niamh, ellie, maddie - day 7
by Rosie Coleman Collier
This is Rosie’s final entry. Thank you so much, Rosie for generously sharing with us for the last 7 days. It has been a privilege to have the first look into Rosie’s writing for each day before publishing at the end of the day coming from work, kitchen, lido, shops, friends, to-be-friends and strangers. Loved thinking about coffee in the morning, having ‘you’ in the everyday of doing, eating and thinking, Hackney, being apart, getting on with life while being apart and feeling attached or detached. Thank you Rosie!
Find Rosie on instagram at the link at the bottom of this final text.
Thanks again,
Sinae + Kate
niamh, ellie, maddie - day 7
I’m playing football again today which feels excessive. It also means porridge once more for breakfast topped with the usual, and another coffee. As I eat, I sit at the kitchen counter and make the decision to order a random selection of things online: coffee pods, a bag for my football boots, more bags for moving house and a book called Attached on the science of adult attachment. I will send this in the post to Niamh when I am finished, as we spend a lot of time dissecting both our own and other people’s attachment styles for fun.
In the background throughout breakfast is Maria Somerville’s Early Bird show, replayed from when I didn’t wake up early enough in the previous week. The beach report makes me think of you, I keep pausing the recording to type it out on my notes to share here.
‘High tide the sun finds it hard to break through the wall of grey. Waking is a slow process, and no one should be rushed in the mornings. Take your time, let the birds get to the chorus, we are only on the first verse of the day and the song is sang many times. Out to sea, horizon and water are still entwined, with waves that break on the shore have a hint of green in their eyes’.
The waves with a hint of green of Ellie, the need to not rush, to take your time of Niamh and Maddie.
I walk to football. I’m already cold when I get arrive and it looks like it’s going to rain. Again today I’ve scraped my hair high with the pony tail plaited, a hairstyle I have copied from observing the pony tail variations of the England players in the women’s euros with you all in the pub last summer. In a similar fashion my nails have also been done, although I notice at half time one is slightly starting to chip.
I can’t really remember our friendship operating in the winter, only ever spread across the summer and autumn months. We were bought together every Wednesday evening for twelve weeks on a ceramics course, and would go to the pub by Hackney Downs every Wednesday evening for twelve weeks for a pint and a packet of Nobby Nuts, chilli, salted and honey roasted flavour. When pottery ended it moved to cold water swimming and messaging each other whenever one of us saw Iris Law walking down the street. Between this there were breakups, yours empathetic and mine an elongated unravelling, as well as difficult flatmates, toxic workplaces, an understanding of cancelling plans and homemade focaccia bread. Now spread out across the world, our routine as friends has shifted but a dynamic has been rooted in us to slip back into whenever that might be.
I have a coffee, an orange and a biscuit on the side of the pitch in between games, needing to both warm up and fuel my blood sugar levels with something sweet. After football I run a scalding hot bath, burning tee tree oil as I can feel myself becoming congested. I’ve avoided being ill all winter (vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc and iron, shared to you now in the same way Maddie shared with me 5HPT from Holland and Barrett). I’m in the bath for an hour before I must leave to meet Peter at Springfield Quay to go to Nandos; something we both realised we wanted on Friday lunchtime when we were hungover but planned to save for a Sunday night. We decide specifically to go to the one in the retail park. This feels the most appropriate place to be on a Sunday evening, something I know Niamh will appreciate and understand without having to have an answer as to why this is the case. Our food comes quickly, even though I mess up the table order saying we are table 8 when we are table 3.
At home I discover the Mini Eggs I thought I left in Sainsburys from yesterday and eat a handful of these. I have voice notes of Ellie’s on Instagram to reply to, but I’m savouring them for the right moment.
Bio: Rosie (she/her) is a curator, researcher and editor from Newcastle upon Tyne currently based in Glasgow where she is doing an MLitt Curatorial Practice at GSA. Her work looks to facilitate contexts for exchange and collectivity, and is situated within practical and theoretical approaches towards care, labour, support, relations and intimacy.
Thanks! Kate + Sinae