Tuesday 18 January 2011

Travel Light.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-jFR6qaf18&feature=related

Save the cash I need by selling black market baked beans

Favourite Favourite

Monday Evening.

Ambition is an underestimated force. It can drive, persuade your body to persevere, remind your mind why you are persisting with an unsatisfying occupation. In one’s hour of need, one’s ambition can give substance and meaning.

Equally, ambition can be a bitch.

As his wife flung herself from the roof of his castle, I doubt Macbeth gave thanks for his ambitious personality. It can cause downfall of epic proportions. Overpower less domineering character traits and suck the soul out of a person. Ambition can make you think it’s ok to give yourself completely to a goal, whilst giving reason to ignore all other valuable and necessary requirements on one’s energy.

After spending an evening teaching a children’s drama group, being paid well for something I am good at, ambition plays heavily on my mind. It was my ambition to act that made me good at acting, provoked me to actively search out and discover the theory behind the trade, and ultimately makes me successful at teaching. It was my deep-set desire to act that put me through 14 years of training.

At 18 I changed my mind. Tired of an unremittingly shallow industry, designed for the latter character type, whereby the priority must always be to get ahead. Tonight reminded me that my desire to act remains faithfully unchanged; it is my priorities that alter.

I think the achievement of one’s ambition is frequently mistaken for happiness. In a recent survey by Action Aid of the 10 things that make people happiest, none of the winning factors concerned career, life plans, or the achievement of ambition. Moreover, hearing the sound of the sea, receiving an unexpected compliment, or helping someone who needs us appear to be our top three pick-me-ups.

Like sugar, salt and all the best things, ambition seems to be best in moderation. Priorities change, but even dampened ambition remains. It’s worth holding on to, it’s even worth fighting for, but if it consumes you so that you forfeit happiness, it’s not worth it at all.





Tuesday 11 January 2011

Dinner.

I love food.

I like eating it, I like cooking it, I like sharing it. I go to bed excited about breakfast. I am a foodie and I don’t care who knows it. I struggle with Kate Moss’ assertation that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”; has she never eaten cake? Or Crunchy-Nut Cornflakes? Or Asparagus dipped in garlic butter and sprinkled with sea salt? This is a real shame for her, because these are really nice things.

I wasn’t always of this mindset. Not long ago I was a teenage girl, ensconced by graphs and counsellors and ridiculous hypnotherapy c.d.’s. A grumpy, sleepy, whiney girl, nibbling on rice-cakes and weeping on train-stations. I look back and wonder how one person could survive at that level of annoying without being punched in the face. Moreover, how one person can survive at all without fuel. Because ultimately, that’s what it is. Tasty, necessary, fuel.

Regardless of its necessity, eating feels good. I’m not talking whole tubs of ice-cream or consecutive boxes of custard creams, (these moments are saved for comfort in the face of real disasters). But warm croissants, a home cooked chilli, even a cheeky McDonalds after a night out; these might just be some of the sweetest pleasures life has to offer. The deprivation of which seems needless, and a little bit sadistic.

The New Year has brought with it its regular portion of quick-fix diets and work-out videos, joggers overwhelm the streets and even my beautiful boyfriend has joined the gym. Now I’m all for more sexy bodies this year, I just hope none of them forget the joy of eating dinner with a glass of delicious, calorific wine. I don’t want to be the only one eating McDonald’s at 3 in the morning. But if I am, I bet I’m the one still dancing.



Friday 7 January 2011

Get Some.

"When I listen to Neil Young I feel like he's telling me a secret. It's all about secrets"

Amazing Video. Interesting Lady.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TTPGAy5H_E

Long Legs.

In case it had slipped anyone’s mind, it is January! Month of all things new! And so in the spirit of the month I have made a New Year’s Resolution.

I would like longer legs.

I think this is a fair and not unreasonable goal. With these longer limbs I could reduce my pasta guilt, as having a longer body would allow the new fat molecules to disperse equally throughout my limbs, all of which could remain toned and slender. Furthermore, I could go about my day with more speed, as these giraffe-like legs of mine would transport me elegantly and speedily about the place.

Unfortunately, it seems, like many, I have confused a New Year’s Resolution with a magic wish. Unachievable, unfeasible, and unhappily, a reinforcement of my insecurities. One day we all might learn to accept that we are flawed. With jiggling bellies, receding hairlines, and self-sabotaging personalities, but ultimately, and brilliantly, human.

One day, maybe, but I doubt it.



Tuesday 4 January 2011

Home-less.

Yesterday I moved out of my temporary home.

For two months my boy and I have been equipped with a three-storey house, a main coon cat, a ridiculous poodle and as many long country walks as our hearts could possibly desire. An impermanent family. A short-term settling. A safe way of checking if we like each other enough to try it again, at another time, as grown-ups.

Surrounded by boxes, surprised at what can be accumulated in 60 days, a sense of loss hits me.

Admittedly, it was hardly a five star. It was dark, it was cold, and it frequently smelt of shit, (despite the high-breeding, the animals are not so well trained). But faced with the thought of a life without our stinking little homestead, I can’t help but look back with fondness. Decorating our baby Christmas tree, being snowed in with only chicken dippers and ketchup for sustenance, New Years Eve with friends and drinks and shrieking arguments on all three floors. All of which are times I won’t forget in a hurry. It may have been a smelly, tumbledown ghost-shack, but it was ours.

I think we are all accustomed to a little attachment. Nostalgia’ll get you. Any prolonged amount of time anywhere and we build routines, systems for living. I went with my mum to a meal for the homeless on Christmas day, clearly not very helpful on the cooking front, I spent most of the time chatting to a paranoid man who lived in the woods for a number of years, and surprisingly enough, he was quite attached to it.

I move again in a few months, after finally deciding to go to university, I’ll be living in Norwich for three years. I hope that however anxious I might be at the thought of halls, time will provide me with attachment. But not too much.



Sunday 2 January 2011

'Sexual Knowledge' by Winfield Scott Hall. 1916.

"Girls or young women are by nature drawn to the society of young men. It is right that they should have this privilege, and any condition which robs either sex of the companionship of the other is abnormal. The choice of these companions is a matter for great care. If the young woman numbers among her acquaintances no young man whose standards command her respect, she would better go unattended and without escort than to accept the attention of unworthy men.

A girl cannot afford to lower her own self-respect or lay herself open to insult."


Things I've learnt in 2010.

How to tie a headscarf.

Learning to fart in front of one’s better half significantly improves quality of life and is a good and soulful thing.

Make-up wont make you happy, reversely, no make-up at all wont work either.

How to shape eyebrows.

Spicy food is tasty because of endorphins.

Big decisions feel good to make.

Moneyless and in love and living in an old woman’s house is a good way to start 2011.

Last pennies are better spent on flowers than food.

Northern soul is good for the soul.


a few Spanish words.