Be confident, be bold*...

...and get over yourself**.

Thank you SO much for your super-sweet comments, tweets and emails. It really does mean a lot and it makes what feels like baring my soul just a little bit easier.

The jig is up though. I've been busted, found out, by people who know me. A chain of events involving Twitter, Penguin Books, Lolita***, Mel and  Morgan (people who know-me-know-me) all lead to me being outed. When I saw that they were following me, I seriously ran into the bathroom, hopped around for a bit, doing that silent screaming thing (all kinds of profanities). After that, I thought Feck it and sent out an email. Only to three people, but it's a start.

And seriously - your comments have made my weekend. Honestly.

Feeling buoyed by all of this support, I felt inspired enough to do some actual writing - as opposed to saying I'm going to write and then feel guilty when I don't, like usual. I finished my synopsis and I'm probably three-quarters happy with it. Needs some... more, but that's okay. That will come.

So thanks, thanks, thanks. Really and truly. You've made me feel all warm and fuzzy and stuff.

*Lovely advice from Lisa
**Lovely advice from all of you (you may not have actually said it, but I read between the lines. It's okay).

***I blame you, Lolita, for all of this. All of it.

Don't Judge Me

I want to be a published author one day. That's why I'm doing a BA/Dip Professional Writing & Editing. Hopefully it will teach me what I need to know in order to write a novel. Or feature articles for magazines, websites and the like.

That's all well and good - except I don't like showing people what I've written. It's becoming a bit of an issue. It's like an actor who can't have people watch. A singer who can't have anyone listen. It just doesn't work.

So I'm thinking about telling people I know about this blog. And just the thought of people I know actually reading this makes me feel nauseous.

The reason why I'm contemplating this is to build up a profile, a reputation, get my name known. Self-promotion has become a major part of being an author. Websites, blogs, Twitter accounts, anything to lead people to your work. How can I do that if I remain anonymous?

Why do I care what people who I know think? Why can I write to a faceless audience and not care (too much) about what they think? What's the difference?

In one of my classes, I have to come up with an outline for a novel. By the end of the year, we're supposed to have written at least 10,000 words and given that the average novel is about 65,000 words, it's not a lot. The idea also needs to be 'workshopped' by the other people in the class (an idea which also fills me with terror and fear). I'm so reluctant to share anything of mine - what if it's crap? Why am I slightly embarrassed about the genre I'm probably going to be writing in? No-one else is about their chosen genre.

It's 'chick-lit', by the way - and I really hate that term. A book about a woman in her late twenties, with a bit of humour, a bit of a love story, and it's deemed to be fluff or a 'light read' or mindless. It's not Mills & Boon, for Christ's sake. (If Mills & Boon is up your alley, more power to you. I'm not judging much. [Kidding].) Reading, to me anyway, is for escapism. It doesn't matter what people read, as long as they're reading.

But it's the book snobbery that makes me hesitant about sharing, because chick-lit doesn't have a lot of credibility attached to it. Which is a damn shame because there are some great books out there and it brings happiness to a lot of people. I don't have a desire to write a book that's going to win awards or change people's views or anything like that, I'd be over the moon if something I write made someone laugh or cheered them up or made their day just a little bit better.

Anyway. Anonymity isn't going to get me anywhere. Neither is having a fear of judgement. It really is something I need to work on. And I figure a good way to start is let people know about the blog. Truth be told, they probably won't give a stuff about it, give it a quick once-over and get on with their lives, without another thought towards the effing blog.

So. So, if I do happen to know you and you're reading this, thanks :) If I don't know you and you're reading this, even bigger thanks to you too :)

in which i cover touchy, political stuff (of which i probably have no right to do so)

*Most likely the only post I'll ever do in relation to anything political.

I fell in love with Ireland in 2007 when I lived there for a year. Six months in Cork, four months in Galway. I loved everything about the country, especially the people and their lyrical accents (not so much the cold weather and near-constant rain, but oh, the craic. I especially loved the craic. The craic was good.)

Image by me

I was fortunate enough to travel to Northern Ireland while I was there: Belfast with its recent, bloody history and Derry - or Londonderry, depending on who you talk to.

While I was in Derry, I took a walking tour with one of the locals. He showed us the Bogside, the site of Bloody Sunday. (An Irish friend once told me her people aren't keen on others talking about The Troubles, so I won't go into the political aspects - I don't understand them anyway. The history is hundreds of years old and so complex.)

In the Bogside, painted on the sides some of the three-storey houses, are twelve murals which depict events in their local history. They are all sad, but two in particular stand out to me still.

    

                                             

Death of Innocence

Image from the bogside artists

This is fourteen-year old Annette McGavigan who, in 1971, was out on the street (wearing her school uniform) and shot in the back of the head  by a British soldier. Forgive me if I'm wrong - it could be a case of Chinese Whispers - but from what I remember, the butterfly in the mural has been deliberately painted grey. Apparently, it won't be coloured until Annette's family has justice for her murder. (Iwon'tsayanythingaboutafourteenyearoldschoolgirlbeingshotinthebackoftheheadbyaBritishsoldier.iwon't.)

