On being stupid and right

Because you can be both, I'm told.

So, I'll cut to the chase, no faffing. This week, I got offered a job. Full-time, slightly more money than I was expecting, at a tiny company about a twenty-minute train journey away - tick, tick, tick. I didn't mean to get the job ("well, fuck you and your accidental job-getting," said a friend - quite fairly - in the pub the other night). I just saw an ad titled "document writer", thought "hey, I can probably write documents!" and sent them my CV. The advert didn't say what the company did, or what kind of documents would need writing, which hopefully explains things a little.

I didn't expect to be asked to an interview a matter of days later - you just don't, do you? Not these days, when all the odds are against the jobseekers. I certainly didn't expect the interview to go well - I'm scared of everyone new people, especially new people who are looking for me to impress them. When they gave me a writing task ("just a 150-word press release, use this one here as a guide"), I freaked out and my brain went Ican'tIcan'tIcan't, and then I realised how feeble it would look to leave them with a blank Word document, so I threw down some sentences and hoped it was a good enough attempt. The tone of it was excellent, the MD said in his e-mail the next day.

(And then he rang me, to let me know he'd e-mailed me, and I'd only just got out the shower and so wasn't dressed, and during the phone call I managed to whack my knee on the corner of my desk and only just managed to stifle a yelp of "Jesus Fucking Christ I think I've chipped my kneecap!")

And yes, it may seem like there's a lot of humblebragging going on here - "look at little me, getting a job by mistake!" - but I assure you, everything about this particular instance of job-getting was pretty much unintentional. I left the interview with a tension headache and a dilemma already taking shape - an odd feeling of "if I don't get this, I'll be disappointed, because I blagged that one reasonably successfully, and if I do, fuck, I'll have a Serious Decision To Make".

Of course I should have taken it. Of course. Because, well - do I want to get away from what I'm currently doing? Yes. It's not paying - almost literally - and my brainpower is slowly, slowly diminishing. Would it have been good experience? Probably. Once you can write press releases and bids and things, you can take that anywhere. Did it make financial sense? Without a doubt. Why did I not say yes?

Because it wasn't right for me. And how much that matters, I'm not actually sure. Given that I'm an arts graduate (an arts Master!), and it's 2013, I'm not exactly in a position to be picky, am I? I'm on the bottom step, I should be grateful for any opportunity that isn't sorting post and making tea. But I was worried that by doing this, I'd be taking myself out of the search for something that fits me better. And, as it's such a small company - and they seemed inexplicably keen on me - I'd feel pretty bad about joining them while the intention to find something better within a few months. They were looking for someone to commit to them for at least a year or two, and I couldn't bank on being able to do that. "But no-one gets their dream job right away," said the Boy's mother wisely, and no, there's no arguing with that.

And I DO feel like a fool for turning down something I know a lot of graduates would jump on, but something just wasn't right, and I can't take a job just because I feel guilty about being offered it. I don't want to say it was "gut instinct" that swung it for me - because it's a bit of a vague concept upon which to be basing life decisions - but there was a voice somewhere in the back of my head going, "there is something better out there for you". Obviously only time will tell if that's the case, but the "Oh GOD, I've made a huge mistake" panic hasn't kicked in yet*.

*Update: it did kick in, about 5pm today, while I was in Boots (which is normally my happy place as I have a make-up buying problem. Still, it's safer than crack, I suppose). I think my panic in the L'Oreal aisle was mainly triggered by the fact that I'd tried to do a whole day of errand-running on one croissant, a piece of cheese and a lot of tea - rather than any real post-decision regrets. Fingers crossed.

On a brighter note: I've been waiting for this lady to make a comeback for an embarrassingly long time. This track is from an album that was meant to be released in 2011. No news yet.

And I am so obsessed with this girl and her new album it's pretty much the only thing I can listen to right now.

It's a bit late in the year for this, but still...

Or, how to REALLY do a festival - a first-timer's guide.

