I Went To Westfield With My Mother On A Saturday Afternoon… And We’re Still Speaking

Three words and I can guarantee your pity & sympathy: Westfield, Saturday, Afternoon. Mother was up for the weekend and probably due to both of us reading far too many magazines that preach such madness, we thought it was a good idea to embark on a mother-daughter bonding trip in one of Europe’s biggest shopping centres.

It wasn’t the greatest start that we had to queue to get off the tube platform at Shepherds Bush. I felt my shopping-phobic mother look at me pleadingly while I administered soothing phrases like “it’s fine, it’s always like this, once we get in there it really is massive, y’know”  as we tried not to freak out at the sea of glazed-eyed pre-shoppers in front of us barely saying a word to each other. It was a bit too much like a zombie movie and Simon Pegg was nowhere to be seen. I admit – I did attempt to recall from Fox’s Walking Dead graphic novels what method was best to dispose of zombies if we needed to… blowing their heads off from what I could remember and there defs aren’t any gun-shops in Westfield = yikes.

After cheating and going straight to Fire & Stone for carbs and charming/slimy waiters (probably depends on how many carbs you’ve consumed), we browsed round Debenhams and swiftly realised that most of the stuff was either spangly party wear or late-summer wear, both felt rather optimistic on this cold, grey Autumn afternoon. I’ll spare you the details of every single shop we went in, I will say that black leather boots with zips up the insides that look ‘a bit 60s’ are NOT in plentiful supply in Westfield, that a shop assistant in M&S actually sneered at my mother when she very sweetly enquired in her best quite-posh telephone voice if there was a ‘Primani’ in Westfield (there isn’t, the nearest is Marble Arch, cheap ankle boots fans) and we got a bit too furious when inhaling the piped in bread smell with no such products to be seen anywhere (pumping carb smells into the path of  vulnerable customers is MORALLY WRONG we both agreed).

Needless to say, we escaped to the M&S cafe after not too long, harped on about how overwhelming being bombarded with consumerism was then rinsed the 3 for 2 deal within an inch of it’s life in Boots and she bought one of the No 7 mascaras with the hi-tech fancy brushes that the posh actress with enormous eyes from Ashes to Ashes advertises on telly, despite being adamant she’d not seen any such campaign both in print or on the telly (she blatantly had, for the record).

Realistically, with one a borderline agoraphobic (well, she doesn’t do large amounts of people, especially when formed in a queue in front of her preventing her from paying for stuff and getting out of the shop in less than 5mins) retail-phobe that prefers to shop online (even shoes = hardcore) and the other perpetually skint so out of practice, we were not exactly in our comfort zone so did pretty well by managing not to fall out once all afternoon. I’d love to provide some powerful insight into consumerism in a time of economical crisis or even be able to spot trends/social behaviours that could be used for some genius marketing strategy but I’m afraid I got so overwhelmed with the scale of the place, the literal bombardment with branding – logos being chucked at you left, right at centre and watching hollow-eyed people around us stalk the place for bargains armed with arsenals of plastic. I guess I get more stressed out by the whole thing than I realised which is weird because the whole point is that shopping is meant to be an enjoyable experience, Westfield is designed in such a way as to make us enjoy ourselves more and therefore spend more. What happens when folk become immune to the fake bread smell (metaphorically speaking) and realise they can’t afford to buy any more Stuff? Armageddon?

Mrs ‘Arris Goes To Paris, Story Of O… keeping it eclectic.

My thoughts seemed scattered this week, fizzing around my brain like Twizzlers and never seeming to settle. I’d rather it was like this than having to wade my way through the fog of Feeling Crap but it’s bewildering at times. Noisy as well.

 My mission for expanding my cultural horizons  this week has mostly consisted of dragging my brother round the HMV dvd floor on a £5 limit (he was very patient but very tired afterwards but don’t mistake him for being long-suffering – his favourite title by far was ‘Mrs ‘Arris Goes To Paris’ = genius but alas I chose some obscure Spike Jonze epic over it, yes – je suis a tad pretentious, the former will probably be more fun) and starting to read ‘Story Of O’ on the bus then realising very quickly that it was not the wisest choice for someone with a somewhat animated facial demeanour by default to be reading on public transport. You live and you learn. I have to say, it was freaky how quickly one becomes rather blasé about all the descriptions of whipping, degradation etc. The Guardian review declared you ’peculiar’ if you don’t get hot and bothered by the first 60 pages. Hmm, I’ve not read as far as the 60th page but no really, I get it, she’s a sex slave – after you’ve read a few intricately detailed descriptions of O’s arse getting whipped by various gentlemen, you get a bit ‘yeah, and?’, I found. If you haven’t read Story Of O and have no idea what I’m going on about – go read the first few pages in Waterstones if you’re too chicken to buy it. And send me a picture of your face.

