Hey everyone,
Another week has passed, and I think it’s one where autumn has really hit its stride. Something I’ve been reflecting on is how different it feels to be back in the UK for autumn this time around, as opposed to in Tokyo last year. Although both versions of autumn have nice coloured leaves, the vibes are completely different. Autumn in Tokyo is a drying out - the air loses its humidity, the sky brings rain and then gradually clears into brilliant winter sunshine, it’s never really super cold although it feels like it after those summers. And of course it happens much later than now - has autumn arrived yet, Tokyo friends?
Whereas a British autumn is going the opposite direction. The air gets damper as it gets colder. There’s mists and dew and rain, but not muggy warm rain, cold rain. Things get noticeably darker as the nights draw in and the sky greys out. Some people hate it, and I am constantly cold after getting used to 35 degrees and losing some weight, but I feel like it brings out the colours of the leaves even more when they’re a pop of fiery red against a grey background.
And this week has really delivered on this front! My weekdays were pretty uneventful, settling into the routine of teaching and writing, and it was cold and grey every day, so it literally brightened my week to see the gorgeous leaves along my way to and from SOAS. Wanna see?
look at these bad bois, 4 colours at once!
excellent camper van/tree combo
bonus content, tea and carrot cake from some point in the week, 10/10 cozy autumn vibes (thanks Eve for the cake)
this tree is on my road, it’s starting to lose its leaves already
these are literally all from my neighbourhood, they don’t call it green lanes for nothin’
did anything happen this week?
A few things! On Monday, which feels like years ago, I finally wrote the last words of my fieldnotes describing my final day in Tokyo on 19th August. Yes that was two months ago. But I felt like I had to write something about every day for completeness’ sake and to begin to move myself from remembering towards analysing. The last words I wrote were “As I left, I noticed the sakura tree along our road had already lost a lot of its leaves, some of them yellowing and falling off. The cycle continues again”
…referring to the fact that last year, I noticed a lot of the sakura trees lost their leaves way early, without even turning autumnal colours. the expectation that they would look autumnal came from my experiences in the UK, where they usually turn red and orange, but I’m still not sure whether they ever have done that in Japan or if it’s normal for their leaves to just drop off when they’ve had enough of summer. anyway yeah that’s the context!
look it’s me getting a bit emosh. bittersweet!
The idea of cycles is something I’m thinking about a lot at the moment, as I’m writing a chapter about ‘temporality’ for an edited volume which miiiiiight come out in 2026 (none of the academics in the department believe this will happen lol). Basically, I’ll be writing about the ways of thinking about time that I came across during autumn and spring, loaded with the ethnographic detail of having been there and spoken to people about it. It’s going to be quite preliminary (my supervisor said to save my main arguments for the thesis) but I will hopefully be able to say I’ve gone and got published quite soon, so that’s cool!
And then of course I was teaching! My wish that I would feel a bit more competent came true, I spent a lot less time planning this week as I had way more of an idea of how a tutorial works as a teacher. Go me. By the way, did you know we only get paid for 30 minutes of prep time per 1 hour tutorial we teach, which includes doing the 2 mandatory readings and understanding them enough to teach them?? yeah I definitely did more than that…
I did manage a couple of social things during the week - pub dinner/drinks with the PhD crew on Wednesday after our evil seminar schedule, and climbing on Thursday - but honestly I was really tired this week, I need to go to bed earlier!
can you sense the tiredness???
me @ queer climbers about 30cm from the ground xx
the weekend!
Here’s where it gets interesting! On Saturday I had a Halloween party hosted by my friend Ali, who I bonded with over a nasty stats class alllllll the way back in 2019 at Cambridge. Suffering through stats classes has its benefits, who knew! And of course costumes are mandatory, and those of you who watched my Instagram story pre-newsletter will know, that I chose….
chappell!!!!!!!!!!!!
as a jester!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now, I ended up having very little time to make this costume, partly because I was away in Leeds last weekend and not everything had arrived before then, partly because I was so incredibly tired this week that I couldn’t think hard enough to start it, but mostly because I procrastinated. Oops. Cue Saturday chaos!
practically got a haberdashery off vinted (people sell ribbons etc there now)
the moment where I honestly almost gave up and thought I would never be ready to leave the house in this thing
So did I reach the dizzy heights of Chappell Roan’s styling team? Absolutely not. Did I spend hours fighting with tiny stretch velvet diamonds? Yes I did. Did I even have time to attach all the ribbons to the sleeves? Not a chance. But did I have fun trying my best to recreate it? Hell yeah. I present, my costume!
