling for the least-trusted news channel in the UK.

Then came the sign off: “If you continue, you will be hearing from my lawyer. That’s a final warning.”

I presume the intention was to scare me instead of crack me up, but it unfortunately had the latter effect. Imagine! A final warning from a presenter on the channel that has built its entire brand on the sacred, inviolable, chest-beating principle of free speech – so much so that a guest can brand me a paedophile by association on primetime television. Rather less of it, it seems, for the civilian with a TikTok account pointing out the fact that she’d done it.

Except it wasn’t the final warning, because he then surfaced in my message requests with some long, meandering bollocks that didn’t make a lot of sense at all, much like his broadcasting. It went on for a while but never quite landed, informing me that I was “defaming” him and directing “hatred and abuse” his way by “misrepresenting” him. A fascinating use of “misrepresenting”, given that my great offence was pressing play on something he said (or failed to say) during a conversation in which LGBTQ+ people were grossly misrepresented. Then came the second final warning, this one over a single Instagram comment that had sat there untouched for four days without anyone noticing it.

Finally, having spent several paragraphs bemoaning the “hatred” he’d endured from being quoted accurately, he asked me for a comment on someone else’s Instagram post that I’d shared to my story, lifting it clean out of context and attributing it to me. He then proceeded to screenshot that out-of-context repost and share it to his own story that same evening, captioning it with “the be kind far-left today, everyone”. He wanted a comment because he was planning to broadcast it to the entire country that very night. As you may expect, he didn’t get that comment.

The next morning, I sat down with a cup of tea and eagerly scrubbed through Armstrong’s GB News appearance to see if he’d followed through with his thinly-veiled threat of retaliation. Did he do it? Did he fuck. It presumably dawned on him sometime between sending the message and going live that pointing a national audience directly at the campaign I’ve been running for three weeks might not be the best tactical move.

What gives his game away is that I’m not the only one who has spoken out about GB News. Since my last post in which I bemoaned the radio silence, the brilliant folks at Good Law Project have also highlighted Caroline Farrow’s recent comments, comparing them directly to Josh Howie’s “paedos” slur last year – they took the channel to task over it and won. Bimini has very graciously joined the fight, designing an easy-to-use form that has led to a monumental surge in Ofcom complaints. Zack Polanski co-signed an open letter to the regulator, urging them to take action.

Alex Armstrong could have picked a fight with any of them, but he came for me instead. You have to question why a man so supremely confident that “no Ofcom rules were broken” is threatening to chase the smallest voice in the room with solicitors, rather than simply posting the evidence of these so-called robust, repeated challenges he’s so certain exist. If it’s all there on the record, as he insists, it should be the easiest thing in the world to prove me wrong. Peculiar, then, that he’d sooner reach for the litigious option.

For the record, I don’t need to misrepresent Alex Armstrong. I have the footage, which is the entire point.

Unfortunately, Armstrong isn’t the only one who’d sooner perform for his usual audience than admit a mistake.

Cast your mind back to Based and Bougie – the dim-witted commentator who kicked this whole ordeal off three weeks ago, when she told the nation on The Saturday Five that gay men are “statistically more likely to sexually abuse their adopted children”, insisting she’d “seen the statistics” and it happens “time and time again”.

As you likely already know, she never produced those statistics. What she offered instead, when I called her out, were two long-discredited sources from a notorious anti-gay activist – neither of which showed anything remotely like what she’d claimed. When I pointed that out, she blocked me on every platform going.

And then, rather than address a single word of the actual charge (or apologise, like Howie reluctantly did last year), she did what any serious journalist would and filmed herself doubling down in the most vulgar manner possible.

On the day of London Pride, Based and Bougie tells her audience that she “heard [she] upset the demon— sorry, guys — the LGBTQLMNOFOPABC123ITVBBCWWE community”. In her retelling, she hadn’t smeared gay men as a danger to children on national television. Instead, she states that because she’s an ethnic minority, she has to “be accepting of them. I have to be accepting of men taking dick up the arse.” As someone very eloquently stated in the comment section of this video, “sense has been chasing this girl for a long time but she’s always been faster.”

The only part that truly upset me was the book. After her mockery of the acronym, she heads into Kensington & Chelsea Library and holds up a copy of Queer British Art, 1861-1867, using the pictures inside as a punchline. In an attempt to rise above the cheap bait of saying it’s because she can’t read the accompanying words, I will instead suggest that she should at least try.

Those two dates are not mere decoration. 1861 is the year in which Britain abolished the death penalty for sex between men, and 1967 was the year it finally – but only partially – stopped treating them as criminals. The century in between is men being hunted, blackmailed, imprisoned, chemically castrated and driven to early graves, purely for existing. She was holding over 100 years of persecution in her hand, using it as a prop to sneer at the people who survived it.

There was, of course, no apology. Based and Bougie has instead decided to continue her steadfast mission of equating LGBTQ+ people to paedophiles, often in the name of Christianity, with countless other Bible bashers agreeing with her and wishing everything from hell to capital punishment on us in response. It’s almost as if that’s the entire point.

Still, it kept coming. Three days after Farrow, GB News wheeled out Olympian-turned-TERF Sharron Davies alongside the repugnant Nana Akua to claim the government’s draft Conversion Practices Bill would jail parents for five years to failing to affirm their child’s identity.

That claim collapses the moment you read the actual Bill, which requires conduct that is abusive and causes serious harm, and targets people trying to force or suppress a child’s identity, not parents who are simply asking questions.

Then came the predictable line from Davies: “…and we have activist teachers, you know, we have teachers inside the system who are extremely… you know, LGBT-driven agendas and I… you know, I worry about that. I worry about this, this potential for grooming.”

Just to get ahead of GB News, before they try and claim any sort of “robust”, “repeated” challenge – there wasn’t one. Akua nodded along beside her and said “exactly”. It’s the same smear, but from a different, stinking mouth. They have a remarkable number of people willing to attack the LGBTQ+ community with the same line – even some within said community themselves.

Here’s what I suspect Alex Armstrong – and, by extension, GB News – is so rattled about. A couple of weeks ago, this was just me, alone, shouting into my phone.

That isn’t the case anymore. The complaints have sailed past 2,000 – 1,927 on the Based and Bougie segment, with 257 on Farrow’s racked up within 24 hours. The Good Law Project is preparing another formal complaint to Ofcom over the Farrow broadcast, drawing the very same line back to last year’s ruling that I’ve been hammering for weeks.

The likes of Metro and PinkNews have both covered it, with the latter even quoting my own videos back at me (a very surreal thing to read). Zack Polanski, Bimini and He.She.They collectively put their names to an open letter to Ofcom over the whole affair.

Cast your mind back to my last post, where I asked why not one person whose actual job this is could be bothered to say a word. Of course, the tabloids still haven’t – the papers that’ll clear a front page over a hundred Love Island complaints still can’t seem to locate this story. That doesn’t matter anymore. The people who genuinely do the work have showed up, and they’re loud. This is the difference a fortnight and a few thousand furious people can make – and it is precisely why a presenter would suddenly, urgently start trying to force my silence.

I won’t pretend it has all been smooth sailing. It hasn’t taken as much of a mental toll as some might expect (especially considering I was at my lowest three months ago), but I’ve still gotten my fair share of abuse. I made a Facebook page to share my videos on, but had to delete it a week later after one post garnered 225 comments, 99% of them negative. They ranged from “weirdo nonce”, “mentally ill bum bandit” and “lying little poof” to “bunch of creeps”, “stupid cunt scumbag” and “I’ll give you brain damage if you carry on.” That is the human cost of speaking up against people like this in 2026, so forgive me if I don’t give a single fuck about Alex Armstrong’s hurt feelings.

Unfortunately for those people, time has made me resilient. Something I haven’t yet mentioned throughout all of this is that I was on Twitter for a decade. I know exactly who these people are, and their motives. Glinner once called me a prick. This isn’t my first rodeo, but it’s the first one I’ve actually managed to sustain. Moving to France gave me the necessary distance and perspective I needed to confidently speak up, and as a British citizen who lived in the country for 28 years and saw first-hand how the likes of GB News began to bring it to its knees, I care deeply about stopping it.

I also have to acknowledge how none of this would exist without all of you – every person who complained to Ofcom, who signed the Section 28 petition, who reposted a video or tagged someone or left a supportive message. And everyone who has lent this campaign a larger platform than mine, from the campaigners to the public figures and politicians who have spoken up. You have eradicated my once-crippling self-doubt and given me the utmost confidence to keep fighting. Thank you, truly, from the very bottom of my heart. I could never have made this much noise on my own, and I am indescribably grateful for every single word of encouragement I’ve received throughout.

As you may have guessed, I won’t be stopping. Not over a baseless legal threat from a man who refuses to publish the evidence he claims is out there.

This is, and always was, the very same lie that Section 28 was built on: that we’re a danger to children and should be kept away. That law did untold damage to a generation and yet here we are, twenty-three years later, watching it get rebuilt brick-by-brick. The only thing that has ever stopped this is people flatly refusing to be quiet about it. As you can see, that’s starting to work.

Here’s where you come in:

Make the complaint, babes: Bimini’s guide to complaining makes it unbelievably quick and easy – all of the details are right there for you.

Sign the Section 28 public inquiry petition: We’ve got until the 24th of September to reach 100,000 signatures, and I absolutely believe it’s possible.

Share this: Tag the journalists still pretending that haven’t seen all of this occurring. Silence isn’t an option.

As for Mr. Armstrong, I’ll wait to hear from your lawyer. In the meantime, the segment that proves everything I said is still up on your employer’s website. I’d see to that before you worry about me.

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Last week, a single segment on GB News garnered 1,332 complaints to Ofcom – the highest number since Love Island: All Stars aired in February – and the British press has thus far said nothing. No clickbait articles, no follow-ups, no enquiring journalists – just radio silence.

I keep turning it over in my head and I can’t make it make sense. When Emmerdale draws a hundred complaints over a non-event, it’s a headline by the next working day. Good Morning Britain, Britain’s Got Talent, and yes, Love Island… a hundred here, two hundred there, write-ups appearing regularly and reliably every single week. This got more than thirteen hundred, and suddenly those same publications are turning a blind eye.

Does this effectively mean a national broadcaster smearing gay men as child abusers – for a second time – is less newsworthy than a tiff on a dating show? Or is it that the moment we’re the target, the threshold for anyone actually caring quietly rises? I’d love an answer, because I’ve been asking for almost a fortnight and nobody seems to want to tell me.

I’m angry. I have been angry for nearly two weeks straight and I cannot pretend otherwise. Let me take you through precisely what happened, and then perhaps you could explain to me why not one journalist could be bothered to talk about it.

The aforementioned GB News segment occurred during a programme named The Saturday Five, in which five random, unqualified “political commentators” sit at a panel and rave mindlessly about the week’s prior events, concluding with a feature titled Triggered Tantrums. You get the idea.

One of those commentators on Saturday 20th June was Based and Bougie, a young British-Congolese woman who has publicly aligned herself with the Unite the Kingdom movement, Tommy Robinson and Reform UK. On national television, during a segment on the recent, atrocious case of Preston Davey, she claimed that gay men are statistically more likely to sexually abuse their adopted children, stating:

“We need to get back to the nitty-gritty of why people are doing this. There is no denying – and I can’t pull up the evidence now, but people can easily research this – that gay men and gay couples are more prone to not only just domestic abuse amongst each other, but child sexual assault with their adopted children.”

When a fellow panelist asked her where the evidence is for this claim, she continued:

“I said I don’t have the evidence with me now, but I’ve seen it, and hopefully when I go online after this, I will post it – but the statistics are out there. They’ve been proven time and time again that gay men are more prone to more sexual deviancy.”

Only, the truth is – no such statistics exist. There isn’t a single body of credible research showing that gay or lesbian people are more likely to abuse children, but there is a great deal showing the opposite.

The landmark study here is Jenny, Roesler and Poyer, published in Pediatrics back in 1994. Of 269 cases of child sexual abuse with an identifiable perpetrator, precisely two of those cases involved someone who could be identified as gay or lesbian. The overwhelming majority of abusers are heterosexual men, often known to the child, a consensus that has been reached in every relative study since.

Every serious professional body – the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association, for starters – has said the same thing for decades, which is that children raised by same-sex parents do just as well as anyone else. In fact, a recent meta-analysis found that across 1,509 children, those with gay fathers often displayed significantly better adjustment than those with heterosexual parents.

This isn’t a case of differing opinion. Inventing evidence that a group of people are more likely to abuse children isn’t a viewpoint that deserves a polite response. It’s a falsehood, and it was broadcast to the nation as fact.

I posted an initial video to TikTok and Instagram a couple of days after the show aired, calling out Based and Bougie directly. After seeing this clip for myself, I hastily checked her social media accounts to find that evidence she promised. To nobody’s surprise, she hadn’t posted it – until a few hours after I shared my video, when she finally decided to cough up the “statistics” she’d seen “time and time again”. She thoughtfully posted them to X with the caption, “facts don’t care about your feelings”.

Here are the facts: she shared four articles, two of which were the same article, but she hadn’t read them properly. Off to a flying start.

So, she actually shared three articles. Two of the papers she offered as proof were the work of Paul Cameron. If you don’t know the name, here’s who Paul Cameron is. He is, in the words of Southern Poverty Law Center:

“…an infamous anti-gay propagandist whose one-man statistical chop shop, the Family Research Institute, churns out hate literature masquerading as legitimate science. Cameron dresses up his “studies” with copious footnotes, graphs and charts, and then pays to publish them in certain journals. Cameron’s work has been rejected by both the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association, yet his ludicrous statistics are frequently referenced in sermons, news broadcasts, politicians’ speeches and even court decisions.”

He was expelled from the American Psychological Association in 1983 for misrepresenting research, and was subsequently condemned by the American Sociological Association. His institute is a designated hate group. He advised the Russian government on their anti-gay legislation. And, for further context, at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in the late eighties, he advocated for homosexual concentration camps.

In short, Cameron is the single most discredited figure possible to cite on this subject, and citing him is a tell in itself – as was the fourth source Based and Bougie shared.

This one was a genuine, respectable Vanderbilt study published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2022. The only problem is, it doesn’t quite say what she thought it did. Captioning the link “homosexual couples and the link to child abuse and molestation”, this study actually found that lesbian, gay and bisexual adults report far higher rates of adverse childhood experiences than their straight peers. In other words, we are disproportionately the victims of childhood abuse, not the perpetrators of it.

