I'm not crazy, I swear.

A few months ago, I nearly died at East Croydon station.

I didn't really, but as opening lines go, that's not half-bad, is it? With the juxtaposition of melodrama and utter banality - yeah, yeah, English students die hard and whatnot; I'll get on with it.

I thought I was going to die. For perhaps 120 seconds, I was convinced that This. Was. It. I even remember thinking, "Here? Really, here? Of all places?!" To this day, it still frightens me a little to recall just how fast my heart was racing, how I pretty much forgot how to breathe in and out, how I spent a tearful ten minutes in the waiting room between platforms 3 and 4, trembling and trying to calm down.

Panic attacks can be so embarrassing.

I've had this post half-written for a long time, and I'm putting it out there now because 1) I'm having trouble coming up with ideas at the moment, and it's worrying me more than it usually would, because I'm about to do a fortnight's work experience at a student website and therefore need to be at the top of my writing and content-producing game (eek). And 2) in the last week or so, new charity Mindfull has advised that lessons about mental health issues should be a standard part of secondary education.

I don't know many stats about mental health issues off the top of my head - and it really isn't for want of looking - but I can name at least four family members who've suffered depression and/or anxiety (I really won the genetics lottery). Most people know someone who has dealt with issues that are somewhere on the spectrum - from "mild" depression or the odd panic attack, to severe mood disorders. And despite a growing number of high-profile people (Stephen Fry, Catherine Zeta-Jones, my own personal heroine Thea Gilmore) being open about their own experiences of mental health problems, it remains a tricky thing to talk about. I almost think I'd more readily give my nearest and dearest a grim-faced account of a particularly bad bout of cystitis than admit that sometimes - no, often - my brain goes a bit rogue and starts throwing panic-inducing question after panic-inducing question at me.

I wouldn't say I have a serious problem. (You may read this and conclude otherwise, and I wouldn't blame you.) I mean sure, if I have two whole days off in a row I start to freak out a bit - too much time off triggers my "worst case scenario" montages. But if I've worked a six-day week or two, and have ended up relying on coffee in the mornings and a glass of wine in the evenings, it won't be long before the jitters set in. Which turn to tension, which in turn may spark a little panic moment, or a proper "OhGODIcan'tbreathe" attack. Sometimes hormones play a part, sometimes they don't.

There was a time when I would have said I had a problem. I've mentioned it before - "that time I went a bit mad in second year". In, um, my second year of uni, funnily enough. Until then I'd been a worrier, sure, but the end of 2009 saw that erupt, seemingly from nowhere, into a full-blown Thing. A Thing that hounded me for months, like an internal stalker. If depression is "the black dog", anxiety is a Jack Russell, yapping and snapping at your ankles, until you give it the attention and energy it needs.

During those horrible few months, I tried a number of things - saw more than one GP, went home to my mother, confided in one tutor, played a lot of clock patience (there's not much to do at five in the morning when sleep is an alien concept and you need something that's going to occupy your brain and your hands. Don't make it weird), and got as far as the door of the university counselling service. On two occasions. Did I ever make an appointment? No. By admitting that a few sessions of chatting to a trained professional might be a good idea, it felt like I'd be slapping a label on my forehead that read "nutter". I was scared of what other people would think - I'm still not sure why I thought I had to tell them. I think I reasoned that if I had good friends, a reasonably supportive - if not endlessly patient - family, a bemused but caring boyfriend, what was so wrong with me that I needed someone else to talk to? But that's the nature of the beast, I guess - the sense of perspective is the first thing to go.

I spent most of the summer that followed second year with gastritis. I'd literally worried myself sick. Things only started to settle down properly when I began my third year - I was living with a good friend, my workload increased, so I had more stuff to concentrate on, and I think I'd just worn myself out. Being in a constant state of anxiety is exhausting. 

