My Thoughts Exactly

For Present's Sake

2012-02-26T11:46:00.005-08:00

February is always an interesting time for me – not only is it the universally troublesome Valentine’s Day, which in the UK proves to be an exercise in balancing the tightrope between the appropriate levels of cynicism and that feeling of pink and fluffy inclusion regardless of whether you are single or coupled up … and in addition to that it is my birthday, which provides an increasingly mixed but nonetheless welcome interruption from the, by now interminably dull winter.

While my outward attitude towards both of these occasions is one of deep suspicion, I am a great fan of things that bring a smile to people’s faces, and despite said universal cynicism anything as saccharine as Valentine’s Day can’t help but provoke a smile of sorts; and I always like getting presents, even if my attitude towards them has somewhat mellowed since as a small child my favourite phrase ‘I want’ has been restricted in frequency ... mostly because my father took to calling me Verruca as a result … as in the obnoxious character from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Nonetheless, these two occasions have had some particularly pleasant upshots, not least of all that I have spent two whole weeks with my bedroom adorned with happy, smiling bunches of tulips that greet me as I wake up – generally making it an awful lot easier to get out of bed in the morning. The first bunch of flowers were from my wonderful friend Carli – in a display of singleton camaraderie we went for dinner on 14^th and met at the tube station with hand made cards and bunches of flowers in tow, thus proving ourselves to be the most thoughtful of dates – it was the least stressful Valentine’s Day of anyone I know I think. The second was an office present on my birthday and provoked one lady on the tube to comment on the beautiful blooms ... I then proceeded to feel supremely smug.

I have long thought that flowers make the most wonderful and decadent of presents because they are something beautiful simply for beauty’s sake. They don’t last, are utterly impractical, and are purely and simply for the purpose of making somebody feel special. When you carry them home on your commute (aside from the slightly awkward shape and impractical amount of space they take up when surrounded by fellow travellers) they induce looks from complete strangers of ‘aww, that’s nice, somebody loves you!’ … and feeling no need to correct them you are permitted to think to yourself, ‘yes, yes they do.’

Of course I have been spoiled on multiple levels this birthday – flowers, a vintage copy of Alice in Wonderland, a David Hockney book, high tech jogging equipment and long coveted theatre tickets to see War Horse – I have high expectations that it will exceed the film tenfold. Most things have however been supremely trumped by my oft-mentioned seven year old second cousin Lucy who sent me an entire package of cards and drawings filled with declarations of love and a profusion of increasingly realist artwork and Disney princess stickers – cards have always been my absolute favourite thing to receive on my birthday – they are just so wonderfully thoughtful and personal.

Perhaps the nicest thing for me though is something that no one can give to me – the weather has been simply glorious this week and weekend in particular – unseasonably so … when I went out running across the fields there were snowdrops, crocuses, bluebirds and rabbits, and now that my birthday and Valentine’s Day are out of the way, March is mere days away and Spring is well and truly in the air – thank goodness – and when I got home, there were those tulips, smiling happily in their vase.

So yes, to bridge the gap between winter and Spring I am obliged to get another year older, but if presents, cake and cardboard declarations of love are the result, it is a price I am totally willing to pay.

Blank Canvas

2012-02-05T13:23:00.000-08:00

Like most people no doubt, I woke up this morning to a thick blanket of snow outside and despite having spent the last couple of months with my fingers tightly crossed and praying that the white stuff will not grace us with it’s presence (I am still feeling traumatized by the fact that it so royally outstayed its welcome last year) it’s effects were, as always, truly magical – in a way that only natural phenomena can be.

Having realized late last night that any plans that involved travel beyond walking distance were going to be scuppered, I didn’t set an alarm, and slept until I woke up naturally – something I almost never do, and judging by fact that I didn’t emerge from my slumber until 11 am, it was probably something that was well overdue.

On coming downstairs, the cat – who as usual took the appearance of human life as an opportunity to beg to be let out of the kitchen door, took one look at the cold, white ground and stared back at me as though I had lost my mind – promptly rejecting the offer and deciding the lack of outdoor entertainment would have to be replaced by sauntering across my laptop/ newspaper/ general Sunday morning paraphernalia. In fairness to him, I would not have been willing to venture outside in nothing but a set of white socks either.

Despite all our complaints about it, when the snow first falls (and a weekend is a particularly good time for it to fall given the general lack of imperative travel), it has a wonderful ability to create silence. Most of us are seriously guilty of constantly being on the go – even our ‘down time’ is invariably characterized by noise, music, movement, interaction … buzz ... but when it snows there is no point in trying to get the car out. As I found out taking two steps out the front door – there is absolutely no chance of going for a run or hurrying about, and you would be ill advised to try to use public transport unless absolutely necessary. So your only options are to sleep in as late as you like, make sure you keep warm and go for a walk – slow down and for one day, just be.

There are two things about snow – aside from its general impact in life (especially in the UK) – bringing everything to a standstill, that make it so special. Firstly – it does seem to absorb all sound – perhaps because not much happens when it snows, or perhaps for reasons more

scientific – I don’t know, I have not looked into it, but I like it nonetheless.

The other is the colour: I think this is the most pleasing thing about it. Perhaps it is something to do with being obsessive about drawing, but there is something so promising about all that blank space. When I was little I used to lie on the floor and look at the ceiling and think how exciting all that unadulterated space was – it was just like the floor, but with so much possibility because nobody had decorated it yet! I get the same thrill every time I have a new sketchbook – it is just filled with possibilities – and the same applies to fields of unexplored snow. I can’t be the only one who thinks so because you see it in small children (and adults – my friend Natasha with whom I was out walking kept veering off the most obvious route just to walk across clean stretches of snow) – they will run and jump and take great pleasure in putting their mark on the icy white plains.

So tomorrow morning I will grumble because there will be ice on the way to work and I won’t be able to wear the shoes I want to. I will moan at the price of my train ticket particularly in light of the fact that the trains are likely to be delayed, and even if they run without a hitch I will mutter that ‘I should think so too’ given the several weeks warning that National Rail have had that the snow is on its way; and I will be particularly grumpy if the snow has not subsided enough by the time I get home to allow me to get the car out and drive to the gym. But for all my complaining (which is horrendous and sad, and a horrid horrid sign of being far too grown up) I am so incredibly grateful for my blank canvas of a day and am extremely smug about the patterns that are now etched upon it, and I hope you are too!

Back in your Box

2012-01-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

One of my father’s favorite stories to tell about me at weddings, birthdays and any other occasion where anecdotes are required recalls that at age three and becoming swiftly educated in the arts of observation, categorization and not least of all, repetition, I analyzed the mood from my car seat when a driver cut him up on a roundabout and inquired: “Daddy, is that man a wanker?”

Too exasperated to express mortification and in a manner true to form for my father, he sighed in resignation and replied: “Yes Bonnie, he probably is.”

When you are little everything is so wonderfully simple – black and white, good and bad. People are labeled with particular specifications, and it stands to reason that once they have been put into a box, that is that: Good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell; Mother Theresa, Cinderella and Mummy – all good and will thus go to heaven; Hitler, Daddy’s second wife and newly dubbed wanker driver, all bad and must accordingly go to hell.

But as you grow up the much dreaded realites of ‘nuance’ and ‘perspective’ come into play, forcing us to take an entirely more philosophical approach to life whereby we learn that absolutely nothing is for certain, and the angle you stand at can make all the difference. It can be frightfully confusing and extremely inconvenient in those moments where you would really just rather stamp your feet and put everyone back in their box.

That said, there is also something comforting about the fact that nothing is for certain, and it can really take you by surprise, not least of all when it comes to the box that you yourself are put into.

When a friend recently said to me: “I know what my brand image is, and I know it is totally

different to who I am – people think I am a lot tougher than I am,” it made me think about how we present ourselves, and how much we can actually decide how we want other people to see us. I suppose to an extent we all portray a certain image that we deem to be most favorable, but even so, there are always going to be some things beyond our control. The upshot as it seems to me, is that you have two sides to the image you convey, the one you choose, and the one you don’t.

It is coming up for a year since my grandfather died, during the particularly grim month that was last January – with the weather being that bad I can’t really blame him for taking off. On a characteristically cold and wet evening – cue Pathetic Fallacy, I arrived at the home half an hour after he died to find my ninety-one year old Grandmother and my mother sitting with the body waiting for the doctor. No one cried, despite the wary attentions of carers who were clearly waiting for the onslaught of tears, tantrums and inconsolable grief.

“I have not ever been around when death comes before – I can’t believe how quiet he was,” said Grandma indignantly, “the only other time I was there when someone drew their last breath was with the dog, and that sounded rather like a fart.” A moment of shocked silence was followed by insuppressible laughter from Mummy and myself – I don’t think Grandma realized she had been funny.

The contrast between life and death with the body slowly assuming rigamortis in the corner of the room was never more evident. Martha, Grandad’s carer shifted uncomfortably, unable to comprehend the mood – she is a very warm woman, the kind whose hugs completely envelope you in comfort and makes the whole world feel friendly.

Now my Grandmother is an entertaining woman because for the most part, she speaks her mind regardless of who she might offend, so her next statement threw me more than the last: “You mustn’t judge us,” she said to Martha, watching intently. “I don’t know what your

family is like, you might be very open in your grieving. But we are not like that. We are not allowed to be like that.”

I was surprised in the moment that Grandma felt the need to explain the process of her own grief. The image she portrayed was one cultivated from years of nurture – you might even call it a cultural one – centuries of British stiff upper lip, it was no more her choice than the irreparable sadness I can only imagine she felt having lost her partner of more than seventy years - she almost seemed to feel guilty about it.

I think perhaps after all my pondering, the reality is that you can never fully be in charge of how the world sees you, and in

order to be the best version of yourself you need to acknowledge the things that are inherently you – be it a neon sign that signals your discomfort or the inability to cry in moments of profound grief.

Being the eternal six year old and spending an inordinate amount of my time doodling, I have been fortunate enough to extend my pastime to more practical purposes, and in the same week that I was preparing Grandad’s Order of Service I was also putting together drawings for a friend’s wedding invitations – two services, totally disconnected - one at the beginning of a stage of life and the other at an end, and goodness knows there is a lot in between. Maybe you really can’t choose your brand image, but you can choose what you

do with it – after all guess who taught me how to do my coloring in?!

Bittersweet Memory

2011-12-31T05:15:00.000-08:00

My grandma has had a tough year – she lost her husband in January, which is hard in itself, but at the grand old age of ninety one, she had been married for over seventy years, so it is no surprise that she has felt a little out of sorts for the past eleven months. So perhaps her announcement that ‘Christmas is so full of memories’ was more than merely a festive cliché, and as her world morphs ever more seamlessly between reality and daydream, naturally I began to ponder the topic.

Memory is a funny thing, your mind plays tricks on you – there is a school of thought in history that thinks you can’t really study history because you will only ever see it from distorted angles, such is the same with life I suppose – reality is one thing for you and another for the person standing next to you – that of course is the beauty of it.

Nonetheless, remembering is what we do at Christmas and New Year through a rosy haze of baubles and fairy lights, and it is a sort of bittersweet taste that it leaves.

This also appears to be the year for rekindling old friendships, and with that has come the triggering of buried memories – an evening dining with school friends I had not really spoken to for ten years, we fell about laughing at memories of whole assemblies being devoted to teaching us ‘how to clap without being too enthusiastic’ on prize giving; instructions on how to get out of the car like a lady; and the punishment for wearing nail varnish to school – weeding the flower beds barehanded – all things that at the time were not remotely amusing, now form fond memories of learning curves and growing up together.

Thinking back over the last year, so much has happened, and I have ended it on an unprecedented high … but as memories rush through my brain, and I think of all the things I am so utterly thankful for it is strange some of the things that made it so special, because not all of them are happy memories, and yet they all contribute to a year for which I am incredibly grateful.

Was it getting the new job? That comes pretty high up … Watching my insuppressible friend Jess sing and dance away amid a crowd of hundreds on bonfire night singing Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’ with gay abandon? Meeting up with old friends and acquaintances and rediscovering shared ideas? The new friends that came from unlikely circumstances? That first step out of the plane in Barbados or the lovely greeting my friend Cal gave me on arriving at the beachside flat (what can I say, it has been a tough year)? Was it the friend who reminded me that I am stronger than I thought? Was it losing Grandad but gaining a whole new relationship with Grandma? Was it hosting a joint art exhibition for the first time since school? Completing a half marathon in less time than I thought? Or that first run again after two months off with a very angry knee? Ultimately, I think it was a mosaic of all of those things, and the little moments in between that knit them together. Actually, one of my happiest memories of the last year was taking my sketchbook to sit by a lake and draw the falling leaves at the end of the summer – sound like too much of a cliché? Oh well, there it is, I am an artist (sort of), clichés are my prerogative.

Of course, memory goes hand in hand with imagination, and while I appropriately forget who mentioned it, someone very wise once said: ‘some of the best memories are of things that never happened’. Which really is the crux of it – everything that happens it would seem, is what you make of it. If you see red and someone else sees green, who is to say what is right? 2011 has far

exceeded expectation – in fact, I could not have asked for more, and while I have high hopes for the coming year, whatever 2012 may bring, I have great faith that it will be filled with wonderful memories to mull over next Christmas.

Happy New Year - I hope it beings you everything you want and more xx

Fairy Footsteps

2011-12-11T09:12:00.000-08:00

When I was a little girl, my dad woke me up very early one morning to go and see the fairy footsteps that had been left in the flowerbeds over night. It was springtime and we were searching amongst the snowdrops. There was frost on the ground, and it was cold, and I was in my pyjamas holding Daddy’s hand, but my overriding memory when we found the footprints was that these fairies had bloody big feet.

Of course, needless to say, my wonderful father had made the footprints himself when I wasn’t looking. We had been reading the flower fairy books and this was his way of a) entertaining me before breakfast and b) being testament to his imagination – ensuring that my belief in magic was kept alive as long as possible.

I defy anyone to find a little girl who is not fascinated by the idea of fairies, and in fact, I know many women who remain equally fascinated by the mythical concept as they grow up. So with such a precious memory lingering in my mind, I was thrilled to be asked by a friend in Australia to design a range of cards thus themed.

Of course, it was inevitable that my source of inspiration was my cousin’s little girl Lucy – as I have mentioned before, we bond over coloring in books featuring Tinkerbell and a gaggle of her fairy friends. Like any girl she has begun perfecting the art of finding her best angle at an early age (she has just turned seven) and when she visited a few months ago, she assessed that her best angle was upside down on the various apparatus the park has to offer – thus I had a proliferation of ‘Lucy photos’ from which to draw my fairies.

I have mentioned before that I am amazed by Lucy’s apparent desire to want to spend time with me – she had to go to school recently dressed as someone who has helped her, and she went as me – which has to be the greatest form of flattery the world has to offer – but I am waiting for the moment when she stops looking up to me simply for being an older girl in her

life who is not her mother. When does that happen? If it’s not seven (which seems to be something of a grown up juncture if you ask me – after all, Christopher Robin’s poem ends there – ‘… I think I’ll stay six for ever and ever’) I have a sneaking suspicion it may be eight. At any rate, I decided to give her as a birthday present a couple of the framed fairy paintings – which should have me newly dubbed as that relative who gave her utterly useless and totally uninteresting birthday presents – but hey, everyone needs one of those – she was just lucky she didn’t get a sponge from Grandma to wash the car with.

Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun reliving a part of my childhood in preparation for Divine Heart and Soul’s new cards, which will be available in the New Year. At any rate, whatever age you are, it is very important to always have a little sense of magic, and while they are just pictures on the wall for now, I really hope that one day they will remind Lucy of all those childhood dreams as she grows up.

Take a look at the website for information on Divine Heart and Soul and other cards including Christmas Card designs: www.bonniefriend.com

What do Downton Abbey, elephant dung and I have in common?

2011-11-27T08:20:00.000-08:00

… be honest, which part of that brought you to read this page? It had to be Downton Abbey right? It’s only been a couple of weeks since the season ended and I am already missing it … but it’s ok, there’s going to be a Christmas special – phew!

Anyway, the answer to the question, rather strangely, is the picturesque little town of Wheathampstead. Anyone within a five mile radius of me this week will be fully aware that the most recent book I have illustrated launched this weekend at Waterstones in St Albans, and it focuses on the local history of this unassuming, historic place in Hertfordshire (apparently Julius Caesar spent some time there and Antarctic explorer Apsley Cherry-Garrard was from the area).

Written by Howard Wright, the my involvement came about rather serendipitously, when I met him at a craft fair in St Albans where I was selling cards, and he was selling glass artwork. He was looking for an illustrator for his first children’s book (he has written many a business book in the past) and the rest is local history.

The book is a series of fictional stories built around real life events from the 1920s, and is aimed at 5-6 year olds if parents are reading to them, and 8-10 year olds if they are reading to themselves.

So on Saturday the book launched in Waterstones, and today it was part of the opening of a new heritage trail in Wheathampstead where husband and wife duo Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter) and Jim Carter (Downton Abbey) were guests of honor.

As a former history student, I have been wanting to work on illustrated children’s history books for a long time, and Howard’s stories are a delightful introduction to the topic – not least of all because the front cover was created by his ten year old granddaughter Isobel – who has a grasp of sarcasm that I have not seen in a ten year old since my friend Jess at a similar age – unhappy with being questioned as to her whereabouts by the Deputy Headmistress asked her: ‘didn’t you know curiosity killed the cat?’ … that is to say, Isobel is an absolute delight – reveling in signing her masterpiece to eager buyers.

