Why Trains Matter to Mental Health

Yesterday morning, around 11.15am, I was standing on the platform at London Bridge in floods of tears. Some background: I had arrived on the platform at approximately 10.15am, ready to board my train for the short journey home to Catford at 10.25am. Then the boards changed to say it was delayed by three minutes, I rolled my eyes. I've never been on a Southeastern service that either departed or arrived on time. Then it was delayed by 11 minutes. I rolled my eyes harder. 'Keep on Southeasterning, Southeastern, I thought.' Then it disappeared from the boards all together. There were no announcements. Station staff didn't have a clue what was going on. I tweeted  Southeastern, they said hang tight, the train's on its way, promise. It got to 10.40am and the board showed the train would arrive at 10.42am, then 10.46am. Then the train that was supposed to leave at 10.40am was cancelled, sensibly at this point, but still no information on the 10.25 other than 'please listen to announcements for information'.

At 10.45am there was an announcement saying our train was awaiting signal clearance at Cannon  Street and would be on the move shortly. After disappearing and re-appearing on the boards several times it was back, with a promised departure time of 10.55am. It got to 10.55am. Twitter said the separate, 10.55 service would run, but with a delayed start time. There was an announcement re: the 10.25 service, which was apparently still awaiting that all important signal clearance. The board refreshed to show the train would leave platform 7 at 11.01am, Twitter told me it would be leaving platform 8 at 11.11am. I was, by this point, quite understandably stressed.

So at 11.15am, I was on the platform at London Bridge in floods of tears, when a man asked me why I was crying. I told him. He said "If you don't mind my asking, why does that upset you so much?"

I should have told him I did mind his asking. I should have pushed him onto the tracks. Instead I just reiterated that I was cold and tired and had been there for an hour and would really like to go home. He shrugged, and walked off. There was obviously a large amount of sexism at play here; men are never asked to justify their emotional responses, much less by complete strangers. But yeah, I was probably overreacting by most people's standards. But the problem is, your standards are not one-size-fits all.

I have depression, as most of you know. I have done since I was 18. I don't know why that was the number that flicked the switch, I stumbled through the majority of my teen years perfectly happily, despite that in retrospect, they were unduly awful. But it was and here we are. I saw a therapist once. Well, six times actually (CBT isn't the longest of treatments). I should really go back. My therapist told me that I was also incredibly and abnormally anxious, which she didn't think was helping my general mood. I've never seen a psychiatrist (under-funding of NHS mental health services, come on down!), so I don't have a diagnosis, but lets say dysthymia and anxiety then. A winning combination, Like cheese and wine (NB: I have never actually had cheese and wine. Should I? Is it everything they say and more?)

Obviously, depression affects different people differently, but I know for some of us, it can turn minor irritations into insurmountable problems. Things hit us much harder than they do you. For you, your train being delayed is an inconvenience, for me, it's yet another thing that's going wrong for me. It's another reason to see the world around me as nothing but darkness. It's another reason to not want to carry on. (I'm not actually going to kill myself over Southeastern's sub-par service. I suspect that's what they want.) You got home an hour late, emailed Southeastern to complain and got on with your day. I got into bed and pretended to watch Snapped: Women Who Kill (come on guys, you KNOW me by now) for three hours, but really I couldn't concentrate because my head hurt from crying so much, so I was really just in bed shivering and staring into space for three hours. At 3pm I felt well enough to go and do the shopping I'd planned to do as soon as I got in. At 7pm I felt well enough to cook. At 9pm I felt fine again. It lay waste to my entire day, that minor inconvenience of yours.

So. Next time you're about to accuse someone of overreacting, maybe consider that things don;t impact on them the same way they do you. Trains are important, yo.

How to Live Well

Some time ago, somehow, unwittingly, I signed myself up to a website called Quora. I'm still not sure how (and they say a university education is worthless these days). For the uninitiated, Quora is essentially Yahoo Answers but for adults - think less "I've been putting my period blood into my boyfriend's food for a month. Is he a vampire yet?" and more "What is your investment checklist before you sell a stock?" It's fair to say I'm more of a lurker than an active contributor to this particular repository of online knowledge.

Nonetheless, I still read the emails Quora sends me, mainly because it sends about five a day (it gets better, I seem to have signed up multiple times, under different email addresses. I'm not convinced I wasn't involved in some kind of conspiracy and have since had my memory wiped). Somewhere along the line I decided it was easier to just acquiesce and accept my new life as a member of a thriving internet community I have no recollection of applying to join.

And anyway (don't fucking judge me, I read as article in the Observer's education supplement recently that said the idea we shouldn't start a sentence with a preposition is outmoded and incorrect), the daily digest emails are quite interesting sometimes. There is, however, one thing I've noticed, and that is that pretty much every other day, it not actually every day, someone asks a variant on the same question which may have been the first I ever read on the site: "What are some habits of highly successful people?" See also "How do I become successful?""What do successful people NEVER do?", etc, etc. And the only thing more predictable than the question is the answer - it is always exactly the same.

Cod, successful people are really fucking boring, if their habits are anything to go by. Every time I read another identikit answer I think that regardless of whether or not following all these daily rituals would actually make me successful, they would definitely make me miserable. Honestly, life's too short for a cayenne pepper cleanse. Ever. So fuck how to live successfully. Here's how to live well.

Start your day with coffee

Some (successful) people will tell you to start every day with a glass of tepid water with a slice of lemon, as "it aids digestion". I hate to be the one to break it to you, but your digestive system is doing just fine on its own, We didn't have safe drinking water in England until the 19th Century and people's guts did OK. Sure, average life expectancy was 35 for much of that time, but do you really want to live too far past that? You're only going to get fat and lose your hair. 

Here's how to start the day right: coffee. The caffeine in coffee is a stimulant - it increases the heart rate and gets your blood pumping to promote wakefulness and alertness. It's like cocaine for middle aged office workers. You need to be awake to get out of bed and start your day, plus your heart is getting a workout - what could be healthier than that? The only downside is that coffee is a diuretic, so it can make you thirsty if you have it first thing. You could choose to combat this with a glass of water (guaranteed 99% cholera free since 1835!), but I find a can of Red Bull is extra refreshing, and bonus, more caffeine!

(For anybody interested, I don't buy Red Bull unless absolutely necessary - successful people such as myself don't pay full price for branded energy drinks where avoidable. Boost has been on 'special offer' at 49p since it was released onto the market, but the best value for money out there is Bulldog, which has a regular retail price of 35p and a full, syrupy flavour that isn't too sweet. Best Buy Energy Drink, also 35p is fine, but the taste is weak.)

Set your alarm an hour later than you usually do

I'm so tired of hearing that you should start setting your alarm an hour earlier than necessary in order to do well. Seriously - it makes me feel tired just thinking about it. The idea is that by giving yourself an extra hour in the day, you can achieve so much more - it's another hour in which to be successful after all! Except bullshit. Your body needs sleep in order to regenerate its cells, and that includes brain cells, An extra hour in the morning is just another hour in which to be tired, My advice is to have a lie-in. Try to spend an extra hour in bed, if you can. For example, I set my alarm for 8am, but I try not to get up before 9 - all the extra brain cells I have acquired in that time mean I'm extra ready to take on my day, and having 12 minutes in which to shower and dress is daily exercise in logic and problem solving - it's basically olympic training for your brain,

Take a long, hot shower

The logic of successful people would hold that one should take a freezing cold shower every day. The cold has the dual effect of waking you up (necessary, I suppose, if you haven't had any coffee) and making the experience uncomfortable enough that you won't spend too long in the bathroom (heaven forfend you not be imbibing your tepid water and lemon by 5.06am precisely). But herein lies the problem - the short, sharp shock of walking into a cold shower might wake you up, but it's still a shock. Did you know that of you find someone suffering from hypothermia you shouldn't try to warm them up too quickly? The inclination is to stash them in a hot bath until paramedics arrive, but you'd do better to spend the time planning their funeral if that's your approach, because the sudden change in temperature is enough to kill them. Same problem with the cold shower. You're all snuggly and toasty warm in bed and then you leap into a stone cold shower - it's not going to end well, is it? Sure, you might not actually die, but do you really want to risk it?

