Link it to the world, link it to yourself

On Sunday, me and some friends went to Reading Festival (mostly to see Muse). Most of us opted not to go for the whole weekend, as most of the line-up didn’t really appeal to us.
I’ve never been to Reading, and I was surprised that the festival is so close to the main town; I’d assumed it would be more out of the way, like most festival sites. The town was heaving with people splattered with mud!

We arrived part way through a set by Frank Turner. I hadn’t heard of him before, but he was very good and I’m planning to download his album later. We also saw The View (enjoyed Same Jeans, otherwise was all a bit samey), Enter Shakari (awful, and very rough crowd), Friendly Fires (ok), Interpol (boring) and Elbow.

Elbow were really impressive. I’ve never seen them live before, but I quite like their music. It didn’t really matter that I didn’t know many of the songs; as their stage presence was so good and it was quite pleasant to just sway along. Guy Garvey was a lot of fun, and all in all I was very pleased I’d seen them.

But the main reason we were there really was Muse.

It’s ten years since Origin of Symmetry (Muse’s second album) was released, so for Reading and Leeds they played the album in it’s entirety. Word is, the album will now be retired from live performance, although I assume Plug In Baby will continue to be a setlist fixture; I’d be shocked if they decide to drop it.
The set was designed to match Origin’s album cover, with big white forks. The video screen was very impressive, with fantastic light displays and video to match the songs. There was a lot of links back to old imagery, such as the reappearance of the little aliens from the Origin era, which was nice to see.

It was amazing to hear Origin in full. Some of the songs haven’t been played since Origin was toured, and a lot of the tracks are very rare to hear live, so that was a real privilege.

We decided to hang back a bit, as festival crowds are usually rougher than a standard Muse gig. I’m glad we did, as I heard afterwards that the pit was awful, with people having to be pulled over the barrier by security almost constantly in order to escape. We could see the stage pretty well and the screens, so we had a good enough view and still had room to breathe.

The set was absolutely incredible and the boys were on top form and clearly having a blast. It was the 9th time I’ve seen them and it honestly never gets old. I am always blown away, and always love every second. I can’t wait to see them again.

I hear the video effects didn’t look great on TV, although I haven’t a chance to see it myself yet, but I can understand how such big lasers and flicking videos look odd on television and probably a bit disorienting!
One thing that is disappointing is how little of the set was actually shown on BBC3 after being advertised in a way that made it sound as if the whole set would be broadcast. Very little of Origin was shown, which I know has made a lot of Musers very angry. I do think it’s a shame, as potentially a lot of those songs will never be played live again. However, there is suggestion that the songs were not shown because there’ll be a DVD. There were certainly a lot of cameras for a set that wouldn’t be fully broadcast, so here’s hoping.

On Monday, we went over to the Barnett Hive to watch some Muse football.

Chris Wolstenholme, their bass player, has been organising football games after gigs for a while. He and some of Muse’s regular crew play, and he invites fans down via Twitter to either play too or go and watch. This is the second Muse football I’ve been to, after going down the Hive for the first footy event after their gigs at Wembley.

It’s amazing to see Chris off stage, and I think it’s so great that he organises this for the fans. It’s a fantastic way for us to interact with him and a lot of fun. Unfortunately this time there were just too many people for him to do much signing or picture taking afterwards which was a bit disappointing after standing in the cold for two hours! I have met him before, so I didn’t mind too much and just enjoyed seeing him.

Chris is the loveliest guy and I was very pleased by how good he looked yesterday. During the recording of The Resistance, Chris went into rehab to be treated for alcoholism, so it really is wonderful to see him looking so happy and healthy these days.

If you want to hear from Chris about Reading, Musers and playing Origin, there’s a good video on NME's site.

Body Language

A couple of nights ago I watched Cherry’s Body Dilemmas on BBC Iplayer. Cherry Healy spoke to a lot of different women about their body image. It was all very interesting, and I felt lots of it was very positive in the way it made it very clear that there is no such thing as the perfect body; everybody has different ideals. One thing that bothered me though is all the behaviours that were accepted as being ‘normal’.