Festivals are like sex – the first time is spent worrying that everyone is doing it more skilfully than you are; the bad times are vastly improved by large amounts of alcohol and drugs, and when the good times are over, you have to fight the urge to share every gory detail with anyone who wasn’t involved. 

I am not a natural festival-goer, by any means. I have a zero-tolerance attitude to having greasy hair and leg-stubble, but I love live music like Robin Thicke loves being an unutterable creep, so for one weekend a year I’m prepared to go from being a massive princess who can’t leave the house without a blow-dry to a slattern held together with cider and dry shampoo. I’m also not much of a festival veteran – I’ve been to two, so far. The first being Oxfordshire’s lovely little Truck festival, which - as I've told you - is attended by about 5,000 people and is farmy and family-friendly, with barn-stormingly good bands (literally. One of the stages is in a barn. The acoustics are exactly as you’d expect – metallic). And the second was this year’s Bestival – attended by 60,000, it was a whole other huge, smelly, rainy ball-game. My companion this time was a total festival virgin, so it fell to me to be the voice of experience, which made me realise that to the uninitiated, the whole event can seem quite strange and stressful. So here’s a handful of things you absolutely need to know before you lose your festival virginity.

1)   The smell. It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to forget. Picture the scene: you wake up on day two or three, and in order to escape the less-than-fragrant scent of your still-sleeping tent-fellows, stick your head outside and gulp some fresh morning air. Except it’s not fresh – the whole site has started to hum with the aroma of thousands of unwashed bodies. This is why if you’re a non-smoker, you become extraordinarily tolerant of smokers over the course of the weekend – if you stand next to one, you can inhale their fumes, rather than the smell of the unshowered people surrounding you. 

2)   And on a related note, the toilets. Back in the civilised world, going to the loo is usually a painless experience – unless you’ve got food poisoning or are naturally prone to constipation. At a festival, it’s an ordeal that doesn’t seem to ease up, no matter how many times you do it, nor how drunk you get. That smell would sober up Pete Doherty after a long weekend in Moscow. Be warned. And take some antibacterial hand gel.

3)   “Festival beauty” isn’t a thing. Magazines are chock-full of this stuff at the beginning of the festival season: how you can channel “Alexa at Coachella” with a handful of bits from Superdrug. Fuck off. You do not need to look your shiny, clean, photogenic best at a festival. It’s not even possible, given that you won’t have access to anything more cleansing than baby wipes. I mean, you can optimistically take your make-up bag, and just keep layering it on, but I personally wouldn’t want to risk the volcanic break-out of spots that will inevitably follow when you’re back in the land of hot running water. Leave the foundation at home and embrace the grime. And if you don’t feel anything but fucking beautiful when you’re hollering along to your favourite band as they storm through their set during a downpour, then I’m afraid I can’t help you.

4)   Sex. Having said all that in point (3), on the Isle of Wight that weekend, I did see a truly remarkable amount of young ladies who had bothered to do a full face of slap. I can only imagine that these young things were on the pull, which is, again, a stupid idea at a festival. You’d imagine that there’s going to be a pretty sexy vibe, with the music, the liberated approach to drink and drugs, the general atmosphere of hedonism. You’d be wrong. If, due a combination of vodka and time passing, you cannot reliably tell me when you last showered, then I don’t want to have sex with you. And tents aren’t the sexiest of locations, unless what really turns you on is a soundtrack of students vomiting and sleeping bags rustling. But if that’s the case, go for it.

5)  You won’t see about half of the acts you plan on seeing. You’ll pay a fair whack for a programme and gleefully rifle through it once your tent is up and you have a drink in hand. “Right, I definitely want to see them. And we can’t miss her. Ooh, they’re playing, I didn’t know that. Oh, and them.” You’ll memorise times and locations, but somehow only manage to actually be present for some of these, due to a sudden tent-collapse emergency, or getting too engrossed in one of those drunken, putting-the-world-to-rights conversations.

In short, music festivals can be hard work. But you’re missing out if you don’t spend at least one weekend of your life living out of a rucksack, laughing brazenly in the face of personal hygiene and going unselfconsciously nuts to your favourite song while it pisses it down. 