No Matter How Many Remixes I Listen To…

…Part Of Me Will Always Want To Jump Off Speakers

Despite my proud declarations of what I consider credible choices in music over the years, the endless hours I spend on HypeMachine listening to mash-ups of Miike Snow tracks (and other tracks, for the record) and Spotify compiling the ultimate playlist – i have a somewhat guilty pleasure. I don’t half love a nice bit of classic rock. Yes really. It all started when I got my first non-baby-sitting job at 16yrs old at a hippy emporium in the Granary Wharf in Leeds. It was the ultimate crusty-that-washed gig – my friends were, despite their protest otherwise, all well jealous.

 ANYWAY, this shop was under the train arches so we got freakish amounts of dust every day and being a lowly assistant – I got the enviable task of dusting the various imported wooden statues & trinkets my boss had brought back from Pakistan & Nepal. First of all, these wooden delights were clearly manufactured for the western market as I really didn’t see wooden toadstools and spliff-toting gnomes being a massive hit East-side but second of all, there was A LOT of them. My boss and his son were massive fans of classic rock so my musical landscapes were opened up along with my capacity for other imports that made their way along with all the paraphernalia brought over each month. Our favourite cds were a set of 60s 70s and 80s rock cds, one for each year. I never did remember which my favourite year was but it was here that I became wickedly fond of such gems as Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ (by the far the best track ever to dust elephant’s heads to, I’d thoroughly recommend it), Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ , Rainbow’s ‘Since You’ve Been Gone, Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ and the cheese-fest Starship’s ‘We Built This City’(performed in duet form whenever possible).

Later on this fetish diversified to more mainstream territory as I developed the inevitable weakness for boys with tats that play guitars and ideally jump off speakers at any given opportunity. It’s come back to it’s original roots in the past couple of years in the form of the comeback of AC/DC. While Black Ice didn’t really do it for me (Back In Black &Highway To Hell For Me – I actually air-drum to If You Want Blood, it’s beyond tragic) , seeing them play at O2 last year was everything I hoped it would be and more. I was the only girl in my area, not really a surprise when you consider the topic of song subject and the (magnificent) stage sets – AC/DC are over the top, about as far away from PC as you can get. You can tell why so many blokes of a certain age(who I was surrounded by at O2) use them as their form of escapism. They’re just fun, and over the top, and hilarious. Fittingly, Iron Man 2’s soundtrack is rammed full of AC/DC’s back catalogue – I couldn’t think of a better fit, enjoy…

 

:::NB – this post is dedicated to my dear friend Kelly Abernethy, the original girl that was Born To Rock – HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KEL – I MISS YOU!!:::

Brighton Beach, YSL 100s and Julie Driscoll – I’ll always have a soft spot for Mods

Act Your Age

No Lobotomy Required

I’ve been thinking about setting up a new blog specifically about dealing with crap stuff but in a straight-talking, humorous at times manner as opposed to the condescending, fluff that appears to be everywhere. I figured I’ve been through a fair bit of not-so-amazing stuff that a LOT of other people experience every day. At the time,  when these things happened, I wish I’d read something that suggested I wasn’t alone with dealing with this sort of crap and was written in a way that addressed me like a normal person rather than one with a lobotomy/two heads.

It’s weird, though – I guess cos the stuff concerned isn’t exactly fun-times, it’s hard to write about it in an irreverent, breezy fashion. Amongst the things I wanted to write about was the subject of mental health but from the opinion that it really doesn’t have to be treated with the hysteria and the fear that it so frequently is. It’s not all badly acted Hollyoaks plot-lines; mental illness is like any other illness – with a certain set of circumstances it’s in full reach of any of us. You just have to look at the fuzzy lines that already exist as far as categorising the subject – eating disorders are so commonplace they’re practically on the GCSE syllabus these days, post-natal depression or the baby blues – accepted as a probability, senile dementure – inevitable – these are all strands of mental illness but no one thinks of them as that, they think of them as part of life. That’s what mental illness is – it’s life with the volume turned up to 11 and it could happen to any of you.

In my teens in particular – I had a rough time, I went through the system and amazingly came out the other end ‘functioning’ which, astoundingly, every time I come into contact with a health professional, I am congratulated on. For real. This is utterly ridiculous and why I want to write about stuff that is crap but without the self-congratulatory or self-pitying tone. I Googled ‘mental health blogs’ and was shocked at the majority I came across being solely focussed on their illness and found this really quite bizarre and deeply saddening. I have fought since my teens against any diagnosis or illness defining my life and struggle understanding why someone would carve their identity from such a thing when there is so much more to a person than what label they’ve been stamped with by their doctor. Being patronised by the ignorant has been a source of irritation for over a decade for me so I thought I’d write about crap stuff from the point of view of acknowledging it, dealing with it and moving forward from someone that actually has experienced this stuff. And not sound patronising or earnest or whatever. Hopefully it’ll be a refreshing, enlightening experience for all concerned, including me, will keep you posted.

 

You Are What You Read…

…And Watch, And Listen To.