I'm really not sure how to round off a blog post that is a little more soul-baring than I'm used to. Like I said, I don't feel I have a serious problem now - I have a few bad days every month or so, and I know what helps and what doesn't, even if I don't always act upon that knowledge. Would I be rid of my weird anxiety issues? Of course I would. I'd pay good money to be one of those asleep-as-soon-as-head-meets-pillow, whatever-will-be-will-be people. But the chances of that kind of a change happening are slim-to-none - the best I think I can hope for is just to get a bit better at dealing with the waves of panic as and when they roll in, and eventually, they might start to shrink.

If this doesn't haunt your dreams, well, then I'm all out of gothy-sounding country-folk to give you.

And this is cute. I don't know if I've missed the boat with this band - has anyone heard of them? Have they released anything over here? But the video itself is gloriously silly and camp, while the song is basically a shortcut back to the best bits of your teen years - sweet and fun and at times, a little bit sexy (altogether now: "we're going to rattle this ghost town!").

Checking your privilege...

Apparently, this is a thing at the moment. It started on the internet and is now some kind of zeitgeisty... zeitgeist. As I'm only partially employed*, and easily bored, I spend a lot of time on the internet, so I'm somewhat surprised that I've missed it - but then again, I had to have Snapchat explained to me the other day, and I feel old when I [am forced to] listen to Radio One, so... I'm about as down-with-the-kids as your great Aunt Mildred.

*I say that; having just done a six-day week, I feel like I'm overly employed. Just not in the right job(s).

So, it's something the kids are saying a lot at the moment, in online debates about politics, feminism - the usual stuff. But it seems to have got up in a few writers' grills  - and thanks must go to Lucy from Made in Chelsea for making it borderline-acceptable to use that phrase. Hadley Freeman, Dan Hodges, Hugo Rifkind and Louise Mensch have all devoted columns to unpicking the phrase over the last week or so. Like I said, I hadn't even heard of it until I read the Hadley Freeman piece (possibly the most sensible one out there), but now I have read some of the varying perspectives, I have to say, it's a phrase I like.

Why? Well, because taking the words themselves - before they get lobbed carelessly into a debate about the social issue of your choice - they simply imply that we all need to be a little more self-aware before we judge people that are not us. Which is a concept I am in whole-hearted agreement with. Don't get me wrong, making scathing and witty judgements is fun - join me and the Boy for an end-of-week drink or five and we'll give you a crash course in being smug and superior - but when it's done to score points, make others feel small, start or win a fight, then it's just not cricket.

People are right to be sceptical of fashionable schools of thought that can be summed up with snappy, witty slogans. They often hugely over-simplify the problems they're trying to address, though the intentions are usually positive ("Make Poverty History" - remember that? If only it was - or will ever be - that simple). But if we look at the bare bones, the basic meaning of the command to "check your privilege" (former linguistics students die hard), it's merely a call to remember where you're coming from. It's the self-awareness version of a GCSE history teacher shouting at their pupils, "Look at the source, boys and girls!" - where are your opinions coming from? Your own experiences.

Now, a) that sounds like common sense. People do that automatically, don't they? Pffff, well... perhaps more on that in a sec, I want to make point b), which is this - you can still have an opinion on something if you haven't directly experienced it. You just need to add the self-awareness bit, and stir. Accept that someone who has had personal experience of the topic in question - being on benefits, any kind of discrimination, abortion, to give some topical examples - will probably have a much more visceral response. Which relates back to a) - most normal, rational, smart human beings will do this - they know their view is not the only view.

But some - the people who leave comments on Mail Online, people who demonise everyone claiming some kind of welfare benefit, people who get sniffy when you call them on it and start their comeback with "well, as a taxpayer, I..." - have forgotten to check their privilege. Yes, it usually takes hard, hard work, determination, failure, and trying again to get on to the ladder in your chosen field - now more than ever - but there is almost always a certain amount of luck involved. You might have been blessed with a fearsome work ethic, a pushy parent or two, the right postcode, a ceiling-smashing ambitious streak, or all of the above plus a pony and regular skiing holidays in Val d'Isere.