One final hint: don’t keep your wristband on past the day of your return to the adult world. No one likes a pretentious festival wanker, so don’t be that guy. 

Bad education

You know what distresses me? I mean, other than the price of Dermalogica products, the situation in Syria and people to whom the words "please" and "thank you" are alien concepts?

Well, this. (If you can't access it, it's a Telegraph article about the government's proposals to drop sex and relationship education from the curriculum for 11-13 year olds - under which, information on sexual health, contraception, hormones and adolescence would not be taught.)

These proposals do make you wonder if Education Secretary Michael Gove has ever actually been to a school - and I feel now would be the time to slip this in here. Thanks to the Boy for showing that to me. Mind you, Mr Gove also once claimed that if young people did well academically, they were less likely to "indulge in risky behaviours" - which made sense, until he used it as a basis for the suggestion that sex education lessons would no longer be needed. "They're bright and high-achievers so they won't be having sex" is one of the most bollocks assumptions I've ever heard someone make. No, no, no - if they're bright, and over the age of 16, and reasonably mature and responsible, then I bloody well hope they're having some sex.

I have a theory, and it goes thus: if you start educating people early - about anything, really - it becomes normal to them. Standard, everyday, unremarkable. Not a big deal. And as far as sex is concerned, if you teach age-appropriate material throughout the academic life, the chances are you're going to end up with a bunch of well-informed, clued-up, sensible, confident teenagers. Who can talk about sex without getting embarrassed, who feel secure and can communicate well within relationships, and who don't feel judged when they have problems or questions. And all this is a bad thing because...?

I suppose one could quite reasonably argue that it should be left to parents to decide how and when their children learn about sex and relationships. But that would put some kids at a huge disadvantage - there would be the nice, liberal parents that fixed a grin on their nervous faces and got The Conversation started, but there would equally be parents that bottled it and neglected to broach the subject at all. The children of the "bottlers" would have to pick up their info elsewhere - like the internet, or the school playground. Which are, as we know, completely reliable and accurate channels of information... The easiest way to screw up your children is to not address the issues that matter to them - to ignore their worries, either through fear or embarrassment, and to make them feel they can't confide in you. That is precisely how you drive them away, thus leaving them even more vulnerable than they were before. So let's not do that, yeah?

The other line some people like to take on this is the hysterical, "think of the children!" one: "if we teach them these things when they're young, they'll start doing it sooner!" Have these people MET any children? Here's a scenario I may or may not have plucked from the air: an eleven year old hears the term "blow job". He or she asks their best mate what it means. The best mate does their best to explain using their own limited knowledge. The eleven year old thinks "Ew!! That sounds GROSS." End of story. (For a few years, anyway.)

There are also the statistics, though - Britain has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe (or has had; it's fallen in recent years), and sex and relationship education is neither comprehensive nor compulsory, while the often-used example of the Netherlands has one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the world, and educates its youngsters from an early age. In short - people BENEFIT from being taught about sex and relationships from a young age, so it would be nice if the government made curriculum decisions that didn't fly in the face of all the actual evidence.

Maybe a small part of it comes down to that British squeamishness surrounding talking about "feelings". But when matters of health and self-esteem are at stake, we need to lose that squeamishness and get some practice in talking about the tricky stuff. Whether the issue in question is sex, mental health or bereavement - there are so many things that can be incredibly hard to talk about - every time someone says "no, we're not going to discuss that", or only talks about whatever-it-is in hushed, conspiratorial tones, they're taking a huge step backwards. Back to a time when personal things - things that still affected everybody, mind - weren't spoken of at all and people went half-mad with repression and anxiety that they weren't "normal".

Because that's the risk taken when the opportunities for safe, open discussion, and asking questions, are removed. Knowledge, as we all know, is power. Information - the correct information - is confidence. If we make sure that younger generations have all the facts and feel free to ask questions, they will be confident in making their own, well-informed decisions. Why would anyone NOT want that?

