what stars are made of

darling nobody, death has always been my biggest fear- and i don’t think that will ever change. when i was six, i would try to imagine what it would be like to be dead- to cease to exist. i would lie in bed, and try to imagine what it would feel like to not feel anything. like floating. it terrified me. dia de los muertos or the day of the dead is a mexican tradition that grows on me quite easily. my incurable fear of death does not stop me from admiring those who accept it- and even welcome it with open arms. mexicans are unusually positive about death, and everything to do with it. as my host mother tells me, “it’s the only thing that you know is going to happen for sure.” it scares me more than i will ever admit. it was the mayans who had a traditional ball game that they played for two weeks. there was a little twist, though: the team that won the game would have the honour of being beheaded, and sacrificed to the gods above.   dia de los muertos too, wa...

As a child, I grew up reading books by Enid Blyton- she was the reason I started reading in the first place. At a younger age, I looked at her books as stories packed with action and interesting people: full of children like me but with more thrilling lives. Her books struck me as intense, adventurous- but they were never repetitive. As I grew older, though, with my energy focused on different things, her books became the opposite of what they used to be: they became synonymous with peace, relaxation. They were an escape, all the same- just from different things this time. And now, they were more important. It seems strange, though, to read so many books written by a single person, to explore every corner of their mind- without actually knowing anything concrete about the person themselves. It was only in 2018 that I got curious about the life of my favourite author and began to read about her, starting with a biography by Barbara Stoney, with a foreword from Enid’s daughter, G...