I'm nowhere near where I want to be at the moment, but I'm ok with checking my own privilege. When I'm raging about the lack of jobs for verbose young upstarts, I remember that at least I'm still employed, and therefore earning. When my mother and I are shouting blue murder at one another, because our house isn't big enough for two high-maintenance females, I'm grateful that she hasn't yet changed the locks with the words, "you're on your own now, princess" (she wouldn't say that; she's not Ray Winstone). When I'm judging the little flock of alcoholics who like to congregate by the fountain a few metres from my workplace, and wondering how it is they haven't got better things to do, I count myself lucky that I have people around me who would intervene without a second thought if I ever fell on the darkest of hard times.

Checking your privilege from time to time isn't a bad idea, because after all, privileges can always be revoked.

This song is like sex in the ears; it also contains the best use of the word "rascal" ever.

What to do with your free time...

...if you still have any.

I can't remember the last time I fell as completely and utterly in love with a film as I did with Mud, which I saw on Wednesday evening. It certainly wasn't the last time I made it to the cinema, to see Les Miserables - the only bit of which I didn't find glaringly underwhelming being Eddie Redmayne's face. I spent most of that genuinely concerned that Hugh Jackman was going to do serious damage to his vocal cords: "he's not going to go for that note, is he? No, he'll never make it. Oh, he is...? Brave. Very brave."

But anyway. Mud. Set along the Mississippi, in Arkansas, two young teenagers find a man hiding out on an island near their riverside homes. He goes by the name of Mud, and is waiting for a girl - a girl he's been in love with for years, and whose violent ex he killed - and is trying to stay off the radar of the dead man's family, and the authorities. The two boys get drawn into his story, and begin to help him - the sensitive one, Ellis, more readily than his brilliantly-named friend Neckbone. Ellis is having problems of his own; his parents are on the verge of splitting, and he's got a crush on an older girl. He's amusingly given to throwing punches when frustrated in his endeavours - I kind of wanted to ruffle his hair and tell him that in four years' time, he'd probably be needing two sticks to fight off the ladies. And then I remembered he's a fictional character.

It's achingly middle-class to get gushy about cinematography, but Mud definitely warrants it. Thanks to its glorious, wild setting and Steadicam camera work (I've been reading everything I can find about this film; can you tell?) it's a film you want to step right inside and explore. I've also had the soundtrack on repeat for the last few days; it's as country as you'd expect, with some really nice guitar work going on. In particular, the track called "Snakebite" (which doesn't give away any major plot points, not at all), with its spiky guitars and menacing drums, makes whatever you happen to be doing while listening to it feel like The Most Important and Epic Thing You've Ever Done. I was proofreading the absolute shit out of my work on Friday to it... (You can find it on YouTube if you want to see what I mean.)

There is nothing about this film I did not love - the plot feels like it could have been adapted from a classic American novel, and it doesn't descend into cliche. Even Ellis' dad, who could be your standard emotionally-unavailable hard-ass, has his softer moments. Everything wraps up quite neatly, sure, but thanks to the story-telling and really good performances from Matthew McConnaughey as Mud, Tye Sheridan as Ellis and Ray McKinnon as Ellis' father, you don't feel short-changed. And plus, who doesn't love a sort-of-coming-of-age film that ends in a shoot-out?

I mentioned in the last post that I'd wanted to include something about the new Thea Gilmore album, Regardless, but that I'd run out of words. So while I'm on the topic of nice things to see and listen to, here goes. In several reviews of the album, much was made of how Ms Gilmore has reached musical maturity and finally found her "place" in the British talent line-up. Biased though I may be, I think what's actually happened is that British music has finally found a place for her. Presumably she has, more or less, always made the music she's wanted to make, and for any artist, that's going to change between the ages of 23 and 30-something. It's probably true that in Regardless, Thea Gilmore has struck her best balance yet between finely-articulated rage against injustice and apathy, and writing about more universal themes of love, family and loss. Stand-out tracks include Start As We Mean To Go On - my new drinking song, surely - Something to Sing About, and Spit and Shine. And if you manage to listen to My Friend Goodbye and remain dry-eyed, then you're a robot.