I think it’s clear what happened here – hoping nobody would pick up on what she said on live television, Based and Bougie hastily found some convenient sources without actually reading them, because that’s the usual practice with her audience. You don’t actually have to have any evidence, because you know people are going to believe it regardless. If this isn’t an indictment of GB News’ quality control in its hiring processes, I don’t know what is.

What angers me more is that this wasn’t just a slip of the tongue. This was, hands down, a deliberate action. Once I posted a second video debunking the statistics Based and Bougie shared, she blocked me across all platforms and decided to double down, instead of holding her hands up and admitting fault.

Her first follow-up was a repost of a video she captured at a Pride event last year. She approached men who did not speak English as a first language, filming them without their consent and asking them confusing, gibberish questions about what “love” means. Spinning them into near-delirium with her nonsense, she then asked whether a 45-year-old man wanting a five-year-old boy counts as love.

Aghast, the men say “no, no, no”, so she keeps tripping them up further until she gets a vaguely clippable response from one of them. She also asks for their thoughts on “MAPs” – “minor attracted people” – being added to the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Despite there being zero admission of paedophilia in the aforementioned video, Based and Bougie shared it to her Instagram followers this week, captioning it: “TB to when I went to a pride festival and they admitted P3dophilia is okay … DISGUSTING 🤮”.

The “MAP” claim itself is a long-debunked hoax with a paper trail. It originated on websites such as 4chan around a decade ago, explicitly designed by the far-right to get the public to associate LGBTQ+ people with predators and goad us into defensive reactions. No legitimate LGBTQ+ people or organisations on this planet includes or advocates for paedophiles, which is a ludicrous thing to have to actually say. The EU’s own counter-disinformation body, EUvsDisinfo, lists equating sexual minorities with paedophilia as one of the standard techniques of pro-Kremlin propaganda.

So, as you can imagine, there hasn’t been an apology – not from Based and Bougie, nor from GB News. Instead, she has mocked the community’s acronym multiple times, asked why “everything is about sex with you guys” and announced that she “despises LGBTQism” as if it’s a casual personality trait.

Just to give you a fuller picture of the type of “political commentator” GB News is employing, she also posted that she’s a “strong believer that woman (sic) shouldn’t be in politics”, over a clip of a man quoting scripture, and who called for us to “bring back shame” whilst sharing a placard reading “black parents are failures”. Not only is she black, but she blocked me the moment I debunked her on camera. Bring back shame, but evidently not for her!

I’m laying all of this out flatly on purpose. I don’t need to call her any names, because her track record does the work for me.

But if I only wrote about one person, I’d be missing the actual point. The problem here is the machine at large. GB News platforms people like this and still expects to be treated as a legitimate news channel, as it is licensed (despite a common misconception that it avoids accountability due to being licensed as an entertainment channel, which isn’t true).

As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t the first time the channel has aired this exact trope. In 2025, a near-identical smear drew a breach finding from Ofcom and garnered tens of thousands of complaints. That time, the presenter in question gave a lacklustre apology and that was the end of it. There were no sanctions, no fines, and no consequences of any kind. The file was subsequently closed.

Think about what that actually teaches the broadcaster. A channel that pays no price learns one lesson only, and that’s that it can do the same thing again tomorrow with impunity. So it did, because of course it did. It aired the exact same lie in fresh wrapping, this time dressed up as “existing statistics”. I would argue that it runs headlong into the Broadcasting Code’s strict rules on accuracy and material likely to cause harm, and I think there’s a serious case for a full investigation and a sanction that actually lands. That, however, is for Ofcom to determine – and the last time they had the chance, an apology let GB News off the hook.

I know exactly what happens as a consequence, because it has landed squarely in my lap over the past week. In the days after posting my videos, I was called a paedophile or a nonce more times than I could count. Someone called me a child murderer. Someone else threatened to give me brain damage.

Can we just take a moment to sit with that? A national broadcaster put a fabricated smear on air, and within days total strangers felt the need to wish physical harm on me for the crime of objecting to it. That is the human cost, and it doesn’t show up in the complaints figures or ratings reports. It just gets quietly absorbed instead, because this type of behaviour has become commonplace on the internet and the blame often falls on the one speaking out – for daring to do so in the first place.

Which brings us back to where we started – the radio silence. I had a thought that the non-coverage was innocent. Perhaps it was a busy news week, or every journalist in the country was off this week, or that GB News is so relentlessly inflammatory that the outrage barely registers anymore. I’ve heard all of the excuses – the channel is controversial by design, it’s a harder sell than an article about Love Island, inboxes are too busy. I don’t accept a single one of them.

Those excuses essentially amount to the fact that a licensed news channel can fabricate a child-abuse claim about gay people, air it to the whole country, watch it pull the biggest complaint count in months and everyone can carry on as normal.

I’m sorry to say it, but this is not neutrality. How can it be when the lie gets a national platform and a primetime audience, and the truth gets me shouting into my phone and total silence from every single person whose actual job this is?

So, I’ll ask it plainly, and I’ll keep asking until I’m blue in the face. Why the fuck is nobody doing anything? Why does a dangerous, decades-old lie get regurgitated to the masses as fact whilst the truth isn’t worth anyone’s time? I am beyond tired of asking. I would just like someone else, one solitary person with the power to move the needle, to be tired enough of hearing it to finally act.

This is the exact lie that Section 28 was built on – that we are a danger to children, paedophiles by default who should be segregated from the young. That law lasted for 15 years and did immeasurable, lasting damage to a generation. Gay children in classrooms across the country were told they were something shameful and unspeakable, and couldn’t receive any support for bullying lest the teacher aiding the pupil be fired for “promoting homosexuality”. Countless gay men died to AIDS because of a lack of information. Teachers changed professions permanently, whether it was of their own accord or after being forced out (there is a petition right now for a public inquiry into the harm Section 28 did, and we’re gunning for 100,000 signatures – it’s open until September, so please consider signing).

And here we are in 2026, 23 years after that law was repealed, watching the same smear get built from scratch and broadcast on national television. If that doesn’t make you angry, I don’t know what will. It should frighten you how quickly this is coming back at the very second we got comfortable. Homophobia isn’t a thing of the past anymore. It is happening right now, running off the same rotten script it always has, and the only thing that has ever stopped it before is people flatly refusing to stay quiet.

I’d like you to decide what kind of person you’re going to be about this – and I do mean decide, because doing nothing is a decision too. It’s the exact decision every editor in every newsroom made this week, and you can see precisely what the intent is. Apathy isn’t neutral – it’s the fuel this whole thing runs on.

So, I’m inviting you to be a total nuisance with me. Complain to Ofcom – the broadcast is still on the record (The Saturday Five, Saturday 20th June, 6-8pm). It takes a couple of minutes, and every single name added makes it harder for anyone to pretend our anger isn’t real and growing.

Sign the Section 28 inquiry petition before the 24th September, and be sure to say hello to the Section 28 Justice Coalition at London Pride this weekend if you’re attending.

Share this piece, and tag any journalists or public figures who should be speaking about this. Silence is only effective if it’s unanimous – all it takes is one major publication to get the ball rolling. Break the unanimity and put it right in front of them. Make it awkward for people to keep looking the other way.

1,332 people shared their anger last week, but the entire establishment seems to be waiting us out. Don’t let them. Don’t hand them the eventual quiet they’re banking on – get loud and stay loud. Make this the moment their silence actually costs them something.

I need to be honest with you about something — I’ve never really had a grand plan for this newsletter.

When I first joined Substack in 2023, I coined the name nouveau début because that’s exactly what relocating to France felt like. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or whether it was a good idea at all, but I was keen to document the journey using the medium I love most: writing.

I briefly wrote about how much calmer things had become, and how much of an achievement it was to overcome each hurdle of bureaucracy, and I gave you some very infrequent updates about the beginning of a new life. Two years on, however, things have evolved in ways I never expected.

Earlier this year, I was let go after my role was replaced by AI. As is typical of me, I wanted to talk about it — so I turned to TikTok, and the resulting video got upwards of 400,000 views.

I’ve been posting on TikTok for around a year now, and it’s taken off in ways I didn’t know I was capable of. Part of it feels like luck, but I’m finally learning to give myself the recognition and take pride in the fact I’ve grown my account to over 14,000 followers. It’s earning me some pocket money, my thoughts and opinions are resonating, and I’ve even picked up a couple of dedicated haters along the way. All of it feels like genuine progress.

Unfortunately, the worst thing about TikTok is that it’s brilliant for a hot take, but ineffective when sharing actual thoughts. Five seconds isn’t enough time to make a cohesive, nuanced argument without people quickly reacting and misunderstanding your point, because it’s an app built to ruin your attention span.

So, that’s what this newsletter will be for. nouveau début is evolving, blossoming into something slightly more fully-fledged. I’m not abandoning what it was — I’d still like to eagerly share more about life in France and how things are going — but I also want to turn it into something bigger, because I know I’m capable of it.

I’m interested in diving deeper into the same topics I discuss on TikTok — everything from pop culture to politics, but with a more nuanced and in-depth lens than I’m able to utilise there. As a freelance writer whose work is dwindling, I’m keen to flex my talents and this feels like a natural way to do so.

If you’ve been here since the beginning — thank you, from the bottom of my heart. You came for one thing and I’m asking you to stick around for the next chapter. The voice is the same, but I just have a few more things to say.

If you’re here from TikTok — welcome! This is where you can get my actual cohesive thoughts on things I’ve briefly touched upon in a video, alongside much more. There are no algorithm issues to worry about and nobody missing the point here… at least I hope!

Either way — welcome to nouveau début 2.0.

I’m still not entirely sure what it’s going to look like, but I’m certain it’s going to be worth the read.

When I turned 30 last month, I was telling everyone just how certain I was that it was the genuine start of something new. After my tumultuous twenties, I had a good feeling about the decade ahead – I’m settled in the south of France with my husband and two cats, which are already much better foundations than the ones I had ten years ago.

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So imagine how I’m feeling now, less than two months later, unexpectedly unemployed after being made redundant this week, but bursting with more optimism than I’ve had in months.

That redundancy blindsided me, but it had to happen. I’d been unhappy in my job for a long time – I say ‘job’, but I was a contractor, so the event was entirely unceremonious. I got a Slack message from a HR representative I’d never heard of at 5pm on Monday, asking me to immediately join a Google Meet session. I did, and was told in no uncertain terms that the company was “scaling back”, and that my role had been “eliminated” as a result.

Eliminated, as if I’m a Squid Game contestant or something. I’d worked for this company for two years, enduring some of the most potent bullshit I’ve ever experienced in the corporate world, but keeping my head down and carrying on (as is my nature as a Brit). Their demand that we removed the company name from our LinkedIn profiles last year struck me as odd; some of their business tactics felt shady at best, illegal at worst. I told them as much, but what happened at the beginning of this month was the final straw.

My line manager reached out and told me that the higher-ups had suddenly changed their tune around AI. They wanted to embrace it, to “bring the company into the future”, whatever the hell that means. It wasn’t my manager’s doing and he was just as dumbfounded as I was, but we were told to cease writing from scratch – as a copywriter, that’s kinda my speciality – and instead paste entire briefs into Google Gemini. We’d then use the first draft of whatever the AI software generated for us, whether it was factually incorrect or not, and upload it to whichever site we were working on.

Imagine how undignified I felt being asked to do that, without much of a choice in the matter. It’s not like jobs in my field – a copywriter working remotely in France, but only speaking English – are easy to come by. I was promised it wouldn’t be for long, that they’d reverse the decision soon, and that I’d be getting a substantial payrise at the end of the month to mark my second anniversary within the company (and shut me up, I presume). I’d already started putting the feelers out in order to hopefully jump ship, only to have the rug pulled from underneath me way before I was ready.

It strikes me as very convenient that I was let go just as they began to use AI across the company. But, if I’m completely honest, I feel a lot less phased than I perhaps should.

This all feels like fate. It feels like something beyond my control is coming together, and I just have to ride the wave and see where it leads me.

You see, on the same day I was made redundant, I hit 10,000 followers on TikTok. That might seem irrelevant given the grand scheme of things, but it’s a notable milestone – hitting that numbers means you can start earning money from your videos. Your engagement gets boosted, your content can lead to genuine income, and people start paying attention to you as a result.

I’ve put a lot of time and effort into TikTok, partly because I’m an attention seeker who cannot keep his mouth closed. I’ve been on social media for years and I’ve always been pretty good at it – Tumblr was where it all started, before I went over to Twitter and stayed there for far too long. I’ve often gotten the attention I wanted in ways I didn’t expect, and they weren’t always good. I found myself in hot water a lot of the time, spending hours arguing with people, gaining followers off the back of being a brash, angry left-winger and often parroting what I thought was the right thing to say.

It always felt like I was putting on an act, and I cringe when I look back at things I posted even a year ago. Wanting to succeed on TikTok, as ridiculous as it sounds, means you need to be unvarnished and authentic. I can so easily tell now when somebody’s faking it – namely in comment sections, where people run with one opinion or rumour and suddenly it’s everywhere, because nobody wants to think for themselves. I find myself disagreeing with the common consensus more often than not these days, but perhaps that’s because everyone’s suddenly MAGA or homophobic (but that’s a conversation for another time).

As soon as I dropped the façade and started feeling confident in myself and my voice again, the results followed shortly after. I’ve posted videos that have struck a chord with thousands of people, and I think that’s because they can tell I’m speaking from the heart. Sure, sometimes I’ve got a script just off-screen so my ADHD-riddled brain doesn’t lose track, but I don’t feel the need to carry out research on what other people are saying and thinking to be able to provide my own take any more. To do that and finally have people hear me out as a result is so fulfilling. I wish I’d had that confidence slightly earlier, and it’s still a work in progress, but it feels so freeing.

Therapy has certainly helped with that. In my last session, we actually spoke about my online presence and how I always felt misunderstood. We followed it back to my infamous run-in with Piers Morgan back in the day and how my intentions were good, but the fallout was the total opposite. In the midst of being threatened, spoken over and thrust onto a public stage for the first time in my life, I had barely anyone to lean on and it messed me up massively as a result. My therapist said it sounds like I have genuine trauma from it, which doesn’t surprise me in hindsight.

I still feel angry about it – I feel angry about a lot of things, but with age, I’m trying to learn how to manage said anger and express it in more eloquent, effective ways. I’m very aware that in the last few years, people have probably come to think I’m a slight loose cannon. I’m overly emotional, I can be harsh, explicit and direct in my criticism, and I don’t always get it right. I told my therapist how I’ve been very overly conscious of how I come across online, and I think that’s why I find it so difficult to connect with people nowadays, even in real life – I have this fear that everyone thinks I’m a bit crazy.