Perhaps the most heartbreaking mural (if this can be measured) is The Petrol Bomber.

                                              

Image from the bogside artists

A young boy, wearing a gas mark to protect himself from the tear gas used to break up riots. Note this child is holding a petrol bomb. He should be playing with toy trucks and riding bikes, not caught up in gassings and bombings and shootings. My heart hurts, just looking at this.

Seeing these murals moved me incredibly. I've never been in place that was once a war zone. Its history was so recent, still so raw. I don't know how to articulate this properly, so I'll just have a bash at it: The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland could have been home. They felt so familiar to me. I don't know if this was because my ancestors came from County Antrim in NI or if because the landscape looked liked it does less than an hour's drive from home, or if the people looked like people from home. I don't know what it was. There was no culture shock when I arrived, unlike Egypt, Greece, or even Italy to a small degree. I half expected to round a corner and see my parents. It all felt so normal.

And because of the normality, I couldn't comprehend such a violent and bloody history, just a few years prior. And I know it's no different to wars in Bosnia, Croatia, the former Yugoslavia, anywhere in Africa, etc, but maybe in some crude way, it hit closer to home because the language was the same? I don't know. All I know is I was deeply depressed and heavy of heart when I left Derry.

So today I was overjoyed when I heard Britain's Prime Minister, David Cameron, had apologised for the Bloody Sunday massacre of fourteen unarmed men, seven of them teenagers.

I felt for the families of the victims and for the people of the Bogside. I felt for the rest of the Londonderry population.

And I felt for Annette McGavigan. She wasn't killed as part of Bloody Sunday, but was still an innocent victim of The Troubles. The apology is a step in the right direction for having her butterfly's wings finally painted in glorious colour.

Saved by the Cat

Here's Archie, being characteristically naughty and sleeping on my sheets. He's doing the exact thing I want to be doing: sleeping and hiding my face from the world.

I loathe him sleeping on my sheets, but they are being washed today and he kind of saved our lives the other night, so he gets a special pass.

We have a gas wall heater that is really dodgy. We have had tradesmen come in and check it out, only to declare there is nothing wrong with it. I didn't turn it off properly the other night before I went to bed (honestly, how many ways should there be to turn off a heater? It shouldn't be so hard.). In the middle of the night, Archie scratched at Mum and Dad's bedroom door which usually means he wants to go outside, but when Dad went to let him out, he wouldn't go. And that's when Dad noticed the smell of the gas.

It seems like Archie woke Dad up to warn him about the gas leaking out of the no-it's-completely-fine-there's-nothing-wrong-with-it heater.

So today, he gets to have a snooze wherever he wants. If I catch him at it again though, his furry little neck will be wrung*.

*It won't. He runs this place, we live with him, not the other way around.

I don't think so, Nana

Nana showed us all up at Sunday lunch at home. I was wearing trackies and a Bonds hoodie, my sister-in-law was in jeans and a t-shirt, and Mum was slightly better dressed in jeans and a 'nice' top. Nana, however, was wearing a lovely chunky knit cardigan, a mid-calf skirt with long boots. A long necklace hung around her neck and her nails were painted in a warm, wintery brown polish.

Out-dressed by an 82-year old.

Having quit my office job earlier this year and becoming a full-time student, I find ninety per cent of my wardrobe is rendered useless. Uni is no place for short-sleeved fitted shirts and tailored pants. The downside is that now my wardrobe needs to be one hundred per cent casual. And it's not. And that's causing trouble.

Everything is falling apart - t-shirts with runaway hems, jeans with frayed cuffs, shoes with split soles. Every now and then, I have a half-arsed browse through the offerings of the chain stores but nothing jumps out, nothing says Buy me! Wear me!

Last week, I said to a friend that the only skirt or dress I ever wear is the skirt I'm forced to for work (in fairness, I'm not really forced. I could have chosen the trousers, but they were the kind that flare out to make your bum and hips look enormous) and she looked at me and said sadly, But you used to have all those packages from your internet shopping binges delivered to work all the time. True, I thought, I did.

That, combined with the three-outfit-wardrobe and being upstaged by Nana, gave me the kick the pants that I needed. I got up this morning, curled my went-to-bed-with-wet-hair hair, put on some make-up and headed into town. I honestly thought I would come back, empty-handed and pissed off. But I didn't.

I am so pleased with what I found that I don't even mind it all went on the newly-paid off credit card. A double-breasted military-style jacket in 'Biscuit' (I find the colour names they use for clothes incredibly wanky); a super soft, super long zebra print scarf; a long-sleeved, above-the-knee, floaty, impossibly flattering dress (in Graphite) which I will wear with the blackest of black tights and black boots; the softest button-up cardigan in Blush Melange (WTF? Seriously, WTF? Can you even guess what colour that is?) and a pair of leopard print flats. I love me some animal print, in case you can't tell.

That was all bought on the ground-floor shops. I had to leave before I ventured up another level, there's only so much I can spend in one day without having a conniption. It's not over though, I still need t-shirts, jeans, cardigans, make-up... This has to happen post-haste.