And so to reading material. On my desk, there's a stack of things I should get on and read, one being The Second Coming, by John Niven. It's the sequel to Kill Your Friends, a book so sharp you could hurt yourself on it. With a protagonist so vile you finish the book and feel a genuine need to read the Bible - but he has such a strong voice you find yourself slipping into his thought patterns. It's funny, but black comedy doesn't begin to cover it. It's a triumph of a novel, but God, you feel dirty afterwards. I'm both nervous and sceptical about the sequel - it's got so much to live up to.

To lighten the mood, I've also got Hadley Freeman's Be Awesome. It's not a self-help book; it's closer to a more balanced How To Be A Woman. I worship at the altar of Caitlin Moran as much as the next 23-year-old upstart who thinks she's cool, but her first book probably should have been called The World According to Catmo. Freeman writes in a similar way - it's like having a long, putting-the-world-to-rights chat with your best mate - but her arguments seem slightly more measured. And it's worth reading for the chapter entitled "A day in your life in Daily Mail headlines" alone.

That's all for now. Have some... oh God, I'm struggling for musical recommendations... Oh, this is quite Sunday-ish, that'll do.

Not really part of the plan...

It's common knowledge by now that being a university-educated 23-year-old, in the UK in 2013, is no picnic. (And if you're the aspiring-writer girlfriend of an aspiring musician, you should probably face facts and admit that you're totally fucked, really.) Someone - not me - really needs to remind my mother of this; part 436 of the "why haven't you got a proper job yet?" conversation happened the other day, and ran thus:

Me: "[insert girl's name] has just got a job with Easyjet- she didn't get onto the course she wanted to do, so she's going to work for them for a year."

Mum: "Oh that's good. [Pause.] Why don't you try and get in with an airline for a bit? Just for a while, so that you have a proper job?"

I'd like to say I bit back the exasperated, "because about the very last thing I need right now is another job I don't want to do and that doesn't even have anything to do with what I'm good at", but because I'm a mouthy little shit all of the times at times, I didn't.

In a previous post (the ranty Iain Duncan Smith one), I mentioned that a Times columnist had written a light-hearted piece about all the menial, brain-meltingly dull and unfulfilling jobs he'd had in his time, and what they'd taught him. During a particularly long and boring afternoon at work the other day, I started compiling my own list.

My first job, aged 14, was a complete gift, and really brought me out of my shell. I worked here (you'll know it if you're from Sussex), and most of the time it was an absolute joy. Running round after animals and children all day? Nice work if you can get it. I shovelled a lot of shit, chased a lot of goats, looked after, rode and fell off some beautiful but sometimes temperamental horses and ponies. I got chased by a belligerent turkey, chased the odd cow through the car park, failed to get alpacas to go where they needed to go, had to shovel up sheep placenta during lambing season (ewww, that was grim) and judged a lot of people on their parenting skills. I worked almost every weekend and school/college holiday for four years, and then worked one last summer after my first year at uni.

I made some great friends, admired some hot boys from afar, and learned to drink at the staff summer parties (which tended to be when the admiration of hot boys could happen at much closer quarters). And all that shit-shovelling gives you a seriously flat stomach. Even if, when combined with falling off a horse, it also results in being frogmarched to an osteopath, who doesn't believe you're only 17 because "your back is awfully... um, how to put this... stressed. You're going to have to sort this out before you have children." Yeah, but I had abs of steel, who needs a correctly-aligned spine?

Next up was a summer behind the bar at a village pub. Which terrified me initially, as I don't love being the centre of attention (...much...) and when you're serving, you're on display all the time. And when you're not serving, you're probably passing through the kitchen, being shouted at by a chef. (I used to be overly nice to him whenever I saw him outside of work, mainly to kind of disarm him/weird him out. I don't think it worked.) I'm not what you'd call a natural at waitressing, so in my first week I think the only thing I said was "Sorry!" and every time my boss walked past me, he'd say "Kirsten, you look worried."

"No, Alex, that's just my face."

University had me doing the odd strange thing for money. There was the two days I spent sticking address labels on the alumni newspaper, for which I was paid about £100. I'm not kidding; I can't have done more than six hours' work. And they say universities don't have money to burn...