It suggested that 'all women calorie count obsessively, that most women know exactly how many calories are in lots of foods and how many many of them they’ve eaten in a day. Apparently, it’s quite normal to weigh yourself every single day.
Now, maybe I’m just the odd one out, but personally, I have no idea how many calories are in a Mars Bar, or a bowl of granola, nor do I know how many calories I eat in a day. I don’t own scales, let alone weigh myself everday. I know roughly how much I weigh and I know it’s a healthy amount for my height, which is enough for me.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to keep track of your weight, but I do think it’s unhealthy to feel the need to get on the scales every day, and to obsess about every calorie. It worries me that this kind of behaviour is portrayed as the way women behave in the media.

Body image is a strange thing. I think it’s important to be at peace in your own skin, but equally I don’t think it’s a huge problem if there are things about you that you’d change. When people say they want thinner legs or a flatter stomach, it’s seen as bad body image. But what if the change you’d choose is to have a different hair colour? That’s seen as quite healthy, but really, what’s the difference? Obviously, if your body hang-ups are effecting your life, there’s a problem, but in reality I think that if anyone could wave a magic wand and tweak things about their body, they’d do it. That’s quite normal.

What do you think? Are you a slave to the scales?

Split at Machynlleth

System failure.
Still. I am on pause,
waiting for the clatter
of railway, to be carried…
not home, just back.
Moleskin on formica, I wait
for motion, from more
than the train.

I am on pause. Uncertain.
The crystal ball of my water
bottle provides no answers.
I am student remnants left
behind. What else
is there? Nine to five
or the dole? CVs beg
for substance. For movement.
Control. But this stillness

is safe. Familiar
places and faces.
It is independence or
a semblence of it.
I wait and I’ll wait
a little longer yet.
I am still.

Green with Envy

So today my best friend met Matt Bellamy in a service station car park. No really. She was pulling out, and stopped to let a blonde woman pass; idly thought ‘hmm, she looks a bit like Kate Hudson.’ Then the realisation, ‘that is Kate Hudson.’ She stopped to phone another friend to tell her who she’d just seen. And then, the Bellamy himself walks in front of her car. She searched the car for something to sign, coming up with a parking ticket.
She spoke to him about Reading. He was lovely. She cried on the way home. I am so excited for her and also blind with envy. Some people have all the luck. Seriously though, I’m delirious for her, and was so excited when she told me.

Last night, I went out with some friends from work. It was so much fun, and we finished up paddling in the sea at 3am. As you do.

Proper post to follow tomorrow, but I’m just in from work and needed to share the insanity of the Bellamy story. I’m seeing Muse in  days time. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus!

A night in with 5 inch heels

What better companion for a night in than Carrie?‘

It really ought to be a Cosmopolitan for watching SATC, but this stuff is still lovely.

Some tasty, healthy evening nibbles.

I got released from work four hours early today, which was a nice surprise. I’d been promised an early reprieve after being the only one not to leave early last night, but I wasn’t expecting that much earlier. I decided to spend my new free evening chilling out completely, as I don’t have a day off now until the weekend (10 day run, oh boy), which is going to be a busy one!

I had a voucher for a free month’s trial of LoveFilm a little while ago, and I must say I rather like it. I might not cancel immediately it costs money like I originally planned. My first couple of discs have been the first series of Sex and the City. I’ve seen odd episodes, but always out of order and without knowing the full story. so I thought I really should see it. I saw the film when it came out, with my mum. She explained that it didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen any SATC before, as it was mostly about shoes. This appealed to me.
So far, I’m really enjoying it, although it turns out the repeats being aired on Freeview at the moment are the first series, so I’ve actually already seen most of these episodes, but that doesn’t matter.