But it always simultaneously frustrated me that nobody seemed to see my intentions, or at least take the time to try. I’ve definitely felt alone and isolated in that regard, as if I’ve been shouting into the void whilst people stand at the sidelines and either grimace or laugh.

However, holding onto all of those feelings also holds me back. That’s something else I’ve learned in the last few months. As I mentioned in a recent post, I hit a wall in November after everything I outran in the UK caught up with me. Having to face all of that baggage head-on has been difficult, but turning 30 feels like the right time to shake it all off and move forward.

And so far, 2026 is telling me to expect the unexpected. On my actual birthday in January, I was surprised by my entire family showing up in Montpellier. To have them all here at the same time meant the absolute world to me, and I couldn’t really fathom it until they’d left – it was the reminder I needed that I’m so lucky to have such a strong support system around me, even if they’re not physically close. It still makes me a bit emotional when I look at the pictures because spending time with my family is a rarity these days, and the fact they dedicated the time and money to come and show me love makes me tear up.

A couple of weeks after that, I was scrolling through my camera roll and came across a video I’d taken eight years prior – I had a car accident on my way to work in which my precious Ford Fiesta had been rear-ended by five other Ford Fiestas. I posted the video to TikTok, not really thinking much of it, and it got 22 million views, it was liked by everyone from Zara Larsson to GK Barry to Michael Barrymore, and I was even interviewed by PEOPLE Magazine about it. That week was like something out of a David Lynch film.

Since then, my account has kept growing and growing. I’m nearly at 11,000 followers now, and almost every post I make is a banger. You know me, humble as always!

In all seriousness, though, it feels fucking great to believe in myself for once. The fact I’m not spiralling about losing my job, and I’m instead excited about what I might achieve next, is really something. It truly feels like my Saturn’s return, and it feels refreshing to embrace the unexpected. I just have a good feeling it’s all going to work out for me.

À bientôt, mes amis !

Upon opening my phone most mornings, I’m met with a sensation akin to how I imagine it’d feel waking up from a coma. I joined Substack two years ago because I was seeing an increasing amount of insightful, powerful writing emerge from this platform, and I wanted to participate.

Most of that writing is extremely timely, reacting to current events with absolute precision and analysing things from every possible angle. The glaring problem is that I’m not reactive enough. I’ll open this app, or any form of social media, with the best intentions of wading into a discussion with something I thought was both meaningful and original. By the time I do, countless people have already beaten my point to death, sometimes in a much more eloquent manner than I ever could. I’ve borne witness to too many hot takes being eaten up, spat out and replaced by lesser, colder ideas, and by the time I’m ready to say my piece, everyone’s already moved on.

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It isn’t that I don’t have anything to say. Most of the time, I have too much to say about things that don’t really concern me at all. Those thoughts and feelings just don’t manage to form themselves quickly enough for the algorithm. By the time I’ve figured out how I want to dissect a cultural moment or current event, it’s already been thoroughly examined and the bones have been picked clean. With such an oversaturation of content being churned out on the daily – a lot of it good, a lot of it bad, a lot of it AI-generated – do I actually have anything left to add?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always envied people who seem to have an innate grip on what’s hot. A lot of creatives seem to live at the precise centre of culture – they instinctively know which designers to watch out for, which debut novel will be a New York Times Bestseller in six months, and which movies will garner the most buzz at the latest film festivals. I, meanwhile, might be able to tell you everything about the newest iPhone, or recite the tracklists of my favourite pop girls’ every album off the top of my head, but I’m helpless otherwise.

That feeling of permanently being one step behind has plagued my life since I was a kid. Even as far back as school, I’d learn what was “cool” second-hand. For example, I’d listen to bands in my friends’ MSN taglines and pretend I’d known them for years, and then become flustered when I couldn’t keep up with a conversation about that band in person. I just desperately wanted to be involved.

That same feeling still shows up today, even if it’s in tiny, mundane ways. I’ll read a solid list of recommendations on here, whether it be must-see television or the apps that will change my life or the clothes I need to buy, and I’ll devour it with genuine enthusiasm. I bookmark them and vow to watch the series or try the app or buy the product, and then I don’t. Weeks pass, and by the time I circle back to my multiple bookmarks, everyone’s moved on. There are new obsessions to talk about and suddenly the things that felt urgent now feel slightly stale, and I’m unsure whether it’s worth engaging at all.

My recent breakthrough of realising I’m neurodivergent has given that feeling some long-awaited clarity. As it turns out, my brain isn’t designed to fire out hot takes on a whim. It’s built for stewing. I’m definitely guilty of being reactive and embarrassing myself online in the past, but that’s an approach I’ve been actively changing. I want to sit with things and come at them differently, without feeling the need to tell everyone about it. I care less about being first to things, and more about eventually getting it right. That’s a noble practice in theory, but it’s disastrous in an economy of instant reactions.

For a very long time, I mistook this as my failing. I confused people’s speed and reaction time with intelligence, thinking those who could regurgitate information confidently in a TikTok about what matters right now were the ones to pay attention to. That isn’t quite the case, though. I’m quite often astounded at just how many people get it wrong in favour of being the ones to speak first, tripping over themselves to add their unnecessary two cents on top of discourse that is already spiralling out of control.

One of the more uncomfortable truths I’ve been confronted by in my late twenties, particularly since moving to France, is that I’m not as clever as I once thought – at least not in the way I’d always hoped to be. My brain is unable to breeze through information and spit out polished commentary on demand. I trudge, and I get stuck. My mind wanders and goes off on tangents. I’ve realised that I’m a lot better at feeling things than I am at immediately diagnosing and discussing them.

There’s a strange relief in being able to admit this. When you stop trying to be the person who knows everything, you leave space to become the person who notices what everyone else might glaze over. Leaving London for Montpellier nearly two years ago was, consciously or not, my attempt to get out of the loop entirely. Life in the UK had started to become exhausting, with everything seemingly moving way too fast. I initially loved the city and the abundance of things that came with it, but by the time I left, I was overstimulated and malnourished.

Everyone there seems to be chasing something, as if there’s something to prove. I’d go to work and watch as people gave up their dignity in favour of a meagre promotion that coughed up an extra £500 a year, before tax. People would bankrupt themselves two weeks before payday – myself included – to try the hottest new restaurant or club before anyone else. There’s an illusion that you have to be “in” on what’s happening, otherwise there’s not much point being there. It was exhausting.

Moving to the south of France promised the opposite. Me in 2019 would have likely thought differently, but I liked the idea of slower mornings, smaller stakes and, effectively, a higher quality of life. I wanted my days to revolve around little routines, like going to the market and coming home to cook something fresh every day, having a dedicated space to write in the sun and creating an existence that felt like mine alone, rather than trying to fit into everyone else’s.

By and large, I got all of that and more. I’m physically removed from the scene, but I’m certainly still digitally invested. I do have slower mornings, I do go to the supermarket and cook (almost) every day, and I do have a space to write in the sun – but I find myself spending a lot of time scrolling through an endless stream of Very Important People saying Very Important Things about Very Important Topics. They seem to know exactly who and what matters at every given hour of every given day, which sounds like an arduous task if you ask me.

I watch from my little apartment here in a small city in France, thinking about laundry and tax returns and whether we need more cat food, and I feel a strange split between relief and envy. Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad that I’m not an active participant in the rat race anymore, but I hate that I’m still letting it dictate whether I have anything worth saying at all.

Being an active participant on the internet in any capacity doesn’t make it any easier. There’s so much information out there – essays, threads, video breakdowns, reviews, lists of things to read, watch, buy, stream, believe. For every genuinely thoughtful piece of criticism, there are ten performative, sloppy, AI-generated takes masquerading as essential nuance.

There’s also this strange, tangible feeling of gatekeeping and condescension that emanates from some creators. People will cling to their discoveries as if sharing them would devalue their social currency; at the same time, there’s widespread, thinly veiled scorn for anyone who isn’t able to keep up.

If, like me, your starting point is already “I’m slow at this” or “I never quite know where to look”, it can be paralysing. I’d love to be discerning, but the influx of information literally never stops. Being informed is crucial, but with things moving at such a rapid pace, it can be daunting to participate when you don’t know where the widespread moral consensus currently stands. One misstep, and the ground can shift completely.

So where does that leave someone like me, who moved away from the centre of things but still wants to write about all of it? I care deeply about culture and politics and the internet, but I’ll always most likely be late to it all. The answer I keep coming back to is disarmingly simple: maybe I’m not actually meant to be “in the loop” in the way I’ve desperately tried to be for years.

Maybe my goal with this newsletter, and with my outlook on life in general, isn’t to predict or define what’s “cool” by other people’s metrics, or to be the first one to weigh in every time the discourse catches a spark. I think I’m actually better suited to observe from the edges, and to let things land in my life and sit for a while before I start running my mouth, as has been typical of me for too long.

When I think about the moments that have stood out to me this past year, for example, they’re startlingly ordinary: finishing the furnishing and decor in our modest dining room, and being overly proud of the results; hosting family and friends in our new city, watching their faces as they take in their surroundings; lounging with my husband and two kittens and binging Breaking Bad on a rainy Sunday; and sitting on my balcony at sunset whilst listening to an album I refuse to retire, even though everyone else has already rinsed it into oblivion.

I don’t think any of this will ever trend, as hard as I might try. None of it will land me on people’s radar, or on any lists of the most cutting-edge, trendy creators to look out for, but it’s honest – and I think good writing is when it’s raw and coming straight from the heart, no matter what the topic.

So, here’s what I can promise both you and myself: I’m never going to be the person who tells you what you should be watching, reading or wearing. I’m not going to be the one with the sharpest or fastest take on whatever everyone’s arguing about today. What I can offer instead is something intentionally slower and smaller.

I’d like to simply post frequent letters from a life where I choose to be a step behind. One of the many beautiful things about the south of France is that a slower way of life is encouraged, and it’s been one of the easiest things to get used to since moving here. My thoughts are allowed to simmer and marinate, and I’m able to live with people’s recommendations and new releases long enough to decide for myself what I’m into, instead of constantly having it spoon-fed to me.

I’ll certainly indulge in pop culture from time to time, but that’ll be alongside discussions about moving countries, mental health, marriage, work and trying to build a calmer existence without disconnecting entirely. I don’t want to romanticise living abroad and dress it up with fancy cafés and Pinterest-esque collages, either. I want to show you the unflinching reality of things like our aging Mediterranean apartment with leaky radiators and cold terrazzo floors, the painstaking process of becoming a French citizen, and the trials and tribulations of enduring culture shock – it’s a beautiful journey, but I want to actually embrace the good, bad and the ugly of it all.

I’ll never be ahead of the curve, but maybe that doesn’t have to be the point. If you’re also the type of person to forever be out of the loop, you’re in good company here – I’d love to build or join a community of people intentionally living a slower, quieter life.

À bientôt, mes amis !

By all metrics, you could say this year hasn’t been my best.

As you all know, I live in the south of France now where, from the outside, everything looks dreamy. For the most part, it is – but this has quietly been one of the heaviest years of my life. Slowing down here has effectively forced me to confront a decade’s worth of things I thought I could outrun, and to realise just how hard of a blow my twenties had dealt me.

It’s been a long time since my mental health was at its prime. Like everyone, my sanity has its ebbs and flows, and it’s been that way for around twelve years. I think I do a fantastic job of hiding it. I haven’t really felt normal or well-adjusted throughout the entirety of my adult life, yet I managed to forge some kind of meaningful existence during my twenties, even if it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

I tried university straight out of school but, much like my teenage years, I found it near impossible to study and be as productive as a course like journalism required. I met another closeted boy during my first few weeks and fell hard – my first ‘partner’ in a romantic sense who was, like me, emotionally immature and completely unprepared to let somebody else in. Things went sour, I lost him and all of our mutual friends in an instant, and soon enough I found myself sobbing on Bournemouth beach in the early hours of the morning, contemplating walking to the end of the pier and not stopping.

That was the first time I recognised that something was wrong – back then, depression was the answer I landed on, as did everyone around me. I made new friends and tried to carry on as normal, but the damage was done. I passed all but two exams during my first year, which meant I had to retake the entire thing. By then, my energy was spent and I’d realised it wasn’t where I belonged, so I dropped out.

Then came moving back home at a time when I’d already had my first taste of independence, and I could feel the tension of wanting that freedom back, but also embracing the comfort of being back under my parents’ roof. It was during this time that I was also trying to maintain a relationship with my dad, who separated from my mum when I was two years old. We’d seen each other often as I was growing up – aside from the times he’d forget to pick me up from school or simply wouldn’t show up at all, as I’d watch cars that looked like his drive past without stopping and cry.

I’ve always been quite oblivious to everything. I’m a daydreamer, I live in my own world and it takes an active effort for me to pay attention. That’s why I never noticed any lack of love or respect from my dad towards me growing up, even during the time he went two years without seeing or contacting me. My memories are largely all wonderful. I especially loved spending time with my nan, my dad’s mum, who loves horses and ran a stable with my auntie and cousin. I’d go and help out as a kid, spending long Saturdays in the summertime riding ponies and running riot around the fields.

One winter evening in 2016, just after I’d dropped out of uni and started working at H&M, my nan invited me to a party. By this time, it wasn’t often that I saw this side of the family – I would usually be the one reaching out or visiting, and I’d been living away for a while. They were throwing a big awards ceremony for their horse riding community, full of familiar faces I’d grown up with and met multiple times throughout the years, and some I didn’t know at all.

The latter included a man who instantly took a liking to me, despite his “girlfriend” also being in attendance. I’d brought a half-full bottle of vodka with me, planning to keep it tame – at that point in my life, I’d been to enough freshers events, student nights and house parties to be able to guzzle alcohol without it even touching the sides. I’ve also always been overly careful and extremely aware of my limits. I hate throwing up, so if I start feeling anything less than 100%, I know it’s my cue to stop.

I was on my second drink when this man started pulling me onto his lap, dragging me away from conversations I was in the middle of and essentially harassing me. I distinctly remember him constantly insinuating that I was gay, despite me not yet being out to anyone beyond a few close friends. He was inebriated and sweaty, and I was uncomfortable, but I’m too much of a people pleaser with an anxious disposition to ever stand my ground. He then pulled me up to dance, and suddenly it was 12 hours later and I was in my bed at home, still fully dressed in a vomit-stained shirt and jeans.