This song's rather fun.
And I'm back obsessing over Brontide again, because I saw them last Wednesday and it was wonderful. With their white-hot riffs and dapper drummer* who knows how to pound seven fucks out of his kit, they wouldn't know "boring" if it punched all three of them in the face. Here, have some of this.

*We met him afterwards, and I was able to rectify the impression I made when I saw him on the Tube a few weeks ago. I may have lost what little cool I had when I spotted him at Finsbury Park station, and blurted out "AreyouWilliamBowerman? MyboyfriendandIarehugefansofBrontide!" He took it well, though, and when we chatted to him on Wednesday, he was absolutely lovely. Well, the Boy chatted, while I stood there and tried to decide which one to propose marriage to first. I must have a thing for drummers.

Advice I’m not qualified to give, but am giving anyway

Or, "stuff I wish I'd known sooner - not that I would have listened, in the event of actually being told".

My sister officially became a teenager last Sunday. I say "officially" - emotionally, she's been one for about the last four months. It's come as quite a shock to my mother: "she doesn't talk to me anymore, and she goes off in strops all the time. She's turning into you". Thanks, Mum*. And welcome back to the world of teenage girls. I suggest you buckle up.

*To be fair to our mother, I was a horrible teenager. I still am a lot of the time sometimes, at the age of 23.

I recently read a piece by one of my favourite writers, Daisy Buchanan (to the book geeks, yes, that is her actual name), that made me go "Aww!" It's an open letter and commencement address to her younger sister, who's about our age and has just graduated. Click here, if you're interested. And, in the absence of anything more pressing to write about, I thought I'd do my own, but for my much younger sister. So here's a handful of useful nuggets I have found to be, well, nothing but useful. I'll try and keep it as unpretentious as possible, but you know what I'm like; that won't be easy. I'll give it a go.

So then...

1) Work hard at school. There's no shame in being the diligent, conscientious one. Figure out the things you like and are good at, and get better at them. It really does make life so much easier, both now and later on.

2) Read. Read loads. You'll never be lonely again (well, almost). Getting totally emotionally involved in a story is an unrivalled joy. You'll never be stuck for something to talk about, and you'll pick up all kinds of information - you'll end up like Stephen Fry, basically. It also improves your spelling and grammar with zero effort - the more you read, the more you get to know when a word or sentence looks wrong. Which, while it isn't the most important character trait, does make you a lot less annoying to get e-mails from.

3) Get a part-time job as soon as you possibly can. It will do you the world of good, even if you're pretty ace already. It's the fastest and most effective way to become more responsible and a good team-player (guess who's spent too much time on recruitment sites recently. Eurgh). And, if you're earning your own money, no one can tell you what to do with it - because it's YOURS and YOURS ALONE.

4) Ignore magazines, and indeed anything or anyone that tries to tell you how you should look, or that you should be thinner. (Such as Mum. Please don't follow her example. Please.) The overwhelming majority of diets don't work, so just kind of pay attention to your body - it's quite good at telling you what you need. Unfortunately, a large part of the rest of the world doesn't quite seem to trust women to know what to do with their own bodies just yet, so it's up to you to tell them to bugger off and mind their own damn business.

5) Experiment with your looks. The time will soon come when you have to look like everybody else, and while you've still got the "teen" suffix in your age, it is not that time. Put bright blue streaks in your hair (maybe wait until sixth form to do this, I know what your school's uniform policy is like: militant), try out flicky black eyeliner or neon pink lipstick. Make-up is a good thing - unless you apply it with a tablespoon. It can cover things you don't like and enhance the things you do like. Have fun with it, it's cheaper than clothes.