So aside from wanting to show you a few of the pictures from the book (and FYI there should be another one out in February), being a real believer in serendipity it is really lovely when things seem to come together better than you could have planned them … and given the turn out over the weekend both for Howard’s book and for the launch of the heritage trail, it seems I am not the only one who is a bit of a geek when it comes to history!

For more information about Howard's book visit: http://tinyurl.com/dykb3s4 or http://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Wheathampstead-Elephant-Disaster-Stories/dp/0956361757

Growing Older Gracefully

2011-11-20T10:50:00.000-08:00

People are very strange I think. The things we do in pursuit of ‘perfection’ and ‘eternal youth’ seem ever more bizarre, and in the gym this morning I saw something that definitely confirmed what I have often held to be true – that plastic surgery rarely makes people look better, it just makes them look like they have had plastic surgery.

Gyms can be scary for the average girl just on a general basis – only yesterday a friend and I were talking about the somewhat self-defeating analysis that goes on when you see someone going ten to the dozen on the stepper in front of you with a backside to rival Kylie Minogue. Nonetheless, the changing rooms, are an altogether scarier place – as evidenced by my first sighting of a woman who had clearly undergone buttock augmentation, better known as butt implants – like car crash TV it was completely impossible to look away, and seemed so separate from the rest of her body as to completely defeat their point. In fact, I think their only purpose can have been to cushion any bones in her otherwise fleshless posterior from wear and tear.

Anyway, this is just another example of all the things we do to avoid the terror of aging and to achieve the body beautiful, but I firmly believe that the only way to get older is gracefully, healthily and acceptingly.

A milestone, albeit an early one, in getting older, is turning thirty. This seems to be a bit of a scary age – after that, you are definitely an adult. Although, that said, every year past the age of twenty-one people seem to grow less enthusiastic about their birthdays.

Well, last weekend was the culmination of months of hard work for a friend of mine who was planning her boyfriend’s speakeasy themed thirtieth. Now, speaking from experience, it is a seriously lovely thing when someone decides to organize a party for you, and makes you feel unimaginably special. So, naturally, I was chuffed to bits when she asked me to help out.

To be honest, my main contribution was designing the email invitations – and given that I happily spend an inordinate amount of time with a paintbrush in hand anyway, was really just giving purpose to a past time.

In actual fact, the whole party was an exercise in friendly contributions, which I think was the source of its great success and warm atmosphere – all of which stemmed from the sense of calm and good organization emanating from the hostess – she even managed to smuggle in guests from Jersey and the US undetected by her boyfriend.

The point is, birthdays are always nice, whatever we complain about. But what was particularly fine about this one was the fact that it was something one person was doing for someone they love, and in turn lots of other people contributed for no other reason than they cared. So two things became glaringly apparent: firstly, turning thirty isn’t about being more grown up, it is an excuse for a better party than the year before; and secondly, the best thing about parties are the people, and knowing that someone has thought of you is worth much more than all the paper it can possibly be painted on – and for that reason alone, getting older definitely isn’t something to be frightened about.

Out of Africa

2011-09-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

To say that I am compulsive by nature is probably an understatement. If I go running I have to run

every day – at least the same amount as I did the day before; and not that I was ever a big drinker, but I didn’t just decide I would drink little, I decided I would not drink at all, so you see a pattern emerges.

So having recently been forced to temporarily hang up my running shoes due to a minor but niggling injury (which categorically must heal before my half marathon in two weeks), I was lost, and in need of a new compulsion.

Always a little late to the game, I am currently joining the smug collective of people who practice yoga. I am not good at it – my hamstrings are too tight to bend much beyond my own knees – there are seventy-year olds with greater flexibility than me. Nonetheless, I have found an instructor I adore and am strongly considering a life totally devoted to stretching, chanting and inner peace … plus with all those downward dogs I am discovering muscles in my arms I did not know existed.

At the same time as my newfound love of yoga, I am also currently ob

sessing over the idea of going to Africa. With a strong interest in travel, and as a former history student, I periodically become fascinated with different parts of the world and find some solace in learning about them and escaping to them through the books that I read. So this is my current obsession. In answer to your question, not entirely sure where, most of it, although the general trend is towards South Africa and Kenya.

I think much of this is the fault of Tamsin who owns Luponde on the Burlington

Arcade, and the couple of months earlier this year that I spent designing safari based greetings cards for her shop – you spend enough time drawing an elephant and before you know it, it’s love. Anyway, the place in my head is definitely one based on fiction rather than reality, but nonetheless my reading material is thus influenced at the moment.

So with the first book of choice after browsing through the HIP Hotels Atlas being the shop recommended Cry Freedom – a simple but somewhat heart-rending text based on the life of Steve Biko, I set out on my lunch break to read in the belated summer sunshine (I can’t bare to be inside for any longer than is absolutely necessary).

As I was reading with a backdrop of the Thames and Tower Bridge, a boy who was sitting a few feet away from me suddenly asked: ‘are you reading about South Africa?’

Being a typical Londoner my first shock was that someone I did not know was talking to me, it took a few seconds to recover enough to wonder how on earth he knew that.

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘’have you read it?’ He shook his head.

I forget how the conversation progressed, although it was in that somewhat stilted fashion where, uncertain if that was it, I kept returning to my page only to be met with another question until finally although warily I surrendered, thinking it was nearly time to rush back to the office anyway.

Nonetheless, progress it did, until he nodded sagely at my choice of literature and said: ‘I am from the Sudan, I was a child soldier when I was fourteen.’ And promptly rolled up his trouser leg to show the most grotesque scarring.

Caught between thinking he had to be making this up and utter fascination, not to mention mortification, I asked how he came to the UK, and what happened.

He told me he had been picked up by the charity War Child, and had gone to the Netherlands where he completed high school, and was now in the UK starting a degree in International Relations and Peace Keeping, all the time smiling the broadest grin possible and expressing how he would like to go home one day and try to give something back.

When he asked me what I did and I muttered something about art, I felt about two centimetres tall, and at that point it was time for me to go back to work. I wished him luck and left feeling the peculiar sensation of someone who has been hit in the head with a colossal dose of perspective, not to mention in complete awe of the peculiarities of life and the way it changes.

Being somewhat sceptical I am still not entirely sure if he was having me on or not. But then I thought about it and aside from the fact that it would be a pretty gross lie to tell, it doesn’t really matter, because whether it is his story or not, for someone out there it will be true and that is definitely amazing.

I trotted back to the office smiling to myself – what an incredible conversation to have on your lunch break – all because of the book I was reading.

I relayed the tale to one of the girls that I work with, and she smiled, leaning back in her chair and basking in the afternoon sunlight that was coming through the windows.

‘You see! You are embracing the spirit of yoga! Look what comes to you when you are open to the world!’

I smiled back at her and as I rolled my eyes the back cover of my book caught my attention: SOUTH AFRICA was emblazoned across the back in massive chalky letters …

I guess it’s true, whether it’s all those good thoughts from the yoga or all the wonderful things you learn from a good book, you really do get back what you put out there.

The Power of ... Colouring-in

2011-08-04T15:18:00.000-07:00

‘He’s pretty cool isn’t he?’ I asked Lucy, showing her a photo of the giraffe I saw at London Zoo earlier in the year – we are both animal people you understand.

‘Bonnie … how do you know it is a he?’ She responded whilst nodding in agreement at my assertion and continuing with the coloring-in we had started at the dinner table.

‘He told me’ I said pondering which shade of pink to use next.

‘How did he tell you?’ She queried – it is a fair enough question, let’s face it.

‘I speak Giraffe.’

‘How did you learn to speak Giraffe?’

‘To be honest Luce, I don’t really know, I think it is just one of those things you pick up – you know?’

‘Hmmmm … ‘ she considered thoughtfully for a moment; ‘I know what you mean, I spoke to a dog once.’

And with that we continued our coloring-in and pondering the pros and cons of various aspects of the color wheel.

So you see, it was in this short conversation that I discovered a new friend.

Lucy is six years old. She is my cousin’s little girl, and we appear to have a connection, which is growing increasingly strong as her long-term recognition of people who flit in and out of her life evolves.

I don’t see Lucy much, and on this particular occasion in April we were at my other cousin’s wedding. The subject of our artistic endeavors was a Royal Wedding coloring-in book, and Kate Middleton’s dress has been re-fashioned in a particularly fetching shade of lurid orange.

Having never had that much to do with young children I am baffled and fascinated by Lucy’s interest in spending time with me. I think I have a new best friend. The source of this friendship is mutual interest – sparked when my mother gave her a copy of a book I had illustrated when she was four (The Little Carrot). Lucy professes she wants to be an artist when she grows up – which is marvelous because so do I! In that I have since been recognized as someone who does coloring-in – a role I am both adept at and comfortable with.

When I first met Lucy aged – an indeterminate number of weeks, I thought we got off to a bad start. Having been held contentedly by five other adults in the room she came to me and promptly started to scream. Knowing now that we are kindred spirits I see that this was actually an early meeting of the minds – as I was coming to the end of stroppy teenage years that involved monosyllabic conversation and an inexhaustible desire to sleep – she clearly was experiencing a similar lack of sociable tolerance.

Well, I have just spent another very enjoyable day coloring-in with Lucy and I am awestruck that in the short time since I last saw her and advised on the benefits of coloring inside the lines and how to achieve it, at the rapid advancement of her dexterity – she is nothing short of genius.

We even have similar artistic styles – although she has experimented in recent months with the abstract concepts of Matisse – drawing inspiration from The Snail, we have both settled on something a little less risqué – I am a fan of illustrated animals, reasonably if whimsically true to life, and she is also a fan of realism – proving meticulous in ensuring that Tinkerbell’s coloring in the book was true to the original on the front of the DVD box – Millet, Sargent, Courbet, shove over, you have been trumped.

It would appear that Lucy and I are basing our friendship on a mutual acceptance of the absurd coupled with an unwavering fascination with putting pen to paper. Well, I can think of no finer thing to base friendship on, can you? Either way, apparently I am not alone; writer Sydney Smith wrote: ‘I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.’ So there we go.

Grains of Sand

2011-07-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour. – William Blake

Sometimes, it really is better to listen to someone a little older, a little wiser, and a little more intelligent than yourself, which no doubt is why my father always refers me to the works of various philosophers, poets, world leaders and artists when offering sage advice, and no one’s words ring more true or helpful to me than those of William Blake in Auguries of Innocence.

Well, this week his words seem to have had both literal and metaphorical significance – it has, suffice to say, been a pretty wonderful week.

I am not a massive one for spontaneity – hell, I don’t even venture beyond six chocolate covered Brazil nuts at the cinema pick ‘n mix. Nonetheless, two extremely good things emerged from a little serendipity and impulsiveness this week, and simultaneously brought life the world and the universe into much needed perspective. The first was the opening of an art exhibition I was part of, and the second was a last minute weekend break in Menorca.

The art exhibition (at Maison Bertaux on Greek Street), my first in a post university capacity, was in conjunction with two other artists and a poet. Haiku, an event born of reuniting with a friend of twenty-three years, the subsequent web of friendships such a reunion inspired, and following through on an idea that germinated over early summer drinks on a quiet afternoon propping up the bar at the local cricket club. It is one thing to have the idea – we are all working as artists in various guises, but having the idea to unite and then actually doing it, took something of a leap of faith: what if no one came? What if no one liked it? It came to me with glaring and worrying force on me the day of the exhibition – ‘bugger! I am actually putting something really very personal on display for all to see here - the space in which I am eternally happy, where I can disappear and no one can find me, where the world makes sense – the space halfway between the now and somewhere else that I escape to when I draw – I am inviting other people to JUDGE it! Eek!’

The holiday, well, not a tough call to make when invited to the sunshine last minute you would think, except that I can always think of reasons why I should not be so indulgent. Thus it was fantastically out of character to disappear off at 48 hours notice. How decadent! Surely I am not allowed to be decadent!? On Monday I was expecting to spend Saturday staring at the drizzle, by Wednesday I was looking forward to 26 degree heat.

These two events I appreciate seem to have no connection whatsoever other than their chronological proximity, but they both represent places I am at my happiest, and where the world makes sense – the place where it begins and ends, my proverbial grain of sand, and in the space of a few days they seemed to collide.

My fears regarding the exhibition were swiftly put aside, as people started to arrive at 6.30 on the dot, and filed through continuously until 10. Their presence was more than enough for me, but the comments made me oscillate between squirming at the attention and soaring with happiness. One person nearly brought me to tears (I never cry – even when my university flat mates went all out with the film to drench all handkerchiefs – The Notebook, I found myself sitting on the sofa willing myself to cry and totally unable to do so). “I don’t usually understand art,” she said, “but I do understand yours, and now I want to go home and draw myself.” I was completely bowled over.

Swimming in the sea and with a little time to reflect on the previous twenty-four hours I was most definitely in a happy place. There is something about the vastness of the sea that helps focus your thoughts. I always like swimming in the sea, but I have to say that the temperature off the Spanish coast is a vast improvement on that of the British seaside. With the sand swirling around my feet, the salt washing through my hair and the view laid out before me – the long sand beach moving from the water all the way up to the enormous rocks that encircled the bay, three things occurred to me: the first that I am supremely lucky to have my own little world to escape to; the second, that thanks to a little encouragement I am privileged to be able to share it if people wish; and thirdly, that what starts with something as small as a grain of sand, can lead to so much more, and sometimes, to places you never knew you wanted or even thought you could end up.

Thank you so much to everyone who came to the opening of Haiku! Hope you enjoyed it!

Haiku Art Exhibition

2011-07-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

It is all go and really exciting at the moment. As with anything that you are looking forward to, there is the added apprehension - oh lord! What will people think!?

Even so, myself along with Chrissie Cant, Emma Charleston and poet Danny Wadeson, are eagerly anticipating the opening of our Haiku exhibition on 14th July at Maison Bertaux on Soho's Greek Street.

Home of all things bohemian, the space, I think is probably best described as intimate, and also runs as a cafe - serving the most exciting cakes this side of Leicester Square methinks. It's biggest claim to fame is probably playing host to comedian Noel Fielding's art exhibitions in recent years, but I am still pretty sure it is touch and go whether it is he or the cake that is most popular to be honest.

Anyway, as I say, it is two weeks to our collective art exhibition in Soho, which will show three artists' illustrated interpretations of Danny Wadeson's Haikus. The exhibition will show for a week, with our opening night/ private view on 14th July. Those already attending, we are really looking forward to seeing you there. If you can't make it on 14th, pop in for a coffee and cake anytime in the week following 14th and let us know what you think!

Anyone wishing to attend the private view, please contact bonnie@bonniefriend.com/chrissie876@hotmail.co.uk

La Dolce Vita

2011-06-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

I am in love; hopelessly, completely and utterly in love. I woke up last week and the scene that met me was completely altered from the one the morning before. The sky was grey and threatening and the drizzle just beginning to patter against the window, replacing the blue skies and whispy clouds that had dominated my vision a mere twenty-four hours beforehand.

Suffice to say, I have just got back from my annual mummy/daughter holiday, and this year, the destination was the sleepy little town of Manerba on the shores of Lake Garda in Italy - and I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Now, all holidays are generally considered to be good, and it must be an unwritten rule that the proverbial crash-landing back at Stanstead is accompanied by a torrential downpour, but there is something about Italy that gets into your head. I think that it is because it is not merely a holiday destination where other parts of Europe are palpably dominated by tourism. In Italy the laissez-faire lifestyle, values and landscape are indelibly part of the national identity. In turn, the moment you land there, you are absorbed into the Italian

lifestyle, and it is bliss.

Italy obviously has a historic reputation for art, culture, family, food, in fact all the things we generally consider to be the finer things in life, the Italians excel at. So coming back to a June evening in a country that appears to be under the impression that April Showers is still an appropriate way to conduct itself, did nothing to deter me from my

newfound thought process that in the UK in terms of quality of life, we have it all wrong – perhaps life really is about olive bread, leisurely dinners, sleeping in the afternoon and an intense appreciation for all things that are aesthetically pleasing over being remotely functional.

I am also positive that the climate has something to do with the reputation that the women there have for being so effortlessly attractive – after all, without sounding like a wannabe WAG, as Jilly Cooper has previously pointed out – everyone looks at lease 20-50% more attractive with a tan.

When I am on holiday I am afraid I develop all the characteristics of a sloth: I eat, sleep and bask in the sunshine – and not a lot else, but mother dearest did manage to convince me to take boat trips across Lake Garda to some of the other towns – mostly on the promise of lunch.

Everywhere you go there is something artistic to marvel it – it seems to be in the Italian nature – on a visit to Salo (where the Italians surrendered to the Americans at the end of World War II), the Riviera style harbor boasted a statue of a local man from who just so happened to invent the violin; while the little town of Sermione, was dominated by its fort, and the sort of residential architecture that you thought only existed in Disney films.

With the nearest big city to Manerba being Verona, it is no surprise that the area was the inspired location for Romeo and Juliet – it is uncompromisingly romantic.

Fortunately however, the weather does seem to have picked up here today as I type and draw in the garden with inspiration from Italy rattling about in my head, the heat and sunshine are glorious, which is just as well because otherwise it would appear I was just gloating about my holiday. In absolute truth however, I would suggest anyone looking for a

restful trip away within two hours flying distance ventures to Lake Garda – it is, in a word, ideal.

The Icing on the Cake

2011-05-29T11:28:00.000-07:00

It seems that 2011 is the year of celebrations in my world. The weddings are beginning to happen, birthdays are being celebrated with new vigor as ‘25’ seems to hold greater significance than ‘24’, and there is even the odd baby to celebrate.

I have been lucky enough in recent times to actually get involved with some of these occasions a little more, by designing invitations, and stationary paraphernalia - which appeals to my extremely girly side by allowing me to get excited for them a long time in advance – it enhances the celebratory atmosphere I find.