Don't Disconnect

It's amazing how many people will take to social media to tell you to disconnect from social media. Successful people don't waste time making and maintaining connections, keeping up with the news or reaching out to, and learning from people all over the world, people who might know things you don't and be able to help you close that deal, fix your computer or diagnose that weird rash that you're too embarrassed to see a doctor about. People are a distraction. Successful people log off from the internet and work for 16 hours a day until and because their only friend is the cold muzzle of the gun they press to their temple every night. Don't be successful.

Watch TV

Quite possibly my biggest bugbear, even more so than people who press the call button for the lift when it's clearly already lit, or people who press the button to open the doors on the train before it has even come to a full stop (I have a lot of button-related rage), is people who say they don't watch TV. "I don't even own a television" is the most overused phrase in the English language, I hear it at work and I WORK IN TELEVISION. Successful people don't watch TV, they read books, because successful people apparently never worked out that it's not an either/or situation. They also never worked out that cortisol, the stress hormone, can do serious harm to your vital organs if left unchecked, and trash TV is a faster way to unwind than settling down with the a glass of tepid water and a well-thumbed copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the original English (speaking as someone who had to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the original English as part of their degree, I can confidently state that it actually raised my stress levels significantly). Successful people also don't know that a TV set can be a portal to learning and betterment - and anyone who cares to still disagree would do well to remember that I have watched enough murder documentaries to make it entirely plausible that I could kill you and never get caught.

God, why do you have to be so positive all the time?

Yes that's right, it's Boxing Day and I've decided to take this opportunity to write to you all in praise of negativity. I can't help it. I'm bored. When I have unfettered free time I write. I never felt more justified in calling myself a writer as when I was unemployed. Now, if only I could harness the same spirit of creativity to write paragraph two of my sure-to-be-a-bestseller novel, only three years in the writing, I may only have a paragraph down so far, but I assure you, it's finely honed. Anyway, as ever, I fear, I digress.

So, I've been thinking a lot about negativity recently, what with having been threatened with the sack for not being a bright little ray of sunshine (plus side, more time for writing!), and the words spoken to me on Thursday still ringing in my ears: "God, why do you have to be so negative all the time?"

I'm going to answer with a question: "Why do you have to be so positive all the time?" Serious question, I'm not being facetious. Personally, I can't stand happy, positive people. Their blunt refusal to acknowledge that the world is an utterly terrible place makes me want to push their heads under water and hold them there until the bubbles stop coming up. The phrase "Oh well, musn't grumble" throws me into a blind rage. No, grumble! You must! Life is awful! After all, no next door neighbour of a spree killer interviewed on TV has ever said after the fact "Well, frankly, we suspected this was going to happen from day one", have they? Because the moaners of this world aren't the ones repressing their negative emotions until they flip and pack an assault rifle in their briefcase instead of a newspaper and a banana. And yet I'm the one people don't want to be around,  Madness.

Anyway, to answer with an answer, I can't help it guv, got a dicky amygdala, innit? Ah, the amygala, my old friend, and the source of all that is wring in my life, For you 'normies', who have no need to understand why your own brain has turned against you, let me explain. The amydala is the part of the brain that assesses risk and measures fear responses. Think of it as a little man, or woman, or non-gender conforming person in a little watchtower in your brain, looking out through your eyes for potential threats. For most people, the little man doesn't have a great deal to do; he spends his days with his feet up, binoculars hanging loosely round his neck, having a little snooze, until someone walks up behind you and wakes him up, and in a sleepy-eyed daze he pushes the wrong button, and that's why you sometimes get a fright when someone innocuously approaches you to ask you a question, for example.

However, people who are shy, introverted, depressed or have high levels of stress or anxiety are known to have an enlarged or over-active amygdala. So the little man in the watchtower is still there, only he's on the edge of his seat, nervously biting his nails and shouting "S-s-s-s-SNAAAAAAAAKE!" every time he sees a twig on the ground, pressing all the buttons, and sending you into near constant fight-or-flight mode. Have you ever head to deal with that much spare adrenaline running through your system? It's exhausting. (To clarify, I'm not especially scared of snakes, more than the average person. I petted one once, though I declined the offer to have it wrapped round my neck, preferring not actively present myself as an appetiser. As a therapist once told me, my amygala is working just fine, only I've trained it to massively broaden its definition of "threat" to the extent that it now judges "knife wielding murderer" and "person I don't know" to present roughly the same level of menace.

Long story short, I was reading an article the other day, and it was saying that negativity was linked to an over-active amygdala. I'm not sure why exactly, but you can guess that being stressed, depressed and over anxious about everything might not always put you in the sunniest of moods.

I'm taking this personally because it is personal. This is my personality, it's the result of genetics and learned experience, but none of it is a choice. Yet, the internet is full of articles with titles like "How To Shut Down Negative People", "How To Banish Negative People From Your Life", and "How To Drown Out Negativity". Where's my fucking self help guide to drowning the sort of idiots that will only say even of Tories "Oh, I'm sure it's not all bad." It is! It is all bad! It is all very fucking bad! The very long-winded point I am making is that a negative outlook on life is a personality type just the same as having a positive outlook is a personality type, so where do we get off saying one kind of personality is OK, desirable, even, but another is bad, undesirable. How is that OK? How is that not discrimination? I refer to Quiet by Susan Cain a lot (Things an ex love of mine was bad at: not putting his penis in wholly inappropriate places.  Things he was good at: buying gifts. A book about the secret power of introversion, a flask and an adopted penguin at London Zoo after knowing me for two months, BOOM), but I'm reminded of the section on introversion in the business world, and how "outgoing" is seen as a positive trait in potential employees and "shy" or "introverted" is seen as a negative one, to the extent that introverts are least likely to be hired and most likely to be fired, regardless of their academic or career achievements, and the fact that introversion comes with it's own set of positive attributes just like extroversion does. We, as a society, have accepted that one kind of personality is acceptable and to be lauded, and another is not, and is to be hidden away.

Well l I say, NO MORE. We're here, we're negative, GET USED TO IT.

Human beings don't have an innate fear of fire, like they do of say, falling (you might overcome this as you grow older, but babies hate heights for this reason. The only two innate human fears are falling and loud noises, true facts), probably because fire was something that we discovered at some point, rather than that was always there. But don't tell me that when humankind first discovered fire, there wasn't one guy saying, "Now this is great obviously, but are you sure want to stick your face in it? Is that safe?", who only end up being accused of being 'negative' at the funeral for muttering "I fucking told you this would happen, Barry." The truth is, you need us negative people. We're the reason there are seat belts, and speed limits, and, thanks to Barry, fire extinguishers.

Don't be like Barry. Embrace the negative (but I mean, don;t literally, because human contact, ew).

"To be wronged is nothing, unless you continue to remember it."

That's easy for you to say, Confucius. You're dead.

I think I have an unrivaled ability to hold a grudge. Despite all the happy-clappy advice to the contrary, it's the natural way to be - you know what they say, the only things that continue to grow all your life are your ears, your nose, and your resentment.

Sometimes I think I ought to forgive the Beast, and move on, because it was two and a half years ago now and it's silly to hold a grudge for so long. But then sometimes I have days like today, when I;m tired at work because I was up crying at 2am, remembering how I was actually happy back then, for a while, until it was all wrenched away from me, and the ground collapsed from under my feet.