I’m also wearing some stupidly high heels right now. I bought them last month, after trying them on ‘by mistake’ in New Look, and falling in love. I can just walk them, but they’re so beautiful I don’t care. I can walk in 4 inch heels with no bother at all, but pushing up that extra inch is proving difficult. I’ve worn the shoes out once, and struggled a bit. It was my ankles that hurt though, rather than my feet. I’m hoping wearing them around the house will teach me to cope with them. I never used to wear heels at all, and my ease in 4 inches is through stubborn practice, so here’s hoping. Any tips, mega-heel wearing ladies?

How are you spending your Saturday night?

Cosmo Girls

I’m writing this on the train to Cardiff, after an unexpected wait at Shrewsbury station thanks to a delayed train. I had time to kill, so I bought a coffee and a magazine. I like a not-too-brain-taxing read for on the train, or I find it hard to concentrate.
This time I picked up Glamour. I was very pleasantly surprised to find an article near the front entitled ‘Let’s hear it for New Feminism’. It’s only a small piece, but covers the journalist’s experiences at the London SlutWalk and her thoughts on why feminism is having something of a resurgence. A larger article would have been nice, but I was still pleased to see it.

Women’s magazines are often the first to be slated as encouraging women to hate themselves and each other. And in a lot of cases, that’s true. I used to really like the odd rubbishy magazine. It’s quite restful for the brain sometimes to read something fluffy that requires little to no thought. But now I find I have to select my ‘comfort-food’ reading quite carefully. I picked up a copy of Cosmopolitan and was pretty sickened by a lot of what I read. This month’s issue is about faking it, and is a mass of contradiction. One page informed me that men actually don’t like it when you wear lots of fake tan and hair extensions, and prefer to date a more natural-looking woman. A few pages later I was being advised to by padded knickers to make my bum look perkier, apply two layers of light tan rather than one dark layer to get a deep fake tan, and how best to make my hair extensions blend in with my real hair. Um, what?
Cosmo has been the giant in the woman’s magazine market for a long time, and can be a good fun, silly read. But i am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of the ‘cosmo girl’. All women’s magazines are going to have advice for toning and slimming and shopping and dating; that’s the market, but Cosmo seems to offer no alternative. According to Cosmo, all women work in offices pondering how they can lose half a stone to be happier, bag that office cutie by pretending to find his jokes funny and spend a lot of time calculating ‘diet maths’ (that’s working out food alternatives. I can eat one almond croissant, or eight jaffa cakes, apparently. Good to know).
The Cosmo girl’s boyfriend is equally pigeon-holed. This issue instructs me that if I want a great holiday with my man, I should avoid bars with football shown. Yes, I should, because neither of us like to watch football, not because I will be bored stiff while MrKiss is glued to it. The Cosmo man should be well-groomed, but too well groomed because that’s weird, should love sport, not listen very much and have to be tricked into committing. No thanks. I’m certain real men aren’t like this, at least none of the men I know are. If you ask me, while it is certainly women who are being pressed into inferiority, men are under just as much pressure to look and behave a certain way. And many women’s magazines are enforcing this.

Glamour isn’t guilt-free either, but publishing articles like the one about new feminism is certainly a step in the right direction. Anything that encourages women to sit up and take notice of the world and a woman’s place in it is a good thing is my book.

Feminism is definitely changing, and I think it is correct to say that it’s at the forefront of more people’s minds. When we live in a world where girls in parts of Africa are more likely to be raped than to learn to read, where eating is somehow considered unfeminine, where it is surprising that a comedy film headed by women is successful (Bridesmaids) than I’d say that feminism is still needed.
But feminism does need to change in order to stay relevant. The adversity that women face is different. For me, there are large parts of modern feminism that don’t sit right with me. Feminism seems to be about being aggressive about being a woman; take for example Caitlin Moran’s book ‘How To Be A Woman’. Lots of people are heralding it as a very important, informative read. I haven’t read it, but the more I hear about it, the less I want to. It seems to be of the school of ‘I am a woman, and a feminist, and therefore better than you, especially if you’re a stupid man’. Feminism shouldn’t be about being better, it should be about being equal.
I also think there isn’t enough recognition either of the fact that women aren’t only people who happened to be born into the female gender. Trans women are women too, regardless of whether they’re pre-op, post-op or no-op. A large proportion of modern feminists leave out these women when they talk about being female.