So, clearly showing some sort of hippy inclination, my friends end up suffering for their relationships with me in the form of some hand-made element when it comes to gifts. In this particular instance the celebration concerned was not just a birthday, but a triumphant festivity at the end of my dear friend’s degree – and what better way to celebrate than cake – preferably of the sick making, uncompromisingly decadent variety. With this vein of thought, I decided that I would combine a desire to draw and paint, with the desire to consume high calorie baked goods.Of course, along with the celebrations comes the worry about what to give in terms of presents. In the case of my most recent friend’s birthday, I was particularly stuck. She doesn’t expect anything really, and I have known her for so long that I have given her enough Accessorize jewelry, trinkets, and other items of limited entertainment value that I am increasingly at a loss. What, exactly is the ideal present for a glamorous woman in her mid-twenties? Presumably, it is the question that every similarly aged boyfriend is concerned with, and is increasingly inclined to throw his wallet at.

Well, I am not a boyfriend, and I am not inclined

to throw my wallet at the situation as it is not likely to produce very much of significance.

The result of some contemplation, and terror that it would not actually work, was a white chocolate and orange cake with royal icing, on which I painted an iris with the help of a wide collection of food colorings and a trusty (although obviously sterilized) paint brush.

Terrified of disaster, and with visions of turning up and having to explain that I did have a brilliant idea for her present, but as it went belly-up I was now there empty handed, I was rather pleased with the result, and it seemed to be well received. In any case, here are a couple of pictures for you to judge for yourself. From my perspective – I have a whole new type of canvas to work on, which is always thrilling, and usually better received than drawing on the walls, or my jeans, which has also been known to happen when I run out of paper.

At any rate, I hope Sumaya had a particularly wonderful belated birthday celebration, and in case it was not perfectly clear, that she knows how proud we all are of her in terms of her degree!

The Magic Dragon

2011-05-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

I have long asserted that the reference to your childhood as ‘the best years of your life’ is made by people with a particularly thick pair of rose tinted glasses. An awful lot of forgetting goes on as to the number of restrictions and frustrations laid on by 90% of your activities being out of your control, and dictated by the higher powers that be – namely mum, dad, teachers, generally people taller and with a greater ability than yourself to project authority into their voices.

Accordingly, I am finding that the only way to prevent such an inappropriately glossy opinion of your early years and frankly, self-defeating attitude towards what are presumably by default ‘the worst years of your life’, is to do all the things that you wanted to do as a child without the parental restrictions.

Personally, I find that the most satisfying thing about growing up (ok, probably not the most satisfying, but within the context of flouting hard and fast childhood rules) is that I can eat sweets whenever I want. I know I am not alone in this because when a friend was issued with branded Love Hearts (how long is it since you last had those?!) at her company’s posh new offices, she promptly gave herself a sugar high by eating the lot at 10.30 in the morning and then taking them in return for administrative favors off other, more … adult? … members of staff.

Well, across the recent spate of bank holidays I found that apparently all those places you visited as a child – family outings intended to be enormous amounts of fun but plagued by the inordinate amount of luggage that goes with young families and the inevitable tantrums when little feet get tired, are a lot more fun when you grow up. Primary amongst such destinations are theme parks, trips to the sea-side with buckets and spades and the zoo.

Well, as I am not that close to the beach (although have you noticed how much better ice cream tastes now that you are tall enough and have the appropriate amount of dexterity to avoid consuming your annual ration of sand into the equation?), and I am not sufficient fun that I fully understand the joys of queuing up to be doused with cold water whilst simultaneously being scared out of my wits as I sit in a giant log. So, I opted for a trip to the zoo - encouraged by a recent project designing safari cards with images of African animals for Luponde tea.

So, along with my friend Chrissy, we set out in blazing sunshine to London Zoo, where the hour-long queue (note to self, in future, book tickets if heading to popular attractions in Easter holidays) sped past thanks to scintillating conversation and glorious sunshine, and we visited all the animals in a suitably erratic order, dictated more by serendipity than intent. We were amused by the sloth hanging upside down in a tree fast asleep and in a pose most women take years of practice and large sums of money on yoga lessons to achieve. We spent a good half an hour trying to get a picture of the eagles; pontificated over nature’s reasoning for giving the giraffe quite such a long neck rather than making trees a little shorter; and reasoned that the justification for the zebra looking so miserable standing next to his tall friends was probably because it had recently dawned on him that despite his exotic natural habitat, he is really just a donkey with stripes.

Of course it did occur to me that we would have been just as well sitting in the garden at home rather than paying £20 each to go to the zoo because as a bird fanatic, Chrissy’s greatest joy was at the chance to photograph the unusually brave Sparrows that crossed her path – well, if you were a Sparrow with the ability to openly flaunt your freedom in front of a lioness and document it in film, frankly, you would have been unusually brave too.

All of this said, one thing I will concede is a little bit sad about not, in the immortal words of Christopher Robin, staying “six for ever and ever” is a certain loss of faith in dreams and fairytales. A colleague at work reported that on watching the royal wedding the other week with her son, he asked with all the seriousness of a four year old looking for cast iron proof that this prince on the television was a real one: “Does he have a castle and a dragon?”

Well, Arthur, I totally see where you are coming from, possessing a dragon would certainly up Prince William’s status from mere figurehead to bona fide prince of the realm. So for this reason, I personally was particularly thrilled by the dinosaur proportions and otherworldly movements of the Komodo Dragon at ZSL, and while for health and safety reasons he does not reside at Buckingham Palace or amongst the aircraft in Anglesea (the accommodation was simply not up to scratch), we can all rest a little easier in the knowledge that you can grow up in a world where there are real princes and princesses, as evident by the existence of real dragons.

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

2011-05-05T15:42:00.001-07:00

I found myself in the most enormous amount of trouble the last time I wrote anything on my blog because I mentioned that my Dad gave me a card of my own design for my birthday, and that made him seem unthinking. Well, the fortunate thing about airing your opinions in public is that you can explain yourself there as well.

You see, I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time studying pictures of elephants: everyone has a favourite book growing up, and mine was The Elephant’s Child by Rudyard Kipling.

About a year ago my Dad was looking for a copy of the book to give to a friend’s little boy, Alex. He couldn’t fine one with drawings he liked, so he suggested I have a go, since I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time pouring over a sketchbook anyway.

Well, the result was about six months of obsessive elephant drawing, which seems to have since formed the basis for the vast majority of the things I illustrate, not to mention a recent trip to the zoo, a set of drawings for Luponde on the Burlington Arcade and a desperate desire to go on safari, only marginally appeased by a recent trip to the zoo.

Anyway, the offending card was given because it depicted one of the animal drawings and was touchingly accompanied by a bracelet decorated with enamel elephants, so far from the way it appeared, it was probably my most heartfelt birthday present, all stemming from that present for Alex. I do hope he likes it.

Anyway, since on this occasion words seem to have failed me, and I understand a picture is worth a thousand of them, I thought I would share my version of The Elephant’s Child with you!

House of Cards

2011-03-06T10:38:00.000-08:00

What is it exactly that makes the perfect gift or the perfect birthday? It seems that the end of one year and the start of the next is fraught with such a question. We have twelve months each year to prepare for Christmas, Valentines Day, and in my case – birthdays – most of which seem to fall between November and February in my household – all that time to think about the perfect gifts for the people we love, and still for most there appears to be a mad rush simply to spend money when it finally comes to the crunch.

In terms of my own birthday, I usually hate it. I despise organising anything, because I don’t like uncertainty – where to go? What to do? How much will it cost? What day is convenient for people? Will anyone come? – Horror of horrors, the latent despair of someone who was shy and retiring at school and expended a great deal of energy attempting to be invisible.

Well, having just celebrated my 25th birthday, it would seem I have found the solution to the ideal day. In short it involves letting the chips fall where they will, having one or two particularly good friends, and ultimately letting someone else do all the work.

This year, I shared a birthday with my dear friend Callum, and his wonderful girlfriend cooked an intimate dinner for fifteen. It was exactly what I wanted in terms of celebrations – old friends and cake.

But then it came to the presents, and being the lucky girl I am, I was spoiled rotten – so where to begin on the perfect one?

About two weeks before the offending birthday – a somewhat frightening event that means I now have to move up a box when filling in forms at the bank, doctor or any other irritatingly well informed institution, so I am no longer 18-25, but 25-30 – ugh – anyway, I received an unexpected letter. I always enjoy post – it seems so indulgent and thoughtful where email has stripped communication of all its romance – you are hardly going to reminisce over your Hotmail account in fifty years time are you?

The letter was a premature birthday card from Australia. Opening a card always has an element of ceremony as good as getting a present – something hidden inside that has been poured from someone’s thoughts – just for you. Ok, so I am sure I am over sentimentalising the process, but hey, it’s my party, I will sentimentalise if I want to. In any sense, it really made my birthday to think someone had taken the time, and remembered me – the effect being that one of those smiles stretched across my face so naturally that I didn’t know it was there until my cheeks started to ache.

Being as spoiled as I am, I had several unexpected cards. One from an old friend at university (who forewarned that it was coming because he needed to ask for my address), which bore all the characteristic elements of a boy with its succinct message; another from Australia – impeccably timed, and thus indicative of its sender, and the family ones accompanied with presents. It is funny how much a card says about the person who gives it as well as the one receiving it – my father gave me one that I had designed myself – which made me laugh – at least they are being used!

The thing about cards is that they really show that someone has thought about you (well, if used properly – yes, there is a right way and a wrong way to use these things – with real sentiment from one individual to another is extremely nice – en masse from a major corporation is a pain in the neck and potentially damaging to the environment). They are inexpensive, indulgent and utterly personal, well, unless you are Hallmark, in which case you have managed to turn something infinitely thoughtful into a £3.50 nightmare choice between a talking gorilla and a Care Bear, where the pre-printed, ‘personal’ message is unique to about 250,000 people worldwide.

I am terrible at remembering birthdays (I hate to admit it, but thank goodness for Facebook), anniversaries, special occasions generally. As evident by my dramatic last minute scurrying around in December, I am hard pushed to realise that Christmas is even coming up – it never ceases to be a surprise – you would think I would learn really. I am more inclined to give someone a card because it is Tuesday than because they are celebrating a milestone (I despise Tuesdays; by dint of their position in the week it is the most horrid day in seven – there is no excuse for it – you can’t complain because it isn’t as early as Monday, but it isn’t time for a mid-week treat and thus the weekend is still impossibly out of site). Do you think it would be appropriate to have cards for the sole purpose of Tuesdays?

Perhaps I am just not that difficult to please when it comes to presents. It is a possibility – I have been told before that I am a cheap date – on account of an aversion to alcohol (of course they were unaware at the time that I am more partial to it if the words ‘pink’ and ‘champagne’ feature in the title). Perhaps I am a cheap birthday girl as well? Easily pleased? Oh well, little things please little minds, and the bigger fools can just look on.

Caught in the safety net

2010-12-12T07:43:00.000-08:00

Some years ago I learned that my maternal instincts are well below par when I was walking around the garden entertaining a friend’s five year old. We were having a perfectly lovely time discussing the pros and cons of blue vs pink, when I was thrust into sheer panic as she tripped and fell over onto the grass. Struck with guilt at my inability to catch her I was preparing for the onslaught of tears that were soon to arrive; waiting for the trembling bottom lip to give way to wails of anguish, lost trust that I had failed to keep her from harm, and mortification at her potentially greviously grazed palms … and then my inner hygiene freak took over – one look at her hands covered in mud and an involuntary ‘eww yuk!’ escaped before I could bite my tongue.

The little girl looked at me for a moment and then at her grubby fingers and broke into an enormous smile – ‘YUK!’ She mimicked, and gurgled with laughter. She clapped her hands together to dust off the dirt and continued tottering around amongst the daisies. Relief washed over me, but to this day I feel guilty that I didn’t catch her before she fell.

Safety nets are a part of our way of life, and with good reason. We are fortunate enough to live in a country where there are benefits, National Health care, Legal Aid – all the insurances that mean we sleep easily at night and make us lucky to live when we do. But then there are the safety nets that we buy into because we are so used to being wrapped in cotton wool, that we don’t even realize when they are to our own detriment.

When I was little I used to save all the chocolate coins I was given at Christmas rather than eating them straight away. I would save them, and grin smugly when my brother had eaten all of his and I still had mine to look forward to.

I missed a trick however. I would save them for so long, that eventually they would go off. I am not sure anyone else in the world has ever kept chocolate for so long that it goes off – except perhaps those cherry liqueur ones that come in red wrappers that no one in history has ever enjoyed. In fact, I am sure most people didn’t even realize chocolate could go off – well, I can confirm, it can, I and it does not taste good.

It seemed that my uber sensibility had backfired, and I was left with nothing. Of course, it didn’t really matter because fortunately for me, chocolate is in plentiful supply. If only I had realized it so that I could simply have enjoyed my chocolate coins rather than having to create a reserve – just in case all the chocolate coins that were ever made ran out, and the only ones left were mine.

If you think about all the insurance policies that we take out, how many of them are really necessary? And how many of them are really just there to give us a false sense of security?

Have you ever insured your mobile phone? One of my friends used to lose on average around sixteen phones a year through dedication to a messy student lifestyle and a holiday job on the high seas. Insurance looked like an obvious option for him, except for the fact that there are almost no occasions when you can actually claim a new phone on your insurance without an Excess large enough to pay the entire phone bill of Kuwait for a month. ‘Your phone isn’t covered outside the home,’ they say – really useful that, with a mobile! And yet, he was twenty-three before he cancelled the policy and simply bought a new phone when he lost it.

Another friend’s father, a man adept at mathematical calculations, never bothered with house insurance because he worked out that with the amount he would spend on it per year vs. the likelihood of the house burning down and all his worldly possessions perishing, it would actually cost him less to rebuild the whole thing without insurance. And yet common sense would say he was mad.

Last weekend my godfather died. I was not close to him, but like anyone you have grown up around he was part of the fabric from which my world has always been constructed, and death being the funny thing that it is echoes around every house it touches.

It was a classic case of the little boy who cried wolf: a bachelor in his sixties he had too much time to think about his own feelings and was the archetypal hypochondriac. So when he complained about stomach problems everyone thought it was like the time he insisted on going to A&E because he had a splinter … an incident made all the more unfortunate because of his status as a professional carpenter whose skill saw some of the most innovative set creations in the West End and Glyndebourne.

Three months later advanced stomach cancer topped off with a bout of Meningitis have seen him off into the next world, prompting the posthumous assumption that he is now looking down on us all quoting Spike Milligan’s: “I told you I was sick.”

A man proud of his collection of Jaguar cars, used mostly for jaunts in the South of France, one of my principal memories of him is from my confirmation, aged eleven, when he left half way through the afternoon because the weather had turned typically threatening, and he was frightened his car was going to get wet.

While much loved, Richard was a man so worried about life’s minutiae that it dominated his existence, and in the end I am not sure it did him much good.

Last weekend was also my brother’s 22nd birthday, and my Dad and Nan and I were all trooping over to my mother’s house for a celebratory Sunday lunch. When I got back from my morning run the landing was filled with a wonderful and familiar smell of jasmine and mint Jo Malone perfume –it always makes me so happy to know that my Nan likes and uses the present that I bought her last Christmas.

“You smell nice Nanny!” I trilled as I ran up the stairs.

“I am wearing your perfume,” she confirmed ,”but I have nearly run out!” She continued, sounding a little troubled.

“Good,” I said, “I am pleased you are using it! You should use it every day.”

“But then I would run out of it, that’s a waste!” She said, a horrified expression etching itself across her face.

My Nan is the queen of frugality, and I love her for it. In fact, much of her frugality is engrained in me – the chocolate incident being a classic example of learning by osmosis – I spent a lot of time with my Nan growing up. There is a lot about frugality that is wonderful, but if something as simple as a beautiful smell can make the day seem a thousand times better – wouldn’t it be better to risk running out of it, and really enjoy it while it lasts?

About a year ago I was in the Hawley arms with my two best girls. All of a sudden the world started to spin and before I knew it everything had gone black. To this day I am fairly sure I am the only person to pass out in that pub completely sober. I don’t remember what happened; I couldn’t hear anything; I couldn’t see anything. I do remember being frightened that I was going to fall and there was nothing to catch me.

When I came round some strange Italian man was carrying me while my two girls hugged me, called my name, and waved mini eggs under my nose. When I was fully in command of my senses again, they took me home, tucked me up in bed, and stayed the night with me to make sure I was safe, and trivial as it all seemed, it was an enormous relief.

So here’s what I figure: we all need some safety nets, just in case. But there are some things that we simply can’t insure against, and neither should we. Sometimes, even in the smallest measure, we need to throw caution to the wind.

I am probably always going to be the girl who goes to bed by ten because I need to get up early the next day; I will probably always be the girl who thinks the best way to avoid a diet in the summer is not to binge in the winter; and it is unlikely I will ever really veer from my grandmother’s motto of ‘when you earn a pound, spend 99p and save one penny’.

But once in a while I will fake tan my legs just for me, I will wear my favorite perfume even if I am only going to the supermarket, and this Christmas I might even eat all my chocolate coins. Because we can’t always have a safety net, and we can’t help but fall over every now and again, but if we are very good and have a little luck, there will always be those special people to help pick us up again and stay with us to make sure we are safe.

Television tantrums and Tea Cup Terrors

2010-11-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

“I know I shouldn’t say this, but I haven’t had a boyfriend for about a year now, and I actually have things around the house that are waiting for a boy to fix them.” A friend told me the other day – practically blaspheming by 21st Century equality standards.

“Such as what?” I asked curiously, imagining boxes the size of elephants waiting for a modern day Hercules to relegate them into storage.