Sometimes I think I ought to forgive the Beast and move on, because it was two and a half years ago now, and it's toxic to hold a grudge for so long, but then sometimes I have days like today, when I try not to let me colleagues see that I'm crying at my desk, because flat hunting is bringing it all back, and there are flats for let on my street, in my house, even (because 25 Thicket Road, London, SE20 8DB will always be my house, on my street, and I have the keys to prove it. Dumb letting agents evicting me and not asking for the keys back. Fucking amateurs), and they're all just out of reach, because rental prices have gone up so much in two and a half years, and even though I earn more now, it isn't enough to cover the difference.

Sometimes I think I ought to forgive the Beast and move on, because it was two and a half years ago now, but sometimes I have days like today, when I remember that she never apologised, That she was given, nit just by me, but by the landlord, every opportunity to stop this from happening, but she didn't. She just left. Left all her crap, left me to receive an eviction notice, left me to pay the agency fees they think it's fair to charge you when they force you from your home, left me in fear that she was going to come back, but she never did. She just changed her phone number, blocked me on Twitter and Facebook and disappeared. Much like she did when the boiker broke and we had no heating foir a week in December  and the landlord was trying to get out of fixing it, or when we were getting letters threatening to cut off our utilities, because she'd been taking my money for my half of the bills and not paying them. Just disappeared. Only this time she never came back, and I haven't seen her since.

Sometimes I think I should forgive the Beast and move on, because it was two and a half years ago now, and someone asked me, at the time, wouldn't I feel bad if I got my way and publicly humiliated her (I made brief attempts to sell the story, a magazine was interested, but only if she would acknowledge that they'd reached out to her to give a right to reply, She declined), and she killed herself? Wouldn't I feel bad? But sometimes I have days like today, when I think no, I would not feel bad. That if she hanged herself and I was the one to find her bloated corpse, swaying in the breeze, toes turning black as the blood thickened and pooled, stiff with rigor mortis, I would snap a photo to post on Twitter - hashtag LOL - before doing anything else. Because I wouldn't feel bad. I wouldn't give a flying fuck if she was mown down by a lorry tomorrow morning, If it happened after midday, I think I'd pour a drink to celebrate. Because today is just like any other day and I am holding a fucking grudge, because that is the sane, rational thing to do in this situation. And I am not going to forgive her, and I am not going to move on, and I am not going to "see her side", because there isn't one, and I am going to continue to hate people for choosing to remain her friend, because I am holding a fucking grudge, because that is the sane, rational thing to do in this situation, and your continued cordiality with the person who ruined my life is a betrayal on an even grander scale than hers, and I believe treason should still be punishable by death.

I fucking love a good grudge, me.

Regrets? I've had a few.

Inspired by recent events:

Let me tell you something: I've made some terrible decisions in my short time on the planet. I dated a man with a misspelled tattoo of his own name. I have huge body image issues and ruinously low self esteem as a result, and knowing all this, I pursued a career in modelling (and if you don't see the contradiction there, try spending your days in the company of people who have been officially ruled the most beautiful and see how you feel about your face). After that unsurprisingly failed, I pursued a career as an open top bus tour guide, despite the fact that 'tourists', 'talking to people I don't know' and 'being on the top of an open top bus' are are all things which are at the very top of my list of 'Things I Do Not Like'.

I could go on. I've harboured innumerate hopeless crushes on friends, coworkers, and men I met at bus stops, all of whom were handsome, cool, and stratospherically out of my league, and even if they hadn't been, they all had girlfriends with long hair and pretty smiles, who weren't clinically depressed. At least once I've decided it was a good idea to confess my feelings anyway, which has only lent further credence to my theory that I am not a person capable of stirring feelings of affection in members of the opposite sex. 

I've grown so terrified of yet again being labelled 'the really quiet girl', which is basically code for 'the really weird girl', that I've embarked upon a policy of filling all silences with "I'm sorry I'm not talking more, is it weird that I'm not talking more, should I be talking more?", and am now well on my way to being labelled 'the girl who never shuts up'. I've made the mistake more than once of thinking, when my confidence is rock bottom, that drinking will somehow make me feel better, instead of making me hate myself even more.

And yet, in all my years of making mistakes, humiliating myself and fucking up my life to the extent that most of what happens to me on daily basis would no longer be believable even as the basis of a sitcom especially commissioned by Dave, I have never face fucked a fucking pig. So there's that.

#FuckThisSexistShit

So, I spotted this on the tube the other day:

Forgive the blurriness, it was taken with a smartphone on a moving train, and I had to snap it quickly, partly because I was getting off at the next stop, partly because the guy sitting directly underneath clocked me pointing my phone in his direction right away, and was getting more and more visibly agitated - perhaps he's in witness protection and thought I was going to blow his cover. Don't fret, your secret's safe with me, jittery tube man with the conspicuously over sized glasses. YOU'RE NOT FOOLING ANYBODY. 

A little internet jiggery-pokery reveals this is an ad for We Swap, an online currency exchange forum which might actually be a good idea if the company weren't clearly run by sexist twatwagons. Oh well, you lose some, you lose some more. I've left them unmolested so far but their Twitter handle is @WeAreWeSwap - have your fill, my vengeance-seeking feminist missiles.

Well anyway, when I saw it I posted it on Twitter under the #EverydaySexism hashtag, because my version of activism is raging impotently on social media for a bit, and then forgetting all about it, much like 99% of all other activists. (Incidentally, this kind of activism does nothing for your job prospects. It seems all writing jobs these days want your Twitter handle as part of the application process - possibly because I will insist on a desire to write for the 'yoof' market - and I don't think it impresses employers when your feed is comprised entirely of swearing, jokes about sex acts, and calling people sexist twatwagons). Ordinarily I'd have left it there; as I say, I've adopted a strict 'post and run' policy, only moments later I got a notification from a (I'm reaching for a suitable synonym for sexist twatwagon. Misogynist cockwomble? Misogynist cockwomble.) misogynist cockwomble asking me "why" it was sexist, and, abandoning my instinctive response of "if you can read I shouldn't need to answer that question", I have decided, for the benefit of misogynist cockwombles everywhere, to answer the question. So why is it sexist?

1.) Women aren't objects

Surprise! Yes, shockingly, there are marked differences between a woman and the average desk chair (namely, we don't tend to come with convenient swivel-wheels and ergonomic back support). To boil it down, you cannot 'swap' women with or for anything because THEY ARE HUMAN BEINGS WITH FREE WILL (I concede that We Swap do admit they can't swap your wife for a Swedish supermodel, but I suspect with them it's an issue of ability and not for want of trying). You can swap your stapler for a Mars Bar because it's inanimate and can't object (it judges you silently though), but attempting to trade in people comes under the handy, catch-all term of 'human trafficking'. Don't do it kids.

2.) It reduces women to no more than the sum of their looks
The only time I tend to ever get shouty about male privilege is when attempting to explain that women are taught from birth that their most important quality is their physical appearance. Men really don't get that. If we spend hours obsessing about our looks it's not self-obsession, it's self-preservation, because if you're not pretty and thin, by Cod baby, you'd better be rich. Anyway, I digress. The 'joke' is only funny because we're supposed to assume that the hypothetical male (let's not kid, this ad isn't aimed at anyone else. Only teh menz deal with important things like money) would obviously want to swap his missus (what a descriptive term, I feel like I know so much about this woman) for a Swedish supermodel, because when it comes to women, looks are all that matter. Guess what? THAT'S SEXIST.