I’ll never know what actually happened in those twelve hours, but I’ve heard enough and had enough time to piece it together. I know that my cousin found me in the bathroom, with this man next to me in some proximity. I know that I was naked from the waist down and she had to redress me, which I found utterly humiliating. I know that I was in such a bad state that I didn’t even know my own address. Neither did my grandparents, who had to try and get me home. I know that they somehow managed to find where my parents live, and brought me back to them as I threw up into a plastic bag.

My parents were having a party of their own at home that night, which meant I had the added pleasure of my unconscious body being paraded through the house in front of an audience. My sister even recorded it, and I still have the video on my phone. It’s terrifying. I don’t hold anything against them for finding it funny, because they thought I’d just gone overboard with the booze – and despite that video being really hard to watch for me, I can’t get rid of it. It’s the only tangible thing I have that tells me I’m not crazy and overthinking what actually happened. In a way, I’m glad it exists.

I didn’t immediately consider the possibility that I was sexually assaulted, but now I’m old enough to recognise those tactics, and now that same man has publicly come out as gay, I think I’m intelligent enough to assume. I couldn’t even hold myself up, let alone take my trousers and underwear off. It’s funny, because my two main worries at the time were my arsehole boss (who refused to believe I was spiked, and instead told everyone at work that day that I was just hungover and lazy) and the fact my cousin had seen me naked.

My familiarity with my own mental health was still limited back then, and I was more focused on finding an actual career after dropping out over anything else, including addressing what had happened to me. There was some initial anger on behalf of my family, but I never pursued anything legally and I never publicly named the man who did it, even when he sent me a Facebook message and tried to follow me on Instagram in the years following. My cousin kept him in her circle, and instead of seeing that as a sign of complete and utter disrespect, I assumed the fault lay with me instead. Looking back, it’s one of the first experiences I buried, but over the years it’s become one I’ve actively had to sit with.

I then tried pursuing a proper career, because leaving university and ending up in retail made me feel like an utter failure. I managed to get a job in Tunbridge Wells as an entry-level copywriter, lying about graduating on my CV to land the role. Then, after a year or so, I met another boy – and this time, it was serious.

It was so serious, in fact, that our burgeoning relationship spurred me to finally come out to my family at 22. I’d spent years being unnecessarily worried about the reaction of those closest to me, but on that particular day, I just felt ready. I came home from work, told my sister, then told my mum and then everyone else, and nobody had a bad or hostile response. After unknowingly feeling quite low about myself and what had become of my life thus far, it felt like freedom – I could finally be myself and embrace everything that came with it.

Then came London. As is typical of me, my then-boyfriend and I fell fast and hard for each other, our first date being an entire weekend spent at his home on the Isle of Wight. He’d recently moved near Stratford for his studies, which naturally meant I wanted to follow. I found a new job, another copywriting role for a massive betting company situated in the middle of Piccadilly Circus, and I moved in with my friend who’d graciously allowed me to stay in her lounge.

Impulsiveness is something I’ve always struggled with, but never truly recognised until very recently. It’s why I ended up living in the city, and why I immediately felt like a fish out of water upon arriving. Despite moving in with my friend, my dependency meant I was constantly asking (and sometimes near-begging) to stay at my boyfriend’s. It wasn’t always possible, of course – sometimes he wanted his own space and sometimes he was busy, but I was reluctant to take no for answer.

But then the lines started to blur, and I wasn’t quite sure who was truly at fault for our quickly deteriorating relationship. His housemates started to noticeably resent me; whether it was my constant presence in their home, or me stealing their friend away, or infringing on their bond as a group, I started getting paranoid. Loneliness was the main emotion and it made me feel like I was back at university, being cast out without ever really being able to understand why, and becoming frustrated at myself for knowing I should pull back but being completely unable to.

And then there were the times like when the passenger seat was fully reclined in his car, and I noticed it because I overthink everything, and I was already on high alert because he’d left me alone the night before to spend time with his hot Brazilian friend that he’d talk about constantly, and he’d ignored my messages and said he was going to sleep but he’d still be online, and I’d spiral. There were many of these moments, times where I’d feel blatantly disrespected but put it down to my mind being on overdrive – so before things got too much, I took myself to therapy.

It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone professionally about my mental health, and it helped me massively. I found a private therapist in Finsbury Park, fully ignoring the financial impact of these sessions (because money is another thing I’ve always been helpless with). I attended a couple of times and made plenty of progress in those two hours – he correctly identified some potential sources of my anguish, painting a clear picture of why I might have been feeling the way I was.

But it wasn’t enough. On my way to one of these sessions, my boyfriend and I were arguing over WhatsApp. The night before, I’d found myself near Canary Wharf after work drinks and couldn’t get any further home due to transport delays – classic London! He happened to be in Canary Wharf, at the home of that same Brazilian friend with a few others. He also had a car and wasn’t much of a drinker, so I messaged him asking if he’d mind taking me home once he was wrapped up. I was happy to wait around, and I understand now that he probably felt some pressure at me just… showing up – and part of me definitely wanted to be invited up, to finally be in with the crowd who he’d not yet introduced me to.

That didn’t happen, and instead he ignored me completely. I don’t really remember how I got home that night, but I do remember how furiously we were messaging back and forth as I neared my therapist’s office. I dropped a message that obviously crossed a line, and he unleashed a flurry of angry texts in response that kept my phone vibrating for the entire hour I vented about him. As I exited the session, I saw that he was on his way to see me, which I knew couldn’t be good.

I remember walking the streets by my flat (well, my friend’s flat that I was still crashing in) with The Night We Met by Lord Huron on repeat, shamelessly crying as I floated down the dark streets of Archway. He eventually arrived and, as I’d expected, he ended things. I protested and cried and sobbed and screamed in the same passenger seat his friend was laid back in a few days earlier, but nothing could salvage it – the relationship was already beyond repair, and so was I.

I remember going to drive back to my parents’ the next morning to be met with a dead battery on my car, and having to wait in the pouring November rain for it to be revived by the recovery services. I remember stopping at my now ex-boyfriend’s on the way to pick up my things, hugging him desperately before reluctantly leaving. I remember crying for that entire weekend, sending rambling messages to him promising that I’d change and suddenly become sane, as if that was ever my choice.

Once I’d grieved what I’d lost, the pendulum swung hard the other way. I got Christmas out of the way and then moved into a house in Stratford of my own. It was a proper hovel, an unlicensed HMO with seven other housemates and a kitchen with yellow fluorescent lighting and no windows. My bedroom’s radiator was constantly on, which meant my bedroom windows had to be open nearly all of the time – and I took up what was essentially the lounge, the front room of the house on the ground floor, in a part of Stratford that’s renowned for violent crime.

None of that mattered to me, though, because I was determined to prove to both my ex and myself that I could thrive in London on my own. And that I did – I finally began to learn how to feel comfortable on my own, and started settling into the job I almost lost after breaking up with my boyfriend because I took a week off to pull myself together, my boss warning me not to do that again during my probation period.

Speaking of that boyfriend, we tried to rekindle things a few months after breaking it off. I’d never known any other romantic partner and nor had he, so we were keen to give it another shot – but it didn’t work. The same problems existed, and I was perhaps growing even more unstable than I was the year prior. He went to LA for a month and I’d do things like watching his Snapchat score go up and taking it as proof he was secretly seeing the other guys out there that he’d talk about all the time.

One night after he’d gotten back, I’d been to see Mariah Carey and upon returning home, realised I didn’t have my keys and was locked out. For once, my bedroom windows were closed. So I messaged him, asking if he was awake and if I’d be able to stay the night. I’d been doing it less by then, feeling more comfortable with myself and happier in my own room – as uninhabitable as it might have been – so I felt less guilty for staying over. However, I didn’t get a response, and presumed he’d already fallen asleep.

I messaged his housemate instead, who then informed me that he wasn’t even home at all. That led to a blowout argument over WhatsApp the next day, which then led to him once again taking it upon himself to drive over. Instead of me falling apart and grovelling, though, I lost it. I swore at him, told him I never wanted to see him again, and slammed the front door shut. I didn’t, in fact, ever see him again.

And so began my year of hedonism, the last year before a global pandemic would change things for good, and one that I’ll cherish forever. I started going out more with my housemates, spending nights at Knickerbocker in Hackney Wick and Ministry of Sound, dressed like a poor Kesha impersonator in 2010 with smudged glitter and ripped DIY clothing because my approach to everything was “fuck it”.

I went to incredible parties where I danced with Grammy winners. I started smoking. I’d spend days in the summer in West Ham Park, portable speaker blasting BROCKHAMPTON, a bottle of factor 15 and a pack of B&H Blue in hand. I went to concerts, I partied at Prides, I started dying my own hair, I completed a music production course and I had my eye set on success. I wanted so badly to be this unapologetic, raw popstar, a story of doing it yourself and emerging from London to take over the world, and I truly believed it was within reach.

I also met a guy during this time, someone who became a rebound completely unintentionally. He’d ended up staying at mine after a night out, me being completely oblivious to the intentions behind it because I’d never seen him as more than a polite acquaintance. Things were pretty good for a few weeks – he was romantic, charming, a bit of a fuckboy but respectful enough for me to appreciate how different he was to my ex. I had no idea he was still in a relationship when he stayed the night, and I didn’t know I was effectively the homewrecker in that scenario until we were official.

This was towards the end of the summer, and my complete disregard for my mental health was rearing its head. On one day in September, the weather was typically terrible and I was walking home from work after having an argument with my friends from university. I cannot remember what it was about, and it doesn’t matter – I was in the wrong. I’m horribly stubborn and have a tendency to be selfish, no matter how much I regret it in the aftermath, and I was also unknowingly unravelling. I think I told them not to contact me again instead of being mature and talking about things and to their credit, they did try, but I was too far gone to appreciate the efforts.

Things just felt heavy – from what I can remember, my dad had a cancer scare that same week and even though the distance between us was growing further, it still scared me. I got home to my hovel which, by this point, had already endured two bedbug infestations. My boyfriend was insistent in coming over that day after work drinks under the pretence of comforting me, but he was also incessantly sexual and I wasn’t in the mood to entertain it once the inevitable occurred.

He showed up anyway, despite me telling him not to. As I mentioned, my bedroom windows were always open when I was home, so there wasn’t any chance of me avoiding him. He came in, we spoke for a bit, then he wanted to take things further and I really wasn’t in the mood, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t undress me, but he got on top of me and pinned me down for what felt like forever until he realised his efforts were futile. He left soon after, and I got in the shower and cried.

Still, I didn’t acknowledge what had happened to me as assault. It wasn’t until the year after, once I’d moved out of that house into a much nicer place with three of my closest friends, that I sat down to watch Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and saw a scene play out on screen that was uncomfortably close to my experience. That was the hardest I’d ever been triggered by something, but I’m so grateful for it – it allowed me to understand the impact it had on me and to realise I wasn’t alone in it. I did open up about what had happened to me then, but I never got the chance to really say how it made me feel, or to truly acknowledge the pain and anger that started oozing out of me as a result.

Some of you will probably remember how volatile and uncharacteristic my actions were back then, just before the pandemic. I had my run-in with Piers Morgan after I sought an outlet for my misguided anger and chose him, launching a petition to get him fired over his transphobic views. That then led to months of torrential abuse and threats, which didn’t do my mental health any favours. It’s something I hold great shame and embarrassment over – not for what I did, but for how I did it and how I handled it. It’s also something I hold deep anger over, because the response and sheer lack of support I got throughout that entire ordeal just sent me further down the spiral.

I ruined Christmas that year by escalating an argument over politics, and had to hang my head in shame the next day once I’d regulated my emotions. My family dog died the February after, and I spent that night on my own in my bedroom, crying into my pillow as my friends went out and partied. And then, lo and behold, we collectively experienced something completely unprecedented – COVID.

Much of my experience during the pandemic is a blur. I remember feeling extremely low throughout 2020, just before meeting my now-husband, Xavier. That was a total chance encounter, one that I wasn’t ready for and wasn’t actively seeking out. I’d messaged him on Instagram on New Year’s Eve and we flirted back and forth, but I expected the conversation to fizzle out as it always usually did – I wasn’t ever usually interested in taking anything further with anyone.

But for some reason, I couldn’t get him out of my mind. We met in person in February of 2021, and we instantly clicked – it only took a few days for us to start actively dating. It’s safe to say we had the opposite of a honeymoon phase, though. I had years of unaddressed trauma and flailing mental health weighing me down, and it took a few months of us figuring each other out before things got better. We liked each other so much that we fought for it to work, and I’m so grateful we did, because now I’m here.

It’s because of Xavier that I’m taking the steps I need to get better. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a level of unconditional love and support outside of my immediate family, and I love him so much in return that I want to be the best version of myself for him. It’s also because of Xavier that I’m here in France, after a rough conclusion to our time in London that I’m still not ready to talk about.

But it’s an unrealistic expectation to think anyone else can actually do the work for me, much like it was an unrealistic expectation to think moving abroad would solve all of my problems. Instead, it’s like I’m sitting in the middle of an empty, barren room with stacks of unsorted files around me, and I can’t get free until they’ve all been addressed and put in order, and there’s nobody around to help me do it but myself.

It’s a fitting analogy, really, because my severe disorganisation is just one of the many symptoms that recently made me realise I have ADHD and autism. It’s been quite the revelation – looking back at the past 29 years through a whole new lens has quite literally changed my life. Neurodivergence is debilitating, no matter where you sit on the spectrum, and I’ve felt it to an intense degree since moving here. It’s made me feel deep regret at how harsh I’ve been towards myself over the years, how often I’ve berated myself for being unable to see things a certain way, how much I’ve struggled to fit in everywhere I go, how I’ve struggled to maintain any meaningful friendships and how I’ve been trying to navigate life for so long without knowing why I felt like everything I did was wrong.

I recently sought out a therapist to help me sort through my issues, and I spoke about it with her. I said how it feels like I’ve been sleepwalking since I arrived in France last year – I’ve barely learned the language, I haven’t absorbed as much of the culture as I’ve wanted to, and eighteen months have flown by without much to show for it.

Of course, I’m probably putting unnecessary pressure on myself (as is also typical of me), but it’s starting to scare me how low I’ve sunk. I have no motivation to do anything, whether it be work, writing, socialising, going out and exploring – I’m borderline agoraphobic with how much I struggle when leaving the house. I never return people’s messages. I’m irritable to a worrying degree, snapping at the slightest thing, feeling a deep rage at current affairs and letting it taint my personality so much that I’ve become a horribly pessimistic and miserable person.

But is it any wonder? I highly doubt I’m the only person out there whose depression has overcome them as a result of the world we live in. Things are dire, to say the least. Deleting my Twitter account at the beginning of the year helped, and I found refuge in TikTok instead – it’s been one of the things that has gotten me through 2025, being able to creatively talk about my life here and how much of a vast improvement it is over the UK.