“The television is broken, and there is a spider trapped under a cup in my living room that I can’t bear to move.” She said sheepishly, but without hesitation.
It was a strange revelation from a girl successfully carving out a career for herself. Independent, attractive, intelligent, it is the sort of thing we are taught is tantamount to sacrilege in a world where women’s lib has a vehemently guarded history, and Samantha Jones is the libidinous idol of a generation.

“The thing is, I grew up in a household where male and female roles were clearly defined. My mum had her role, and my dad had his, and they didn’t really cross over, and I liked that.”

On mentioning the television predicament to a male friend, he laughed. Not because she needed help with the problematic electrical appliance, but at the assumption that a boy would know what to do about it: “The sole extent of my technique for fixing televisions involves hitting it and shouting at it, and then staring at it expectantly,” he pointed out. Given that my only recollection of my father dealing with creepy crawlies conjures an image of him shrieking and jumping on top of the toilet seat when he thought he saw a snake in the bathroom, I am not all that reassured that a boy would be the answer to either of her practical solutions.

I am one hundred percent confident that my friend is actually more capable of fixing the television than any of her male counterparts, because the difference between men and women when it comes to fixing things is the same as asking for directions – men won’t, women will. Asking for help isn’t a weakness, it is finding a solution suitable to your skill set. My ex-boyfriend used to be mortified that I could not change a tyre myself, there was no way he was going to accept the fact that I could change it, I just didn’t get down on my hands and knees with a jack to do it – I called the nice man at RAC: efficient, effective, usually over within forty-five minutes, and less likely to end up with a wheel flying across the motorway.

Similarly the same boyfriend was furious when another girl and I beat him and a particularly macho friend at bowling: he said we cheated because we had the bumpers up and used them as part of a winning strategy while they did it properly without bumpers. I maintain this is not cheating: we knew we would lose without them because we are no good at bowling. They had the same option as we did, and were too proud to admit that they sucked too. We won.

So if it isn’t because men are better at fixing the television and removing unwanted houseguests, then why would my friend be keeping things for the day a potential boyfriend could come and fix them? Well, of course she isn’t really talking about the spider, or the broken television, but about the desire to have someone to make her feel cared for and safe. Something, which for many women in the 21st Century feels like a guilty secret worse than a penchant for takeaways and Strictly Come Dancing on a Saturday night.

Everywhere we go we are surrounded by a variety of ‘in your face’ female role models – from the sexually liberated image of pop stars and weeny-teen celeb idols, to the stiletto armed city slicker sirens that clippetty-clip their way down London Wall, and right up to the women who aggressively seek to prove that they can have it all: e.g: Angelina Jolie in her endless quest to be sex symbol, mother, successful businesswoman, creditable actress, man eater, and saviour of the world.

And yet, there almost seems to be something self defeatist in it all. Just who exactly are we trying to prove all of this to? Not men, that’s for sure: They have been batted round the head with the feminist baton long enough now to know not to argue with it, and if they are stupid enough to say something antagonistic, you can bet your bottom dollar it is purely for the satisfaction of winding you up.

I am not even sure these images do anything to enhance female emancipation. Sexual liberation is one thing, but what happens when it back fires to make girls feel they are obliged to be sexually liberated? What happens to the girl who wants to grow up to be a great mum but feels that isn’t enough? She has to prove she can take over the world first?

Self sufficiency is of course the price of independence, and I think there must be few who would have it any other way, but it raises some interesting points as to what exactly is modern day feminism? And should a girl feel guilty about wanting someone to help remove the spider from under the tea cup in her living room even though she is more than capable of busting balls in the boardroom?

The 21st Century girl is caught in a conundrum. We have been brought up by strong women who both have, and have protected their right to vote, work, dress, and have sex with the same liberty as their male counterparts. That is our privilege – we have no boundaries, the world is our oyster.

However, while our mothers were burning their bras, and home economics was replaced with business studies, we still spent our down-time watching Cinderella stories. The result? Somewhere in the back of our minds – if not for all of us, then for a fair few, we are still waiting for a knight in shining armour, complete with white horse to sweep us off our feet, and tell us it isn’t always about sisters doing it for themselves – not because we need them to, but because we WANT them to.

That being said, it has occurred to me that perhaps I am completely wrong about all of this. Maybe I have been far too focused on this being a girl thing. As the evenings draw in, and the probability of Love Actually appearing on our television screens become more likely it makes me think, that despite living in one of the most hostile cities on the planet, everyone would like some respite from the daily onslaught – men included.

When one male friend’s girlfriend went away on holiday for a couple of weeks, he was lost and in constant need of having his friends around. “It is the little things,” he admitted: “When she isn’t here it is as though I don’t know what time to go to bed, there isn’t any point in cooking dinner, because it is just me. There is no structure because there isn’t someone to share it with.”

Another friend, recently enlisted the help of one of the most stylish girls I know to take him shopping for an update on his winter wardrobe. Every item chosen sought her approval. In fact, it isn’t just clothing he seeks her advice on – from the girls he dates, to the flat he lives in, her advice will be required – whether taken or ignored.

Both of these guys are perfectly capable of making their own choices and getting themselves dressed in the morning – they don’t need someone to help with these things, but it is nice to have the option.

Of late I have come to realise that some of the strongest women I know are the ones who admit that actually they really do want someone in their lives to share the every-day humdrum – what a way to leave yourself exposed! The thing is that we live in a world, and a city, where despite all the help at our disposal we feel as though we should be masters of the universe, the kitchen, the bedroom and the boardroom and never have to ask for it. As girls, it is something that has been under a spotlight since Simone de Beauvoir first uttered the phrase: The Second Sex.

So it is no surprise that my friend felt guilty for admitting that she wanted a guy around to help with some of the little things she was nervous about at home. It is no surprise that she would rather have someone she felt close to, to fix it rather than having to admit to a stranger that there is something she feels ill equipped to deal with. The funny thing is that despite all of our bravado, maybe, just maybe the real surprise is that it isn’t just her – but that sometimes everyone needs someone to hold their hand and shout at the television until it works again.

Superstitious Minds

2010-10-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

You know as soon as anyone engages you in a discussion about religion that it is likely to be a bone of contention. Belief systems are so personal and as most people will hold their ideas, spiritual or atheist pretty dear, any debate is likely to be fraught with emotion.

So it was never going to be a good thing when my boss asked me: ‘Do you believe in God?’

As if the topic was not potent enough, my response of “I don’t know,” proved suitably antagonistic to spark such a debate. Of course, there is so much concerning religion, that the whole thing was null and void and with no real conclusion except that he remained convinced of his theories, and I of mine. Not least of all was the problem of a classification for religion. My view is that religion is separate from spirituality – one being a tangible, organised concept, and the other being the belief itself.

But belief systems go well beyond the pale of religion, and many are not nearly so well defined. Growing up we are taught to put our milk teeth under the pillow when they fall out so that the Tooth Fairy can come and exchange them for cash; Father Christmas will come down the chimney, or failing that will be available for a small fee at Harrods; and if you reach the end of the rainbow you will find a pot of gold. All areas of belief that we tend to relegate to childhood.

But what about the things that fall half way between belief and logical thought. The things we adhere to despite knowing that they bear little relevance to our day to day lives: why, with all the logic we possess are we still superstitious?

I don’t know if anyone else remembers the film Fairy Tale? It was made in 1997 about the 1917 phenomena, The Cottingly Fairies, where two little girls in Yorkshire took photographs of fairies, sparking national interest and the attention of physician and Sherlock Holmes author, Arthur Conan Doyle.

Along with all the people who just wanted to see the beautiful pictures, and willed the belief that there were fairies at the bottom of the garden, were those who wanted to disprove the claims of two little girls.

It has always seemed to me that this was very sad. I am not saying that I go around chanting ‘I believe in fairies’, but it seems so utterly pointless to feel the need to prove that no one should. I mean, it is the crux of everything that we believe, scientific or not, that invariably, we have faith in things that we can’t see. If we are talking about religion, then doubting Thomas was told in no uncertain terms when a reincarnated Christ appeared before him, that he could believe in him because he had seen him, but for generations, people would would willingly believe without proof.

On another level, we know that oxygen is fundamental to our survival, but it isn’t something that most of us see working on a daily basis – we just sort of have faith, both in the fact that we are still here, and in what other, better informed people tell us. ‘But we know that to be true because scientists told us’ – you will say. Yes, but scientists also said the earth was flat, and in any case – in what other context would you take human dictate as gospel truth?

That aside, I was at a wedding the other weekend, and mid evening was shoved all but kicking and screaming onto the dance floor with the other three single girls present, to catch the bouquet. Of course, one or two in our hopeful little group, momentarily acting as though women’s lib had never happened, were very much coupled up and hoping to cross the final threshold into married life as soon as possible.

If only they could have some kind of a sign that it would happen soon! The blushing bride took her position to throw the bouquet, and almost like a slow motion, Ben Stiller action scene, it flew through the air, over the heads of all the determined bride-zillas and landed happily in the hands of a girl so thrilled at the prospect of her impending nuptials, that she skipped around the room cooing: “I’m getting married! I’m getting married!”

Of course, any disappointment for the remaining singletons was amplified despite their best efforts at happy clapping the girl’s good fortune, because the lucky lady was a mere nine years old. A swift mathematical calculation ruled that according to fate and superstition, the rest of us would not be getting married for at least another seven years, and then only if the nine year old decided to run off to Gretna Green with a pimply adolescent.

As I returned from the dance floor, thrilled not to have been smacked in the face by the flying flowers I came across a friend in fits of giggles at the entire spectacle. “Bonnie, you should have seen all their faces! Those girls with boyfriends looked furious!” He chuckled.

This made me think – clearly, common sense tells us that there is nothing in this superstition – catching a bunch of flowers can have no bearing whatsoever on the future of your relationships, except perhaps to make any potential grooms sweat a little under the collar. The tradition actually stems from the idea that certain flowers in the bouquet were good luck, and so the bride would give it to a particular friend after her wedding, to pass the good luck on. Now brides have so many friends that they simply can’t choose, and besides, this way you get some good old fashioned indignity into the bargain. Once upon a time it was the garter that was thrown, but people tried to take it before the bride had removed it, so that became less common and acceptable.

So we all know that this is a tradition based on superstition and not a lot else, but still, however one mocks it, however much my friend laughed – it clearly did mean something to some of the girls there. Whether as a sign to their partners that it was something they wanted, whether just to allow them to dream, or simply for the fun of it, it meant something...

Superstition is defined as being: “a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge.” Frankly, I think that could encompass a whole lot of things beyond everyday eccentricities and trivia. To an extent, religion can fall into this category as well. And yet, despite all the scientific knowledge that we have, it is often these inexplicable things that help us get through the day – they are often the things that we cling to: throwing salt over your shoulder when you spill the shaker; walking around a ladder in the street; or avoiding the cracks in the pavement – all in aid of a good day – as if it makes a difference. Common sense tells us not to be so silly, but that little voice inside our head nags: but what if it does?

At dinner with a friend of mine the other day, I was talking about throwing the bouquet, and wondering aloud why it mattered: “the thing is Bonnie, we are all different, this is what we need to remember. But we are all part of one whole.” And he is absolutely right. In 21st Century Britain, we hear an awful lot about how we are a multi cultural nation – as if it is something new – nobody seems to count the fact that from Pagans to Vikings, Normans to Romans, in the UK our culture is a refined mongrel of cultures, all coming together to produce a historically multicultural society. The funny thing about superstition, is that even if you are practical enough to be unfazed by a black cat crossing your path, the superstition can still mean something because of the origins of where it came from.

Superstition is a depiction of our eclectic historical past, and funnily enough both the way we react to them, and where they come from illustrates my friend’s point rather well – we are all different, but we are part of a whole.
For example, the superstition that walking under a ladder is bad luck stems from the idea that because between the ladder, the wall and the floor there are three points thus symbolising the trinity, by walking through it you are breaking the Trinity, which by Christian doctrine would put you in league with the Devil. But the idea that ‘3’ is a sacred number stems from way before Christianity – in the UK the Celts saw the number three as powerful which predates Christianity by several centuries. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Wicca also hold the number three as important or have their own variations of the Trinity. On another note, ‘three’ is a leitmotif in literature: Macbeth has three witches, there are Three Blind Mice, Three Musketeers, three ugly sisters and Three Little Pigs. So in one little superstition we can take some part historically and presently in a culture that is bound together, and that is certainly worth believing in.

On the way home the other day I saw a black cat walking towards me, and two magpies as I got off the train. I trod on every single crack in the pavement and found a penny and picked it up before I walked through the door. The probability is that the black cat was curious, magpies are prevalent in London, the pavement is cracked because of local authority spending cuts and that being seriously scatterbrained I was actually reclaiming my own change from when it fell out of my pocket as I left for work that morning. Either way, as far as superstition goes, I am not sure what to expect next week and don’t know whether I am coming or going on the luck front.

There are an awful lot of superstitions, some making more sense than others, but ultimately I am coming to the conclusion that though they do not really matter in the realm of science, maybe the reason that they matter is because they are a part of who we are.

Is It 'cos I'm Cool?

2010-09-26T05:29:00.000-07:00

Whoever said that your school years are the best of your life was clearly one of the popular kids. I by contrast was not popular or ‘cool’ at school. I wasn’t even really interesting enough to be a geek. I think I would have been described as something of an in-betweener, before that in itself became a peculiarly eccentric, British form of anti-cool. Fortunately, I am now well out of school, and I like to think, the categorisations that go with it.

As far as I was aware the only people who thought ‘cool’ still counted as an aspiration in life were teenagers inflicting a social hierarchy on one another and the more precocious members of the Geldof clan. On that basis, it stands to reason that when a friend recently moaned: “Sometimes I wish I was just a bit more 'cool' – you know?” I was overcome by an almost winded feeling that was the direct result of having been flung back ten years to the realm of people who cared.

Of course I know what she means, she is referring to being someone who appears to effortlessly command a room; seems eternally comfortable in their own skin; and perhaps benefits from that languid body language that simultaneously oozes nonchalance but remains compelling to everyone orbiting around them. In short, someone less likely to turn purple with embarrassment and succumb to verbal diarrhoea when inadvertently acquiring any sort of limelight.

Every day, no matter what the moan of the moment may be, I have taken great pleasure in the fact that it is another day further away from school. Not that my school experience was particularly awful, in the grand scheme of things, it was ideal. But still, I am increasingly grateful for the time and distance that allows me to see it through rose tinted glasses; because away from the confines of adolescence, you are free to be who you are and meet other people without your own pre-conceived categorisation.

Apparently I am wrong. Apparently, and to my own crushing disappointment, ‘cool’ is still a factor even once we have left school. But then thinking about it, what exactly is ‘cool’? It is in this contemplation that I have found the order of the universe to be reinstated, and some sense of calm has returned, because with the exception of some faintly irritating fashion trends, and transparent ad campaigns, beyond the classroom, ‘cool’ is actually whatever you want it to be.

When you are at school the prime requirement for anything to be dubbed ‘cool’ is that it must be popular. So amongst teenage girls in the 90s that would include fake tan, bare midriffs, Miss Sixty, highlights and Robbie Williams. Fast forward to post university noughties, and the notion of ‘cool’ repels anything that is too openly mainstream (but in its infinite difference of course remains entirely on trend – think tattoos, heroin chic, brogues and ‘vintage’ shopping, which for anyone who hasn’t spotted it, is really a more expensive way of saying ‘second hand’, nothing wrong with that, just so that we are all on the same page.)

When you live in a world where Paris Hilton has the patent on the phrase ‘That’s hot!’ by which she means ‘cool’ – duh, your suspicions should be aroused as to the validity of this statement. That and the fact that ‘Cool Britannia’ was a nineties phenomenon that left the building with Tony Blair and failed to be resuscitated in the Spice Girl’s come back tour. The discovery that ‘cool’ is totally subjective is one of those realisations like discovering that your parents do not possess all the knowledge of the oracle. It is simultaneously terrifying, and liberating – to know that it is actually all a series of grey areas, and very little of the hard and fast categorisation you were taught between the ages of five and eighteen exists.

Now, the things people around me refer to as ‘cool’ are ‘interesting’, and often, frankly a little geeky – books, ideas, art, design, jobs, holidays. The people who are ‘cool’ are the ones who invest their time in thoughts and actions rather than reciting Kate Moss’s latest dictate on style.

If we are going to put labels on things then the people who I think are cool these days are the ones who are blissfully unaware of their own intrigue. One of the ‘coolest’ people I know is such because she is interesting to talk to and brimming with ideas and knowledge. However, she considers herself something of a social menace – revealing her knickers to Ben Barns (the pretty one who tried to play the protagonist in the film adaptation of Dorian Gray – definitely not cool), whilst helping out on a photo shoot; being shunned by her mother for an entire day because a stranger told her that her chakras were repellent; and being chased by wild dogs on a yoga retreat, all in the space of two weeks.

When I was at Art College, there were plenty of people who conformed to the art student stereotype – for visual reference feel free to visit any part of East London where everybody is unique and different. However, the most interesting people I knew there and since, are not only the most talented, but the ones who don’t wear it on their sleeve - from Jonny, who never failed to amaze me with his mind blowing insights into the seemingly mundane, and his painstaking attention to detail to Jessica and her cutting intellect under whose gaze the coolest of cool withers and dies a shameful, superficial death.

I think the biggest shock I had when my friend expressed what I had otherwise considered to be an adolescent desire to be ‘cool’ was that it seems like something unnecessary to worry about, and that is coming from somebody who worries about everything. I worry on Sunday that it’s nearly Monday, I worry on Friday because I have been too lazy to organise things for Saturday, and I worry on Tuesday just for the hell of it. I worry about pleasing people, offending people, working hard enough, exercising enough, whether so and so is happy and whojamacallit isn’t, but one thing I take enormous pleasure in remembering is no longer a factor in my life is whether or not anything I do would be considered ‘cool’.