3.) It assumes all men are sexist too
Remember how I just said the joke only works when you assume the male reader would obviously want to swap their female partner for a Swedish supermodel - well, that's pretty sexist to men too. As much as it's offensive to women to imply all that matters about them is how attractive they are, it's equally offensive to men to imply that they are all so shallow that they only care about looks, that they'd all blindly take the supermodel over their loving partner because they're all a bunch of superficial aresholes. Calling all men sexist is, ironically, fucking sexist.

4.) It fetishes Swedish women
I'll touch on this only briefly, as because a white, Western woman, I'm not ideally placed to comment on the fetishisation of other cultures, but it happens a lot. Like in how Eastern European women have been stereotyped as femme fatales (I'm not just talking about Bond girls either, the number of times men have told me I'm "not Eastern European enough" or that they "only date Eastern European women". It's......weird), and how middle aged Daily Mail readers are always espousing the values of marrying Thai and  Eastern women, because they're supposedly more subservient (because that's what normal people want in a partner. Part lover, part slave.). It's Creepy. As. Fuck. And when it's concentrated on one gender, it's sexist. So stop it.

I could probably go on, but I can't be fucked. Slacktivist forever.

Resolutions/Revolutions

Those of you who know me will know that my fondest wish is to be completely average. Where others seek to escape the anonymity of mediocrity, I crave it - I want to be just like everyone else. Basically, I just want to be normal. And what do normal people do in the early days of January? They set themselves long lists of completely unattainable goals that they can beat themselves up about for not completing later in the year, of course! I'd hate to miss out on a trend, despite being at least a day late, so as ever, I am making a desperate leap for a long-passed bandwagon as it disappears into the sunset.

'Revolution is the only solution' - Michael Mansfield

1.) Go back to therapy

In retrospect, it was probably overly-optimistic to think a six week course of CBT would solve all of my deep-seated and numerous psychological problems, but hey, never let it be said that depressed people can't also be optimists - hope, however unfortunately, springs eternal. However, I'm not sure how well the CBT has actually worked, partially because I always left my homework til the last minute at school and I don't know why as an adult I thought I'd be any different, partially because my circumstances have changed greatly since then and I don't feel my problems are the same anymore and partially because CBT is aimed squarely at anxiety, not depression, and I don't know why it's touted as cure-all. I was just (un)lucky that much of my depression, at the time, at least, was triggered by crippling social anxiety, so theoretically I still benefited, but I don't know. Interestingly, at the time, the recurring problem was that I felt unable to communicate with my colleagues, I hated that when I left no one knew I was going and I'm fairly certain most of them won't yet have noticed by absence, and I finished last May. So I think my therapist would be really pleased with how well I get on with my colleagues now, but I can't track any of it back to CBT, because I'm a lazy bitch and I never did the confidence building exercises, so I have to question whether it's a victory for CBT or just the fact that I'm sitting with my peers, who are closer to me in age and more equal in position (at Hotcourses I was an editorial intern and I was sat first with IT and then with sales, owing to space issues) and that my colleagues just happen to be people I was more naturally inclined to get on with. ANYWAY, CBT ramble aside, easily the most beneficial thing for me for those six weeks was having someone to talk to, and when I had my initial assessment, it was recommended that I follow up the CBT with talking therapy, because, in the words of that particular therapist, 'you haven't stopped talking for an hour and a half, and the session was only supposed to be an hour long.'  Given that most days now I'm about five minutes away from ending up the subject of a newspaper article that ends with the words "before turning the gun on herself", to talking therapy this year I go.

End note on CBT: I'm really not anti CBT (I'm also going to really make an effort to start doing the exercises and keeping the thought diaries and everything again while I wait for an appointment for longer-term therapy), but I think what annoys me about it is that so much of it is based on challenging your assumptions, based in it's OWN assumption that you're being paranoid. When I was having it, for example, I was convinced that a certain man in my life (anyone who knows who I'm talking about will get that I have no idea exactly how to refer to whatever that fucked up situation was, so forgive the vagaries ) didn't care about me anymore and was going to leave me, and we did six weeks of exercises about challenging my conclusions, and saying "well maybe he's just busy and that's why he doesn't call so much anymore" and what eventually happened? He announced that he didn't care about me anymore and I haven't seen him since. A lesson learned - sometimes they really are all out to get you.

2.) Eat less crap/more not-crap things

It's possibly contradictory of me to go on a health kick when I often say I don't particularly want to live a long life (cut away to futuristic video news clip of 130-year-old Victoria patiently explaining that the key to a long life is hating every single second of it, because if there's one thing the universe loves, it's fucking with me) but that doesn't mean I want to make myself susceptible to cancer and heart disease, or the fatty deposits that are already strangling my liver, according to dodgy magazine article I did that ended with the conclusion that I'd be dead within the month. This thing is going down at a time and in a manner of my choosing. And sometimes I feel guilty about the amount of rubbish I feed myself with, and not to bang on about my debilitating mental illness, they do say eating too much junk food can exacerbate feelings of depression, and whether that's true or not, it probably doesn't actively help at least, plus you do experience a feeling of accomplishment when you successfully eat a salad. And I do like some healthy foods (mixed leaves and hummus and asparagus at least), I'm just unimaginative, plus it's really hard to eat healthily and gain weight, which is another of my goals. I made a gorgeous salad the other day, rocket, baby spinach and watercress with mozzarella, croutons and French dressing, and the whole thing came to about 350 calories, and I ought to be aiming closer to the the 800-per-meal mark. I hear rumours of fat vegans - how does this work? How many pine nuts do you have to eat?!?!

3.) Start making an effort to gain weight again

It isn't a huge mystery why I'm so thin - I have a fairly small appetite, and where other people comfort eat I've always comfort starved, and I haven't cracked a smile since 1997. That's not all of it of course, I quite patently have something wrong with me (unspecified connective tissue disorder aside), whether it be an insanely fast metabolism or something more nefarious, as one enthusiastic young doctor once opined, fantasising his name in the medical journals, telling me whatever it was we could name it after me ('Bad news Sir: I'm afraid you've got Victoria Williams' - sounds about right). So I'm not entirely certain calorie counting and just, as so many sarcastic people have told me, 'eating more' will work, but I can't be sure, because I've never properly applied myself to trying, bar a period earlier this year in the summer when I was doing quite well at sticking to my target calorie count, though I gained a grand total of one pound all the time I was doing it. So I pledge to count my calories and aim for the request 3000 a day. Worst come to worst, I actually really like the weight gain milkshakes I have.

EDIT: There's been another 'thigh gap' controversy, and now I'm tempted to renege on this. Even if I stand with my knees squished together I still have a thigh gap (and a bikini bridge, a bodily feature apparently so ridiculous it was made up as a satirical comment on the pressure on women to look a certain way and I was like 'Umm, hellloooo! Sorry...'). Fuck you, skinny shamers. I'm tempted to diet down to a size zero (pretty easy for me to achieve to be honest) just to piss more people off.