It feels futile, though, when everybody else is actively struggling and I’m not exactly living the dream just yet. Everything is antagonistic, too, and another reason I realised I’m autistic is because of how highly sensitive I am. A troll with zero followers can leave a shitty comment on one of my videos and instead of ignoring it like anyone else, I’ll let it eat at me and I won’t be able to settle until I’ve responded. My therapist said it sounds like I’m in fight-or-flight mode because I’ve lost all protection, and I’m choosing the former because the latter didn’t work out. I think she’s right.

For example, the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk lit a fire under me. I didn’t care for him in life – to me, he was simply one of many right-wing reactionaries, funded by the government and those in power to spout whatever inflammatory views were fed to him. I found the public outcry in response to his murder absolutely mind-boggling. It was one of many instances of me being completely and utterly unable to understand how so many people could willingly overlook the disparaging things he’d said about people like me.

One of those people happened to be a family member on my dad’s side of the family. By now, I haven’t spoken to any of them for half a decade. There wasn’t a specific reason for us drifting apart – the incident at the horse riding ceremony changed the dynamic, sure, but the pandemic meant I couldn’t see any of them in person even if I wanted to and, because I was always the one making the effort, I decided to stop. It’s been five years since, and I’ve realised it’s not worth grieving something that wasn’t ever really afforded to me in the first place.

That’s besides the point, though. This person took offence to my stance on Kirk, claiming he was representative of “good Christian values” despite never actually practising those values herself. When I pushed back, things escalated quickly. She sent me a late-night message telling me that “the next generation is fucked because of people like you”. My response could have made a sailor blush, and in one exchange I effectively cut that entire side of my family off. Afterwards, I spent days feeling guilty and remorseful, ignoring the fact that I’d been unnecessarily provoked by someone in close proximity to my dad. It confirmed there was a rift, and it wasn’t one I’d created.

For me, the only explanation that exists is that I wasn’t good enough. He was never consistently there for me as a parent, even though I showed him unconditional love until I was old enough to know better. Plus, as I said, it’s pointless for me to grieve the loss of something I never really had. It doesn’t make it any easier, though – it just adds to the feeling I have that I’m different, unworthy, that I’m just not worth it.

It’s moment like this that bring it all to the surface. For the longest time, I thought I was capable of overcoming all of it without ever wading through it, and I now realise it’s impossible. That’s why I’m deciding to purge it all, to finally look at it head on, to finally stop giving people the grace that I should have been giving myself this entire time.

So, this is me drawing a line in the sand. I have so much to live for, and it’s time I started doing so. I’m quickly approaching 30, and I’m seeing it as a total fresh slate for me. In terms of my dignity, I have nothing left to lose – everything is on the table. I’m a fuck-up, sure, but so is everyone else.

When I look at the bigger picture, I’ve not done that badly for myself at all. Here I am, approaching the end of my twenties with almost two years of living in the south of France. I dragged myself away from a potential life of continuing to abuse my body and mind, found someone who loves me for me instead of an idea of me, became the proud parent of two cats after a lifetime of wanting one of my own, and I’ve recognised how far gone I am and have begun taking active measures to claw my way back.

I have severe depression and anxiety, as well as autism and ADHD – and I’m sure there are a couple more things rumbling under the surface, too. I’ve seen my doctor multiple times about it, and I’ve started out on some medication to see how things go. As I mentioned, I’ve also started seeing a therapist here, and the sessions are going brilliantly. They’re definitely heavy and emotionally taxing, and I’ve needed a nap after each one, but I’m already starting to get answers to things I’ve left unresolved for years. Sometimes, that answer is “there is no answer” – and the key is accepting it and moving on.

Moving on is a heartbreaking concept, really. It’s hard to definitively end a chapter of your life when there wasn’t much closure, and accept that some things are just the way they are. I couldn’t really tell you a definitive reason why I find myself so alone these days, but it’s something I’m learning to accept. I moved abroad for a fresh start and instead of constantly being marred by nostalgia, I have to embrace it. I’m young enough to start again, and I finally have solid enough foundations for it.

I want to discover my lust for life again. I want to make new friends, whether they’re French or immigrants like me, and I want to make spontaneous plans to grab coffee or dinner with them on a whim. I want to master the language. I want to visit more local restaurants. I want to explore this beautiful country. I want to go to concerts and not even think about the crowds around me. I want to be able to drink alcohol without instantly feeling sick and panicky. I want to find the motivation to write and make more music, even if it’s just for myself. Most of all, though, I want to stop bullshitting everyone – including myself – about how I’m feeling.

That’s why I’m getting it all out in the open today. I have to jump over this hurdle in order to move forwards and stop being bogged down by it. Every time I sat down to write something this year, I wanted all of this to pour out of me but I was too proud and stubborn to let my guard down. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to write about this year, because I’ve had some truly fantastic moments, but I knew I was at my limit and simply waiting for the bomb to blow.

Now it has, it’s only up from here. I promise I’ll be back soon, hopefully with something a bit less taxing. Thanks for reading, mes amis – wishing you all a happy and healthy week ahead. It’s nearly Christmas, after all!

Here’s the understatement of the century: it’s been a while! I haven’t updated you on my life in months – and there’s a lot to catch you up on. We’ll start from the beginning soon, but I want to give you an insight into where I am right now.

I’m sat at my desk in the apartment I now share with my husband, our cat perched on the bed behind me, feeling a deep sense of optimism that has undeniably expanded since first moving to France ten months ago. I thought things were good, but things such as looming admin work, a growing feeling of isolation and the stress of renting a (old) new apartment were all weighing on my shoulders – despite the subsiding anxiety, I still felt the pressure.

That was until recently. I went into 2025 with no expectations, nor any resolutions that I could punish myself for not acting upon. Instead, I simply started as I meant to go on. I applied for my visa renewal, my French driving license and my carte vitale in one fell swoop, finally alleviating the stress of not having these major things sorted. I finally stopped going on Twitter, because I wasted so much time and energy bickering with people that simply weren’t worth it. I even started cooking more (in part because my amazing parents bought us a Ninja Foodi for Christmas, which I literally use every single day).

Things continue to get better, which feels good to say. Despite the ongoing chaos ensuing in the world right now, I have my own little slice of paradise here – and I feel more at home with every passing day. In fact… this is home.

So, what’s been going on since I last wrote?

Let’s start with the biggest update: we finally moved into our own apartment! Last August, we found an absolute steal on leboncoin (essentially the French Gumtree), located in the heart of Montpellier. We’d wanted to move to the city for a long time, as I’d mentioned previously. It isn’t anywhere near as overwhelming as London, but there’s always something happening here. Whether it’s the bustling Christmas markets in the winter or endless club nights and festivals in the summertime, Montpellier is a lot of things – but it’s never boring. It’s also beautiful, with an abundance of historic buildings, cobbled streets and sandy beaches only a stone’s throw away.

Considering the advertised price for the entire three-bedroom flat was less than what we paid for a double room in Hackney Wick, we enquired about organising a visit within a minute of the ad being posted. That same evening, we’d booked to have a tour of the apartment that weekend. It was sweltering, being in the middle of August, and we were heading back to the UK for a holiday two days after, but it was our first viewing and we were buzzing. My husband and I had never lived alone before – we’d either been staying with family or sharing with housemates, even after getting married. To put it simply, getting our own place couldn’t come any sooner.

As soon as we walked into the apartment, situated on a quaint, quiet side street just five minutes from the centre of Montpellier, we were struck by how unique it is. There’s authentic and original Mediterranean tile mosaic flooring throughout, with a massive lounge and dining room that open onto each other to maximise the space. The windows open up to luscious trees and the distant buzz of the city. There’s a brand-new shower, three decent-sized bedrooms (enough space for working from home and comfortably hosting guests), and a kitchen with recently-fitted units – that we had to pay the old tenants 400 EUR to keep.

That’s just one of the many quirks that come with renting in France. Had we not paid that fee to keep our kitchen installed, we would have arrived to a barren, empty room. Here, you install everything yourself, from the oven to the sofas, the washing machine to the beds. We spent a small fortune furnishing the flat, and only just finished the dining room last week at the time of writing. I’ve put enough flatpack items together to last me a lifetime, and to callus my hand permanently. Let me tell you, though – our new dining table is fucking beautiful. Look at her!

It’s also an extremely old apartment, which adds to its charm but also poses challenges we weren’t prepared for. I’d never painted a room before in my life, but within the first month of moving in I donned my gloves and shitty old clothes to tackle the spare bedroom. My family were coming to stay for my mum’s birthday in October, and I wanted to spruce the place up as much as I could before they arrived. I never thought I’d have the motivation to renovate my home myself, but I definitely don’t have the funds to get a professional in. So, I repainted the walls, scrubbed the skirting tiles that were caked in old paint, fixed the hinges on the door and cleaned up the wall-mounted lights. The end result looked so good, I wondered if a new career beckoned (spoiler alert: it doesn’t).

The bathroom is in dire need of a touch-up, as are the walls throughout the entire apartment, and we want to get the floor cleaned up or replaced this year. Instead of seeing this things as a hindrance, though, I’m looking at them as a challenge. I really, really love this apartment – the location is perfect, the size is ideal for hosting anyone who flies over to visit and I like that it isn’t a carbon copy new build. I’m excited to keep adding to it, improving things and making it feel even better. It already feels like home, though, and the freedom that comes with having your own apartment is so liberating.

We have the train station less than five minutes away, where we can quickly pop over to Barcelona or head up to Paris for the day. We’ve got local boulangeries and supermarchés, amazing restaurants and bars, tattoo shops, every clothing store you could think of and so much more right on our doorstep. It was so much fun to show my family around a few months ago – even we found places we hadn’t visited before, such as La Tomate. This rustic restaurant is tucked away on Rue Sainte-Anne, and offers up some of the best home-cooked cassoulet you’ll find in Montpellier. All of us were blown away, and to top it all off, my mum said it was the best birthday she’d ever had.

I can’t wait for more family and friends to come and visit this year. Being able to host is a fantastic feeling, and I can’t wait to drink wine around our dining table with some pals in the summer, or take my family to La Grande Plage for cocktails and oysters on the beach. There is an endless amount of things to do, see, eat, drink and enjoy in this city, and it’s even better when you get to share it with people.

It’s funny that London is known as a city full of potential – it’s not untrue, but I always felt stifled living there. Montpellier, on the other hand, is the total opposite. I’m coming back out of my shell slowly but surely, feeling more confident in myself, recognising my ability to thrive in a different country, and feeling proud of where I’ve ended up. I refuse to speak anything to existence, because I don’t want to jinx things, but I have a good feeling about this year for me. I think things will be very different, in the best way possible.

I really think that part of this newfound motivation and joy is down to one tiny little bundle of fur: our new daughter, Willow.

After years of longing for my own cat, it finally happened – I won my husband over. He had never wanted one, partly because of allergies, but also because he thought they were universally horrible little bastards. I can’t blame him, considering the amount of compilations on TikTok and YouTube of cats knocking things off shelves, spontaneously attacking their owners and generally being harbingers of chaos. I, however, still wanted one of my own, and it played in my favour that our landlord won’t allow dogs (our primary choice of pet) but would allow cats (my primary choice of pet).

This November, we got word of a puppy and kitten convention happening at the exhibition centre in Montpellier. We didn’t need many more details – we were on the tram bright and early on a Sunday morning, marching towards the entrance with such excitement that we almost accidentally entered an international poker tournament instead.

After finally locating the right hall (aided by the sound of screaming chihuahua and Jack Russell puppies), we walked in and immediately knew it was a bad idea. One of these animals would be coming home with us. We didn’t have the money, nor had we prepared at all, but we simply could not resist. There was every single breed of cat and dog you could imagine, from ragdolls to huskies and so many more. We played with a cheeky little Bengal kitten, awwed over the baby golden retreivers and almost cried over the baby Shiba Inus.

It was a giant, statuesque Maine Coon cat that caught my eye as we were pulling ourselves away from the convention. She was sat as still as possible on her plinth, her owner gently brushing her long, dense silver fur. I’d seen these massive cats online before, but never in person, and this one was huge. My mind was made up instantly – I wanted one. It was literally love at first sight.

I spent the next few days researching them in-depth, learning about their temperaments, their typical behaviours, what they like to eat, and: just how big can they really get? It turns out, they can get pretty fucking gigantic – up to one metre in length and up to ten kilograms in weight. They’re also gentle giants, with an extremely loving and calm nature despite sometimes resembling a wildcat.

Not long after we’d been to the exhibition, my husband sent me another leboncoin link (this website is magical, I swear!). This time, it was for a female Maine Coon kitten in Montpellier for sale – and she was gorgeous. Her fur, a mix of brown, ginger and white, and her pointy, fox-like ears made me well up after just seeing a photo. We decided to go and view her, just to test the waters and see how we felt (and to make sure it wasn’t a scam). It was a hasty decision; even though we knew we wanted a pet eventually, we wanted to make sure we were ready.

Our willpower is non-existent, though, and as soon as we set eyes on her in person, we knew she was ours. Out of four Maine Coon kittens in the room, she was the only one to come to us and play, rolling over on her back and grabbing our fingers as I tried to listen to what the seller was saying. We told him that yes, we wanted her, and as soon as possible. However, we were once again heading to the UK not long after (that country always seems to get in my way) and we didn’t want to do the irresponsible thing of picking her up before we went away. So, we put a deposit down and had to wait a few more weeks before we could bring her home.

My husband and I decided to walk home from seeing her that night, giddy with excitement over the fact we finally had our own cat. Her parents’ owner told us that we should give her a name beginning with V, W, X, Y, or Z. The reasons why were unclear but, not one to fuck around with superstition, we followed the rules and started batting ideas off each other as we strolled through the city centre. “Velma? Xena the Warrior Princess? Zelda?”

“What about Willow?”

We stopped and looked at each other. My husband is a massive Taylor Swift fan, which is admittedly where the name came from, but it also just felt right. We knew we’d landed on her name there and then, and straight away it became part of our daily lexicon. Repeatedly looking through the photos we had of her before we picked her up, we’d constantly be saying things like, “Willow looks so cute in this picture” because it just felt natural. During our trip to the UK just before Christmas, we’d mention Willow almost non-stop – and we hadn’t even brought her home yet!

