personal

Impression of Heat

Ocean Bream The Story of Lenny Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

There is deep exhaustion everywhere. The kind that climbs onto your shoulders, places warm sweaty palms on your eyes, and rests its long tentacles along your bones. You can’t shake it off, no matter how much you sleep.

You long for the respite of the cool night air, but it never comes. Perhaps there is a moment of happiness in a new ice cream cafe, a walk with a friend sipping iced lattes at 11pm, the discovery of a new book to take you away from this fetid existence. A moment, maybe. Two of them.

Air conditioning units humming through the night, causing your throat to dry out like sandpaper, causing your cough to hack you awake from restless and clammy dreams.

Then you decide enough is enough, you will venture out, bring the world to your eyes so they may drink, make the most of where you are. But it is a concrete wilderness. House upon house, bridges stretching over gleaming highways. Bloated with traffic. The kind that has sharp, hot, exhaust-fumed edges and dogged determination. Every exit is a game of chicken. Cars coming out of intersections at the speed of bullet trains. Do I brake, do I carry on, do I assert myself, do I give in.. so much at risk though. So much. So ultimately, do I really want to be outdoors fighting for my life against these metal machines driven by people who believe they will live forever?

It’s a gleaming, shining, sterile city, if you choose to look at it that way. Malls and shopping complexes, five star dining and the most luxuriant cosmetics and decadent foods. Women dressed like queens, men smelling like musk and oud. Pristine. Polished. Smooth. Convenience on a plate. Someone will take your groceries to your car for you, happy to carry your children, clean your home, cook your food. You don’t need to lift a finger if you don’t want to. If you don’t have a maid or nanny there is shock in their eyes.

And dust everywhere. Brown sky, brown ground, plants wilt and die, death rises up to meet death.

A bed of luxury at death’s doormat.

Do we walk away from Omelas?

Savoury Life

Ocean Bream motherhood, musings, The Story of Lenny Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I don’t know if my brain is becoming smooth.

Ideally it should be more wrinkly, the wrinklier the better, I am told.

AI usage, mental convenience and delegation and short-form content on the regular are making my attention span shorter.

I feel any information I do consume stays in my short-term memory box, and I am left on a weird intellectual loop. Saying, thinking, planning the same old things month in, month out, year in, year out, with no significant change occurring.

This is where I say it will all stop but I guess I am just fooling myself. At the very least, I am aware. Being aware is one step closer to making a change, is it not?

I am based in the Middle East currently. Since the 11th of May, 2025, actually. The situation here is stable but volatile. People are going about their daily lives while missiles are being intercepted every day – sometimes you hear them and the house shakes, and alerts go off on your phone that you can’t turn off saying to head to a safe space… except there are no safe spaces. No basements or bomb shelters, so you have to think where is the safest place in my house where I won’t get crushed? I am more worried for my kids than myself. If this war escalates to something nuclear I think we are all screwed, no matter where we are in the world. And I think it’s safe so say we all know this is a war fuelled by ego, Epstein file cover up, the US being in Israel’s pocket, Israel furthering it’s Greater Israel agenda and keeping Netanyahu out of jail… the US is ruled currently by an illiterate madman. But hey, are we surprised? No. We just hope to be safe, I think we can all agree on that. I am just really sad and shocked and worried for my kids’ future. The world we seem to be bequeathing to them is chaotic, frightful and full of smoke and mirrors. What is real, in this age of AI and corporate lies?

I shall try my very best here, in this torrid place. Summer is creeping back in, for there is no winter here, no spring and no colourful autumn.

Just summer, hot hot burning summer, and then… gentle summer, or what people here call winter. I used to dream about this place, for it is where I grew up, but I am back now, and I long to escape once more. Just as I did as a child. Rose-tinted glasses, folks.

We are at the mercy of electricity here. If it goes out, the cool air goes, and we are left to bake in an aching dryness that feels like death. It is death, it’s death. How can I raise my children in death?

Like I was raised in death?

Taught to fear everything, never to feel secure?

But I see people here and they are so secure. They are secure from the bombs falling, not even gasping or running when the shopping mall booms and shakes from interceptions above. Swishing around in their expensive clothes, heels clicking on polished floors, they feel secure. Their children are secure, no anxiety, nannies running after them, adhering to their every whim. Why then, am I insecure? Why are my children worried, afraid to fall asleep because a plane sounds too loud, afraid to go on a school trip because they may be left behind? Are they swallowing my insecurities? If so, that is very very bad.

I long to be back in a nature that envelops me and does not seek to devour my moist flesh.

I long for my children to run in fields again, to climb trees, to fish for frogs in puddles and to collect the sweet scented roses that are abundant in my garden. I long for my little girl to pick up worms again, kiss them fondly and name them, to cherish the ladybirds that infiltrate our house through the seasons, hibernating in the corners of the ceiling for months on end. I miss the old oaks, the spring explosion of magnolia and cherry blossom.

But I don’t know what this future holds. And perhaps seeking financial stability that comes at the cost of health and happiness and a cool breeze is just… not… worth it.