4.) Stop fancying twats

Here's a fact about me - I have terrible luck with men. The ones I like never ever like me back, and neither do the ones I don't like - 'I really fancy that really tall, anorexic-looking girl with the weird short hair and the fat lips. Yeah - that one standing awkwardly in the corner by herself wearing the feminist t-shirt' - said no man ever. Plus, I only ever seem to be attracted to men that make my friends roll their eyes and groan. The word 'hipster' has been mentioned. More than once. I swear, it's a disease.  This has sometimes led to ill-advised flings with a fat singer in a bad indie band, a hairdresser who didn't want anyone to know we were dating and a man with a tattoo on his penis. Mostly it just leads to hopeless crushes and unrequited love. I don't know if you've ever fancied anyone who was aware of, and yet still deeply unmoved by your existence, but it doesn't feel great. It fucking sucks. And when it's someone who you're fairly certain is actually a terrible human being as well it just makes it worse - you get an oppressive sense of self-loathing to accompany the gnawing self-doubt. And so I've got myself into a situation where I have a crush on a terribly fashionable guy who has all the personality of a washing up brush and is openly hostile towards me. And is already taken, because of course he is. So now every day it's this internal battle of wits where one half of my brain is going 'hnnnuuuuuuaaaaaaah' and licking it's lips and the other is shouting 'WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!' Well, no more. I can't guarantee I'm going to start fancying nice guys; to be honest, I hardly ever end up fancying anybody, I usually run at an average of one doomed obsession every 6-12 months. But since the end result is the same (soul-crushing loneliness), I don't suppose it matters. What I can do is at least stop lusting after men who've clearly assembled both their wardrobe and their personality from a collection of lifestyle tips in Vice magazine. I'm not sure how, exactly, but I'm working on it. Maybe my future therapist will have some ideas (My old therapist thinks I push nice men away because subconsciously I think I don't deserve to be treated well, but I maintain it's because they're largely bad in bed).

5.) Write more

Fairly obvious. Writing is the only thing is the world I could give a fuck about (and pugs. Writing and pugs) and I barely do any. I have ideas for blog posts for literally years at a time (I've a draft from 2011 on here I keep meaning to finish) and I keep thinking up ideas for Buzzfeed posts only to see them published by other people weeks or months later because I didn't get off my arse and turn fantasy into reality. Fucking fear of failure. Plus, I've had a really good idea for a novel for three years now and it's starting to get ludicrous that I've only written the opening paragraph and I'm having second thoughts about that now, to be honest. I'm not setting myself a posts per day/week/month target, because that's setting yourself up for a fall, but more, I promise. And if I haven't got a full chapter of the book finished by April you have my full permission to tie me to a chair and force me to listen to The Enemy until I promise to try harder.

6.) More Germans

A deliberately broad goal. I love all things German and I refuse to feel ashamed because Germans are just better. FACT. I will fill my life with that which makes me happy. I will pick up learning German again, because I used to be good, damn it. I will go to Bierschenke on the weekends and watch Bundeslige games and eat currywurst and drink vodka sherbert shots and whomsoever judges me will earn only my eternal wrath.

7.) Shun people who don't like the Manics

Because who needs that kind of negativity in their life?

8.) Stab more people in the face 

This one is getting its own follow-up post.

9.) Develop powers of telekinesis

Not actually even joking, this has been my goal ever since I read Carrie as a teenager. VENGEANCE SHALL BE MINE (no list of resolutions would be complete without at least one thing that was totally unachievable, no?).

10.) Become a happy, positive person

(OK, two things that are totally unachievable)

What I've Learned From Romcoms

Single women, Hollywood has some important advice for you...

• Do you have a male best friend? He is definitely your soul mate.
• No male best friend? Do you have a male colleague or slightly creepy neighbour you are similarly sexually disinterested in? Soulmate.
• Passed a man on the street recently? Soulmate.
• If he stalks you it's because he likes you. You should totes marry him.
• If you stalk him, he will almost certainly find it endearing.
• Love across the class divide, always, always works.
• In fact, the more totally unsuited you are in every way, the more likely you will live happily ever after.
• If you chase a man through an airport to declare a hitherto unmentioned passion, he will drop his plans to move abroad for his dream job to be with you, and you will not be arrested on terrorism charges. 
• The object of your affections not being single is no barrier to love, as he will, in absolutely all circumstances leave her for you.
• Him publicly dumping his girlfriend/fiancee for you is the grandest romantic statement a man can make. The more humiliated she is, the more he loves you - awww sweet!
• Interrupting someone's wedding to declare undying love to the groom is totally not a completely dickish thing to do.
• After your wedding crashing, you will obviously live happily ever after, and his family will welcome you with open arms rather than thinking you are totally insane and should probably be locked up.
• Almost all of life's problems are both caused and solved by sleeping with Hugh Grant.

The 25 Awkward Stages Of Having A Workplace Crush

1.) When you spy them from across the office for the very first time

2.) You attempt, subtly, to find out their name and what they actually do there



3.) You start making an obscene amount of effort with your appearance every morning, even though you already have to get up at 6am to get to work on time



4.) You try (and fail) to catch their attention from across the room



5.) But confronted with the possibility of having to actually interact with them, you panic



6.) So you resort to Googling them instead



7.) And arrange a conference with your friends to discuss everything you've discovered



8.) Then one day you bump into them in the corridor and they smile...



9.) You find their contributions to team meetings endlessly fascinating



10.) When they're out of the office, work becomes infinitely less interesting



11.) Then when they're back you have to try to conceal how pleased you are to see them




12.) You prepare for their potential appearance at a work night out like this



13.) And decide to finally make your move...



14.) But success! They begin to acknowledge you in the office!



15.) When they reveal details about their life, you have to pretend that you haven't already read it on their Facebook page



16.) You may start to read too much into their actions



17.) When you see a member of the opposite (or same, according to preference) sex talking to them in the staff kitchen



18.) This person now becomes your sworn rival, whom you will never include in the tea round again



19.) You begin to worry you might not be as subtle in your attentions as you'd hoped



20.) Then one day they casually mention that they're seeing someone



21.) And you have to hide your disappointment



22.) Now seeing them in the office makes you feel like this



23.) You get irrationally angry at the unfairness of it all



24.) And decide to give up on love forever



25.) But wait! Who's that new guy/girl...?

Product review: Barry M, Cor Balmy!

Friends, I've finally found it.  After 15 years of searching for The One, I've found the perfect tinted lip balm.  Enter Barry M's Cor Balmy!

Some background - I have a love/hate relationship with my lips.  I have a big mouth in literally all meanings of the expression, and while I often think my naturally plump pout is the best of my ramshackle collection of facial features, I'm aware that because of their size, wearing lipstick is an easy way to look overdone.  I still wear lipstick for nights out - though I'm jealous of women who can do the more common smoky eyes and bare lips combo, sadly, I've long since realised that there's no point attempting to emphasis my small, shapeless, asymmetric eyes - but the sage words of wisdom spoken to me by a stranger when I was still only 15, or 16, "Your mouth makes you look like a prostitute", ring heavily in my ears when it comes to daytime.  And so, I hit upon the idea of tinted lip balm as the perfect way of playing up my best feature without anyone asking me how much I charge for blow jobs.  Fast forward several years and I'd been through about half a dozen brands (I've never found tinted lip balm to be a particularly popular product, and don't often see it in shops) without finding one I liked.  I don't know about anyone else, but I've never found a tinted lip balm before that actually had a visible colour - until now.

I'm a big Barry M fan, but not a regular purchaser of their products; while they're usually referred to as a budget brand, a lot of their products hover around the £10 mark, which is a bit steep in my opinion when truly budget brands such as Miss Sporty or NYC Colour will have something similar for nearer to £3.  However, killing time in Boots on Friday, my eye was caught by Barry M's brand new range of tinted lip balms, Cor Balmy!, and at a surprising £3.79, I decided to give it a go.  I'm SO glad I did.  There five are shades, a very pale pink, a bright pink, two reds and a deep plum, and I plumped for the bright pink, called Rosie Lea, as that's my go-to lipstick colour for most occasions,

First things first, Cor Balmy! smells gorgeous, sweet and sherbety, like all the best Pick 'n' Mix counters of your childhood put together.  Sometimes I open it up just to sniff it, even if I'm not planning on applying any,  Plus, the 'moisturising core' (the centre of the stick is the white, moisturising part, the colour around the outside) really is deeply moisturising and soothing, something many tinted lip balms fail at monumentally, often being greasy or thin.  Bit the best thing about Cor Balmy! is that you get exactly what I was looking for for this Summer, a pop of sheer, shiny colour that's very visible without looking obvious or overdone.  Rosie Lea doesn't come out quite as bright as it looks in the tube, but it's still a true fuchsia shade, so much so that so that I'm definitely going to invest in the darker red shade (bright red doesn't really suit me) for a hassle free glam look, and the dark plum one will finally allow me to experiment with a colour I've always liked, but felt was 'too much' for me.  I'm seriously considering investing in the pale pink one too, even though it's not a colour I'd usually wear (light colours make large lips look bigger), because I think the sheerness of the shade could be key to achieving the no lipstick look of my dreams.  Probably the only thing holding me back from buying up all five colours in one go is that owning the entire collection could be considered excessive/obsessive.