Her pickup date was the same day that we landed back from London, exhausted after a 2:45am alarm and a 6am flight. We had to wait until the evening to go and get her, and those few hours were the longest I’ve ever experienced in my life. But, as we finally arrived with her empty carrier in hand, I was struck with a wave of anxiety and my hands started to sweat and shake. I realised there and then the responsibility that comes with having your own pet, and the gravity of it hit me.

I immediately felt protective, even as we put Willow in her carrier and started to walk the quiet way home. She kept meowing through the air vents and my heart broke a bit more each time – I just wanted to get her out and hold her in my arms. Within five minutes, she was my baby, and that deep love has only grown ever since.

She was apprehensive when we got back to the apartment, eventually hiding under the kitchen cupboards. I knew it was a possibility that we might not see her for a few hours at first, but with the help of some toys and treats, she eventually made her way out to us and was cuddling us in bed by the next morning. The next night, my husband was out for a work dinner and I sat with Willow on the sofa as she played with the sleeve of my jumper. At one point, I looked down and she looked up at me with her big eyes and I started to bawl. As in, full on sobbing, loud, ugly wailing by myself. My neighbours probably thought I was insane. I haven’t felt that feeling of sheer adoration many times in my life, but it’s happened several times now with Willow. She really is our baby girl, our ball of energy, our beautiful daughter who I will fiercely guard with my life if I have to.

Since Willow arrived in our lives, I’ve felt so much less lonely. I had a bit of a “moment” around the New Year, where I finally recognised how isolated I’ve been feeling and told my husband about it after bottling it up. Moving countries is hard. It’s fun, yes, and nothing beats the feeling of settling into a place that feels so much more suited to you, but it comes with its downsides – one of which being the loneliness that I’m sure every expat feels. I moved away from my family and friends to a place where I’m a complete and utter outsider. I still don’t speak the language fluently and, although I have my wonderful in-laws who I love dearly, I don’t have my own circle here.

I met some friends at a civic course that I had to undertake as part of my visa requirements. Across four separate days, we learned about the history of France and how it shaped the country it is today – from the origins of the laws of the land to Bastille and La Marseillaise, it was less of a chore and more of a fascinating insight into my new home, contextualising a lot of what I had already seen and experienced. I ended up bonding with a musician from Nottingham who moved to Montpellier to study jazz, as well as a guy from Bosnia who, like me, moved to France so his partner could rejoin her family. We exchanged numbers, but I’ve been too shy to reach out since and I’m kicking myself for it. This is a note to self: do that soon!

But, having Willow around has made things feel so much lighter. I talk to her whilst I’m working from home, even though she has no fucking clue what I’m saying and either wants me for chin scratches or treats. She’s given me the motivation to stop wallowing around and make the most of my situation – hence the sudden pivot to cooking fresh, nutritious meals every day instead of grabbing a quiche from Carrefour. I’m taking a much-needed step away from social media, because nothing and nobody on it is real and none of it matters in the grand scheme of things. I was a Twitter addict for years, but I finally woke up in the last few weeks and realised I was wasting my life away trying to win arguments with idiots on a platform owned by a Nazi. We’re living in crazy times, but I need to preserve my sanity as much as possible, and I already feel so much better for it.

The loneliness has almost certainly been exacerbated by the gloomy winter weather, as even Montpellier is often steeped in thick grey clouds during this time of the year. But, I know the sun will come out again very soon, I know that my favourite people on the planet will be visiting us shortly and I know that I am so unbelievably lucky to be here and to be living this life, and I cannot ever take any of it for granted.

In summary, then, I’m still very much enjoying this journey. So much has happened in the space of a few months, much less a year, that it feels almost unbelievable. If you’d had told me in October of 2023, as we packed up my stepdad’s van and moved back to my parents’, that I’d be sitting at mine and my husband’s dining table in France with my cat just over a year later, I’d have probably laughed in your face… and then broke down crying over how much I wanted it.

It’s very easy to lose sight of things when you’re in the middle of a trivial struggle. I found myself bordering on being overwhelmed in these last few months, sometimes beating myself up for not putting enough effort in or making a minor mistake – but then I look back at where I was not that long ago, and I realise just how far I’ve come. My god… things are so much better than they used to be, and that’s all down to my husband and I making it happen. We often remind each other of that, finding ourselves wandering down memory lane and discussing the times we were teetering on the edge of rock bottom, then looking at where we are now and feeling nothing but pride and love.

Who’s to say what 2025 holds? I certainly didn’t imagine 2024 unfolding in the way it did – but I didn’t really have many expectations at all. I just went with the adventure of moving to France, embracing the challenges and the opportunities that came with it, and it served me well. That’s how I aim to take on this year, too. I’m going to say yes, I’m not going to wallow and I’m going to keep moving. If things keep looking up, who’s to say the sky’s the limit?

I’m writing this as the thirty-degree heat beats down upon the apartment; I’ve spent the past couple of weeks sweating profusely around the clock. I’m not complaining about it, either.

Having a defined summer season is just one of the many reasons why I grow to love living in the south of France more and more with each passing day. It’s almost guaranteed that I’ll wake up to the sun rising on the horizon, unobstructed by clouds, the temperature almost reaching its peak before I start work for the day. I could gripe about being uncomfortable – especially with no air conditioning – but I feel grateful, energised, happy.

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There’s a physical upside to it, too. It’s no secret that vitamin D is extremely beneficial for our bodies, and the abundance of it here has helped me tenfold. Before the move, my skin had broken out into the worst case of eczema I’d suffered for years. The stress of changing jobs, applying for a visa, commuting to London throughout the week and getting married on top of it all had me flaring up all over my arms, legs and face. Now, it’s completely disappeared. I truly haven’t felt this good about myself in a while, despite the near-constant perspiration.

Getting used to the heat will take time, as will integrating into the French way of life, but I’m wholly dedicated to the process. I had to prove said dedication recently, as I was summoned to the Office for Immigration and Integration for a mandatory appointment. Here, I would have to sign a declaration confirming my willingness to adapt to French society and put the effort into settling in, as well as undertake both a written and spoken language exam.

My heart was in my throat as I pulled up to the building, rehearsing the worst-case scenario in my head and fully expecting to be laughed out of the door for my French skills. After arriving and having to sit in a dead silent, clinically lit waiting room, myself and several others were taken into a classroom that felt strangely similar to high school – individual chairs and desks in rows, hushed whispering amongst us in trepidation of what was to come, and exam invigilators stood watching at the front, stacks of papers in hand.

We were given twenty minutes to complete our written French exam. It involved creating an email to a creche, enquiring about their availability and facilities; analysing a newspaper article about a retiring teacher; and sending text messages to my “son”, confirming that I’d pick him up from school and offering to buy him a textbook. I struggled my way through, convinced I had failed and would have to attend a mandatory 600 hours of language lessons (a very real figure, by the way).

I was then led out of the classroom and to a booth, where a lovely French woman began asking me questions about where I’m currently living, what I’m doing for work and what to expect from my next few months in the country. She didn’t speak a word of English, and it was only after a ten-minute conversation that I realised this was my speaking exam. Thankfully, I managed to respond to everything she asked and, after the time was up, she revealed her perfect English and told me I had passed.

To put it lightly, I was elated. I had spent the whole morning panicking for no good reason – my efforts had paid off, and I showcased a good enough understanding of French to be able to remain in the country without the need for further lessons. It was a lesson in ignoring self-doubt and believing in myself, as cheesy and as cliché as that sounds. Moving countries is an arduous task, one where you’re constantly worried that you’re doing something wrong, but I left the appointment with a spring in my step. I had overcome perhaps the biggest obstacle I’d faced since arriving, a huge weight lifted.

I still have a medical appointment to come, as well as four full-day civic courses in Montpellier to attend. During these lessons, I’ll learn all about France’s laws, politics, history and the systems I’ll eventually be fully integrated into. I’m excited and motivated in equal measure – my nouveau debut continues, and it’s going even better than I’d hoped.

Aside from the administrative developments, I’ve simply been enjoying the summertime. My husband and I spent the past Saturday at Valras-Plage, our local beach that becomes considerably packed during this time of the year; families and tourists arrive in their droves, injecting the usually peaceful town with a buzzing energy that I love.

We grabbed lunch at La Cabane Bleue, a beach bar that also offers private sunbeds to enjoy after your meal. It’s a gorgeous spot, decorated with striking blue paint and straw lampshades with panoramic views of the sea just in front. I was starving, so I opted for a double hot dog with fried onions – it was essentially an entire baguette with frankfurters and dijon mustard, which gave me a good excuse to drag my stuffed body over to a lounger afterwards.

I have always cherished any opportunity to swim in the sea. I never really ventured to the beach much whilst living in the UK – I much prefer sand to stones, I don’t fare well with crowds and I don’t fancy entering any water that’s quite literally full of shit. But, I find there’s something healing about swimming in open water. It goes without saying that the Meditteranean is much preferable, but it feels even better knowing that it’s just a stone’s throw away.

Whilst slurping down a Piña Colada, I actually said to my husband that it feels like a holiday. It reminded me of conversations we’d have before moving, in which he’d remind me that the reality of living somewhere I’d only previously visited for two or three weeks at a time would be very different. It was a fair point, as my infatuation with the south of France was heightened by the fact I’d always have to leave. However, it’s been four months since I got here and the novelty is yet to wear off. I'm not sure if it ever will.

Some other things that have been going on recently:

Last weekend, I finally got to see Longlegs. I’d been keeping an eye on the buzz online and had subsequently bought into it, as I hadn’t been truly scared by a horror film in years, despite loving some recent releases. I’m also a fan of Maika Monroe since seeing her in It Follows years ago, as well as Nicolas Cage (we share the same birthday, after all). Not to mention, the frequent comparisons to Se7en – one of my all-time favourite films – and The Silence of the Lambs were definitely intriguing.

My husband was extremely nervous before heading into the cinema, whereas I was beyond excited. Cut to two hours later, and I emerged feeling nauseous and shaken whilst he was absolutely fine. Longlegs lived up to my expectations and more. I hadn’t felt that scared and uncomfortable watching a film since I first saw Sinister twelve years ago; Monroe and Cage’s performances are exceptional, the plot is complex yet fantastic and the scares are incredibly effective. If you haven’t yet watched it – and can handle a truly evil film – I highly recommend.

We’re also racing our way through Ink Master, the US-based reality TV show in which tattoo artists from across the country compete for $100,000. I’m an avid tattoo fan, having 18 of them in total, and it’s fascinating watching these people create absolute masterpieces from scratch in the space of six hours. Some of the artists across this series are truly world-class, and I cannot fathom the level of sheer creativity it takes to design and apply artwork that’s entirely out of your comfort zone, whilst on camera and under a time limit.

Of course, the real entertainment comes from a) the bad tattoos, of which there are plenty, and b) the drama, of which there is also plenty. It’s like the straight man’s RuPaul’s Drag Race – you can very easily tell when production has stepped in to make the contestants fight over nothing. They will yell and scream at each other in the green room over the most petty, unimportant things, and I lap up every single second of it.

It doesn’t come without its controversy, though. Each season has its own unique theme, and the one we’re currently watching is a ‘Battle of the Sexes’. Some of the men are grotesquely sexist, without the talent to back it up. Thankfully, they’re actively called out on screen and made to feel antiquated, as they should be. Despite their questionable and offensive remarks, the satisfaction comes when some of the women routinely out-tattoo them with ease. It’s an infuriating watch at times, but a stark insight into the dynamics of the tattoo industry.

In terms of music, I’ve listened to barely anything aside from JADE’s debut single. Angel Of My Dreams is a soul-bearing, energetic, unpredictable pop masterclass, reflecting on her time with Little Mix under Simon Cowell’s label, Syco Music, with complete honesty: “Selling my soul to a psycho / they say I’m so lucky / better act like you’re lucky, honey.”

All three of the Little Mix girls have now made their solo debuts, with varying levels of success. None of them are bad, per sé – and Leigh-Anne deserves so much more – but it feels like Jade has flown out of the gate with a statement. No other pop song in recent memory sounds like this. A Sandie Shaw sample gives way to an X Factor winning ballad-esque introduction, that then evolves into a grimy, pulsing beat that’s set to be a gay club staple for months to come. There are definite influences of Xenomania, Girls Aloud and arguably even K-Pop throughout, suggesting that Jade is both a dedicated student of pop music and, now, a teacher.

And that’s without even mentioning the music video. Partly set in Deptford (two stops away on the DLR from where I used to live), it tells a highly-dramatised tale of how the music industry chews women up and spits them out in favour of the younger, fresher talent. It’s surprisingly emotional, visually arresting and has tons of replay value. I cannot understate just how powerful it is, not to mention unique. Jade is a superstar, and I cannot wait to see what comes next.

Speaking of living near Deptford, I knew that Jade also lived close by after she uploaded a few TikToks in the park that was two minutes’ walk from my house. It was a running joke between my housemates and I for almost two years that we’d soon bump into her, and we’d invite her over for drinks and she’d be our best mate eventually – and then one day, whilst working from home, I strolled to Canary Wharf for some lunch and walked directly past her. Of course, I said nothing as I didn’t want to interrupt or bother her, but the mere sight sent my heart racing so fast, I had to sit down for five minutes. She’s powerful, I’m telling you.

Here’s a playlist of ten songs I’m enjoying at the moment, which I think you’ll enjoy too. JADE is in there, alongside the new Kesha single (which I still have on heavy rotation, of course), new ones from the Clairo and Kaytranada albums, as well as the latest single from the Margate-based Tokyo Tea Room. My friend is the band’s lead singer, and to watch their profile explode over the last few years has been very exciting – it’s well deserved. They make blissful, dreamy music that offers the ideal soundtrack to a tranquil summer.

Wishing you all a fantastic, sunny week ahead – bonne semaine à tous !

It’s somehow already been over three months since I packed up and joined my husband in the south of France. Time has flown, and yet it feels like a lifetime – at least, the impact this relocation has had on me personally has been life-changing.

There have been countless times in my life when I thought I was doing better than I was before, only to be dragged back into the throes of depression or anxiety at the flick of a switch. This time, however, I can say it with conviction. There’s a palpable feeling in the south of France that I can’t describe with words – maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s being in such close proximity to the sea, but in just three months I feel changed.

We’ve been taking it slowly, mostly out of necessity. As my husband and I haven’t been at our new jobs for long, we’ve been unable to make progress on things such as renting a house, or buying a car. That isn’t a bad thing, though. The slow tranquillity here is what I appreciate the most – nobody is in a rush and nothing is urgent. Nothing is pressing on my mind and distracting me, which means I can go for daily walks and appreciate the little things, such as the feeling of the white-hot sunshine on my skin.

