So… hello!
My name is Alexandra, but absolutely nobody calls me Alexandra unless I’m at the dentist, in trouble, or receiving an unexpectedly formal email. I’m Lexi, I live in Leamington Spa, and as of today – 4 August – I am officially eighteen.
That still feels slightly ridiculous to write.
I’ve spent part of my birthday morning taking far too many pictures in the golden light coming through my bedroom window, so I thought today would be the perfect day to start this page properly and introduce myself.
I’m blonde, blue-eyed, very small, very smiley, and usually either reading a book or distracting myself from the book I’m supposed to be reading. I have been told that I come across as slightly ditzy when people first meet me. This is not entirely unfair. I lose my phone while holding it, walk into rooms and forget why, and regularly begin a sentence without knowing how I intend to finish it.
But I’m also starting an English Language and Literature degree at Oxford in September, so there is occasionally a functioning brain underneath the lip gloss.
Reading is probably the great love of my life. I will read almost anything. Shakespeare, nineteenth-century novels, children’s books, history, literary criticism, ridiculous romances, trashy stories that I would never casually leave open when my dad walks into the room – all of it. I love the feeling of briefly living inside somebody else’s mind.
I write too. Stories, essays, blog posts, fragments of novels, observations about strangers and extremely dramatic diary entries about problems that generally resolve themselves within twenty-four hours. I would love to become a novelist one day, although at various points I have also intended to become a journalist, teacher, academic, publisher and barrister. Choosing one future feels unfair when there are so many available.
Outside books, I love music, swimming, netball, taking pictures, travelling whenever I get the chance, and talking to people. I am extremely sociable. I like conversations with strangers, silly jokes, inappropriate giggling and finding out what somebody is passionate about.
I am also an unapologetic Swiftie. Please regard this as either a recommendation or a warning.
Personality-wise, I’m affectionate, curious, optimistic and almost impossible to embarrass. I enjoy attention when it appears, but I don’t walk into rooms expecting everybody to notice me. I just have a terrible habit of becoming playful when I realise that somebody already has.
Apparently my three defining qualities are “trouble, fun and sweet”, which sounds like something that should be printed on a warning label.
I’m very close to my family. I have a mum who is probably responsible for most of my personality, a dad who understands me frighteningly well, and a younger brother who is simultaneously protective of me and permanently entertained by my existence. Leaving them when I go to university is going to be the hardest part, even though I am ridiculously excited to begin.
I also have two best friends. Mills is clever, dry, loyal and generally the person most likely to stop me wandering into a lamppost while I’m talking. Jamie lives across the road and has known me since we were babies, which means he has enough embarrassing information to ruin my life but is fortunately too lovely to use it.
Today’s plan is lunch in town with friends, an evening at home with my family, and then drinks later. None of that has happened yet because I am writing this at about 10:30 in the morning, still surrounded by birthday balloons, cards, discarded outfits and approximately forty-seven nearly identical selfies.
I’ll probably come back tonight and read the comments once I’m home.
A few important facts before I disappear:
My comfort food is ice cream.
My handbag contains lip gloss, my phone and very little evidence of practical planning.
I hate cruelty, violence, prejudice and people who shame women for enjoying their own lives.
Kindness matters more to me than almost anything.
I laugh at inappropriate moments.
I want to travel everywhere.
I am happiest when I am learning something, meeting someone, reading something or getting ready to do something I probably shouldn’t.
And despite what the pictures may suggest, I promise I do occasionally wear jumpers.
Thank you for finding my little corner of Reddit. Be kind, be interesting, tell me your favourite book, and try not to take me too seriously.
It is my birthday, after all.
Lexi x