I was going to illustrate this with a picture of my suitably shiny, tinted lips, but as it turns out, my so-called best feature is not at all photogenic and I'm actually just plain hideous, plus I wasn't getting a good representation of the colour, so I've forgone the "here's a little something I prepared earlier" demo photo in favour of this classy shot of all the shades arranged in a glass for some unspecified reason; hopefully it's just as good.

Product review: Magnifibres

Let me tell you a secret that probably wasn't a secret to anybody who has had the misfortune to see my face in real life - I don't spend a lot on make up.  I love make up, and enjoy wearing it, when I'm going out, sometimes for work, but not just to pop to Tesco (I live in Essex, they don't deserve my full effort).  I think I've got a good balance.  But much as I enjoy make up, I'm usually strictly a budget - mid range kind of gal.  I'll go to Miss Sporty and Collection 2000 first, and stretch to Rimmel or very occasionally Barry M if the circumstances warrant it (I appreciate this is undermined slightly by my reviewing a BB cream recently that cost the same as two days return to travel to London, but I swear, it's a rarity).  Oh, and my Urban Decay Naked pallet, which was expensive in initial outlay, but not usage, as I wear it pretty much every day and night that I wear make up.

However, there's one area of cosmetics in which few holds are barred for me, and that's mascara.  You see, I've always hated my eyelashes.  They're white, they're thin, and they point downwards - no natural curl for this gal.  Clearly when God, or Morrissey, as he is properly known, was handing out luscious lashes, I absent from the queue.  I've been offered many opinions over the years as to why I'm still single, and being that I have fabulous hair and unimpeachable taste in music, I've come to the conclusion that it must be my faulty eyelashes which are to blame.  I usually have about three different mascaras on the go, because whenever a new ones comes out, making all sorts of wild promises about length and volume and curl, I fall for it.  Every.  Single.  Time.  Call me an optimist.  I probably still don't go crazy with how much I'm willing to pay for a single mascara, but I splash out occasionally.  I spent £30 on a Guerlain mascara years ago in Berlin; hated it.  Max Factor disappointed, as did Urban Decay.  I have a sample size Smashbox mascara I got in a free gift which is only OK.  Which brings me to my latest extravagant miracle purchase - Magnifibres.  

Magnifibres promises to add volume, plus up to 5mm in length.  The product is described as "brush on false lashes" and one thing I'll grant them is it's certainly unique.  Once you slide open the extravagant cardboard cylinder, inside is what looks like an ordinary tube of mascara, but unscrew the cap and it reveals a fairly slender mascara wand, covered in what looks like spider webs.  These are the titular fibres.  This is how it works: you apply one coat of mascara, then immediately apply the Magnifibres (your lashes need to still be tacky), as you would regular mascara, then wait for 30-60 seconds for the fibres to bind and apply a second coat of mascara, to cover them up.  The fantasy result?  Supposedly, longer, thicker lashes, without resorting to falsies.  The reality?  Well, judge for yourselves.  If my technological skills stand up to the challenge, then below top you'll see a photo of my largely unimpressive left eye, dressed up in two coats of Rimmel's Scandaleyes mascara (with a brief intervention from some eyelash curlers), and below bottom, my right eye (see what I did there), with two coats of the same mascara and the Magnifibres applied in between, also with a touch from the curlers.

The difference, as you can see, is....infinitesimal.  The Magnifibres packaging says you can apply just to the tips pf your eyelashes for a more natural look with added length, or all over for volume and up to 5mm increase in length.  I used Magnifibres all over, and if you look hard, you'll see the lashes on my right eye do appear to be very, very slightly thicker near the base, but that's it.  No extra length or curl, and I do not look like I am wearing false eyelashes.  The biggest difference between my left eye and my right is that my right is now quite weepy and sore, because every time I've used this stuff, the fibres have fallen into my eye and irritated it.

Magnifibres costs £22 (although who pays full price for make up anymore?  I got mine for £13 from eBay), and for the difference it makes it's not worth it.  If it cost £5 I'd tell you to save your money.  To be honest, it's so fiddly to apply, and adds so much time to the already time consuming process of doing your eye make up, that if it cost 99p I still wouldn't think it was worth the hassle.  My quest for lashes worthy of love, sadly, continues.

I don't normally do beauty product reviews...

...Partially because I'm not good at reviews in general (a quite accomplished journalist once told me that my reviews read more like sketches, but I still don't really understand what sketches are in the journalistic sense, and they're usually about politics...) and partially because I know nothing about make up or beauty, not naturally being a possessor of it.  Everything I know about how to apply make up I copied from what make up artists do to me at shows, and even then it continually looks half arsed (though in fairness, 99% of my make up is applied on moving trains, so maybe I could do better).  I wore heels for a day a week and half ago and my feet still hurt.  If someone actually invented Homer Simpson's make up gun I would totally use it.   Basically, I am a shambolic, fraud of woman.  Anyway, as ever, I digress.

I don't usually do beauty product reviews, but then I'm never normally impressed by beauty products, because they keep not making me look anything like Kate Moss, as is often unfairly suggested by the advertising.  But a good product deserves a shout out, so a shout it it's going to get.  I'm talking about Benefit's Big Easy liquid to powder multi-balancing complexion perfector.  The box says "Bigger than BB", but a BB cream is this product's closest living relative; it's more than a BB cream and less than a foundation.  Let me explain.

I've not historically been impressed by BB creams (though all three I've owned have been under the £5 mark and the last less than £3.50 I think.  I am not one to spend a lot on make up, I ALWAYS get the cheapest thing I can find, but I think maybe with BB creams the expensive ones really are better). They've always been too dark for me, as they tend not to come in the same range of shades as foundation, and offer little to no coverage.  The last one was by Miss Sporty, and it was just awful.  I bought it because my regular foundation (Rimmel Match Perfection in Porcelain) is £7, and although that's average for a good foundation, I was really trying to scrimp.  Anyway, it lasted just under two months, which is a shockingly short amount of time, but thank heavens, as I was bored ploughing on with it.  The consistency was barely thicker than water (if you opened the tube upright, it would flood out over your lap), it had weird bright red streaks in it, and there was basically no coverage, although it was dark enough to leave tidelines if you didn't blend really well.  The only good thing I have to say for it was it was very moisturising - I didn't usually use any serum or moisturiser before applying it, as I didn't need to.

So although I have more foundation now, I decided I wanted something lighter and more natural for summer, and had originally hit the Benefit counter in search of You Rebel tinted moisturiser - I've never tried it, but I know friends wear it, and that it has SPF, which is necessary in a summer skin product.  But when I tried a smidge, I wasn't that impressed, as it was, as usual, far too dark for my pale skin.  The sales lady was immediately on at me to try their BB cream, which is why I hate staffed make up counters.  I have to talk to people - urgh - and they'll make me buy stuff. I relented, and tried a bit, and it was much paler, and because I hate to disappoint people by not buying things when they've tried so hard to sell me them, I reluctantly allowed her to ring it up for me, despite it costing an eye-watering (and just about everything else-watering) £27.50.

