Astrology blog
Planets, houses and aspects in plain language — from your first chart to a year-ahead forecast.
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
CompatibilityTuesday evening, eight o'clock, the back room of a north London pub. A book group of twelve has dwindled to five, and within the five, two people have been talking only to each other for the past hour and a half — one chair turned slightly inward, both leaning forward, both refilling water from t...
Oksana Miatova17 min
CompatibilityIt's the autumn after the fifth year, and someone — the accountant, a friend who hasn't visited in a while, your sister — is sitting in your kitchen looking at the books, or the renovation, or the practice you've built together, and saying some version of the same thing. *I had no idea you'd done...
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
CompatibilityIt's a Thursday evening arts council planning committee in a Bristol community hall. Twelve volunteers around two long folding tables, the usual urn of tea, a five-page funding-strategy paper in everyone's hands. You volunteer for the sub-group on the third item; she volunteers for the same sub-g...
Oksana Miatova19 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 screen-grabs a paragraph from Cosmopolitan and sends it to her best friend. «Is this us?» The friend reads two sentences and sends back a shrug. A different site rates the pair at 47 per cent. A third calls it «one of the most challenging matches in the zodiac», then a Reddit thread tells her...
Oksana Miatova12 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
CompatibilityA Virgo sends her Libra colleague a proposal at 4:47 on a Thursday afternoon: "Final read. Going to client at six." Twenty minutes pass. He writes back: "Lovely. I do wonder if we should sit on it overnight — give Maya a chance to weigh in."
Oksana Miatova18 min
CompatibilityA small church hall in Hackney on a Wednesday evening. A housing meeting that started at seven has not finished at half past nine; the organiser is putting chairs away and pointedly not turning the lights off. Two people are still standing by the leaflet table, both holding paper cups of tea long...
Oksana Miatova18 min
CompatibilityIt is a Tuesday evening, and you have been turning a small thing around all afternoon. A colleague said something at lunch that landed harder than it should have, and you have been holding it for three hours. Then the door opens and your partner walks in mid-thought about a podcast, an article he...
Oksana Miatova17 min
CompatibilityIt is 2am on a Wednesday. Her mother has been in hospital for six weeks. Somewhere around the third week, a friend started ringing every evening at the same time. Long voice notes after midnight, the kind that begin "no need to reply, just thinking of you". Tonight, scrolling through the chat, sh...
Oksana Miatova17 min