6) Fancy someone you shouldn't. In a legal sort of way, I mean. One of those boys who thinks they are God's gift to women - you know the type. They’re not, so get this out the way early in life and you’ll save yourself a metric shitload of drama. Then find someone who’s kind (this is underrated, and shouldn’t be) and who thinks you’re wonderful. And makes you laugh til you yelp like a seal in distress. Yes, you can vomit. But it’s important.
     6b) You don’t have to have a boyfriend, either. (Or girlfriend, for that matter.) I didn’t have a proper relationship until I was nineteen, which was... fine. I didn’t absolutely love being the only person in my friendship group who was single, and it can feel especially bad when your best friend gets a guy and suddenly she’s not around half as much, but you’ll do the same thing one day. Plus, relationships are bloody hard work at times - factoring a whole other human being into your everyday life can sometimes be a case of moving from one uneasy truce to the next. You can quote me on that, it's probably the truest thing I'll say for a long time.
     And the majority of relationships that start before university/the age of 20 do NOT last. A rare few do, BUT MOST REALLY, REALLY DON’T. I cannot emphasise that enough, you're just going to have to trust me on it. You might get to your A-levels, look at a couple you know and think, “They’re going to be together forever, and get married and have babies”. Give it two years, love…

7) Learn that being cool is a myth. Or rather, the coolest people are the ones who just do their own thing, like what they like and stand by their opinions, even if those opinions aren't popular.

8) Stay in touch with friends who move away. Take it from someone who is God-awful at doing this. Even if you just drop them the odd Facebook message, it still helps. It's never anything but lovely when you hear from someone you haven't spoken to for ages: "Oh! They were thinking of me? Well, that's made my week".

9) Be nice. Polite. Kind. You know, not a dick. If you find yourself in, say, a shouty situation, or a serious personal disagreement, and manage not to make it worse, then it's a start. Being able to walk away with a clear conscience gives you one less thing to worry about.

10) I've saved the best two things for last, you'll see:
     10a) Always, always, ALWAYS send hand-written thank you notes for presents. ALWAYS.
     10b) If you're feeling down, look up videos of babies laughing on YouTube. Ditto baby animals doing pretty much anything.
Yeah, you're welcome.

OK, now I have a request of any blog-readers that may be out there. I'm planning to enter a feature-writing competition, and I need some assistance. I'd like to write something about mental health in university students - you know, cheery stuff - for reasons you're probably aware of, if you've read previous posts. So, if anyone found that being at uni either triggered, or worsened any mental health/emotional issues/problems they had, and fancies dropping me a couple of lines about it, then please do. Names won't be used in the piece, obviously, and I'm certainly not going to be gossiping down the pub about anything I do get told. I am particularly interested in people who actually managed to use their uni counselling service - did it help? Etc, etc. I will also be writing about my own "I think I'm losing my mind" moments in the feature, too. So, if anyone feels able to share, I would be very, very grateful.

Music time! If I could have anyone write the soundtrack to my life, it would be Gary Lightbody - he just has an unparallelled knack for writing simple songs with all-time melodies; tracks that are effortlessly epic. And he's one of those rare singers who sounds better live than he does on recordings (the Northern Irish accent helps too). This is one of my favourite tracks from the new Tired Pony album - an album that feels like being reunited with an old friend - easy and joyful. And here's another - it starts all slow and yearning, then takes you by surprise about 1:18.

And this lady needs to make a comeback; it's been years. That isn't one of her best songs, by a long way, but it's a fun, playful one.

I didn't want this to be a list post, but...

...I spent two weeks at Student Beans, in the name of finally getting something a bit writer-y on my CV, and most of the 30+ ideas I pitched to them over the course of the fortnight were list-type posts, a la Buzzfeed. It was a good fortnight though - it turns out being a writer involves spending a lot of time on the internet and then trying to be faintly amusing. I've been doing it right all along.

I managed to break the golden rule, though - the first rule of work experience is you do NOT get ill during work experience. I don't do ill. Aside from the odd migraine and like, one bad cold a year. So to go down with tonsillitis on the evening of my very first day was, to be honest, absolutely hideous. I'd never had it before; does it always reduce its victims to weeping messes who are incapable of anything except drinking tea, sleeping and crying? It's rare that I shamelessly heap praise upon the Boy (Lord knows he's all too aware of this) but that week, he more than earned my eternal gratitude. From not complaining about my 6.30am alarm, to spending five straight evenings marathoning Modern Family* with me - someone give that boy a medal. Or I'm actually going to have to start being nice to him.