But I wore it for the first time today and I have to say - this is some good shit.  It's exactly what I wanted; a light, even coverage, that just made my skin look naturally "nice" for lack of a better word, without covering up my freckles (I'm not fussed on whether my freckles show or not, just an indicator of how deep the coverage is).  It did appear to, as it claimed, "self adjust" to match my skin tone.

But what I was impressed by was the liquid to powder finish.  I was wary when the sales lady told me that it was a matte finish, as even though I wear powder to combat shine, I also have areas of dry skin, particularly on my nose, and matte is no good for that, and I just generally find matte products quite dull and dry.  Now, I didn't moisturise before applying the Big Easy, as instructed on the box, and that was a mistake - it felt quite dry going on and absorbed almost instantly, meaning I ended up using more than I'd like, and it's only a small tube, and it cost me the price of a weekly zones 1-2 travelcard.  BUT, it does exactly what it says on tin, it dries to a velvety, powder like finish.  I *could* have applied a little powder to my forehead, but only if I wanted a really, really done up look, for a natural look, this really did the job of eliminating shine, without being at all thick, claggy or overbearing.  It dried out the skin on my nose (despite claiming to be "moisture balancing" whatever that exactly means), but this is common for me, and I think if I'd moisturised first you'd barely have noticed.  And it didn't leave my skin looking dull, it looked bright and refreshed.  Plus, it does last - I'd had it on a good six or seven hours before I notice signs of it fading. Oh best thing - it's SPF 35, so perfect for protecting skin from sun damage in summer.

I'm not sure how long it will last, and thus how good value it will work out to be - the sales lady told me it lasts for ages as you only need to use a little bit, but it is really not a large tube - but if you want a light product for summer that still has some coverage, and particularly if you have shiny skin or just prefer a matte finish that is still natural looking, I guarantee you will like this.  It comes in six shades; I have 01 Fair, and the darkest is I think "Deep Beige" which is a sort of caramel colour I think, so sadly we're not really catering for women of colour here, yet, but hopefully they will expand.  The colours are quite flexible in that they adapt to your skin tone.  I've included a picture of a model wearing the darkest shade below, for reference.

So that is my not particularly well written, rambling, but hopefully still informative Big Easy product review/appreciation.  For a beauty blog written by someone who actually has a clue what they're talking about, check out my friend Jill Robinson's blog here: http://confessionsofadressaddict.wordpress.com/

The dangers of conflating contentment and happiness

There's definitely something about the sun coming out that puts people in a good mood.  I actually think that if our winter's were a bit shorter, we'd probably actually be less cynical and bitter as a nation (let's pray that never happens, because cynical and bitter are the two key strengths of my writing and I don't want to be left without an audience).  However, I'm here to darken the mood with a heartfelt plea to "happy" people - please stop it, you're making me miserable.

One of the few criticisms of social media that I do find to be valid  is that the tendency of many people to only comment on the positive - and not the negative - things in their life can have the unintended effect of making other people feel like they're missing out because they're not having such a good time, all the time.  Personally, I think everyone should be more like me and provide the internet with a relentless stream of misery to even things out, but I digress.

While the above serves as a good introduction, that's not exactly what I want to talk (moan) about.  You see, people have a terrible tendency to conflate contentment and happiness, and I never realised until today.  I also never realised how dangerous that is.

You see, while I'm not one to get depressed by the state of my life because other people are posting photos of them smiling in nightclubs (sidenote: I originally wrote "smiling AT nightclubs", which gives me an idea for a Tumblr) - after reading the article about how people deliberately project a highly manipulated image of themselves and how much fun they're having online, the scales really fell from my eyes - but some things do bother me.  What bothers me, you ask?  Semantics and proper use of the English language, that's what.  (Again, I'm getting, very slowly, to why this is actually relevant to mental health and is not just me being a pendant, although there's probably a degree of that in there).

So today, a lot of both my Twitter and Facebook timelines have been taken up by people talking about how their lives are perfect and they're "so happy".  I don't know why, let's, as before surmised, blame the sun.  Now I don't begrudge these people their good fortune (lols, I begrudge like a BITCH), but I question if it's happiness they really feel.  Don't they mean contentment?  If you're talking about how great your life is, how much you love your partner, or your job, or your house, that's contentment, not happiness.  That is general, long term satisfaction with your situation.  Happiness is a short term, fleeting emotion.  Why is the distinction important?

Because I never have, and almost certainly never will, feel the way these people do.  I've never had a proper, happy relationship, I've never had a stable job, I've never had an ideal home life.  And for a long, long time, I thought that that meant I'd never been happy.  That I was complete freak, so crippled by depression I was unable to feel basic human emotions.  And then today, I realised - of course I've been fucking happy.  Because happiness is fleeting, and made up of moments, not months, or years.  I was happy the moment I walked out Berlin Tegal airport, following the path to the train station that would take me to the city centre to start my new (and is it turned out, short lived) life in Germany.  I was happy the moment I first walked out into Tokyo.  I was happy the moment I found out I was getting paid to go to Australia.  Apparently I'm only happy when I leave the country - could be onto something here....Ok, no, British examples.  I was happy the moment Morrissey shook my hand in Victoria Hall in Halifax (I didn't dare wash it for days) and I felt, for a second, like someone who mattered.  I was happy the moment I got offered my current job.  I was happy the moment I realised in Brixton Academy that my not exactly lost, but lets say diminished love for the Manics had come back with full force I was struck in the face by awe at how fucking awesome they are.

So yes, I've been happy, and no, I hate to disappointment you, but you are not happy because you're engaged to the man or woman of your dreams, or because you've got a nice house or because you're job is going really well.  You are content.  Enjoy that feeling.  But don't call it "happiness", and make people who don't have those things think that they are broken.

In which I am so annoyed by a stranger's blog, I am moved to patrotism

I'm not generally a hugely patriotic person.  I feel incredibly fortunate to be British, and English - there's certainly something to be said for not growing up in a war torn third world country (although being from Essex I'm not entirely sure my experience was completely dissimilar). However, I do like my country, and I dislike arrogant idiots, so when in the course of researching an article for work I happened to stumble upon a blog whose author was being really very rude about London, England and the UK (she seems to think they're all the same place...), supporting her assertions with outmoded stereotypes and gross generalisations, my moron sensors were activated.  Alarm bells started ringing.  And I started getting annoyed.  Very annoyed.

I was tempted to leave a comment, but as that particular post was written three years ago, it seemed overly antagonistic (although I was disappointed to see she's still posting now, so presumably has not died in a fire in the intervening period).  However, I'm not much given to letting things go (beware, I bear more grudges /than lonely high court judges), and there were so many problems with her post that needed deconstructing that I decided the only appropriate way to deal with this was to fight blog post with blog post.  And so, here we are.

Final thing to note before we proceed: as mentioned, she uses the words London, England, and the UK interchangeably.  She bases her professed disgust with England on one five day visit to London.  I'll try to keep up with her mixing her proper nouns, but it gets confusing.

Let's start at the beginning.  With her intro:

"England has never been on my list.  It just seems boring and uninteresting."

Well, fair enough, everybody has different tastes.  However, I find this intriguing coming from someone from Colorado.  I'm just saying, people in glass states shouldn't throw boring stones.  You also shouldn't write off an entire country without ever actually knowing anything about it.  I've been to the States and I'd happily go again.  Hey, maybe I'll even go to Colorado one day, if I ever develop a desire to go live in the mountains like some kind of cave dweller (whoops, I can be really mean about somewhere I've never visited too!)

