Day 1

Wow, finally it is starting. All the preparations, travelling, packing, organising and finally I am sitting at my desk in the House with The Garden, looking out to the ancient birch trees (not that ancient really, but dear to me) and listening to that inimitable minuet off the bees. They might well be wasps actually, but I really don’t care. I love the fact that they easily find their way in the house through the big quarter open living room window where I am writing Glocal Trinnovation, the thesis that was destined for a whole year not to be written and being forgotten as the only thing I have started in the past 11 years since I moved to England and I never finished.

My wonderful friend Martha told me last year when I started Vondores my Couture business that I should start a blog, but I have to make sure I write every day. That just sounded harder than hard for me! I have never been good at writing a diary. I remember as a child and later a teenager even in my early twenties I have started a few times, but the regularity bored me so much, that I had no intention to write after as long as two weeks the maximum. I do have to say I have found some of my diaries at my parent’s house a few years ago and I was fascinated by my own writing. Not because it was something to be shooting straight to the orange book or any other book prize, but because when I read it I had the wonderful feeling I was reading somebody else’s stories rather my own diaries. It wasn’t just about who I found difficult at times and why we couldn’t have a bit more money to this or that to go on holidays together as a family and bond through the adventures of seeing new places. It was about feelings, deep feelings of love and loneliness. Have I really been that person who wrote those things in those diaries? Upside down and most importantly back to front and deliberately writing things to the wrong dates, so no one ever would be able to figure out what has really happened in my rather dull village life and when because not only the dates were a puzzle, but to reduce the chance of ridicule to get to the open about which boy I have been fancying in the village and when I wrote things down as fiction. (I did indeed fancied boys from time to time and slowly but surely I became a wide ranged expert in platonic love by my early twenties.) I suppose I started to write about fictional places, fictional names and abbreviations not only about the beast of ridicule, which I have been afraid, like nothing else (I did get into ridiculing situations of course against all my efforts from time to time) but also, the simple fact that when one writes fiction, things actually happen. People fall in love and the girl in the flower-patterned dress always gets swept away by her prince charming in his Hungarian peasant shirt and black trousers or most likely blue jeans. I have to say by that time years ago when I re-read some of the writing (I should not even call them diaries no more, but writing), I wasn’t even able to remember who I meant to be swept away by and what was really happening in my least `esemenydus resze az eletemnek` (my dullest part of my life) which I am amazingly realising now was the most enchanting experience I could have had on my journey of becoming a young women from a little girl. I have indeed discovered the taste of fictional writing by my early twenties. (Of course all in Hungarian, which is an amazingly rich language and a huge blessing to be able to write on. This is my first English writing apart from reports and essays from university. Sincere apologise for any mistake to be to be made in the most admired language of the world whilst writing this blog.) So, most of my `diary-writing` than I know now was nothing else but fiction. I made things happening to me as a child and a teenager by escaping into a fictional word. Writing everything back to front in the books back than all made sense, I know which book came after the other and which page from which book was following by which page from which book. The one with beautiful violets on a checked background after the book I got from my friend Judit from Kner Inc. at Bekescsaba. That was in my early twenties though. And by then, I was regularly writing (but nothing to do with diaries any more, but fiction.) I even started my first novel: Perfectly Imperfect World .

That is why it is a challenge for me to write every day from Monday to Friday from today 8^th August until 14^th September. I have a as little as five weeks to try to scrape out 25.000 words at least that makes sense. It would be so easy if I only have to write fiction!

This blog is my official Reflective Diary for MA Fashion and The Environment at London College of Fashion. It is an attempt to write down all about the research journey I have undertaken since October 2008. I must be the longest standing MA student at uni. I should have really finished it by last December, but soon after setting up Vondores, and not long after my very first entry to the Vondores blog my health started to deteriorate and not only I haven’t followed Martha’s advice about writing the blog every day, but I even had to take a year out from MA and it was a big question mark for almost a year if I would ever get well enough to have the energy and the will to finish my studies.

I am sure at some point I am going to write about the story of life and death. It does sound dramatic and it certainly wasn’t a pleasure to live through the necessary lows to be able to get back on the heights of desire to be wanting to be alive more than anything.

I just realised it is almost noon and I haven’t had breakfast yet. Since I was given the grace of recovery Rule 1 is having three meals a day and Rule 2 is having eight hours sleep every night. I am doing better with Rule 1 than Rule 2, normally though.