*I'm starting to develop some seriously maternal feelings towards Lily. I mean, look. Look!


Since work experience ended, I've felt a bit drained of ideas for the blog. I've got a couple of other writery projects on the go too, but it's been a month since my last post, and if I'm honest, I'm missing seeing those spikes on the page-views graph. Which is sad but perhaps inevitable.

As my friends and I were trying to leave the pub on Monday, we walked into - or rather, through - an argument about what the best super-power is. My friends are geeky enough to have this conversation down to a Really Fine Art, so naturally they decided to weigh in, with amusing consequences. Which got me thinking - no, not what the best power is, it's clearly and unarguably "being able to control people's moods" - but what the best pub conversations are. Because nothing spells conversational gold like being happily drunk and gathered round a table with your best friends.

1) The top one is obviously "if you could have any super-power, what would it be?" As I've said, my friends and I have spent hours debating this one. I always go for mood control, the Boy always goes for something to do with having infinite time, and my friend James just wants to control everything. (I think.) It often takes interesting detours, such as "would you rather have an arm that could turn into anything you like, or be able to make it snow whenever you want?" We must have been a few beers in by the time that made any sense.

2) The lunatic idea conversation. A conversation that genuinely happened on Monday night began thus: "What if there was a pill that could give you an instant orgasm?" I felt really, really sorry for the people sitting at the tables either side of us. We got pretty vociferous over this one - the boys were more concerned about how rich it would make them, and I was sitting there wondering aloud if it would bring about some awful societal decline.

3) The heated debate. Say the word "adoption" to a few of my friends, and watch them turn ashen and start going "OH GOD, NO. Not again, please, no." Last summer, during a cheese and wine evening, we started talking about adoption. (I've no idea why.) Cut to about two hours later, and we were all shouting at each other, going "You're wrong! You couldn't be wronger! Please stop offending me with your utter WRONGNESS."

Shit gets rowdy after too much Camembert, you know how it is.

We've also all agreed to never again discuss who, out of David Mitchell and Robert Webb, is the funniest. And no, don't you start.

4) i) The sexual bucket list one. Where you all end up talking about your "lists of stuff you'd like to try". You have to be quite drunk for this, and often, the weirder and more comical, the better. Can lead to...

    ii) ...the sexual tell-all one. (For cleaner version of this, see no 6.) Often a girl thing. You end up divulging everything you've ever done ever, and asking each other questions you wouldn't dream of had you not drunk an entire bottle of wine and multiple shots of tequila.

5) The character assassination one. One of your friends couldn't make it out, and conveniently it's the one you all find a bit annoying. After a while, you start talking about them. Then talking turns to bitching, and bitching turns to "I know! Let's make up a drinking game based upon their behaviour, and unbeknown to them, play it the next time we're all out together!"

6) The rant. Similar to 3), but it usually involves whisky or wine. I get my feminist rage on - and start saying things like, "when I have my own column in the Guardian" - while someone else I could name but won't once gave us the complete and unabridged history of his love life. With visual aids via the use of Facebook. Recounting this to my stepfather, he said "Aye, whisky'll do that to you."

7) The argument. Again, similar to 3) but much, much more personal. "I didn't tell you this before but I really have to tell you now. YOU REALLY HURT ME THAT TIME YOU -" etc, etc. Often ends with the argument-starter weeping profusely and declaring passionate and undying love to their victim. (I in no way speak from experience.)

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's many more, so feel free to chip in (hark at me getting all interactive).

Music time - and what a lovely bunch of stuff it is too...

Just when I think I couldn't want to be this girl anymore than I already do, she comes up with a track that's even more gutsy and soulful and Stevie Nicks-esque than her previous stuff. Oh yes.

And I've not loved everything this band has done, but this song is perfection.

And this too, it's beautiful (and that kid is brilliant).