Thirty Two

Ocean Bream The Story of Lenny Tags: , , , , , , , 12 Comments

I am thirty two today. It slipped my mind entirely. I am expecting.

Guests and a baby.

I am also so exhausted and burnt out. I feel like I don’t know where I begin and end. Where does daily life meld into anything to do with myself. Am I just a blob drifting through this life? Do I want to live this kind of life? Maybe it’s got to do with my perspective.

ANYWAY. I didn’t mean to get all morose!!

I am thirty two today!

The only person who ever remembers this fact is my mother. She is not well at the moment. Mentally. She is there, she is aware, but at the same time she really is not. It’s such a strange experience. I miss her dreadfully. I miss her voice. Her little ‘isms’. Even the things that used to annoy me about her, I want her to have a go at me for complaining about the smell of cooking on my clothes.

Anyway she isn’t well so of course nobody will remember. This doesn’t bother me because I don’t bother about birthdays, nor have I ever bothered about them. So it’s fine, of course. It’s just a thought I have though that even something insignificant to me, would have been significant to my mother.

I just really miss her.

I also now have a deeper understanding of mental illness. A deeper appreciation of it, and people who go through it, in a way I never did before.

There’s thirty two!

On Concordes and Helicopters

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One of the nicer moments I had with my mum before her recent lapse into severe anxious depression happened in the summer of 2025.

We were at Manchester Airport’s Runway Park, one of my son’s favourite places. There is a real retired British Airways Concorde in a hangar there, and he got to see up close the mighty point and the smooth, seamless majesticity (is that a word?) of it.

My mum was only just starting the slippery descent into depression and I was missing all the signs. I felt the foreboding feeling radiating from her and cloaking me in its clammy presence, but I ignored it, I shook it off, I tried to point things out to her that would please her.

There was a moment where my two children were running wild in a field after we had finished our picnic lunch, and my mum and I sat watching them. We watched my boy reach the far end of the field, and I said to my mum, “watch, watch him now. He is going to stick his arm out in front of him like a point and run as fast as he can, just like a Concorde.”

He did do that. Zooming towards us, pointing, with his little sister rolling her arm like a windmill as she ran because she was still in the ‘helicopter’ mode that her brother had previously been in before the Concorde took its place in the ‘current obsession’ part of his mind.

My mum laughed.

Oh she laughed aloud. I hadn’t heard her laugh loudly like that for weeks. I didn’t realise this until now, nearly a year later, watching her suffer in some deep dark place in her mind.

When he reached us she put her arms around the little Concorde and said how she loved him.

That, I think, was the last nice moment we had together.

Before her descent into deep deep depression.

Take care of your mums, folks. Life is a dreary and drab place when they are not there.

Things Said [1]

Ocean Bream Things Said Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

In today’s episode of ‘Things I Want to Remember my Child Saying’, we have my daughter, newly turned 5, self proclaimed ‘Princess Flower Nice Doctor Giraffe’, not easily embarrassed, with starlight in her eyes and sunshine in her steps..

I was brushing her hair, and happened to mention the voice note she sent to a friend containing a joke she had newly heard was received very well by the friend. Let’s call him Apple.

‘Apple loved your joke’, I said, twirling a curly lock of her hair in my fingers and setting it on her shoulder, before beginning on the next lock.

‘Oh, that’s good!’ said she.

‘Do you remember Apple?’ I asked, because it had been nearly a year since we moved away from the UK, and she hadn’t seen him since May.

‘Yes Mama, of course I do. I always remember people, I am a Remembering Girl.’

Yes indeed. You really are.

Random Thoughts 2022

Ocean Bream musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Stephanie Meyer published a book called ‘Midnight Sun’. It is a retelling of her famous Twilight novel from the perspective of the male love interest, a vampire named Edward. In 2009, when the Twilight series was all the rage, I was fourteen years old. I was enamoured, to be honest. My parents forbade me from reading vampire romance so reading in the dark, in secret, made it all the more glorious. Oh I savoured every word. Anyway. All this is to say that hearing about Midnight Sun sparked some curiousity so I read some reviews and watched some ‘booktubers’ talking about it and have come to the conclusion that my 27 year old self really doesn’t have the time to read about the inner thinkings of a hundred and something year old vampire who decides, with the gift of immortality, to spend time in a highschool with sixteen year olds, and falls in love with one of them. I mean. I am 27. If I was immortal, highschool would be the last place I would spend my time, my goodness.

I realised this week, when my 2 year old had his first ever tummy bug, that I have to put my own tummy bug on hold in order to deal with his. I had to still rush up and down stairs, cleaning out vomit from sheets and floors and buckets, disinfecting everything. I had to make sure he was hydrated, and lie next to him ready with the bucket at his slightest stir. It’s amazing how the human body works. One minute I was so exhausted I couldn’t get off the sofa, and the next I was hurtling across the room to catch my child, who was shivering and hot and had vomit in his hair. Lovely.