the slippers really make it x (I didn’t go out in them lol)
a slightly more cute selfie
taking photos of eye makeup is so hard but I tried haha. you can’t really see but it was mostly orange with pink on the side and a shimmery eyelid, plus a ridiculous amount of blush to make up for the white face paint (I totally forgot to buy eyeliner RIP)
chappell takes the train
chappell takes the night bus home at 2am feat. st pauls cathedral
Costume aside (I probably will try and finish it another time, since it’s not even Halloween yet…) the party was really fun, I met so many cool people and had some great chats! You have lovely friends Ali! The time really flew by, I didn’t even notice it had got to 1am when I realised I had a very long journey home across London on the night bus, so I had to reluctantly go home. Being dressed in a costume made it much more fun, along with listening to some chill music. I never really appreciated night buses that much before, but it’s so cool that when you’re super tired you can just go home whenever and someone basically drives you to your road with one change in central. Compare that with Tokyo where if you stay out past midnight you have to wait for the first train in the morning… yeah London wins this one!
As you can imagine I was pretty tired today………… but my housemate Kirstie found out that we had an Apple Day happening nearby so I thought the wholesome vibes would perk me up. And they did! Apple Day is usually some kind of community apple pressing activity, sometimes with apples they’ve grown nearby (the Castle climbing centre has one of these kinds of days), but in this case with apples from the national fruit growing centre in Kent (yes it’s actually run by the government, it’s used for research). I don’t really remember Apple Day being a thing where I grew up but apparently it’s been going for a while. It’s not an ancient tradition or anything. I like that it’s not trying to be anything more than an excuse to try some delicious apples. And buy apple crumble cupcakes from a lovely lady running a market stall, of course.
so many apples!
the ecology centre where it all happened
spotted some horenso on the way there, kinda unexpected (they’re plants they grow in japan, traditionally for the Obon holiday because they look like lanterns)
more apples plus the juice we made
we met the arsenal mascot <3
had an absolutely banger sandwich afterwards and promptly fell asleep on the sofa. life is good
So that’s been my week! I guess a fair bit did happen after all!
album of the week
I listened to the new Last Dinner Party album when it came out on Friday and had high hopes for it to be album of the week, but aside from the singles (shoutout to The Scythe) it wasn’t much to write home about. I think it needs a few more listens to get to know the other songs.
Instead I got an excellent recommendation from April, a fellow partygoer on Saturday night, who recommended this fabulous album that’s not new at all but is new to me:
the crane wives - foxlore
I listened to this on the night bus home from the party and it was genuinely lovely. It’s kind of cozy indie vibes but also musically interesting, including some jazzy interludes. Great stuff and I literally never would’ve heard of it if I hadn’t gone to that party. Yay for talking to people!
thought of the week
Finally, a thought for the week ahead, but which also sums up my week just gone, comes from a Kurt Vonnegut quote from 2005. I came across this on Reddit somewhere, possibly in the digital minimalism subreddit. It goes like this:
David Brancaccio: There’s a little sweet moment, I’ve got to say, in a very intense book - your latest - in which you’re heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say - I’m going to buy an envelope. What happens then?
Kurt Vonnegut: Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know…
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realise, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.
You can hear a longer version of this story from a lecture that Kurt gave, starting at 24:16:
But I was mulling this quote over as I went on my way this weekend, thinking about all the nice random encounters I had because I was looking up and out. Knowing smiles on the Tube as I crossed London in my Chappell costume. Some cheerful students on their way to a night out as I got the night bus home. The lady selling her cupcakes which took a lot of effort you know, because she had to make the apple crumble as well as the cakes and then put it all together, and she decided to make cream cheese icing because it holds up better in the heat. The man selling local honey from Blackhorse Road and Islington and Highbury which goes darker and more flavourful when the bees make it at the end of summer. The man waiting for the same Tube as me on the way home who spoke to me randomly and caught me a bit off guard, but I knew was a totally nonthreatening rail nerd the moment he said ‘class 717’ and we had a nice five minute chat about the 200th anniversary of the railways. The album recommendation from April at the party yesterday and the sandwich recommendation from the lady in the cafe I stopped by on my way home this afternoon. Yeah there’s a lot of anger and fear out there, but it can be a nice old world too. I want to be the kind of person who will stop for a chat, because why the hell not.
See you next week,
Stella x