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It cannot be understated how necessary this transition was for me. To be able to fully embrace a fresh start has rid me of most of my worries; money, work, the future, the past… I’ve even gotten rid of my old phone number, switching to a French network, but it feels like I’ve gone off the grid. Good.

My few years of living in London were turbulent, to say the least. Despite meeting hundreds of beautiful people (including my husband), making new friends, experiencing some once-in-a-lifetime things and having fun, it also fundamentally changed me as a person. I became insecure, unmotivated, scared, lazy, anxious, miserable and burned out. There were many contributing factors, but retrospectively I think it was down to simply feeling lost in such a big, bustling city. I never really settled down in London, and it never felt like home, despite living there for five years.

Your surroundings have a tangible effect on you, and in contrast to my previous move, settling down in France has changed me for the better. I feel genuinely happier, healthier and extremely motivated to turn my life around. Saving money is now a realistic (and appealing) prospect. I’ve started reading books again. I’m walking 10,000 steps a day, eating healthier, feeling more love and energy inside myself than I’ve felt in a long time.

And that’s before the good stuff has even truly started, too. Now, though, it’s full steam ahead – we’ll be relocating to Montpellier, around 40 minutes from Béziers, in the near future. With my husband’s new role being in the city, and with us both drawn to it every time we visit, it’s the logical next step. The apartment hunt will (hopefully) be the last big task on our to-do list for a while and, as we’ve never lived alone as a couple – let alone a married couple – the excitement is through the roof. We’ve been browsing homeware and furniture stores, excitedly picturing ourselves with a golden retriever and a kitten between us on the sofa.

Montpellier is a beautiful, vibrant place, striking the ideal balance of energy and tranquillity. I have only visited a handful of times, but it has always struck me as somewhere I’d thrive. It strikes the perfect balance between a busy city and a quiet escape, with that same unhurried, calm atmosphere running through it. There are enough things to see and do, and any guests we host will be sure to fall in love with it, but it doesn’t give me that same claustrophobic feeling London does.

It’s also an LGBTQ+ hotspot, confirmed by the fantastic drag event we recently attended at Halle Tropisme. We watched stars from several European iterations of Drag Race, including France’s Sara Forever, and partied in the sunshine, the vibe joyous and freeing. There are plenty of other gay bars and cafés in the city centre, and I really hope to integrate with the community once I’m a local. Despite the rise of the far-right here in France (which I don’t feel even slightly equipped to comment on), these pockets of acceptance and freedom will continue to thrive. The French won’t ever take it lying down!

There is so much promise, so much potential and so much to look forward to. It’s been a while since I felt secure about the future, and to know that I’m heading towards something even better is comforting. But, I’m also embracing the present – something I haven’t done in years. The serenity of being able to switch off and enjoy where I’m at right now is something I don’t take for granted. I’m beyond lucky to have this life; a loving partner, good health, amazing family, friends who I miss dearly, and a new home in this beautiful part of the world. Every single time I stand on the balcony, the sea sparkling on the horizon and the sun on my face, I cannot help but smile. I made it.

Here are a few things I’ve been consuming this week – leave a comment if you’re listening to, reading or watching any of it too, or shout out with some recommendations for me to dive into in time for next week!

🎧 Self Esteem & Moonchild Sanelly, ‘Big Man’

I’ve loved Rebecca Lucy Taylor, aka Self Esteem, for a while – ‘I Do It All the Time’ stands firmly in my top songs of all time. This new track plays on gender stereotypes, with Taylor and Moonchild Sanelly stepping into the shoes of a loving, chilled boyfriend lifting up his girl and being a “fucking big man” for doing so. It’s a unique approach but a necessary one, and I love how much fun this song is. Perfect for the summer, as proven by my repeat listens to this on my daily strolls. If you’re in need of something uplifting, turn this one up loud!

📖 The List by Yomi Adegoke

I used to read all the time – as a child, I could have genuinely given Matilda a run for her money. Now, I’m getting back into it as a genuine hobby. I picked up The List at the airport last week and raced through it, as it told a story that holds a mirror up to modern-day society, in which social media plays a big part in punishing people, whether it be fairly or unfairly. The premise sees an Instagram-famous and successful couple torn apart by allegations made on The List, a spreadsheet posted to Twitter which names alleged male abusers in the media industry. Whilst I think some facets of this book could have been handled better, and I personally wasn’t a huge fan of the ending, it’s a thrilling read and one I highly recommend.

🎧 Kesha, ‘Joyride’

I’m cheating slightly with this one as it isn’t released until the 4th of July, but I haven’t been this excited for a single in a very long time. Kesha is coming back this week with her first song as a fully independent woman – JOYRIDE is a brash and energetic record, inviting you to “get in, loser” as Zhone’s production booms. Kesha had been teasing new music for a while, and it comes a week before Katy Perry’s new single, Woman’s World – produced and co-written by none other than Dr. Luke.

For those who don’t know, Dr. Luke and Kesha were engaged in a highly-publicised court case from 2014, until Luke pushed to settle privately last year. Kesha accused the super-producer behind her earliest hits of sexually assaulting her in 2005, alongside countless other instances of physical and verbal abuse, exerting his control over her life and career. She experienced a stint in rehab due to an eating disorder, had her royalties withheld, was blocked from releasing new music without his involvement and had everything put on hold for years as Luke attempted to counter-sue for defamation.

It wasn’t until the anti-SLAPP laws were introduced in New York that things began to shift. Kesha had faced setback after setback in court, with Judge Shirley Kornreich, wife of a lawyer at the firm representing Sony Music (which Luke’s label operated under), forcing her to remain in her six-album contract which ended with last year’s Gag Order. The New York Court of Appeals ruled that Kesha could claim back legal fees and damages from 2020 onwards, and told Dr. Luke that he had to prove actual malice by clear evidence. After nine years of bitter court proceedings, he decided to drop it when things started to look bad for him.

Most pop artists distanced themselves from Luke since the allegations were made public. Stars such as Kelly Clarkson, P!nk, Becky G, Bonnie McKee and countless others have publicly commented on Luke’s behaviour, with him being a notorious misogynist, known for using his money, power and influence to control young women. Doja Cat and Kim Petras, both of whom signed contracts prior to Kesha going public, have seen similar issues with lack of control. Both women have published unsettling statements about Luke online or in interviews, before being forced to put out contrasting statements to calm the subsequent storm.

Katy Perry, on the other hand, has gone running back to him. After distancing herself from Luke for 2017’s Witness and 2020’s Smile, both of which failed commercially, she has openly collaborated with him for her new album, supposedly centred around female empowerment. How fitting. Perry was involved in the Kesha v. Dr. Luke trial after a record label executive told Kesha and Lady Gaga that Perry herself was a victim of his. This information would turn out to be untrue; nevertheless, after Kesha and Gaga discussed this revelation via private texts, Luke’s attorneys found the messages and pushed to make them public in aid of his defamation case.

Katy Perry’s 2018 deposition as part of these events is an interesting read. She details how she has no contractual obligation to Luke, but chose not to work with him for a period of time because of how it’d reflect on her. She showed no interest in supporting Kesha, silenced and bankrupted by this man, because she didn’t want to “take sides”. Six years later, it appears she has.

There are many reasons why I therefore won’t be supporting Woman’s World when it releases next week, and I urge you to steer clear, too. Katy Perry has created a women’s empowerment anthem with one of the most dangerous and misogynistic men in the industry in a desperate pursuit of the success of her heyday. Not only does the song sound stale in comparison, but it enables an abuser and allows him to profit whilst he silences young women in the industry. Enough is enough.

The release of JOYRIDE feels monumental as a result. Kesha let a simple “lol” tweet do the talking after news of Katy Perry’s new single spread, sparking furore amongst the latter’s fans who have since embarked on a campaign against her and her fans of heinous body shaming, death and rape threats, homophobia and more. Riding off the back of that with the release of her first single as a free woman, a week before her abuser makes his mainstream comeback, is beyond powerful.

I’ve been a fan of Kesha since 2009, and I feel that same excitement, pride and admiration now as I did back then. This feels like a pivotal moment to stand for what’s right, and I’ll personally be throwing 100% of my support behind her. She’s stronger than the man who actively tried to ruin her life, and it’s high time we made that clear.

I won’t keep you waiting as long for the next issue, I promise – I was busy enjoying the moment. Plenty more exciting things on the horizon, so stay tuned and I’ll see you next week. Bonne journée!

The clouds have hung thick over Béziers for days. It’s ironic, really – one of the main reasons I was so elated to be leaving the UK was to escape the dismal weather, yet it seems to have followed me. Glimpses of sunshine have been fleeting, made all the more difficult by sharp, chilly gales that have me sitting on the balcony in fleeces and jumpers, pensively chain-smoking cigarettes whilst gazing out at the grey skies. 

I don’t know why I place so much certainty on the sunshine lifting my mood, but perhaps it’s because it works. As soon as I wake up and turn to see blue skies through the slats in our bedroom blinds, I’m filled with optimism – but if I crawl out of bed to the sound of pouring rain, or if it’s too overcast to watch the sea glistening on the horizon, I start to wallow. Imagine how downbeat I felt spending the past winter back at home, counteracting the misery of constant downpours with the joy of my mum’s cooking to try and stay afloat. A lyric from the new Taylor Swift album comes to mind: “All my mornings are Mondays / Stuck in an endless February”. She must have written that during a London winter.  

So, I’m trying to find ways to better cope with this newfound dependency on the weather. For example, come rain or shine, I’ll throw on some clothes after lunch every day and take myself out on a walk. The rumours are true, it turns out. Just an hour of walking with nothing but the music blaring in my headphones helps me feel refreshed enough to carry on through the remainder of the day. I always take the same, unspectacular route through deserted industrial estates and quiet side roads, but it still beats London where, at any time of the day and in any corner of the city, you’d always have someone on your trail. 

I wondered if the weather was the silly little reason for my attitude, as it bears such an uncanny resemblance to the dreary English climate. I must admit, I did feel a pang of sod’s law about the situation. It’s weirdly funny that I ranted and raved about how terrible the rain was in my last few months at home, constantly cursing the wind like an old man shaking his fist at the sky, and then relocated to a typically warm region just to be welcomed with even more of it.

For some reason, though, I can’t shake this downbeat feeling – nor can I diagnose the origin of it, only noticing as it gradually washed over me during the past week. I’m used to the ebbs and flows of depression, but this doesn’t feel like that. I don’t feel like I’m in a pit of despair, more so dancing with malaise.

So, I was struck by this piece from ’ , in which a reader says: 

“I seem to spend my life waiting. Waiting for things to get better, get easier, be more enjoyable… how do I just sit and enjoy the now, rather than always looking ahead, hoping things will improve?”

It hit me like a train, no less because I couldn’t express this feeling myself, and also because I rather naively thought I was the only one to feel like this. It’s rather selfish of me, I know, but it’s simultaneously comforting to learn there are others out there experiencing this at the very same time. Don’t get me wrong – I recognise how lucky I am to be where I am. I worked hard alongside my husband to get here, and I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d have the tenacity or maturity to move abroad. But I’m also chronically impatient, often to my own detriment. 

Things take time, which couldn’t be more true for such a big life step. An apartment of our own is finally in arm’s reach and we have never had the luxury of living alone before, so we’re both itching to make it happen. However, that requires waiting to pass my probation period at my new job, registering as a French taxpayer so that the formalities are in order and countless other administrative tasks to get out of the way. The silver lining is the palpable excitement and relief when one of these tasks is ticked off, as it brings us even closer to what we’ve both been envisioning; summer nights on the balcony of our apartment, bottles of beer and cigarettes, hosting friends that hop on a flight down to this quiet paradise, cooking whatever we feel like eating in our own kitchen and living a life that’s just ours, and ours alone.

I guess it’s only natural for me to feel a slight frustration at not having reached the end goal, even though I knew it wouldn’t happen overnight. I’m just having a fleeting moment where I crave that vision more than ever. I’m on my way to something beautiful, but I merely hit a bump in the road this week. 

I’d go as far as to say it’s a facet of my overarching anxiety over ageing, with which comes the comparisons against my peers and those I follow on social media, the people who seem to have it all together, are more cultured, more aware, more fashionable, more cool. I tend to forget how good I have it, and now even more so. It’s both healthy and helpful to consciously remind myself that I’m exactly where I should be and where I want to be. I’m married to a good man and we’re making a life together in a country I’ve long adored, and that’s something I’ll always be proud of, regardless of how long it takes to reach the ‘finish line’ and despite the emotional rollercoaster we’re still riding.

As I write this, though, the clouds are breaking – physically and metaphorically. I’m listening to Kacey Musgraves’ ‘Deeper Well’, the duck breast with gratin dauphinoise is being prepared for dinner, and I can feel the aforementioned malaise leaving me. Today in particular has been a productive one, and I cherish that feeling of pride you get when, at the end of the day, you can rest easy with a few less things on your plate. Long may it continue.

Here are a few things I’ve been consuming this week – leave a comment if you’re listening to, reading or watching any of it too, or shout out with some recommendations for me to dive into in time for next week!

🎧: Jessica Pratt, ‘Here in the Pitch’

I was late to the Jessica Pratt party, only finding out about the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter after Troye Sivan sampled her track, ‘Back Baby’, on his 2023 album, ‘Something to Give Each Other’. I’m glad I finally arrived in time for her fourth studio album – ‘Here in the Pitch’ is typically sparse, yet arguably more dynamic than Pratt’s last records. I’ve been actively looking for more stripped-back production from whatever I listen to recently – perhaps because the outside world is so loud and overstimulating – and Jessica Pratt’s unique approach to folk music hits the spot. I’m a big fan and hope to hear her enchanting voice live one day soon.

🎧: Dua Lipa, ‘Radical Optimism’

There has been a lot of unfair criticism levelled at Dua Lipa after the release of her third studio album, ‘Radical Optimism’. Maybe it’s because I now live in France, or maybe it’s because I’m a radical optimist myself (wink wink), but I’m thoroughly enjoying this foray into a breezy, European-influenced sound. Coming off the back of her massive sophomore album, 2020’s ‘Future Nostalgia’, was never going to be an easy feat, and as is typical with the online stan sphere, emotions are running high with people believing this record doesn’t hit the same peaks as its predecessor. Let ‘Radical Optimism’ wash over you on a warm day – preferably with a cocktail – and I promise you’ll get it.