I worked in a university office for a few months - the QUB School of History and Anthropology. That was ok, until the last few weeks, when all the staff began taking their summer holidays and I was pretty much on my own in the History office. Which would have been fine had it not been the end-of-exams and pre-graduation bit of the year, so we were getting a lot of students calling up in a panic about resits and registering for graduation, and all they were getting on the other end of the phone was me. Who didn't have the first idea of what to tell them, because no-one had told me anything. I just used to say, "Erm, yes, I think the best person to speak to would be Frances, as she's the school manager", put them through and carry on faffing about on the internet. And then Frances would come in and I'd have to pretend to be doing something other than going through every comic on this website.

Sometimes I'd be over in the Anthropology office, which was smaller and quieter, perhaps because it was populated by men - one of whom did stand-up comedy in his spare time, which was pretty cool, especially as he'd sometimes leave his gig notes on his desk. While working there, I was having a bit of a trying-to-break-up-with-someone problem, while almost getting together with someone else, via a third person. No, I'm not proud of it. "You should have your own show," said the non-comedian guy once, after I'd given him the full run-down of my romantic situation(s). Well, he asked.

I also worked briefly as a Kumon assistant - I pretty much nicked the job off my flatmate - and I can't think of anything remarkable about that, except having to sneak off to the loo to text the Boy whenever a kid asked me to explain something Maths-related. An actual message I sent him was: "I've forgotten how to do long multiplication. Help!" Luckily for me, he obliged.

Which brings us to proofreading, and tanning-salon-minding. (Oh, the thrilling life I lead...) I remember being jobless and bored out of my skull once I'd come back to Horsham in the post-graduation comedown of summer 2011. I was just getting desperate and staring down the barrel of having to do something waitressy when I got an e-mail inviting me to Uckfield, which I'd vaguely heard of, to do a proof test. I had no recollection of applying for the job, but off I went. And found eleven mistakes on a ten-mistake document, much to the amusement of my friends when I proudly relayed that fact to them later on. "Can you start tomorrow?" said my interviewer.

And I'm still there, when I'm not at the salon. (Except on Sundays, when I refuse to un-cling myself from the Boy, because it's the only day we're both off.) I'm still proofing guide dog obituaries and insurance policies, and overhearing conversations that both amuse and appal me. It's not news, but boys aged between 18 and 21 are disgusting, hilarious creatures.

You get a lot of weird and wonderful characters in a tanning salon - a real cross-section of people. Loads more men than I expected, and what's more, loads more straight men. I've had the line "so, can a man and a woman fit on a sunbed together?" used on me more than once, which is nice, and the creams that we sell to prolong/enhance your tan have names you wouldn't believe if I told you. I've had to try and explain Morris dancing to our lovely Hungarian nail technician, and have acquired an admirer with the most beautiful Scottish accent I've ever heard. As Fran says in that episode of Black Books: "It just... does things to me."

I really need to stop now, this is far longer than planned. I was going to include something about the new Thea Gilmore album, "Regardless", as it's the only thing I've been listening to all week, but I'll be straying into e-book territory if I type any more words, and none of us need that.

Have this. The Boy keeps playing it, and as a result it keeps getting stuck in my head. 

Daily Fail.

It's not easy being the daughter of a Daily Mail reader. On a near-daily basis, I find myself saying things like, "that's a slight generalisation, isn't it?" and "whoa, hang on, that might be a bit racist!" And possibly the worst one of all: "don't say that, you sound like Granny".

This post will contain a couple of ironies - mainly, that by complaining at length about said newspaper, I'll only be further boosting its profile, and secondly, a blog post that bitches about bitchy so-called journalists is in itself a massive contradiction.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good bitch. Some of the best conversations I've had with friends have involved a heartfelt slagging-off session of a mutual frenemy. Part of what brought the Boy and I together was our shared sense of superiority over [most] other human beings. (The other parts were vodka, and a mutual love of cheese. Find someone that really understands when you say, "that is some amazing Camembert" in an almost orgasmic tone, and you're set.)

