Astrology blog
Planets, houses and aspects in plain language — from your first chart to a year-ahead forecast.
CompatibilityIt is 11:53pm. The takeaway menus are still open on the kitchen counter. He said "I genuinely don't mind, you choose". She said "no really, you choose". This is the third evening this week that has finished without anyone choosing the restaurant, and neither of them is sure whether that is sweet ...
Oksana Miatova16 min
CompatibilityThree horoscope sites can read Cancer and Scorpio and come back with "soulmates", "watch the possessiveness", and "difficult match", each writer perfectly confident. They aren't lying. They're all looking at the same one tenth of the chart and filling in the rest with mood. Astrological birth cha...
Oksana Miatova17 min
CompatibilityIt's a Wednesday evening writing group in the upstairs room of a small London pub. Ten regulars on a long table, two pages each. You hand yours to your neighbour — tall, mid-thirties, soft jumper, careful pencil — and read his. By the end of the round you have both underlined the same paragraph i...
Oksana Miatova17 min
CompatibilityShe wants to know whether they're moving in together. He answers, easily, by suggesting a long weekend in Porto, as though those two questions belong on the same shelf. Both think they have engaged. Neither has heard the other. By Tuesday the conversation about the flat has gone quiet, and he is,...
Oksana Miatova13 min
CompatibilityTwo o'clock on the 31st of December. The Cancer partner is in the kitchen, putting together a small supper for four — her sister, her sister's husband, the two of them. Candles already on the table at this hour; the music chosen yesterday. The Aquarius partner walks in with his coat still on. "I ...
Oksana Miatova16 min
CompatibilitySunday afternoon at the hospital ward. Maya is at the nurses' station with a printed medication chart, working out whether the new dosage clashes with her sister's blood-pressure tablets. Sam is in the side room, holding her sister's hand while a Bake Off rerun plays quietly. Both have been there...
Oksana Miatova15 min
CompatibilityShe met him in a bereavement group — the local Talking Therapies service ran one for adults who'd lost a parent. She'd lost her father six months earlier; he'd lost his mother the year before. They started having tea after sessions. Four months later they were together, and she was lying in bed a...
Oksana Miatova13 min
CompatibilityYou type your sign and your partner's into a compatibility search box, and the internet hands you a verdict in about three seconds. Aries and Cancer — incompatible. Leo and Aquarius — match. Cancer and Cancer — depends who you ask.
Oksana Miatova25 min
CompatibilityShe sends her best friend a screenshot — a small argument, mostly resolved, slightly still itching. Her friend replies with a shrug emoji and "you two are so different though, lol". Twenty minutes later, in bed with the lamp still on, she types `pisces aries love compatibility` into Google. The f...
Oksana Miatova12 min
CompatibilityIt is Saturday morning, six months after you moved in together. He has chosen a small ceramic jug at a craft market because the colour was right. You have relabelled the jars in the cupboard so the lentils actually get used. He bakes bread on Sundays now. You buy the kind of tea he drinks without...
Oksana Miatova18 min
CompatibilityIt's a Tuesday-evening pitch night in a converted Shoreditch warehouse. Maya is on stage in trainers, talking through her start-up deck like she's already late for the next thing. Aries, you'd guess, even if you didn't know. Sam is two rows back, half-watching, half-typing into his phone, working...
Oksana Miatova15 min
CompatibilityIt is Sunday afternoon, eight months in. She has been talking for twenty minutes about an allotment they could share — the compost heap, the herbs, the slow lunches with friends pulling carrots they grew. He has been listening properly, the way he always does, and has just asked how much the coun...
Oksana Miatova20 min