There is also a ‘petrol shortage’ in the UK. I think it’s just a combination of panic-buying and a shortage of lorry drivers due to Brexit. Funny that, isn’t it. Leavers were worried ‘foreigners’ were taking all their jobs… now not enough ‘foreigners’ are taking the jobs. Funny funny irony. Thankfully we do not use our car much, so we are alright. But I have heard tales of ambulances not being able to fuel up due to the ‘shortage’ and have seen plenty of memes about ‘loo roll wankers’ being the same douchebags who are filling up plastic water bottles with petrol because this is apparently the end of times and what do we need most in an apocalypse? Petrol. Oh. Humanity.

I spend a lot of time thinking but my thoughts are to-do lists.

2026: Why I am publishing this list of 2022 thoughts now, I have no idea. I came across it in my drafts folder and sentiments sure have changed in 4 years. My 2 year old is now almost 7, and I have a nearly 5 year old, and my thoughts are occupied by far more complex things! But why not publish this, why ever not.

That Golden Brown Butter

Ocean Bream Oatsies. Tags: , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Today I fried samosas in ghee. I didn’t know I could do that, but given my newfound knowledge about the inflammatory effects of refined oils and seed oils, and the fact we only ever use olive oil, butter or ghee for cooking – I was so averse to frying samosas in the only way I ever knew we could fry them; in sunflower oil.

So I avoided ChatGPT, and went straight to Google, to ask if I could fry samosas in ghee. Google gave me the AI answer, but I bypassed it and scrolled down to an article written by a Pakistani lady who said frying samosas in ghee was better because it results in a deliciously nutty flavour.

So we did it. We made a spicy potato filling, just like my mum makes – all my samosa-making skills come from my mum, who is the queen of homemade samosas, and has had us trained from childhood in the art of wrapping them to form perfect triangles. We fried them till golden brown and crispy. We dipped them in ketchup (because I am not skilled enough to make a chutney of any kind, and my mum always gave us ketchup). We ate them together, me and my two munchkins, who are on a two-week holiday from school, so it really did feel like our old home-schooling days.

Did you know you could fry things in ghee?

On Naming Things

Ocean Bream motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

In an attempt to bring joy back into my life in what seems like a season of ill-will, misfortune and tired depression, I will talk today about something that brings me joy. It’s my daughter’s penchant for naming all her toys – apt names sometimes, or names that simply tickle her fancy at the time of the naming ceremony.

Her first named doll is a little bald thing with the most intense eyes and the grimiest all-in-one outfit one ever did see. When she first obtained the doll, three years ago now, my daughter had just turned two. She was enamoured with an Arabic song about seagulls flapping their wings, and one of the phrases in the song was ‘the seagull flapped it’s wings, flap flap!’. So she named her doll ‘Hallaqa Hallaq’ – which means ‘flap flap’. In fact, the doll’s name is the entire phrase but she deigned to shorten it for her own ease of play.

Then she has Foxy – which is a little white fox. Cuddly-cuddly Elephant is a little purple elephant no bigger than my hand. It’s furry and has large imploring purple eyes. She has Button, a little rag-doll with a singular button on its dress. Kung-Fu Panda, which is a panda dressed as a dragon which her father got her from China in celebration of the Chinese new year. She has Goldilocks, which is a plump little marshmallow creature that is shapeless and designed, I suppose, to be ‘cute’. Not in anyway resembling the real Goldilocks – but the name took her fancy and now we can’t see that marshmallow thing as anything other than Goldilocks! And Llamery Sparkle is a colourful little Llama who has a pair of sparkling eyes.

Flower Nice is a velvety puffy ladybird with large black beads for eyes. She followed her dad all around the supermarket the day Flower Nice was procured begging him to buy it for her. He took one look at the price tag and shook his head. But she wouldn’t let up. She implored with her large eyes, she took his hand and kissed it, she hugged and rocked the silly stuffed ladybird as if it would break her heart to part from it. He eventually gave in, of course. Who can resist the charms of an enamoured little three year old?! What will you name her, I asked, once the ladybird was paid for and safely back in her arms. Flower nice, she replied, because flowers are nice and nice because she is nice.

All of this to say, I never named a thing as a child. I had a doll but she certainly had no name, and was subject to all sorts of experimentation by myself and my sister. Bathed, hung, parachuted down the side of an apartment building – no, we did not name her. But my daughter insists on naming everything that can be constituted personage – including ants and moths that happen her way. And that, my friends, brings me much joy.

Girl, dolls and toys. Honor Appleton

[18]

Ocean Bream NanoPoblano2025 Tags: , , Leave a comment

The days are merging into one, folks. I don’t know when one day starts and the other ends. They are all beginning to look the same. I know it’s torture for my mother, who is the one going through this incredibly dark and confusing time, but it’s torture for us too. To see her like this, to hear the heartbreaking things she says, to be on the recipient end of her frustration.

I wake up, I haul myself out of bed even though I don’t want to face another day like this. I sort my children out, leave them with family members, then go and see to my mother all day. When I return late at night, my kids are often fast asleep, and I am dizzy, exhausted and starving.

It’s a tough phase of life. I have never experienced anything like it before. But it will be okay.

John Atkinson Grimshaw