Nana's reign of best-dressed terror is coming to an end.



***Edit: Hey, Cheryl, if you're reading this, I've tried to comment on your blog, but for some reason, the link won't open. I don't know if it's just me (more than likely) but wanted to let you know I've wanted to comment on your posts, but haven't been able to!

Bloggy Love

I used to have a magazine addiction. A pretty serious one. I would read anything if it was published in a magazine. I'd buy both weekly and monthly publications, drinking them in as soon as I got my mitts on them and impatiently wait until the next one was due.

Then I discovered blogs. This, combined with the increasingly exorbinate cost of magazines, cured my addiction. I haven't bought a magazine for ages, the last one was disappointing to say the least. Combining a love of reading with a very bad desire to read other people's diaries, I'm now all about the blogs.

(I remember I did read someone's diary once. I was living in London with some friends and one of their cousins was staying, all four of us in one room and I noticed her diary was out. I slowly, casually, sauntered over it and with a fingernail, flicked open the cover. I read a page, fascinated, but had to stop. Diary karma. I live in fear that someone will read mine one day. I'm positive they would rather use the pages to give themselves paper cuts instead of reading, because it's all so damn boring. But you never know. So I stopped and had to deal with my guilty conscience when she came home later in the day. Never again.)

Sure, there are the fashion blogs (which hold only a little interest for me - I'm a jeans and tshirt kinda gal) and the design blogs (which just serve to remind me that having a space of my own is so very far away) but the blogs I love, really love, are the personal ones. Ones that give me a glimpse into their lives, loves, laughs and loses. Ones that let me live vicariously through their words. Ones that let me celebrate triumphs and comiserate the lows.

Often I pick a popular blog and go back to read the first entry. See what they had to say when they had no or very little audience. Follow their lives, catching pieces of personal information here and there. Sounds slightly stalker-ish, doesn't it? And yes, before you even ask, I have stalked YOU.

One of my favourite blogs of all time is What Possessed Me. Persephone is a scream. Gorgeous, intelligent, hilarious. Her blog began three years ago, heartbroken over a break-up. Over the past couple of days, photos of her wedding have been published - she married the dude she was apart from. So sweet. You should all definitely go to What Possessed Me right now, read all three years' worth of posts and report back to me when you're done.

And if I haven't gone through your blog's underwear drawer as yet, don't bother hiding things, but I will be there before you can blink. Bloggers, please keep telling your secrets to the internets. Voyeurs Readers like me live for it.

Dishonorable mention goes to....

Me.

On Sunday morning, when I stumbled up the hallway to get a life-saving drink of water, I stopped in my tracks when I saw this: 

That's my coat, draped over the back of the couch, four helium balloons tied to a button hole. How did I get them into the back of a taxi? I remember having about twenty of them to take home, but the birthday boy pulled me out into the middle of the empty street and made me release them. Watching them float away, high into the night sky, I was devastated. So I sneaked back inside and stole some more.

The trail of destruction continued. I walked into the still-dark kitchen and tripped over my heels, which I kicked off when I got home. Two gold and one sparkly bangle rested on the bench-top, next to the crystal tumbler I used for a neat vodka, an inch of water at the bottom of the glass from the melted ice blocks.

Something on the tiled floor caught my eye. I squinted, but tried not to put my head down for a closer look (that was when the room started to spin) and saw my huge pearl and diamond glass cocktail ring beside the leg of a chair.

I went back to bed for two hours.

Later in the day, I found my keys on the floor, at the front door. Later still, I noticed a text message from my friend (who was at the party), sent at 1.19 am. She wanted to know if I got home okay and was let me know that she had gotten home and tried on her wedding dress: still fits and rocking it! She has been married for nearly five years.

I guess it was that kind of night.

I keep having flashes of memory: dancing in stockinged feet, shoes long discarded; biting a balloon and sucking in the helium; going up to the birthday boy - who I've known for all of two and a bit months - and putting my hands on his face and saying I think you're absolutely gorgeous and I love you after he gave a lovely speech; telling a girl who I work with that her legs looked awesome in her mini-dress but mine looked like that when I was twenty-two as well and ha, look at mine now, it will catch up with you eventually, you know; hey, let's have another shot; love this song! let's dance!; ooh, fuck. Lost my balance; no, I'm fine; I think I need to go home; taxi!

I have these flashbacks and I put my hands over my screwed-up face, cringing and groaning with embarrassment/mortification. Ah, alcohol. You really are the devil's milk.

Thank You

Dear Gods of the Ringlets,

Thank you for helping my hair go into perfect curls for tonight. It's my first Saturday night in a while, you see, and I am quite nervous (though this straight vodka seems to be helping. Quite a bit). I now have a head of bouncy curls and this so very rarely happens and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Dear Rimmel Red Lipstick,

Sorry, I don't know your actual name, but I love you. What you can do to a face is incredible.

Please don't smear all over my chin later in the night.

 

Dear Hangover,

I know you're coming. I'm not at all prepared. Please be gentle.

With love,

Annelise