📺: Selling the OC, Netflix

I cannot in good faith say this is a recommendation – more so a warning. Season three of Selling the OC has unfortunately landed on Netflix, and I have decided to torture myself by watching alongside my husband, who inexplicably lives for reality shows in this vein (his prerogative). I do admittedly enjoy Selling Sunset as it gives us some charming characters, including Chrishell Stause who I would die for despite her faults. OC, however… I summed up my thoughts in a neatly-wrapped-up tweet earlier this week:

Every agent comes across as vacuous, uninterested or just plain nasty, and there aren’t even enough gargantuan houses to soften the blow. It’s a truly bizarre television show, in which the biggest storyline is the gay realtor accusing his straight ‘bro’ colleague of drunkenly flirting with him and asking for a threesome. Just kiss, for fuck’s sake!

📖:

For anyone discovering Substack for the first time, ’ Hung Up is the quintessential newsletter. She has long been one of my favourite people to follow on Twitter, with a deeply funny pen that she marries with sharp insights on pop culture, and I can lose myself in each piece she publishes. Hung Up was the first newsletter I paid to subscribe to, and for good reason – Harris is so fucking good at what she does.

I’ll be back next week, ideally with something more positive as I’m in my radical optimism era. Leave a comment if you enjoyed this piece, subscribe if you really enjoyed this piece, and I’ll see you soon. Bonsoir!

Never in my life would I have expected Las Vegas to become one of my favourite cities in the world, but my recent visit proved me entirely wrong. I returned from a five-night stay in Sin City last week with four new tattoos, a significantly dwindled bank account and a new-found appreciation for this restless, extravagant town. 

In the past, I’d always pictured Vegas as a tacky getaway for hedonistic adults, a booze-and-hookers wonderland where you’re certain to lose all of your money and dignity. In truth, it can be that if you want it to be – but otherwise, it’s a strangely beautiful city with plenty of redeeming qualities.

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 Even when we touched down after an arduous ten-hour flight, all of us fatigued but excited, the mere sight of the Strip from the plane windows took my breath away. Here it was, in all its glistening glory; the Luxor, with its beam of light shining directly towards the stars; the Strat, towering above its surroundings; and the countless neon signs beckoning us to come and explore. For me, this was my first time in Vegas as it was my husband’s, but we were travelling with my family for my cousin’s 21st birthday and some of them had been here two, perhaps three times prior. Regardless, we all felt that same exhilaration upon touching down. 

It didn’t take long for Vegas to open itself up to me. On our first full day, we took Ubers to the Strip with a mission to explore as much as physically possible. I had heard from multiple people that the city was much bigger than we perhaps expected, and those people were correct – upon arriving at the Wynn, our first port of call, I was immediately struck by the scale of each building and the Strip itself. It seemed to stretch for miles, various architectural wonders peering out upon the skyline in the far distance. 

We sat and had brunch at Happy Camper, a pizza joint and sports bar located a stone’s throw from the Wynn. After bingeing on chicken strips from the Chick-fil-A in our hotel, the Golden Nugget, and then rapidly falling into a food coma the night before, I wanted to take it easy and opted for a salad (perhaps for the first time in my life). As we sat underneath a canopy of disco balls, the Spring Mountains providing a cinematic backdrop past the northern end of the Strip, I realised Las Vegas has so much more to offer than what I’d anticipated. 

Oh, and the salad? The best I’ve ever eaten in my life, although the view may have helped. 

We explored the Strip over three separate days, taking our time to explore the labyrinths within each hotel. The Wynn was our first, which may have been unfair to its neighbours considering the sheer extravagance of it. The building, an elegant, curved copper skyscraper, hides wonders such as dynamic floral gardens and art installations from the likes of Jeff Koons, alongside the most upscale mall you’ll ever see. Stores such as Gucci and Bottega Veneta boast their own gardens here, floor-to-ceiling windows opening up to cascading waterfalls to add to the allure. This alone could have entertained me – and bankrupted me – for the next four days, but the Wynn is the most expensive hotel on the Strip by a country mile, perhaps for good reason. That’s why we chose to stay off the beaten track, opting for Downtown Las Vegas instead.

There are between ten and twenty main properties in the centre of the city, and we almost conquered them all. There was the Venetian, with gondolas sailing down artificial canals below a ceiling painted with clear blue skies, Caesars Palace with towering Greek statues adjacent to the Cheesecake Factory, and New York New York, where we were thrown around a 230-foot-tall roller coaster that passes through the building’s replica landmarks and given the bruises to prove it. 

The most bizarre of them all was the Luxor, built in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid with a jet black facade. The interior of the hotel has rooms cascading towards the pinnacle of said pyramid in an upwards slant which, for someone with anablephobia that kicks in whenever they look up at tall or massive buildings, was a genuine nightmare. A true feat of engineering, sure, but I can sadly never go back!

One night, my husband and I decided to explore more of the Strip by ourselves. We strolled through what felt like the biggest casino in the world beneath the Cosmopolitan, gambled a few bucks in Paris and found ourselves at the nearby flagship Taco Bell for dinner. I’d wanted to try the authentic, greasy American Taco Bell since I was a Tumblr-addicted teenager, so I racked up $40 on two burritos, two tacos and some sides for good measure. The discomfort I felt afterwards, trying desperately to find the rideshare bay in the sweltering desert heat, could have put me in the hospital – but it was made worth it with a fleeting look at the magnificent Bellagio fountains on our way. No matter how many times you’ve seen it on the big screen, it takes your breath away in real life. Again, this city showed me just how beautiful it truly is. 

The true highlight of Las Vegas for me, though, is Downtown. The Golden Nugget sits at the heart of Fremont Street – the ‘original Vegas’ – which is covered by a 1,375-foot screen, showcasing vibrant, trippy images of blue skies, lasers and even hourly concerts from the likes of Shakira and Tiesto. This part of the city truly never sleeps, as I found out after emerging at 6am for a cigarette in the sunrise, walking past people throwing dollars into slot machines and sipping their frozen cocktails from Fat Tuesday. 

We spent a good portion of our time here, whether it was enjoying the pool in the Nugget, stepping over to Fremont Casino for a Dunkin’ Cold Brew in the morning or spending all of our money in Circa, which became our favourite casino in Vegas. I walked over to Cannastarz, a dispensary a few blocks away, and allowed the affable girl working behind the counter to guide me on what to get. Her recommendation hit the spot – I’ll never forget having a few tokes as the sunset beat down on me and then gliding back through Fremont, high on Blue Dream and soaking up the palpably joyous atmosphere. 

That’s another thing people might not tell you about Las Vegas – it’s the friendliest place I’ve visited in a long time. Compared to my fleeting stay in London the night prior to this trip, where we encountered one too many miserable, unhelpful people (who can blame them when you live in the UK), each person we spoke to came equipped with entertaining stories, manners and a friendly, welcoming attitude that made our stay all the more fun. I’ll even remember our Uber drivers, including the one that pulled a microphone out of his glove compartment when my mum started singing along to the radio, the one with the infectious laugh that fell into fits of contagious hysterics whenever my stepdad cracked a joke, and especially the woman who, upon getting cut up on the road back to our hotel, exclaimed: “Darling, you are in a Kia. I am in a Tesla.” She got a big tip.

I’ll cherish those five days in Las Vegas for the rest of my life. We packed in so many unforgettable memories, like shooting M4 assault rifles in a sweaty shooting range, flying down the Fremont Street zipline a la Big Freedia and covering ourselves in $10 tattoos from Koolsville, that I feel immense gratitude for having a family I can do things like this with.

Since we arrived back in the south of France, the rain has been coming down heavily and the clouds have hung thick and grey. I’ve been mostly sequestered in the flat since Saturday; as someone who suffers from seasonal affective disorder and extreme restlessness when they’re bored, it isn’t the ideal scenario. I keep holding my hand out from the balcony, testing the air to see if there’s enough time for a quick walk, watching the cars pass by and waiting to see if their wipers are on so I can catch a brief respite from my cabin fever. Alas, the time hasn’t come – but if my phone’s weather app is to be trusted, brighter days are on the horizon.

I can’t be too down, however, as I’m still riding a Vegas high. I’d never been too eager to visit Sin City, but I’m pleased to say that it is so much better than I could have ever imagined, and it has become one of, if not my favourite city in the entire world. 

et bien plus

• I finally registered my Visa, which means I can officially call myself a French resident! As part of the requirements to stay here, I have to undertake intensive language lessons. That sounded daunting to me at first, but after a local teenager swore at me for being an ignorant Brit after asking me for directions, I think it’s for the best. Allez! 

• Like the rest of the world, I was captivated by Baby Reindeer last month. It’s an extremely effective, disturbing and unique piece of television, and I commend Richard Gadd for his bravery in putting his trauma on display in such an unflinching manner. What I don’t like, however, is how people have unearthed the real woman Martha is based on. Without giving her identity away, I have seen screenshots of her Facebook ramblings in the wake of the show’s premiere, and it’s as troubled as you may expect. Guys, did you watch the show? Let’s use our brains! Leave her alone! 

• In terms of what I’m listening to, I still have to make it through the entirety of Taylor Swift’s new album. I’ve heard it in fragments – first when iHeartRadio played it in full on the radio during our cab ride from the airport in Vegas on the night of its release. I then tried to finish it on the plane home a few days after and fell asleep. Whether that speaks on the quality of the album or not, I’m not sure – but I can definitely say Fortnight is my favourite single from her in a very long time. Elsewhere, the Maggie Rogers album is continuing to blow me away, as are the new singles from Mabel, Normani and Christine and the Queens. My spring playlist is below if you’re interested in what else I’ve been rinsing over the past few weeks. This has been a fantastic year for music after a considerable drought, and I love how exciting it feels. 

I’ll be far from the first to tell you this, but moving abroad is exhausting.

I never thought I’d be one to do it. I’ve always been a cautious and anxious person (mostly to my detriment), so when my husband and I mutually decided to seize the moment and move back to his hometown in France, I was nervous. I was also extremely excited, of course, but this was perhaps the biggest life change I’d ever embarked upon, and that came with some warranted apprehension.

The process isn’t easy. For us, the first step was marriage. It was the easiest way to get a long-stay visa, and even though we had planned on a much more extravagant ceremony, we always wanted a wedding. So, I had to tell my parents in a double whammy that I was leaving the country, and that I was also getting married before the end of the year.

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Since then, it’s been a whirlwind. In anticipation of our imminent relocation, my husband and I first moved from our shared house in Essex back to my parents in Kent (a week before the wedding). That in itself was a big adjustment, as I hadn’t lived at home for over five years – but I loved every second of it. Getting the chance to prepare for the actual move, all the while saving money and getting my mum’s home-cooked meals nearly every night was something I feel very fortunate for. Commuting to London twice weekly for work was the downside, but in comparison to forking out hundreds for a room in someone else’s house, it was the ideal option.

Seven days later, we were in our suits, on our way to the registry office in a limousine our family had surprised us with. We had intended on just sneaking off as a duo and saying our vows, before heading to the pub afterwards to celebrate. The real wedding, sometime in the near future, would be something truly special, ideally in a French chateau (once we could afford it). However, our incredible friends and family went above and beyond to make this spontaneous occasion as perfect as it could be. Instead of just us two, there were nearly 50 people in attendance, and it was more magical than I had ever anticipated. The rain stopped just in time for us to say “I do”, and those closest to us enjoyed themselves just as much as we did.

The wedding happened, then Christmas happened, and then suddenly I had my visa appointment booked. It all started to suddenly feel real in February, when I headed to the centre in Wandsworth to hand over my paperwork and fingerprints. An arduous 10-day wait followed, whilst my husband – a French national – moved home early. But, finally, the day came and I picked up my passport with bated breath. Lo and behold, my visa was granted and the wheels were fully in motion.

Turns out, the usually cheap flights suddenly weren’t cheap, so I forked over £200 for the most affordable option. That option was the following Wednesday, which gave me seven days to pack my life into two suitcases and say my goodbyes to my family. All of a sudden I was at Luton Airport, brimming with excitement whilst the rapid pace of it all didn’t let it sink in until we touched the tarmac in Béziers.

It’s been two weeks here so far, and it’s only just starting to hit me that this is now home. I’d fantasised about it since my very first visit, whilst wandering the quiet, sunlit streets of the ancient city centre or gazing in awe at very regular things, such as the variety and quality of the food in the local supermarket. It felt like a place full of promise, somewhere to escape the dreariness of the UK, and so to finally be here permanently is a blessing beyond recognition.

The slower pace of life here is allowing me to adjust on my terms, and I’m consequently the least anxious and most hopeful I’ve been in a long time. I haven’t done much these past two weeks aside from soaking it all in, in various ways. My husband and I went for a standout brunch with a friend at Sain’plement Laura, a newly-opened spot nestled in the middle of Béziers. We went to look at new cars and we’re constantly scanning the local agence immobilières listings for our own house. I even plucked up the courage to start talking to locals at coffee shops and boulangeries – I’m picking up the language almost freakishly fast.

It’s only now that I feel pure pride and optimism, without any looming trepidation. I made it happen. Lord knows I needed to – I felt like my journey in my home country had been far from what I had envisioned for myself years prior. I made mistakes, which is natural for anyone in their twenties, but I could never escape feeling like my life was broken, in ways I couldn’t rectify. The gravity of this fresh start – this nouveau début - becomes more real by the day, even with small things such as opening a bank account or changing my current country on Facebook. For the first time in a long time, I’m excited about the future.

We’re at the beginning of a beautiful journey, and I’m thrilled to be taking you along with me. Welcome to Nouveau Début, my newsletter in which I’ll be giving you weekly updates on my new life in France, and all of the joy that comes along with it. Oh, and plenty of pictures, of course.

et bien plus

• I’ve made it my mission to walk for at least an hour per day – aided by the fact we’ve got plenty of sunshine down here. The influx of fantastic new music has made it a lot easier; TYLA by Tyla has been on heavy rotation, specifically Jump, Breathe Me and ART; I’m unexpectedly obsessed with the new Camila Cabello and Playboi Carti tune; and, of course, COWBOY CARTER has dominated. My current favourites from the album are YA YA, BODYGUARD and II MOST WANTED - hearing Beyoncé’s voice alongside Miley’s feels like my teenage dream come true.

• The amount of new foods I’ve tried over the past couple of weeks has been a real treat. As a mashed potato aficionado, I’m obsessed with pommes aligot – but I’ve already been banned by my husband from buying it more than once a month. Good for my health, I guess, but I fear I’ll be wanting it as a side dish every single night!

• This is also the first time in years that I haven’t been constantly thinking about money. Life here is so bafflingly affordable that it blows my mind on a daily basis. Thankfully, it opens my mind up to being able to think about other things for once, and that is refreshing beyond words.