 

On an totally unrelated side note, I am now in Cardiff. I’ve forgotten my camera, so this isn’t going to be much of a style blog this week. Sorry about that, hope you don’t things being a bit more article-based around here for a few days.

Streets of Rage

Ok, seriously, what the hell has happened to Britain? I went to bed one night and everything was normal. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, everything fell apart.

Except these things are never out of nowhere. ‘Broken Britain’ isn’t new. Gradually, things have been crumbling, but somehow, we’ve been complacent. I’m suddenly remembering my dad saying months ago he was stunned nobody was alarmed by what was happening in this country. Britain was a tinder-box, and now the fuse has been lit.

I cannot begin to understand the complexities of the situation behind the riots, but I must admit, the response from large parts of the media, and from our so-called leaders has shocked me. To me, it seems obvious that the first areas to riot were places where people couldn’t be heard. Places where more and more flats were being crammed in, but no more businesses to provide more jobs for the increasing population. Places which were ignored by regeneration projects. Places hit hard by benefit cuts.
It seems obvious to me that if you cut funding for public services and facilities, you force up the cost of higher education so much it becomes unreachable for most, when you pack people into areas with no jobs, when money is tight for so many families and when the people apparently leading us provide no answers, only more pushes for power, eventually people are going to say enough. And when it’s in areas where these situations are ignored, that ‘enough’ isn’t heard. And so you get anger, violence, aggression. Of course you do. And yet people are surprised?

For me, there is a horrible inevitability about these riots. We shouldn’t be asking ‘why’? The why should be clear enough. We should be asking ‘how did things get this bad?’ We should be asking ‘how are we going to stop this and fix this?’

I am disgusted that it took Cameron three days to come home from his holiday. I am equally disgusted by the behaviour of the rioters. The riots may be inevitable, but when a community turns on itself, no good can come from it. I do think that a large amount of the violence is copied aggression from people who think it’s big and clever to smash up local businesses, although the media seems to me to be too quick to brush aside the violence originating from people who felt there was no more ways to make their voices of protest heard. Ignoring the issue won’t make it go away. Brushing this off as uneducated chavs setting things on fire is fooling nobody. Somewhere in the midst of all this horror and stupidity, are real problems that need to be brought to the foreground and put right, before it’s too late.

I read a wonderful article from another blogger which is one of the best things I’ve read anywhere about the riots. It’s here, please do read it.

Wherever you are, stay safe and stay calm. And stay clever and aware.

I Capture the Castle

I took these yesterday at the castle. I have hundreds of pictures of the castle in my camera and on my computer. I’ve photographed in bright sunshine like this, on dull days, in the snow…it always looks great. It’s my favourite place in Aber, I think. I used to go there as a kid. We had family holidays not far away, and we’d usually come into Aber. My cousins and I would play in the park next door, or we’d all run wild around the ruins, climbing over bits of rock and imagining what the whole castle was like. There’s very little of the castle left now, but once you start exploring it properly you find bits of staircase still intact and can pick out some places where rooms must have been.
It’s a favourite place to have for lunch for MrKiss and I. We buy sandwiches and sit here, watching the sea. We came here when it snowed and had a mini snowball war. When he was here last, we lay on one of the slopes and nearly fell asleep in the sun. I’ve been going there a lot on my own lately. When it’s hot, I take a book, sometimes treat myself to a coffee (a caramel latte, what else?) from Costa, and sit here, my back against the stone, and read and listen to the waves.

I wasn’t really intending to write about this tonight. I wanted to share this pictures, especially the second one of those fantastic clouds, but I had a more normal post planned. I’m sorry. I just love this place and wanted to share.
Where’s your special place?