 

January by tradition is the month for re-birth. De-toxing, re-inventing oneself, making promises to be different and do things differently going forward – attempting to make up for the inevitable excesses of the previous month. Doomed exercise regimes are undertaken, diets composed, juicers and exercise dvds are purchased (guilty on the last one) for this period of reinvention as the New Year’s Resolutions lists are made. At this point adverts and articles often throw round variations on the phrase ‘you are what you eat’, most likely in order to promote a health product of some sort. Of course it’s true, it makes total sense that what you put into your body is going to affect you but what about everything you surround yourself with, doesn’t that affect things too?

Now I’m not suggesting that watching Enders is going to turn you into a fake Cockney, or being glued to Celebrity Big Brother is going to result in you reciting every move you make with a dubious Geordie narration but I do think it must have an effect on our brains and energy levels watching constant cr*p, along with reading it and listening to it. Bathing in the shallow end can be delicious but not if you never venture out of it and you become incapable of constructing a sentence anymore because you've fried all your braincells. It just occurred to me that while I adore pop culture, the volume on my quality control needs to be turned up. My vocabulary is not great, my spelling & grammar has definitely deteriorated, my knowledge of current affairs is alright but not amazing and as for the hot air I constantly flick in and out of on Twitter and Facebook for – surely it’s killing brain cells?

The solution? Well like any diet – I figure the solution is balance and moderation. I reckon I cut down on social networking dramatically like you’d cut out the carbs, instead of fruit & veg – I get my nose in some quality fiction and watching the odd arthouse movie that isn’t drenched in product placement and if I must watch Enders and Ugly Betty, then I have to watch Question Time and the odd natural history documentary now and again. With a bit of luck, it'll last longer than the average crash diet but no promises…

These Things I Have Learned This Year Pt 2

Listening to the inner critical voice way too much is unfortunately a demon I'll be cursed with for life, albeit one I seem to beat more and more into submission as the months go on. At the beginning of this year I was pretty convinced I was an asshole that didn't deserve anything particularly good to happen to me. What was the basis for this belief? Well, I admit somewhat sheepishly, there wasn't one, I just had, for varying reasons, zero self-confidence or belief.  It's startlingly common and it happens quite easily – I'm quite interested in helping other people avoid feeling like that, how I do that remains undefined for now.

 

An echo of this belief that one is an asshole of the highest order is looking for love in the wrong places, albeit subconsciously. My heart may have been starved into submission but it still needed nourishment. Weirdly I managed to find comfort and ultimately healing in the most abstract of friendships. I wasn't ready for love, after keeping my malnourished, sickly heart locked away for years, it could only take a very subtle, gentle reassurance. As I felt accepted and appreciated as I was by my new friend, randomness and all, my heart started to get healthier even if things weren't as I'd originally anticipated.. And here we are now, with a whole new fresh year ahead of us. 2009 has been a year of healing ultimately and with it's lessons, it's sweet friendships alongside the crashing lows, I have only one resolution for the year ahead – to be brave.

My Christmas Expanded And Yet I Survived

Well I’ve already completed two of the major blogging clichés, blogging aimlessly about procrastination and earnestly pontificating over the year that has passed, might as well go for the full three and blog about Christmas too…

For many years my family were quite little, there were only 3 of us – my mum, ,my brother and me so over the many Christmases we’ve spent together, we’d developed subconscious methods to combat the intensity of sharing a normally fairly small space with 3 pretty substantial personalities encased in 3 not exactly petite frames – basically we always had pretty chilled out Christmases.

My mother, legend that she is, has always stocked the cupboards like she has at least 5 more (rugby player sized) offspring about to turn up from somewhere and is an awesome cook so The Christmas Day Walk has always been a necessity to minimize sumo-scaled expansion of ones gut over the Christmas break. Other traditions have included myself and my brother fighting over the remote control to the point of violence then literally the next minute be in fits of giggles over whatever comedy special we’ve compromised on, my mum will make Christmas pudding because she forgets that none of us actually like it, and we still have stockings(she does ours, I do hers) despite all being far too old, really. Yes we scrapped after being under each others feet for several days but it was always sorted out within the hour and overall, as long as we all took ourselves off for a bit of space, it was all good.

This year was different. We had the intermediary last year, my mother’s partner and my brother’s partner joined our little trio and suddenly we had to behave and be considerate and things like that. Last year was a bit sensitive all round – it was new for everyone, everyone was on their best behaviour yet constantly whispered under their breath querying into significant others’ well-being. Noone really chilled out.

This year it was the same base unit of 5, chilled out considerably more but yet still well behaved from the lack of familiarity. Add to this the other side of the family, two more daughters, their partners, their mother and a baby and fear was in my belly by Christmas Eve if I’m totally honest. It was all good – you forget that with two families combined together on such occasions how much common ground (taking the p*ss out of our parents predominantly) there is. The tension evaporated for the most part and that was even before the wine was cracked open. I’m relieved to say it’s been a lovely Christmas and I was pleasantly surprised. I think it’s easy to panic when things don’t seem conventional but families are such weird and wonderful things at the best of times, sometimes you end up with the one you were born with – sometimes you create your own, sometimes you have more than one and over the course of time they change, other times you can lose touch and then later become close to some of them again. And that’s alright.