What I'm not so keen on, however, is coming across newspaper articles that amount to nothing more than inches upon inches of bitterness and spite. Written by people who are in the privileged position - because we all know where print media is headed, let's be honest - of being paid to thrash out their opinions on a laptop and have them printed in national newspapers. Liz Jones, Jan Moir, Samantha Brick, I'm talking (typing?) about you. If I ever have to cast Macbeth, you three will be a shoe-in for the witches. (Note to self: calm down. Deep breaths.)

I am aware that those named above all write for the Daily Mail, and to provide some gender balance, there's Richard Littlejohn - also at the Mail - and undoubtedly numerous other offensive columnists at other papers. It's those three that drive me to distraction though, every time I have the misfortune to stumble across one of their pieces. In the same way that Fifty Shades of Grey was car-crash storytelling, Brick, Moir and Jones deal in car-crash newspaper columns - you read on, because you can't quite believe what you're reading.

On my way home from work on Tuesday (I get most of my blogging ideas on the train, mainly because it's the only time I don't feel bad about spending ages arsing about on Twitter), I noticed there was a lot of Twitter-based outrage at Jan Moir. (Again.) This time, instead of being vile about deceased boyband members, she'd sunk her claws into mezzo-soprano and let's face it, rather pretty lady, Katherine Jenkins. Now, I don't really have an opinion on Jenkins, and admittedly, getting your high-school bitch on is a far lesser crime than putting your vindictive, homophobic attitude down in black and white. My mum has a couple of Katherine's CDs, and yes, her voice is impressive. But I only have room for one girl-crush in my life, so I'm not here to stridently defend the singer.

But the tone of Moir's article was so breath-takingly bitchy, and seemed so utterly unnecessary, that it was hardly surprising that Twitter was buzzing with it and bloggers and columnists were tapping out responses as fast as their fingers would allow. So Katherine was wearing sunglasses when she ran the marathon - it was sunny. So her hair was "pulled back into an immaculate ponytail" - she was running a marathon. I should imagine that's hard enough without your hair flopping sweatily round your shoulders and getting blown into your face. So she might have been wearing some make-up? Jenkins herself did later deny that she was, but it doesn't bloody matter either way - some women I know will put something on their faces to put the bins out, given half a chance. Like I said, who gives a shit? She ran a marathon, raised £25,000 for Macmillan, a brilliant charity that provided help for her father, who died when she was only 15. Based on those things alone, writing such a nasty article just isn't on.

I highly doubt Ms Jenkins will be losing any sleep over it. If you're in the public eye, you must know that you're going to get a fair bit of crap written about you, so I'm not saying famous people should be exempt from having tabloids print that crap. I'd just like there to be genuine justification for it. There's a reason Charlie Brooker - as an example - is a far more pleasing read than Moir et al.; when he's being misanthropic, he at least displays a certain level of self-awareness so his audience knows he's got a heart somewhere.

Maybe this kind of thing comes from laziness. Maybe if you're a columnist on a national newspaper and it's a slow news week, it's easier to pull a name out of a hat and pick that person apart than it is to try and think of something that will give your readers something constructive, perhaps even uplifting, to mull over when they're commuting to work/on their tea-break/waiting for their dentist appointment. But we're not living in slow news times. There are so many things happening, so many things to write about, that people shouldn't need to resort to filling their column-space with venom and vitriol - especially when those at which it is aimed are doing good things. I get that it sells, and that those circulation figures are what the editors are primarily concerned about, but that doesn't mean it should be accepted. Journalists are meant to write "the first draft of history"; in such a jammy position, you'd hope they'd be beyond the playground bitching.

As I said, I'm well aware that posting the links to the offending articles in question only gives the writers more page-hits, but it's mainly so I don't have to paraphrase and thus risk giving an inaccurate synopsis. It's also in the interests of fairness. Of course.

I didn't really like this song the first time round, but I've been playing it non-stop this week.

If you don't have a sentimental bone in your body, you won't like my second choice. But it's very cute, very catchy, and the musical itself is nothing short of fucking brilliant. Click me.