Simplicity

• Top from Hollister
• Vest from New Look
• Jeans from New Look
• Shoes from Shoe Zone

Because some days call for nothing more than a t-shirt and jeans. Bloggers often seem to only ever wear carefully crafted outfits, leaving us lesser mortals wondering if they dress like that to do the food shopping or the vacuuming. So here is my ‘sitting about the house’ look. Yesterday was a very quiet day for me. I had a high glamour day of buying food, hoovering my bedroom, doing laundry and uploading things onto Ebay.
After my clear-out, I got things sorted into three categories: chuck out, donate and ebay. I’ll be popping into Oxfam later with the donate stuff.

If you’re interested in the Ebay stuff, my Ebay shop can be found here. There’s a couple of dresses, a pair of Mango jeans, some shoes and a pair of like new Doc Martens. 10% of whatever I make from sales is being donated to Cancer Research and the RNLI (I love that nice little option when you sell on Ebay. Such an easy way to give.). The rest is going to an equally good cause. My shoe habit.

I haven’t really got going yet today. I’ll be going into town to drop off the donation stuff, and I need to return a t-shirt to Peacocks, but so far have achieved not much more than breakfast. Lazy days are the best.

Love Poems

I’ve been wondering whether to share any of my writing on here (as in, the fiction and poetry I write, obviously the blog is my writing anyway). I’ve written a couple of new pieces lately, and already have some older ones I’d quite like to share.
What do you think? Would you be interested in seeing some of my work or would you give those posts a miss?

To test the waters, here’s an older piece of mine. It was written for part of my Creative Writing degree. The task was to take a well-known poem and incorporate lines from it in a piece of our own. I chose to use How Do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I decided to use it to create a more ‘modern’ love poem. When people think about love poems, they think about the old classics; Shakespeare’s love sonnets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Burns…very few people think of modern works. Personally, I think romance is different now, so I tried to write a piece that fitted with my idea of what modern relationships can be like. Anyway, enough rambling, here it is.

Dry Ice
I do not love you like the weeping banshee
of nightclub toilets loves before hands
stray. Love is not scaffolded shouts
of “Alright, Darlin’”, drinks spilt
over barmaids’ chests, and “No,
I’m not on Facebook.” Love is
reduced to advertising on the tube.

I do not love you in stolen gropes
on crowded dance floors, in boxes of chips
shared on the way home, coughing
out dry-ice and cigarette smoke
of others. Nor do I love you with a love
I seemed to lose with my lost saints.
I do not crumble in your absence, ache
for the sound of your voice, need you to survive.

And yet...

I love you in warmth against
my back while I sleep, in fingers laced, arms tight
around my shoulders. Love is
simple and in everyday’s most quiet
need. I love you in laughs,
remembering my drink order at the bar,
nights in with a bottle, and, if God choose...

 

Thoughts? Comments? Should I keep posting some of my work?

Sheer

• Sheer shirt from Peacocks
• Belt from Matalan
• Trousers from New Look
• Shoes from Dorothy Perkins
• Bag by Nica
• Bracelets from Topshop and local boutique
• Necklace from Ebay (I think)

After wearing these trousers for the second time today, I’ve decided they’ve got to go. They look great when you first put them on, but they go all shapeless really quickly, which is rubbish. I have no room in my wardrobe for saggy trousers, so out they go. I’ll be hunting out some good quality ones though, as I do love the cut. Can anyone recommend any decent (and reasonably priced) cigarette pants?

I had a massive wardrobe clear-out last night and was very harsh about chucking things I like but don’t wear. Anything that hasn’t been worn for a while, or doesn’t have a great fit, is gone. I’ll sort all the thrown stuff over the next couple of days, and anything that’s still in good condition will be going up on Ebay. Links for that will be posted when the goods are online.
I also gave my clothes a good rearrange. The storage in my bedroom is limited, and what there is isn’t great. The wardrobe isn’t very big, and it’s the only storage I have, so only things that really need hanging up are in there, now organised into types of clothes (dresses with dresses, shirts with shirts etc). Everything else is in the cupboard above, again arranged by type, and now my t-shirts are colour-coordinated to make it easier to see what I have. It’s still not ideal, but it’s much better.

More interesting posts coming up later this week, promise.