Perhaps part of not worrying about whether you are ‘cool’ comes from realising that the people who matter don’t mind and the people who mind don’t matter. However self contained one might purport to be there is always going to be that niggling fifteen year old somewhere in the recesses of your psyche that is worried you don’t fit in, but ultimately I figure if you are the best person you can be, the rest of it is out of your control.

A couple of years ago a family friend was given two years to live. A few weeks later, the prognosis was reduced dramatically to a matter of months. When she found out that there was nothing to be done she accepted it with infinite grace and sent an email to all her loved ones saying:

“I have been to see the doctors and it isn’t good. But I wanted to tell you all how much I love you and remind you to "dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt; sing like nobody's listening" and remember, don’t sweat the small stuff. Love Diane x”

And you know what, she was completely right. Being at school is often described as being the best years of your life, most probably because despite what you think, most people don’t have anything more than being ‘cool’ to worry about. The beauty of leaving school is that ‘cool’ becomes the small stuff, but so many more interesting things take its place as important, and that in itself is pretty cool.

Day Dream Believer

2010-09-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

I know a girl whose dreams are about to come true. Juliet is about to get married to the perfect man. They offer one another everything each has ever wanted, and her parting words as she was ushered into a taxi – all sequins and champagne colours to compliment the rosy glow of a blushing bride, and one too many glasses of wine on her hen do last weekend, said it all: “I am just soooooooooooooooooooo happy!”

As is the case with general musings, the concept of dreams came up again when I was at another party. In a moment of verbal diarrhoea I opened up more than necessary and revealed to a complete stranger that I am a total dreamer who not only spends most of her time on another planet, but is actually much happier that way. Contrary to the expected reaction – that is to say a swiftly thought up excuse and bolting to the nearest source of salvation, he considered my confession and looking rather sad, sighed and said: “You must never lose that; it is good to be a dreamer.”

It struck me, why would I lose that ability? Why would anyone stop being able to dream? And more than that, why does it matter?

I suppose an active imagination is something we generally consider to be a childhood privilege – it isn’t that often that you see city workers exiting their towering glass offices duelling with make believe swords fashioned of Bic biros; or members of parliament running around the House of Commons playing cowboys and Indians. But whether you call it dreaming, day dreaming, wishing, ambition, make believe, fantasy or escapism - if you look around, as a society we are completely obsessed with dreaming.

For every time you were told off for it at school instead of concentrating on your simultaneous equations, there was someone else telling you to go with it. There are entire industries built on people’s dreams and imaginations – books, games, art, fashion, branding, movies: for £5.99 at Blockbuster you can purchase your very own pre-fabricated daydream – signed, sealed, delivered in cellophane; you just have to press play. However tentatively, so much of our daily existence falls under the blanket of dreams.

In fact, our society relies on dreams financially as well as creatively – it is no mistake that you think your world would be complete with that new pair of shoes – you can just imagine the scenarios in which you would wear them, and the ways in which life would be different with their presence. It is the crux of popular television – from dramas where you can project your mind into a different world for a while to escape this one, to the X-Factor, where a few lucky individuals get the glossy treatment for their fifteen minutes, and the rest of us can sit back and pretend that that is the way it really happens.

All part and parcel of escapism, these dreams are a way of forgetting reality, or making plans for the future – finding things to work towards. On a more destructive level, escapism – the less directed side of dreaming – is often the goal that leads to the proliferation of drink and drugs: One well seasoned friend succinctly explained: “I love the escapism, you can be completely selfish when you are high.”

There is a computer game for just about every dreamer – from the fairy princess to (somewhat controversially) the wannabe soldier. They are often criticised for making children violent, or an unhealthy preoccupation compared to climbing trees and running around in the garden. But while the one hand points to aggression and a one way track to generation moron – an entire species completely incapable of imagining anything without the necessary construct of a make believe world already put into place for them; the other hand presents a safe environment in which they can explore and understand varying sides of human nature.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s summer hit, Inception, explores the power and importance of dreams, but makes the poignant observation through protagonist Cobb’s dead wife: “Don’t you believe in more than one reality?” The idea that your reality could be totally different to someone else’s, or that you have the power to convince yourself of an alternate reality to the one immediately presented to you, is both terrifying and thrilling, and to be honest, puts you in a pretty powerful position – it places you almost completely in the driver’s seat of your own life.

History knows the power of untamed thought – it isn’t a massive surprise that censorship was rife in Nazi Germany, amongst other fascist movements: if the pen is mightier than the sword when it is tempered by the limitations of conscious thought, fears and societal boundaries, imagine how dangerous the uninhibited psyche of the dreamer could be? If an idea took root, and grew through idealism, all manner of things could be possible. After all, people can do amazing things with their dreams: Martin Luther King had a pretty awe inspiring one. If a dream is a place where ideals run free, then it is also the place where they are incubated until they are strong enough to become a reality.

Literature – the source of so much pleasure for so many people has its roots in active imaginations – JK Rowling must have sounded like a lunatic when she expressed a desire to write about a little boy with magical powers, and to the earth shattering relief of teenage girls and a few mums the world over, the protagonists of Twilight came to Stephanie Meyer in a dream. Favourite stories from the dawn of time have their roots in the ability to believe, imagine, aspire ... dream – from Beowulf to Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland to Fantastic Mr Fox, the stories that have brought the most satisfaction are the ones that allow the individual to escape for a while – in turn, one person’s dream feeding another’s.

Dreaming covers a multitude of plateaus and purposes. Sometimes they are important just because they are entertaining. On occasion, dreams can lead to a great action, a beautiful story, a new perspective, might change humanity as you know it, and sometimes it is simply the only way to get through the day.

In the wake of Juliet’s hen do, I can safely say I have rarely seen anyone happier than she is right now. So if she is proof of anything – however clichéd – it is that not only can dreams come true, but you have to have one to make it come true. (Insert sound track to South Pacific here).

When in any doubt about facts or theories, it is always important to turn to an expert, and in the case of dreams who could be better than the renowned owner of a very famous chocolate factory. The final line as to why dreams are important however old you are, rests with the wise words of Willy Wonka who told his friend Charlie: “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted. He lived happily ever after.”

Rhino in the room

2010-07-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

“So I have put most of it aside to save towards something sensible, but the rest ... is just enough to pay for a nose job!” Came the slightly inebriated little voice as she touched her nose thoughtfully with her index finger. Clearly the home made vodka had started flowing.

As a group of close friends got together around a rather impressive barbeque on Saturday night discussion ensued about everyone’s recent good fortune. The new jobs, new degrees, new internships ... recent windfall and the latter had prompted one friend in particular to realise a lifelong dream to rectify what she sees as a problematic nose.

I have never had a particular problem with plastic surgery. If it is reconstructive it is a wonderful tool to help people recover from horrific accidents and illnesses, and if it is purely cosmetic I have a somewhat laissez faire attitude towards it. I myself have a chronic fear of hospitals that would see me prefer a periodically infected wisdom tooth to the minor surgery that would solve the problem once and for all, so for my part it is not an option. Of course, that was before I was envisaging some lunatic with a scalpel sawing through a nose that I have become frankly rather fond of in nearly fifteen years of friendship.

It was at this point, backed by others at the table that I launched into a vitriolic attack as to why plastic surgery in this particular instance is a terrible idea. Do you know what they do with Rhinoplasty? They saw through the bone in your nose! Agh!

“Why on earth do you want to do that?” I squealed with barely contained horror.

“I want to look pretty,” she said.

“You are pretty!” I reply, “and if you don’t think you are now, you never will – if it isn’t this it will be something else!”

“You know lots of people have trouble accepting their new faces after plastic surgery – you can have real issues as a result of it” one of the boys volunteered – brilliant, a male perspective is always more persuasive than that of a biased female.

“You know, I knew a girl who had it done and not only did everyone know about it, which defeated the point, but you could barely tell the difference – it was an enormous waste of money.” Offered my partner in dissuasion, followed by, “and if you do it, I will happily come and punch you in the nose afterwards.” She then demonstrated, teasingly wielding an enormous cocktail ring covering half her right hand.

The arguments came thick and fast.

“I know you don’t like it, but I am going to see a consultant to talk about it, and if I do it will you support me anyway?” Brilliant idea, let’s leave it up to the butcher of Harley Street. A unanimous “No” echoed around the table; I love her, and will love her regardless of the nose that she has, but I would be more inclined to support her conversion to Scientology, a marriage to her cat or an announcement that she was now a devoted fan of Justin Bieber than the potentially dangerous and totally unnecessary reconstruction of her perfectly lovely nose.

And then I make my fatal error: “Whose nose do you want anyway?” I asked naively, “I want a little nose – I want YOUR nose!” She laughed.

“You can’t have MY nose!” I fired back without thinking

“YES I CAN!” She said with immeasurable satisfaction. Agh! Argument lost. She has a point.

The thing is I don’t believe that she will be happier for the change. It seems like a massive and illogical jump between ones nose and happiness.
On the other hand if there is something about you that you don’t like and you have the means to change it, why not? Surely it is a perk of living in the 21st Century? Life’s too short. But then at the same time, surely it is too short to waste time and money on something that given a few more years and the self acceptance that comes with being that little bit older, would probably not be an issue any longer.

If you take someone like Leslie Ash, who I am sure thought – no biggie, I will just have a few fillers – why not? Life’s too short and I don’t like my mouth! Several years later, a superbug and a few chemicals gone wrong, and I suspect there are now plenty of reasons why not. Of course, she is not alone, plastic surgery has been part and parcel of Hollywood for years to a greater or lesser extent, and even when it goes right it has a peculiar effect – the once fresh faced Dolly Parton looks recently embalmed and the worryingly young Heidi Montag has become the poster child for bad celebrity plastic surgery at the tender age of twenty four.

Of course this is part of a much larger societal trend about instant gratification and growing up in the knowledge that if you have enough of it, money can buy you anything; everything has its price. That’s worrying not least of all because your idea of perfection changes over time; when I was sixteen I thought nothing could be more attractive than Kate Moss’s heroin chic, these days I am more inclined to think that the eternally athletic Elle McPherson has the edge.

My friend is worried no one will love her if she isn’t pretty – the fact that we think she is pretty is null and void, but it is always the so called imperfections that identify someone as the person you adore. Growing up I hated the freckles that appeared across my nose in the summer – I am still not so fond of them but accept them as I am too lazy to cover them with foundation. My dad on the other hand would always tell me that someone one day would love those freckles because they are part of me...typical parental response to a disgruntled teen, but there is something in what he said.

Ultimately, I know what my friend is like and it is her decision, and of course, I wouldn’t have it any other way. The way that she sees the world and how she wants to tackle it is only one of the many reasons that every person at that barbeque loves her quite so much. All part of life’s rich and surgically enhanced pattern. Nonetheless, I was surprised at the extent of my own reaction, and I have still to pinpoint exactly what it is that bothers me so much about it. I mean, it doesn’t have anything to do with me, so why should it be an issue? How would you feel if someone you loved was about to take a tool usually reserved for household DIY to their face?

I know that she won’t believe me when I tell her she is perfect the way she is, and I know that she thinks I oppose this move because I see her through rose tinted glasses. But it isn’t that – well, it is probably partially that, but aside from thinking that this is a) unnecessary and b) dangerous, her nose is an integral part of the girl whose image is imprinted on my memory and whom I associate with someone I love.

So, in answer to your question: “Will you support me?” Yes, I support you. I always support you, and if you choose to do it, I will never mention a negative word about it again. But remember that I have supported you whatever nose you had. I might not be prince charming, and I am certainly not the little voice in your head that dictates your self-worth, but I wouldn’t lie to you, and to me (scratch that, us)you are already pretty perfect – nose and all.

Shopping Etiquette

2010-07-16T08:14:00.000-07:00

Retail is one of the biggest employers in the UK and has successfully ridden the recession supplying jobs where other industries have closed their doors. With this in mind it strikes me that a large proportion of the population will have at some point in their lives worked in retail or some other area of customer services. Accordingly I find it baffling that an enormous number of people are still unaware of appropriate etiquette when it comes to shopping.

The thing is that there is a direct correlation between your manners and the level of help any shop assistant is likely to bestow upon you, so it is completely in your interest to follow these simple rules to get exactly what you want out of your shopping experience.

Return Policies
Always check out what the returns policy is. If on off chance you were not told at the till, or you have forgotten or misunderstood what it is, there is no use in saying that the shop assistant told you something other than the store’s policy. They work with it every single day and so will have it marked on their brain like medieval branding. Therefore, unless they have some sort of death wish there is no way they would tell you differently – it is only likely to lead to this situation where you are screaming across the counter and embarrassing yourself and them.
And no, don’t be so ridiculous, if you have had it altered or bought it last year of course you cannot bring it back.

Sales

I like to think that the bit you lose out on in the sales discount is the customer service. Use your common sense – if there are ninety-nine people in the shop and only five members of staff do you really think we are going to phone round to find out whether your camisole exists in a shop five doors away where there are another ninety-nine customers and five staff? I didn’t think so.

Take the hint

When a member of staff asks if they can take the pile of clothes from you that you are walking around the shop with, there are a number of things going on: First they are genuinely trying to help – if you hand it all over you will be able to look around and pick up more stuff – you thereby get a better chance of improving your wardrobe, and we get the opportunity to ensure good will and the possibility of you buying even more stuff – win/ win situation. We are not trying to steal your clothing treasures from you! We will give them back! We knew where they were anyway and did not deem them worth purchasing! If we wanted it we would have bought it by now!

The second thing we are doing is making sure we know where the clothes are in case you are trying to hide and walk off with something. So don’t be all British about it, and say that you are fine while the cotton Everest in your arms threatens to cut off your oxygen supply – hand it over you thieving nutcase and let us do our job!

The Stock Room

The stock room does exactly what it says on the tin – it is where we stock stuff. It is not a magical workshop where little elves make new clothes on demand. If we don’t have it, you will have to see if another shop does, or else you will have to admit defeat. Also, shop floors are rotated and merchandised as often as once a month, so that means that as the season wears on it is likely that almost every item in the stock room has been on the floor at some point. So the question ‘can I have a new one’ when you have decided you want that shirt, but you deem yourself so utterly revolting that you do not want the one you have tried on, will only be met by a frustrated sales assistant and a shirt that is exactly the same as the one you have just tried. If you think you are too repellent to even buy the item you yourself have tried, then you shouldn’t be shopping at all.

Trying things on

While we are on the subject of personal hygiene, there are some very basic rules to trying things on – I wouldn’t come to your house and wear muddy shoes all over your carpet, so don’t come to our shop and sweat all over the clothing. If you have a problem with body odour, don’t try things on unless you know you are going to buy it. Yes it makes things smell, yes we do notice, and yes it does render the item almost completely unsellable in the future except for people with defunct nasal receptors. We don’t have special tricks for getting rid of this – it is the same thing for you as it is for us – soap and water - you might have heard of them?
I know that we have ‘skivvy’ written across our foreheads, but when you have tried on half the shop we do understand that there may, on the off chance be the day when nothing whatsoever fits you and everything makes you look like Shamu on a fat day. However, it is common decency to bring those items back out of the changing rooms and at least dump them on top of a sales assistant – it didn’t start the shopping experience in the changing room, so what makes you think the journey is finished in there?

Also, I know that for women especially there is great pleasure to be had in trying things on just to see what it looks like, even though you have no intention whatsoever of buying it. This is tolerable with one item, or maybe two, but not with forty-five different things. This is a shop not a fancy dress box, guess what we do here?

Discounts

Before you ask for a discount ask yourself why? Is it going to make that button re-attach itself? Is there any way in which this discount is going to make the problem better? Is there any particular reason we should value your custom over anyone else’s? Do you really think that is the most anyone has ever spent here, and is such a colossal amount that we should feel obliged to bow down and kiss your feet? I reiterate – this is a shop, guess what we do here?

Do you know who I am?

It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you are famous, rich, poor or the Queen of Sheba herself, we don’t care who you are unless you are spending money.

Press Discount Cards

Let’s be clear on this matter. A press discount card will not make you popular or entitle you to special treatment in store because you are all of a sudden a favourable customer. This is the noose around the sales assistant’s neck – we have to serve you, we have to be nice to you, and we usually have to spend inordinate amounts of time with you no matter how busy it is, just in case you say something bad about us, but your custom brings no benefits to us as individuals especially if we work on commission. We have to work three times as hard with you and lose out on singularly more lucrative sales. So be a gem, take care of yourself unless it is absolutely necessary to bother a member of staff and pick your moments for shopping carefully – Monday afternoon around 4’o’clock is perfect, Saturday lunchtime in the sale is not. And preferably no diva demands either – I once had a customer with a press card who wanted me to get him a drink after spending two hours with us and buying one jumper because the sushi he had had before he came in had left him a little parched – diddums.

Shopping Companions

So that you know, the shop assistants know what they have in store and how it is supposed to fit better than you and your other half do. If you are going to bring a friend/partner/brother/sister or colleague shopping with you it is advisable that they cease to pass comment unless it is on a matter that specifically relates to an area of expertise that the shop assistant is not privy to – no, that suit is not the right colour to match the bride’s choice of wedding paraphernalia; yes that skin tight T-shirt looks great but as you are on a ten day plan to building 40 lbs of muscle perhaps you would like to go for a larger size.

For men in particular this is information you may wish to adhere to. Most men see shopping as cruel and unusual punishment to be necessarily experienced on a biannual basis – we know that you bring your other half along because you really don’t care what you wear and they have told you they have excellent taste, but with a skilled assistant you will be in and out in twenty minutes and you will be well dressed. Your well intentioned advisor will only want to assert their own authority on your wardrobe in a manner that will drag out the experience to hours at a time, often ending in little success. Any man who enjoys shopping is perfectly capable of doing it alone anyway, so you see, personal shopping companions are a risky and irritating business – you have been warned.

The end of the day

When the staff stop paying attention to you and are more focused on seemingly pernickety tasks such as making sure the hangers are equidistant apart, this is a cue that closing is imminent. It is rude to then disturb entire rails just because you want to know how the fabric feels. This is also a bad time to start asking if there are extra sizes or if we can phone another store.

When the music is off, the doors are closed and the clatter of hangers and bin bags echoes in your ears we are closed. No we don’t want to serve you, no it isn’t funny, and no it is not our job to hang about after hours. Yes we have lives, no we don’t get paid extra for staying behind ten minutes, and while we the little people may not seem all that important to you we will remember you, and in future no, we don’t have that shoe in your size, anywhere, in any store, so take your flipper feet and leave. Even if you don’t have somewhere better to be, we do!

I think that is about it, but in short, smile, be nice and understanding and the shop assistant may just prove to be the keeper of the keys in a long and fulfilling relationship that will ensure you VIP treatment regardless of how much you spend. If you behave like a pain in the neck you will be treated as such – your shopping experience will be as stressful as you yourself choose to make it.

Girly Getaway

2010-07-05T00:54:00.001-07:00

“You’re going where?” Came the response of an inquisitive colleague thus deflating my triumphant holiday revelation.

You see, this summer I headed to the Canary Islands with my mother for our annual girly getaway and our destination of choice was the lesser known isle of La Gomera.
As one of the smaller Canary Islands, La Gomera boasts none of the stereotypical party antics of its larger counterparts, and all of the sunshine.

The little island lives in relative obscurity as far as the tourist industry is aware and in stark contrast to the better known islands of Lanzarote and Tenerife, and with good reason. With few bars, hardly any shops, a fifteen mile diameter and no direct air access from the UK, the sleepy island is not the easiest place to get to, and for anyone seeking to live la vida loca I suggest you look away now.

However, for us, this was the basis of its appeal. La Gomera boasts a virtually undisturbed rainforest, almost perennial temperatures hovering upwards of 23 degrees Celsius, panoramic views of the sea and the golden sound of silence.

While there are other hotels in La Gomera, we stayed in one of the Holiday Property Bond apartments at El Balcon de Santa Ana, which due to a share system in a variety of resorts allows members to holiday in otherwise inaccessible resorts for a subsidised fee. Placed on a cliff top Santa Ana has its own restaurant and three swimming pools as well as a smaller, shallower children’s pool, and all of which over look the vast expanse of ocean that disappears into the distance. There are of course other hotels in the surrounding area, but the infinity pool over looking across the deep blue sea towards Africa is definitely a tick in the box for HPB.

La Gomera is not the place for sightseeing or elaborate adventures. The key activities on this island are sitting in the sun by the pool, walking, and eating local produce – by which I mean fresh fish, and more fresh fish, mostly with the key Canarian dressing – Mojo, which is essentially olive oil and crushed herbs.

Aside from the tranquillity, breathtaking views and money can’t buy distance from the stresses and strains from daily life, La Gomera’s distinguishing feature is its rainforest. A far cry from the black volcanic sands and sunshine drenched shores, the rainforest rises over 4000 ft above sea level and amidst a cool haze plays host to the islands indigenous plant life. We went on one of the guided walks through the rainforest which starts at about 9.30 in the morning, finish at 3.00 in the evening and will set you back around £35 per person. The walk includes a one hour stop for lunch and a lift to and from the start of the walk. Despite its length and sharp descent it is a walk tried and tested by all ages.

If the weather turns cloudy, which it is liable to do occasionally it is worth a day trip to one of the island’s towns to wander around the shops and take in a different vista. The best way to get to the other towns is by boat and the most widely recommended is Valle Gran Rey. However, be warned everything on the island takes a siesta at 1 o’clock and the ferries stop running at about 4, so be sure you don’t miss the boat!

Far and away one of the nicest things about La Gomera is that it feels a world away from everything. It is a place where you feel safe, and healthy – children can run around (within reason) with little concern about the traffic or anything else. The temperature is a perpetual balm and the friendly greetings of all the people are a reflection on the happy go lucky lifestyle that is for a time completely contagious.
The price to be paid for such idyllic peace is that the four and a half hour flight into Tenerife is merely the start of your journey. Factoring in any travelling to the airport, the standard hanging around for the flight (not helped in our case by strikes in Paris) the forty minute journey to the ferry port at the other end, forty five minute ferry ride to La Gomera itself and additional forty five minute car journey at the other end to get to your hotel (the island may only be fifteen miles wide, but the winding roads take full advantage of the space and altitude they can reach), you are best to factor in an entire day from door to door. In our case, it was a fourteen hour day of travelling even with HPB’s rather useful bag handling service to and from the airport.

Holidays are about feeling as though you are another world away, and the best are the kind where you actually come home feeling relaxed. When I got off the plane I felt completely disoriented by the amount of traffic on the roads leading away from Gatwick, as though I had never seen so many cars before. If just five days in the sun can make you feel as though you have been that far away, it has got to be a good thing. Just make sure you take plenty of travel games for the journey!

For more information visit: hpb.co.uk

Mimicking the Man

2010-06-22T03:08:00.000-07:00

Last week media artist Suyin Looui launched the ‘Hey Baby!’ computer game where women are given the licence to mow down any male who dares to leer at them with a machine gun. A cathartic thought I can imagine – especially after a long day at work or a particularly stressful journey home in rush hour.

With this in mind it was a startling coincidence walking along the tube platform the other evening that I was stopped in my tracks when a screeching war cry alerted me to the ruckus ahead where a pint sized aggressor had morphed into a human battering ram and attacked another woman dressed for a day at the races. With feather hat a-flying and strapless dress a-falling, the effect was farcical and had the appeal of car crash TV.

The two women were eventually separated, and continuing along the platform I discovered a perhaps more worrying phenomenon: people were actually getting back off the waiting train in order to get a better look at what was going on. You cannot usually get a Londoner back off the tube for love nor money, and a similar incident involving men would most likely have incurred a very British tutting and a silent wish that it would not hold up the train.

Thinking about it now, perhaps it was not so coincidental that these two events entered my sphere of consciousness in such quick succession, because violence amongst or perpetrated by women seems to have been on a steady increase over the past few years.

Aggressive behaviour is stereotypically associated with men – something to do with testosterone and left over primitive instincts from an age of being the main providers and protectors. Of course the lines between traditional male/female roles have been blurred over the past hundred years as breadwinning has become more about brain power than brawn. But as women have traversed a tricky path, and emerged into the twenty-first century as legal and social equals, does equality mean more than equal rights? For some does it mean mimicking the most base in male behaviour as well?

The hundred years since the suffragettes famously fought for a women’s right to vote have seen plenty of examples where women seek to resemble their male counterparts. Since the 1920s with a brief lapse in the 50s there has been a steady progression in women’s fashion, perhaps influenced by the proverbial bra burning that has seen androgyny pervade the catwalks and the shops alike.

Then again, perhaps you could say the same of male behaviour, metro-sexuality is a twentieth century phenomenon that has seen the birth of the house husband and the further blurring of gender roles, and thank goodness for that. What a blessing to live in a world where you are allowed to seek the life you want regardless of sex, race or anything else. In many ways gender mimicking is simply a way of saying that gender is irrelevant when it comes to social constructs like business, fashion and politics.

Over time it seems that female equality has become confused with being the same as men and in our struggle to achieve that nirvana of equality, which despite the constant struggle against the final fragments of the glass ceiling we have pretty much reached, perhaps we have begun to adopt many male characteristics – not least of all violent behaviour.

The news is littered with examples of female violence from pre make over Cheryl Cole’s attack on a cloakroom attendant and Naomi Campbell’s mile high meltdowns to the proliferation of husband beaters and girl gangs. Is violence a latent instinct in the female psyche, constrained through history by the corsets and rigging of society? Or has the pursuit of sexual equality meant mimicking men down to their most primal characteristics rather than being the best versions of ourselves?

Offender patterns in violent crimes show that women are substantially less violent than men, and this could be the result of learning different social skills at an earlier age. Nonetheless, violent crime perpetuated by women has increased substantially over the past twenty years prompting research into when, how and why women are becoming increasingly aggressive. The theory that the social role of men and women in society may influence their levels of aggression has not been ruled out, and therefore, perhaps increasing levels of violence amongst women – regardless of whether it is a previously silenced instinct or a newly learned trait is an unexpected offshoot of social equality.

If we look at the animal world the lioness is an infinitely more aggressive fighter than the male. She is the hunter, the protector and the provider, while the male retains his curiously metro-sexual position as the proverbial peacock; perhaps nature’s little joke on our own perceptions of natural roles.

In history there have certainly been female warriors to rival conquering males – the formidable Boadicea lead a revolt against the Romans who attacked her family and country and raped her daughters – hell hath no fury like a woman scorned; The 1841 Dohemian female army of West Africa was thought to be one of the most fearsome in the country’s history; and the Amazonian army from Greek mythology are infamous to the point of being synonymous with all female warriors. On this basis, it is not as though women have been unable to defend themselves physically; they are more than capable of fighting their own corner.

No one expects people to lace themselves back into a corset, unless of course that is your preference, but simultaneously no one can imagine that Ms Davidson threw herself under a race horse so that women could forego self control in the worst possible manner. Violence seems to be the lowest of the low in all human behaviour – if equality is about mutual respect, violence seems to be the renunciation of everything progressive and a total let down to both sexes. So whoever started it, why do two steps forward in the name of equality mean three steps back in terms of civility?

Facebook Friend or Foe?

2010-06-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

I know that in the years since Facebook was founded we have learned some valuable lessons about over sharing on the internet. There have been many people caught out for missing work when they are not ill, or posting inappropriate pictures on their profiles that have cost them their jobs, relationships, and their friendships. However, like health and safety before it, I can’t help but think that the employment Gauleiters who are apparently running such self sufficient businesses that they have time to stalk their employees online can sometimes go a step too far.

If we go back a little bit further than Facebook, since the dawn of the internet along with its blogs, social networking, and Twitter, we have become an international community of people who have the capacity to share every intimate detail of their lives.

There are of course great plus sides to this. In the case of Facebook itself, I
have many friends who live on the other side of the world, and actually, I am thrilled to learn that they have had a great day, are looking forward to seeing their boyfriend, wish me and their other five hundred friends a happy Tuesday, or are now in a complicated relationship. These are ways I can keep up with people I would otherwise be likely to lose touch with, not because I don’t value them, but as a result of distance and time.

Just the other week I was alerted to the plight of a friend in Australia who was in hospital. To cynics who would say that if she was a real friend I would maintain correspondence by painstakingly drafted prose, penned with a hand sharpened quill – get real. I can hardly imagine that a friend in the midst of being rushed into hospital would have the time to send individual messages to all the people she knows alerting them to her condition. By means of online messaging I was able to send my instant condolences ... Although I did also send the appropriate hand crafted correspondence as well. She deserves more but I wanted her to know that I cared immediately.

Instant information has revolutionised our social lives, the media, politics, and the world. We are better informed and better equipped to react to the news, delays in public transport, celebrity indiscretions, international disaster and Lily Allen’s mood swings.

The downside to this mass of information is that we forget all too easily that we are in fact telling the world details that in hind sight we might not want them to know. On Facebook this is particularly easily done, because you take for granted that the people who are your friends and thus privy to the information you put on your profile have nothing other than harmless, sociable motives. In the case of your working life this is a crucial oversight. How many of you are friends with your seniors or even colleagues at work on Facebook? To what extent do you consider them to be friends – after all, these are the people you spend the majority of your week with, the people who see you day in day out, and most likely are the people who know if you have had a good day or a bad day.

Work is a key part of most people’s social lives, it is inevitable. So there are bound to be pictures of you worse for wear at the office Christmas party, comments about your day, and notes to your work friends on your profile. But at what point is it reasonable for a colleague to use this information against you in your professional life?

The logical answer is that you should be careful, never mention anything about work on your profile, but given the aforementioned inextricable links between work and social life that most people experience, this seems to be an unreasonable request. Besides, all too often social networking is actually vital to improve your professional life.

In recent months a friend of a friend found herself confronted by a manager who said that she had been sent an email by another member of staff detailing her Facebook statuses over the past month. There was no mention of her place of work, and no defamatory statements of the company she worked for, thus no grounds on which to sue. What she had expressed was that she was unhappy at work.

The company’s reaction was to tell the girl that she was now being monitored and she would have to prove company loyalty before being considered for any sort of promotion. Now aside from the fact that you would have thought a manager’s obvious reaction to an unhappy subordinate would be to try to get to the root of the problem, is this a step too far when it comes to monitoring staff? Why should a company take issue with an employee being unhappy at work?

I am sure the company would have no problem if the statements had been actively positive, the problem I suppose if that they are inactively negative, but that kind of censorship is having your cake and eating it. Well, in a nation where the rights of the individual are bandied about where they have no business being mentioned – (see foul mouthed mothers outside school gates proclaiming their children’s rights to fish and chips) this would seem to be a perfect opportunity to jump on the PC band wagon.

Under the assumption that because by placing information on Facebook you are willingly putting it into the public domain, we will bypass the idea that using that info to undermine them at work is an invasion of their privacy.

A quick glance at the Human Rights Act, and it’s oft quoted Article 10 will tell you that “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression.” This seems self explanatory, but just to qualify it crucially elaborates to say: “This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by a public authority and regardless of frontiers.”

Now obviously we can’t have people going around expressing damaging opinions where they are simply uncalled for, so, your freedom of expression is indeed tempered by law. You must not endanger national security; you must not endanger public safety; you must not endanger the protection of the reputation or rights of others; you must not prevent the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for the maintaining of the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

That is a lot of rather boring wording, but given that expressing your unhappiness at work is unlikely to endanger national security, I would think the issue a company might have is the endangering of their reputation. Clearly, an employee’s unexplained misery cannot logically be construed as damaging to a worldwide organization. In fact, it seems farcical that I even feel the need to spell that out.

So at best, by detailing irrelevant information about a colleague and using it to the detriment of her working life is an impingement on her freedom of expression. At worst, it seems to be tantamount to bullying. So that everyone is on the same page, ACAS, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service includes amongst its examples of bullying the following: “overbearing supervision or other misuse of power or position.” I would think exploiting information imparted in the confidence of a social context falls into the category of a “misuse of position.”

Regardless of specifics, it is true that we all have to take some responsibility for what information we choose to broadcast to the world, even if it is just our intimate circle of seven hundred and fifty five of our nearest and dearest.
Nonetheless, it always seems to be the individual who is in the wrong when it comes to inappropriate information on their Facebook page that affects their professional persona. It isn’t nice for anyone to go out with the intention of undermining other people, and all too often we take far too literally the idea that it is ok to let it all hang out.

However, just sometimes it would seem that actually, employers with all their might are also a little over sensitive and invasive when it comes to monitoring their staff. Is it really necessary to invoke formal questioning over a publicly miserable member of staff? Is it really necessary to look at their expressive outbursts and only ever think of their title rather than the person behind it? And even if it is – don’t you have more important things to do?

Graduate fashion week presents:

2010-06-07T01:26:00.000-07:00

Graduate fashion week is upon us, and while everyone has their favourite brand I have a favourite graduate.

With a collection based on clean lines, bold silhouette and Savile Row cloth; Hephzibah, the brand name for Nottingham born women’s wear designer Jemima Beulah, introduces a range of blue hues, natural fabrics and elegant style to the London scene this Pre-Fall.

So put aside the McQueens for a minute, and move over Matthew Williamson, this little lady is the one to watch!

Profile

Name: Jemima Beulah

Age: 23

University: Kingston University

Course: Fashion BA

So, you moved to London four years ago to study fashion. Have you always been interested in fashion?

Both my grandmother and mother have always sewn clothing, my grandmother for her children and my mother for her nights out at the weekend. Having always had a sewing box to rummage in as a child, I have always been keen to sew from a young age.
I am not sure when (if ever) I knew that I wanted to be a fashion designer. I simply knew as a child that I liked making clothes, and since then I have been working with clothing, fabrics, textiles, construction, knitted crafts and social consumerism and production theory and will continue to progress my work in these area in the future.

So creativity is in your blood then! You must have been pretty creative at school?

I was dyslexic at school so I struggled academically. I remember hating Fridays spelling tests, mathematics and learning lines for plays. In one year I became so miserable with school I remember being absent for more than a third of the time. It wasn’t until the end of the final year of primary school that a sub-teacher realized I was dyslexic. I remember my Mother walking me home from school and telling me I had dyslexia, I thought it was some kind of deadly disease!

When I arrived at English Martyrs R.C Secondary School I was in bad academic shape, but I was so proud to be there because it was the same school my mother, beloved late Aunt and my Uncle had been to.
I found academia hard, but I loved anything creative and had a passionate imagination. The stories of history, examining English literature, recreating artistic masterpieces and sewing in textiles were my areas of interest at school. I had great teachers who saw my potential and helped me to achieve A, B and C grades rather than the D and below grades I had been predicted.

And then you went on to study textiles at University?

After school I began to feel more academically confident and I continued my studies in textiles and art and design at college. It had been a tough time at home; my aunt was battling cancer and lived at my Mother’s house where we nursed her in the final months.

In those days college became a sanctuary: I pressed on with long days of study, and did my best to achieve the highest grades to please my aunt. She passed away right after all my deadlines, living longer than the doctors had expected her to. I believe she waited for her son and I to graduate from college before leaving; it would be just like her not to inconvenience anyone.

After that I was determined to move on; geographically, emotionally and academically, so I applied to Universities to study fashion. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until I had completed an Art and Design BTEC diploma, that Elinor Renfrew Fashion Director at Kingston University admitted me onto the course.

Tell me a bit about this collection. Where do you get your inspiration?

I interned for Patrick Grant on Savile Row in 2009 and I wanted to bring an element of what I had learnt there into my collection especially in the quality and texture of the cloth, from the natural Harris Tweed to the worsted brush wool.
To achieve a contemporary style my inspiration was taken from modern architecture, I was exacting over simple, clean lines, and heavily influenced by minimalistic artist Anish Kapoor. Some of the structures on the pockets in particular have been inspired by his ‘When I am Pregnant’ sculpture.

The garments themselves are simple forms acting as a foundation to display the rich textures of the fabrics. This is also heightened by the harmonizing blue colour palette.

The designs are pretty sophisticated, what market are you aiming your clothes at?

I see this collection sitting in the same market place as Jil Sander and Maison Martin Margiela; two designers that I admire for their conceptual garment construction and innovative designs. The customer attracted to this market will appreciate the attention to detail and high level of quality and consideration in every garment produced.

You have already mentioned Jil Sander, which other designers do you admire, and where would you like to see your own brand in the coming years?

I do particularly admire Jil Sander; she is a great designer who has produced a timeless style of clothing for women who want unfussy, sophisticated sharp dressing.
I have never pretended to want to be the next best designer – aiming for the heights that Chanel or Alexander McQueen have achieved, though these two fashion houses are hugely inspirational.

I am excited about visiting antique markets or old rummage stalls, finding something unique and old, made using traditional craftsmanship. I am fascinated by old traditions and purposes for garments and accessories, when designers truly were problem solves.

Hand weaving, traditional knitting techniques and naturally made cloth, are three aspects that I have worked with in my current collection, displaying these craftsmanship in a modern way, and I want to focus on that quality in my work.
Obviously this is a big moment for you, and you have worked hard towards this point.

Do you have any idea what you are going to do next?

I have finally found the aesthetic and balance of the traditional with the modern in this collection. I want to continue to progress this as my trademark: appreciation of traditional craftsmanship in a modern delivery. Innovation of construction has become an important design consideration throughout the progression of my collection, finishing garments in fabrics unconventional for the garment. These qualities have all been influenced by my appreciation of the work by Jil Sander and Martion Margiela, and so to be taken on by either of these fashion houses would be a dream come true.

For more information visit: jemimahephzibahbeulah.com

You are what you wear

2010-06-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

In preparation for a long awaited holiday to the Canary Islands I indulged in a little shopping the other day – only for the necessities you understand, but for some godforsaken reason I decided that in amongst this list were white jeans and a new bikini. For anyone unfamiliar with the perils of Lycra and fitted denim, this is shopping designed to make you feel bad. Shopping for a bikini will provoke an unnecessary level of bodily scrutiny, and never have I heard anyone with hips utter the phrase – ‘do you know what, I went shopping for jeans the other day and not only did I find what I wanted immediately, but I came away feeling on top of the world!’

Having pre empted the ensuing self loathing, I opted for an uncharacteristically male attitude on this shopping trip – I had spotted the bikini I wanted in a magazine – its fundamental purpose being the greatest possible sun exposure; and the destinations were limited given that I did not want to invest a lot in jeans which were certain to seem like a bad idea once I had woken up from the visions I was having of my alter ego drinking cocktails on a yacht off the coast of Cannes.
Somehow in these visions I morph into the doppelganger of a slightly stunted Christy Turlington – the fact that I don’t even drink merely goes to show the extent of my delusion, and as you can imagine only adds to the crushing reality upon facing the harsh lighting of Oxford Street’s fitting rooms.

The only reason for not buying the targeted items would be if they did not fit, and having tried on bikini number one, and confirmed somewhere between the oscillating body dismorphia and the faint hope that my eyesight was failing, I decided that my disappointment probably wasn’t the bikini’s fault and I needn’t try on any more. I took the plunge and opted for some less offensive sunglasses shopping thereafter.

The thing about shopping when it comes to women – some men as well, but mostly for women, is that regardless of the perils, and unnecessary dissections of our own flaws, shopping gives us a bit of a thrill. There have been movies and books focused on it, and there are companies serving not so much a product, but the mere exercise of shopping. In my teens Top Shop provided an unrivalled Mecca, sure to relieve my pockets from being burned by any birthday money that had no doubt been intended for more noble purposes.

It is the perennial bug bear of other halves and it is telling that while the majority of men see it as an unfortunate one of life’s necessities, women see it as a leisure activity.

We are also lead to believe that while enjoyable, shopping is in fact a completely vacuous and self indulgent past time, and if it does not induce physical misgivings, then after the initial high from having new toys to play with, you will experience bank account guilt, and deservedly so, you materialistic buffoon.

And yet, actually, if you look at the history of consumerism, shopping is a key part of creating your own identity. It allows you to express who you are by the way you present yourself and your home. Over 70% of someone’s first impression about you is based on your appearance – and why wouldn’t it be, they don’t see you with their ears now do they, and if they heard you coming before they saw you, no doubt that would say a lot too!

The history of consumerism is tantamount to the chicken and the egg – did industry come first or the demand for products? Who can say? What is asserted however, is the acknowledgement that shopping is actually a key part of the female identity in particular. A consumer revolution is now being recognised as occurring around the same time as the industrial revolution – so we are talking about 17 or 1800s. Women did not have the vote; come to think of it a lot of men didn’t either. Women were defined by the private sphere – that is to say, the home, while men dominated the public sphere. But low and behold, boutiques crop up and industry provides you with a way, not simply to make your home functional. No longer will you have to have pots and pans simply for the purpose of cooking; now you can have pots and pans that are prettier than your neighbours. Mine are pink, yours are blue – I have striped sofas, you have spotty sofas, and in an instant, we are taking ownership of our private spheres and turning them into something that makes a public statement.

As time progressed, and most notably when more women went out to work after the First World War, there was a boom in fashion and personal accessorising. No matter your job, parentage or natural gifts, you could express who you were by changing your appearance – a vamp one day, a domestic goddess the next. The proliferation of affordable brands has merely extended this phenomenon into the present day and made shopping even less class biased.

There are people expressing their individuality all over the place, and more often than not that is the result of advertising – so not so much your individuality as that of Abercrombie and Fitch, but still, your choice, and that is the beauty of it.

So the next time you go shopping remember – sure, your bikini makes you wish that you had not succumbed to that Cadbury’s addiction at an early age, and sure, your bank balance would be healthier and you would be more likely to afford a real tan the L’Oreal equivalent if you did not go on a weekly spree at the high street’s finest; but, you are doing your bit for your feminist identity, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

How low would you go?

2010-05-31T04:35:00.000-07:00

“How low would you go?” came the question as our tube came above ground at East Finchley. I was not entirely sure what we were talking about but I had a sneaking suspicion the conversation had moved on from my plans for the summer and Sumaya’s latest crush.

However, just to clarify, you never can be sure about these things: “Pardon?” came my response.

“Well, I saw Sam Taylor Wood in London today with her nineteen year old fiancé and about-to-burst-bump, and it made me think – how much younger would you go when it comes to dating?” She explained.

Ah, I see, well, there is a question open to debate beyond my instant response of: “well, I could never really date someone more than three years younger than me because that would make them younger than my baby brother, and frankly, that would creep me out.” On this we are both agreed.

The other thing we are agreed on is that at this stage neither of us are in a position to copy Ms Taylor Wood, because if we dated people nearly twenty years our junior, it would be illegal, and described as babysitting. So the conversation is to be predominantly hypothetical or limited to a six year discrepancy.
Over the last year, women dating younger men has become a topic of national fascination, and Sam Taylor Wood’s relationship with Aaron Johnson has made them the King and Queen of courgar-ville. You know that a topic has won international excitement when it is the subject of an American soap opera – a real one, not the paparazzi variety, so when Courtney Cox put her stamp on the topic last year middle aged women across the world jumped up in excitement: Yes! Another victory for feminism! Yes! Men have been shagging women half their age for centuries without so much as a second thought! Yes! Finally women the world over have been given the Hollywood seal of approval to go out with younger men without the pre requisite plastic surgery and raw food diet, and Yes! Finally, someone has taken the spotlight away from Demi Moore and her impossibly beautiful younger husband!

But no sooner was party started than newspapers and researchers start up with the sobering news – that’s right ladies, I am afraid that even if you can bag a younger man, I am afraid it will probably kill you. Studies now show that women with younger partners are likely to die younger than their more sedate contemporaries.

Even so, Sumaya and I considered the pros and cons of the Taylor Wood dilemma:

What is she getting out of this situation: Great sex (we assume), the adoration of a rather beautiful younger man; validation of her own enduring, perhaps even increasing sexual appeal; and the benefit of enjoying the world through younger eyes – a second youth perhaps.

What does he get out of it: Great sex (we assume) with the benefit of experience; a woman secure in her own career; perhaps even a woman who is secure in her own body and desirability; someone interesting to talk to and learn from; the benefit of seeing the world through more experienced eyes.

I contemplate what my own mother would think if my twenty-one year old brother brought home a woman nearly the same age as her. My mother is pretty liberal, I have never known her to say ‘you can’t do this’ or ‘you can’t do that’ ... but I think even she might baulk at the idea of my brother being doe eyed about a woman her own age. I also think she might be a little more reluctant to buy in a stash of Toblerone cookies on the weekends the offending female presence came to stay or to do her washing for her should it be left behind after a weekend in the relative countryside. But that is another topic; I would assume the dynamic changes in this situation and I am getting ahead of myself.

Having a younger brother certainly tints my perspective of dating someone younger than me. I am not adverse to the concept, but tradition dictates that girls tend to date older men. Speculating as to why, Sumaya and I come up with sufficiently vapid ideas such as – they carry the illusion that they might be more mature, or they are more interesting because they are secure in their jobs, who they are etc etc – all, I am aware, are gross generalisations, but no doubt they are the same generalisations that would make older women more attractive to boys – that and the legacy of Mrs Robinson.

Having said that, whilst chatting to a friend after work in Soho the other night he announced his own mortification at having chatted to a guy online for half an hour, exchanged photos and enjoyed riveting conversation only to realise that the object of his desire was sixteen. He promptly turned off the computer and ran for the shower so mortifying was the thought of dating someone still in their teens.

Certainly having an insight into the thought processes of teenage boys is a reasonable deterrent to dating them (Although I suspect if I had an insight into the thoughts of older men I would be equally wary). That and if my brother thought I was dating one of his friends, or rather if he thought one of them was dating me (again, knowing what they think about) his usual ‘bovvered’ countenance might experience a surge of discomfort and purple faced rage to which it is normally unaccustomed. I kissed a boy in the year above him at school once – I am still yet to hear the end of it.

So sitting back on that tube and contemplating this dilemma I was still at a bit of a loss – my instant reaction was somewhat flummoxed by the evident happiness that Sam Taylor Wood and her boy enjoy. “They looked like love struck teenagers” says Sumaya – “It was really sweet”. Maybe age really doesn’t matter, I think to myself. After careful dissection and media case studies, the question remains unanswered: How low would you go?

Jog On

2010-05-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

As someone who attempts to maintain some level of fitness I am the first person to extol the virtues of going running, and as summer takes hold it seems I am not alone. It is at this time of year, and most notably on Sunday mornings that people reignite their New Year’s resolutions, and with proud smiles on their faces (at least at the start) head into the sunshine to get in shape.

There is nothing like a long run, or a short one for that matter, to blow the cob webs away and boost the serotonin levels. Running is a great way to burn calories, tone muscles, boost cardio fitness, and burn off some negative energy, all for the cost of a tracksuit, a good pair of trainers and a spree on iTunes.

However, anyone who goes running, and as a matter of fact, those keen to avoid it, will also be well aware of some of the key problems that it can cause. Having injured my knees a couple of years ago I spent some time doing other forms of exercise – swimming, power plates, power walking and so forth while my knees recovered. In that time, my Vibrator Lady friend, Michelle (Power Plate personal trainer for anyone who might have been thinking otherwise) took great pains to point out to me the potential injuries caused by running, especially on the pavement – i.e. knee or ankle injuries and shin splints (as though this was something I needed reminding of mid agonizing sports massage).

Today Michelle still reminds me to stretch properly, and it is advice that, despite a rather lazy disposition towards this particular aspect of exercise, I am more than willing to take, because what that woman doesn’t know about keeping in shape is not worth knowing. Nonetheless she feels that one of the best pieces of advice for any woman who enjoys running is to invest in a good support bra. It is a problem men don’t have to consider she says: “unless of course they have moobs!”

What has come as something of a surprise over the years are some of the more unexpected perils that running can present. So here is my beginner’s guide to running:

1) Don’t stop to offer directions!

I nearly had a heart attack one day, when plugged into my iPod and mid ‘Material Girl’ I discovered I was being chased down the road by a man asking for my phone number. Admittedly that was nothing compared to my surprise when I stopped to give someone directions – well, that’s what I assumed they would be asking for, only to be propositioned by a man who was in throws of satisfying himself. I live in a nice area – and that is simply something you don’t expect! On the plus side I am now much better acquainted with the local police force as well as the private security teams in the North London area.

2) Make sure you look presentable: running is surprisingly sociable!

Despite my more disconcerting experiences, I have also had some particularly pleasant encounters on my runs. Living at home and in close proximity to friends and their families I bump into a surprising number of people, and on several occasions I seem to have had a positively sociable day before lunch: Just the other week one friend practically took out an oncoming stream of traffic to swerve into a side road and say good morning. If you go out power walking with a full face of make-up and designer sunglasses (you know who you are), sweat streaked foundation and mascara trailing down your face won’t be hidden behind your eye shields if you’re make any real effort in your keep fit campaign!

However, you might want to make sure you have cleaned your teeth and put on some strong deodorant before you set out even if it is in the early hours of the morning –you never know who you might bump into!

Having said that, if you live in a more rural area, you may find that the company you keep is less fussed about personal hygiene: I happen to have a following of feathered friends in the form of some rather fluffy ducklings who come to greet me when I stop to stretch by the ponds, although admittedly I think their interest may be short lived due to disappointment at my constant lack of provisions.

3) Invest in appropriate footwear!

Any physiotherapist or personal trainer will tell you that a good pair of trainers is vital to look after your joints and to make exercise effective. In fact footwear has become such an important part of the exercise process that Skechers trainers actually claim to help you keep fit without the actual exercise part – it is all in the shoes!

But there are other things to consider when kitting out your feet: while my own experiences fall predominantly into a very specific category, it seems that I am not alone when it comes to unexpected hindrances. At school I was not remotely interested in exercise, Lacrosse lessons saw me actively running in the opposite direction to the ball – seriously in America boys play this game in enough padding to keep out an army of killer bees, in the UK, girls play it in mini-skirts in December!

To this day I am not in the least bit competitive about sport, so it came as a surprise when a friend reminded me that a girl at school had been so keen to finish a cross country run in first place that when she lost her trainers to a particularly sticky mud puddle she completely abandoned them and finished the race barefoot.

4) Choose your running time carefully!

There are times when it is really difficult to fit exercise in around a busy working schedule, especially when those winter months draw in and whether you run morning or evening, you can bet your socks it will be dark. It is always hard to get up in the morning before work, and if you are not careful running home from work you are in grave danger of having any peace of mind you might hope to gain from your virtuosity ruined by rush hour traffic.

Another friend, who what with being a member of the Territorial Army, and also having competed in the Iron Man challenge is no exception in the struggle to fit training in around work. He says: “One day, bearing in mind I start in the office at 6.30, I set my alarm to allow plenty of time to make my way through the city. So, I promptly sprung out of bed when the alarm went off, jumped into my runners, and stepped out the front door. As I did, I noticed how incredibly dark it was that morning – it always is dark when I set out, but today, more so. With my hazy morning eyes I glanced at the watch and noticed that it was ridiculously early in the morning … RIDICULOUSLY! About 2.30 am! I went back to bed, called it off as a bad job and got the tube at the appropriate time!”

So there we go. I am thrilled to see that exercise is on the up, it is the perfect time of year for it, and a much better way to get in shape than any of the faddy bikini-bod diets that grace the pages of weekly magazines. However, remember this as the beginner’s guide to running: tie your trainers very tight; double check your alarm clock; make sure you look presentable; don’t offer anyone directions; and above all, don’t forget to stretch!

The Beauty Underneath

2010-05-21T16:13:00.000-07:00

It appears that society is at odds with itself. In the last few months we have had our standard drip of celebrity trivia, diet tips for the summer, lusted after red carpet perfection through the awards season, delighted in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and swarmed to watch one of the west end’s anti heroes in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom sequel – Love Never Dies.

In short, the same society that is utterly obsessed with the body beautiful seems to be bewitched by the beauty underneath – things that are verging on being ugly, but hold us captive by their other worldly romance. This shows one of two things about us – either we are trying to justify the ugly side to our own personalities, or this is our saving grace proving that we have not become robotic slaves to Botox and airbrushing.

We currently live in an age of child beauty queens, and Tavi Gevinson, the 13 year old fashion blogger. We glorify youth, are perplexed when women in their forties can still look attractive, put it all down to Botox and feverishly ask the question – would you have plastic surgery? If I Google, ‘The Body Beautiful’ the first entry that appears tells me where I can book plastic surgery holidays for mother and daughter in Malaysia – ugliness is a family trait you understand.

Not only are we obsessed with skin deep perfection, we like to put beauty in one formulaic box, with science citing the golden ratio mask - we have all seen it – it tells us that the most beautiful faces all have the same symmetrical proportions. Unsurprisingly, famous faces that fall into this golden category of perfection include Kate Moss, Liz Hurley and Cheryl Cole. So by those standards, I am afraid that if you do not conform, you might as well stick a paper bag over your head and go and sit in a darkened cave to think about your unforgiveable ugliness.

Nonetheless, I have a distinct memory of my first foray into Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights as a teenager. Teenagers usually provide the perfect fodder for pure unadulterated superficiality – with hormones raging you can guarantee the words ‘fit’, ‘hot’, and if my little brother is anything to go by ‘buff’ – make up a vast proportion of their vocabulary. However, under the guidance of an enthused English teacher, a GCSE class of girls all but swooned at their desks as they grew to know and love the amoral and unearthly demonic Heathcliff.

How can anyone possibly love a man with an implied taste for necrophilia, and whose violent nature induces him to mourn his Cathy “not like a man, but like a savage beast being goaded to death with knives and spears”? And yet, Heathcliff and Cathy remain amongst the most romantic if tragic literary figures.

It is not even as though flawed protagonists are few and far between – time and time again we have fallen in love with characters who physically or characteristically undermine our preoccupation with superficial beauty: Jane Eyre’s brooding Mr Rochester, The Return of the Native’s Eustacia Vye, even Disney has ventured into the realms of the beauty underneath with Beauty and the Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Dreamwork’s favourite alternative to a knight in shining armour – Shrek.

Tim Burton is famous for his dark characters and it is interesting that many have been depicted by the undoubtedly beautiful Johnny Depp – most lately the truly mad Mad Hatter, and in the formative years of his career – Edward Scissorhands. Depp almost seeks to destroy his own good looks to portray vulnerable, but by society’s standard’s quite frightening characters, and the really strange thing is that we love him all the more for it! Alice in Wonderland caused trouble before its release because it was arguably too dark for children to see and was therefore not commercially viable, but after general release seems to have invoked the amount of attention suitable for a production involving some of Hollywood’s most famous names.

Andrew Lloyd Webber is the King of West end wonder, and after more than twenty years in the making, he has tapped into public demand to know what happens next to the Phantom who is neither hero not villain – the audience remains torn between fear and fascination with the physically deformed and morally twisted lead. It seems bizarre that we applaud a character that practically blackmails the beautiful Christine, who sleeps with her and abandons her for fear she will reject him because of his deformities. And yet, Christine and her little boy, Gustav, cannot help but adore him, destructively and whole heartedly they sing about ‘The Beauty Underneath’ – and evidently the audience too falls in love with the self loathing Phantom. We thrive on anti heroes – and whatever the critics might say in mixed reviews of the production, more than £9 million in advanced ticket sales are a pretty telling sign not only of Mr Lloyd Webber’s box office appeal, but also of the Phantom’s cross generational fascination.

My artist friend Riffat whose work reflects her fascination with horror films, believes that our interest in the beauty underneath reflects our own insecurities: “I think we are fascinated by characters that are considered 'ugly' because they resemble us more accurately, even if we don’t want to accept it. This is why I am fascinated by horror and thriller films, they have characters which we manifest as evil, outcast, or a threat but they are really a manifestation of people’s fears of their own flaws.”

My friend Lynn tells me that her fictional crush of the moment is none other than out of this world heart throb – Edward Cullen – Twilight’s vampire lead. This answer speaks for itself. When I asked my friend Dom who he thought was the most romantic fictional character, he said – “Mr Rochester?... Wait, that is such a stereotype ... Austin Powers!” I think his response is more insightful than he realises – yes, Mr Rochester is a romantic stereotype – Literature students across the country will be wishing to fall in love with such a paragon of brooding masculinity. Maybe that is all there is to it though? We fall in love with obscure characters because we want to be different? Austin Powers as well – not exactly Brad Pitt, but testament to the pulling power of a good sense of humor and a fast car?

So are we trying to be different? Are we attracted to a reflection of our true selves? Are our romantic daydreams our salvation from a world drowning in fake tan and collagen?

I ask Dom why he thinks Mr Rochester is such a romantic character: “because he marries the most romantic heroine” he says with smug profoundness.

I am about to accept this as a succinct response before prying – why is Jane Eyre a romantic character? His response restores the order of the universe: “school mistress ... much sexual repression”.

The Trouble With Twilight

2010-05-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

Like half the global population, I am a fan of the Twilight series. There is nothing I enjoy more than suspending my disbelief and allowing my mind to wander into a different world for a while. I am also perfectly aware that teenage girls will always find a hero to fall hopelessly in love with – someone to scream at, at premiers – for my age group it was Leonardo Di Caprio and Josh Hartnett, for the weenie teens of today it is Robert Pattinson and his fictional counterpart – Edward Cullen, alongside a plethora of musicians and football players.
I am also not a complete bigot void of romantic hopes and day dreams, I like a fairytale ending as much as the next person.

What I do take issue with in the Twilight series is something that seems to be perpetuated amongst teenage girls across the board at the moment: which is their increasing willingness to be defined by their romantic interests.

By bringing this up I do not intend to bash people about the head with headstrong feminist politics – of course I am a strong feminist, what woman brought up in the twentieth century could fail to be; but that is not the point. The point is that for generations women have fought to be defined by their own ideas and agendas; and in a flutter of teen novels and delayed effects of sexual liberation young girls are once again placing themselves in what Simone de Beauvoir described as the ‘object’ position in society.

Essentially, Twilight sees a teenage girl talking about her first real relationship. Nothing wrong with that, we are all aware of the all consuming power of your first crush. Protagonist Bella’s whole world is dominated by Edward. She is willing to give up everything for him – life included, and it is left to him to say that he wants her to pursue her education and individual potential. She has no ambitions beyond her relationship.

This for starters is problematic. The book may well be reflecting the reality of teenage emotions with this image, but surely this should be tempered by Bella’s sense of self – beyond her obstinate behaviour in getting what she wants out of her relationship. Surely a parent or even her own little Jiminy Cricket should mean that she has some interest beyond hormones? And no, it is not enough to say that this is different because it is true love – that is the way everyone feels when they are in the grips of first love.

The two fundamental problems in the Twilight series: Edward, and Bella. On the first point, Edward is no ordinary teenage boy. Not only is he a vampire, but he is over a hundred years old and brought up in the Victorian era with all the morals and values that go with it. He is not your regular 21st Century teenage boy whose devotion lies with his favourite football team, his X box, and a rampant libido he has been brought up to believe he is free to use at will. So it is unreasonable to let anyone think that they might be able to find their very own Edward Cullen, or that Bella’s frankly desperate behaviour is anything other than absurd.
Most teenage boys, and I put the emphasis on most, because there is always an exception to the rule – do not approach their relationships with this level of responsibility or intensity at such a young age. I do not wish to be the relationship Grinch, and it is part and parcel of growing up that you will experience euphoric highs and crushing emotional lows, but surely it is irresponsible to let young girls think that this is what they can expect from their adolescent lovers?

Secondly, there is Bella herself. She says repeatedly words to the effect of: “I wasn’t interesting. And he was. Interesting … and brilliant … and mysterious … and perfect … and beautiful”. She does not see herself as beautiful or worthwhile without the validation of Edward. Her sense of self worth is dependent on him. More alarmingly though, she is physically at her most beautiful to the outside world and at her most competent when she becomes a vampire – when she has sealed her commitment to him, as though receiving a mark of his approval. All teenagers struggle with their insecurities about how they look – hell, most adults struggle with them too, otherwise Botox and beauty products wouldn’t be million dollar industries! The thing is, that insecurity and learning to be confident in who you are, is a really important part of growing up, and I cannot believe it is ok to tell teenage girls that their validation is dependent on the hormonal acrobatics of an adolescent boy.

This perspective Bella has of herself leads to her destructive behaviour in the second book, which is cause for concern in itself, and yet something else that adolescents do not need justification for. When Edward decides it is better for Bella if he disappears out of her life she mopes about for six months becoming a shell of her former self. Eventually she discovers that if she puts herself into grave danger the adrenaline surges cause her to hallucinate that he is with her. She jump off cliffs, goads a werewolf and races along on a motorbike she can’t ride in order to bring him closer to her, until eventually he is forced to give in and return, granted because he wants to but also because she has refused to get over her loss. As a reader I was certainly thrilled to see the two main characters reunited, this is the way you instinctively want it to work.

However, surely one of the most wonderful things about being human is that you will, beyond a shadow of a doubt always recover one way or another from your emotional losses, in particular the ones you experience as a teenager. Surely it is socially irresponsible to feed the fantasies of young girls hoping against hope that if they are self destructive enough then they will get what they think they want and blow the rest of it.

Here is the dilemma: In the 1980s Julia Robert’s uneducated, prostitute character in Pretty Woman decides that she wants more for herself as an individual before she answers HER Edward’s question: “So what happens when the knight rescues the princess from the tower?” with “She rescues him right back.” In 2010 the modern movie heroin Bella commits everything she is to Edward almost without thought, and tells him: “Now you know. No one’s ever loved anyone as much as I love you”.

I am not sure what this says about the way women see themselves today, but as someone not that far out of their own adolescence, it seems that a heroin who is too frightened to stand alone is no heroin at all.

Where is Art?

2010-05-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

At the end of last year the omniscient art deity – Saatchi did Art students across the world a colossal disservice in the programme ‘School of Saatchi’ when he selected the winner Eugenie Scrase for her Trunkated Trunk, thus perpetuating the simultaneously vacuous and pretentious art school stereotype.

Move over Duchamp and take your Urinal with you, another art student has been justified by a man with money in bringing a serendipitous act of nature indoors to reignite the eternal question – What is art? Apparently according to Saatchi and his minions the answer is that art is where it is, not what it is. If you put it in a gallery – res ipsa loquitur! It’s art!

Nonetheless the question rages on – what is art? Gormley’s fourth plinth project – One and Other, in Trafalgar Square last summer put the question into interesting focus. The idea offered 2400 people the opportunity to be living ‘statues’ on the plinth for one hour each, doing whatever they wanted. Apparently when it is put to the general public, art is at its most potent when it highlights the human condition and when it not only reflects reality, but IS real – waving a CV to get a job in recession; campaigning for an individual’s release from death row, or simply enjoying a good view.

We have seen people turn what would otherwise be an act of eccentricity or even protest into art because of the forum it is displayed in, but what about the other way around? What happens when you turn a place into an artistic forum by placing art in it?

The Parlour collective is a group of performing artists who take their work to relevant settings to explore the human condition. Their goal is to make art more accessible by contextualising it in relevant surroundings rather than the austerity of a gallery.

Jack Catling, founder of the Collective says: The “The Parlour Collective began because I felt there was a need to embrace the historical context of performance art as an entertaining act. I was particularly interested in the concept of the pre-music hall song-and-supper rooms, which presented an eclectic mixture of acts to a hugely varied audience, often there was no line drawn between art and entertainment.”

Catling founded the Collective whilst studying at the University of Arts, and now finds his own work inextricably linked with that of the collective. With an emphasis on historical and cultural exploration, the artists who make up the group also vary in their styles of working, and content, but seem to be on the same page as Catling when it comes to their focus on an all encompassing artistic experience.
Artist Riffat Ahmed who has been working with the group since her time at Central St Martin’s says: “We look to contextualise our work in a place that will encourage us artistically as well as presenting contemporary arts in accessible public spheres.”
“Our shows have varied from pubs to museum spaces. All the performers in our group are very different. Some performances run throughout the evening whereas others have a set period of time, but we are all responding to the same ethos – making performance art accessible.”

Ahmed has always thrown herself into her own work with unrelenting enthusiasm. With many of her past performances including a recent stint at the Whitechapel Gallery approaching gender issues.

The Whitechapel performance entitled: “I do this for you darling,” saw her dressed for a ball, and shaving her legs to classical music in front of a live audience: “There is always an element of voyeurism in my work as well as a fascination with the absurd. I am interested in the deformations and flaws in our society; but because of the context of a lot of our performances it also includes the audience. A lot will depend upon their reaction, so they become a part of it through this sense of voyeurism.”

In their latest performance, the Parlour Collective has chosen to work at the Ragged School Museum because it is a space that can function on multiple levels. It is a building in Mile End known for its historical connection with Dr Bernardo.
Ahmed says: “The site has also functioned as a factory at times, and holds a lot of memories. Our show focuses on the theme of Victorian schooling, but there is no getting away from these other functions the building has. Everyone’s work is different, but it all bears relevance to what has happened here.”

This isn’t the first time that artists have used their skills to make social comments, it is something of a running theme in art history; Goya caused scandal with his Los Caprichos series in 18th Century Spain by exposing Spanish folly, and our very own Tracey Emin has been known to hit the headlines for highlighting issues in the present day.

However, with an instant visual appeal and the help of the internet, performance art has gained momentum in recent decades and could be the way to make art more accessible to an information saturated generation eager to cut the rubbish and see the point. Performance art is an effective way to channel ideas and to make art more interactive. Being able to see the artist at work is a great way to connect with the ideas.

The beauty of the Parlour Collective is that part of their goal is to embrace the different perspectives of the artists and the audience to create a more effective performance, and the setting away from a traditional gallery is key to this objective. Catling says: “Utilising a contemporary context allows modern audiences to experience performance art in a variety of different ways not usually accessible through a fine art environment.”

There are a lot of things that are in a state of flux this week, not least of all the question of how to make our political system more democratic, but trust the arts to provide the answer. The most effective performances are not the ones with a single stage presence, but ones that are collective.
parlourcollective.co.uk

14th May, 6pm-9pm

The Ragged School Museum
46-50 Copperfield Rd.
London
E3 4RR

Men as shoes

2010-05-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

“He’s hot!” smiled Kevin as he leered at a passer-by while shopping in the post apocalyptic debris of Saturday shopping on Oxford Street. Then he looked at me and shook his head – “shoes,” he said sadly, “I know you too well”.

The gentleman in question was by all accounts very attractive: tall, dark, handsome – all the relevant criteria for a veritable prince charming, but all of this was lost on me at a single glance at his feet. While Kevin was drifting into the realms of sexual fantasy, I had already deemed the man a lost cause. You see, after careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that a man’s footwear is an insight into his date-ability.

You can tell a lot about a man by his feet, or so the myth goes. However, I am sure small footed men across the country will vehemently dispute this as sure as the cock crows. In Notting Hill Julia Roberts made the shrewd observation that a man with big feet must have big shoes, and it is these shoes regardless of size that could save a lot of trouble.

Every girl it seems is a sucker for a bad boy. From mad bad and dangerous to know Lord Byron, to the pre-Perry Russell Brand, it is the boys we know to be utterly unsuitable who we are hopelessly drawn to. My particular brand of weak spot comes in the form of artistic souls whose creativity and sensitivity is offset by neurosis to rival that of any highly strung female, and an insatiable appetite for attention. It never fails to surprise me, but if I took the time to give these boys a proper dressing down, I would have realised before now that they all have one thing in common...they all choose to wear white, lace up plimsolls.

I am slowly beginning to realise that those little white canvas shoes that once seemed to fly the flag for Shoreditch chic are now an irrepressible fog horn warning that insecurities and pokey watering holes are on the horizon. I mean, if you can’t cope with real shoes, how on earth are you going to manage a real woman? – Assuming that most women over the age of 15 are looking for more than free gig tickets and a joint.

I vaguely worry I am being terribly superficial, but I am not alone in this theory, author Donna Sozio is of similar mind. In fact, so much so, that she wrote a book on the subject: Never Trust a Man in Alligator Loafers, which has earned approval amongst the ranks of America’s finest females.

Donna says: "All shoes send a message that other people pick up... all day long. Think of them as little billboards on your feet".

Still, I am concerned. Taken as I am with this concept, am I not in grave danger of judging a book by its cover? Doesn’t this completely violate all those things we have been told growing up? And then it hit me that I might be being judged by my un-erring devotion to flat boots – am I boring? Too practical?

“People have all kinds of shoes” says Donna, “shoes reveal aspects of our personalities. It's not meant to be THE WAY to read people - but it is fun, telling, simple and extraordinarily accurate.”

Illustrating her point she says: “When picking an apple - if it's bruised on the outside, I don't eat it because more than likely it's bruised and mush on the inside! Did I just "judge a book by it's cover" - you bet! It's called discernment.”

In search of the male perspective I asked my friend Callum what he thinks his shoes show about him. Callum has been wearing the same Converse since as long as I can remember. They have been scribbled on and the holes are so bad that the soles of the shoes are threatening to walk out on the bit that covers his foot, but he is unerring in his devotion to them, and said: “I reckon they show loyalty. I have driven them to the end of their usefulness, but I still wear them when most people would have thrown them out.” Then he added thoughtfully, “I wonder what Justin’s vomit-green Nike trainers say about him?” Interestingly Callum and his girlfriend have been together for just about as long as the trainers have been around, so perhaps his shoes are pretty much on the mark.

So if the eyes are the window into the soul and shoes are the beacon of compatibility, evidently I might also be attracting a particular type of man by the shoes I choose to wear myself! Wavering confidence implored me to be concerned as to whether I am mortally offended by this idea or empowered by it: “We don't get to choose everything in life - but we do get to choose our shoes” Donna reminded me; “Focus on the qualities you want to express to the world around you - then go ahead - judge me by my cover because I've taken the care & time to line it up with who I am!”

So now I feel justified in my conviction that when it comes to a man’s feet it isn’t size that matters, it’s what they do with them. I would hardly say that this is a theory to live by, but it is a little more interesting than working out if someone is perfect on paper – as Donna says – “To boot - it's fun!”