Next up is a complaint about our "unaffordable dental care".  Dental care is not cheap, I admit, even on the NHS.  I fail to see how it can possibly be more expensive than in a country where there is no social option and they pay privately, but never mind.  I will just say that I'll happily pay a bit more for a six monthly check up than maybe other countries do while I know that if I ever have anything seriously wrong with me, I have instant access to world class healthcare that is FREE at the point of use.  I will never understand resistance to socialised healthcare.  It seems at best counter intuitive, at worst backwards thinking.  *Cough* North America *Cough*.

I'm now going to quote something that may shock and offend some of you.  Please look away if you are of a sensitive disposition:

"Yorkshire pudding - have you tried that crap?  It's disgusting."

It's oven baked batter, and it's delicious.  How can someone be offended by something so simple, so pure, so....tasty?  Did she misinterpret the name and try serving it with custard as a dessert?  One cannot dislike Yorkshire pudding.  DOES NOT COMPUTE.  She's going to get far worse about an entire nation's culinary skills but for the moment I'm going to leave you with these images:

England gave the world this:

The United States gave the world this:

The KFC Double Down Burger.  The culinary expertise that went into that one!  Two pieces of chicken with some cheese in between!  Whatever inspired the great chef to think up this masterpiece?  And it only has 32 grams of fat and your entire RDA of salt!  No wonder Americans manage to keep their weight to a healthy 25 stone (am I deliberately making crass generalisations about an entire nation?  Yes, I am!  Hurts, doesn't it?).

Ok, so that was just her intro.  I'm moving onto the meat of the main post now.  So we really start with:

"The annoying, condescending accent."

THE accent?  THE accent?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?  This another incident of her confusing London with England as a whole, being as that's the only place she mentions having been to, but fucking hell, it's not like there isn't a range of accents in the metropolitan capital!  THE accent?!  And if she is talking about England as a whole....It's just indescribable, that level of sweeping statement.  THE accent?!  There is a Liverpudlian girl in my office and with no offence to any Scousers I know, I wish she came with subtitles.  Absolutely genuinely, I've had entire conversations with her where I've had no idea what's been said.  THE accent?!?!?  Scouse, Geordie, Mancunian, Lancashire, Brummie, Bristolian, Cockney, Received Pronunciation...All sound identical.  Who knew?

Also, "annoying and condescending"?  No one can put you down without your permission dear.  It's a bit of an old stereotype that Americans suffer an inferiority complex with regards the class and culture of the motherland, but this women does little to dispel it.  To quote Nicky Wire, we're just naturally fucking intelligent.  Deal with it.

And so, we circle back to the food:

"English food is bland and weird".

Sweetheart, "bland" and "weird" have diametrically opposing meanings.  Pick one, because you can't have both.

"Oh holy hell!  Who would put a disgusting kidney in a perfectly good pot pie?!"

I don't know.  My grandmother did, but I haven't had it since because I'm not EATING IN THE 1950S.  Maybe some places still serve steak and kidney pie, I don't know, I don't look for it so maybe I don't see it, but don't pretend that you can't get plain steak pie, or chicken pie or whatever else it is you get in pies these days (I'm not a big pie fan, in general.  I guess I hate ALL English food, huh?), it's just dishonest.  And I refuse to believe that anyone could have a problem with roast beef and roast potatoes.  Think it's bland? That's what horseradish sauce is for, they keep it right on the table.  And you hate full English breakfast?  So Americans hate bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, hash browns and sausages?  Because I'm pretty sure I saw a burger in the States that had all that in it.  Fish and chips?  Yeah, Americans are totally opposed to anything served in batter, those health nuts.  Cheddar cheese?  Gross.  Bangers and mash?  Don't be ridiculous, Americans would never touch complex carbs.  Dairy Milk?  Ew.  Everyone knows Americans like their chocolate to taste of vomit (seriously, try Hershey's chocolate, it tastes exactly like sick).  I could do this all day.

Next up, we decide to round upon the English fashion sense, because again we dress exactly the same and London is representative of the entire nation:

"They were the biggest congolmerate of some of the most unfashionable people I've ever seen.  It's like the English get dressed in the dark or something."

Again, England/London, same place, apparently.  And I'm not convinced she stopped to check the nationality of the majority of people she saw walking down the street.  And that's relevant because like all American tourists (stereotypes are FUN) she only went to the big tourist attractions, meaning everyone she saw there was a tourist.  In fact, is she certain she wasn't looking in a mirror?

Here are some designs by English fashion houses:

Alexander McQueen:

Urgh, THAT dress.  Can you remember the global furore about how much everyone hated it?

Stella McCartney:

Wouldn't be caught dead in any of these.

Burberry:

Classic tailoring, schmassic tailoring

Paul Smith:

Well boring.

I could go on.  I thought I'd do side by side comparison with some famous US designers, but I couldn't think of any, so here's a picture of a Kim Kardashian:

America: keeping it classy.

Think posting images from professional fashion shoots is unrepresentative of actual English fashion? So's posting a picture of one man on the tube with shoes that don't match his suit.

Onto the weather:

"The sun doesn't come up until, like, noon, if it ever does."

You visited in November, moron.  Except the sun still rises around 7.30am even in the depths on winter...Wait is she sure she wasn't in Finland?

And then the press:

"You'll have to wade through the crap to get to the financial section."

Or you could buy the Financial Times?

"Guess where the tabloids first debuted in 1900?  England"

Guess where newspapers in general debuted in the 16th Century, brainbox?  England.  You can still buy broadsheets, like I don't know, The Guardian, The Times and the Telegraph, off the top of my head.  And you can buy tabloids that aren't red tops, like the Independent or the i.  But much easier to pretend they don't exist to prop up your negative view, I guess.

And music:

"The good days definitely ended with punk"  (Backs up her view with existence of the Spice Girls)

Yeah, I  forgot Britpop never happened, that was a dream I had.  The Smiths?  Morrissey probably made them up, like he did the whole game-changing New Romantic/Electro scene.  David Bowie?  Who's he?  Certainly not one of the biggest musical acts in the entire world, who saw the best of his career in the 1980s. Adele?  Not my cup of tea, but she's in the Guiness Book of Records about 12 times for all the musical awards she's won and records she's broken, but maybe she's secretly from the States?  

Adele: has not won multiple Grammy awards.

Culture:

"Luckily, culture is everywhere in England. After all, it is the birthplace of William Shakespeare, the greatest writer in the English language. Says who? Says Wikipedia. So it must be true. His plays were translated into every modern language. And you'll be happy to know that the rich tradition of live theater lives on here. The evidence of it is everywhere. Big, pink posters declaring Legally Blonde "fantastic" and "blows other musicals out of the water". Uh, REALLY? Now I didn't actually spend any money to see it, because I hate musicals and being raped by the Pound, personally. But, (and I'm just guessing here) it's no Shakespeare. So it's yet to be determined. Will Legally Blond be pronounced legally dead or will it be translated into Swahili? I'm on the edge of my seat in anticipation and sitting here reading the dictionary while I wait for the verdict."

"Raped by the pound"?  Everyone loves it when you diminish the status of rape as a serious crime.  Did feminism not reach North America yet?  But, pushing that aside, I'm intrigued by the assertion that because there is a Legally Blonde musical there is obviously NO GOOD THEATRE ANYWHERE IN ENGLAND.  I guess I fucking dreamed seeing Corialanus live from the Donmar this year?  And Hamlet at the Young Vic.  And The Islanders in Bristol.  And A Doll's House and Miss Saigon in Birmingham. Cos, I've been dreaming about a lot of plays lately.  Maybe I should see a doctor.  Pretty sure I did see Avenue Q at the Noel Coward Theatre though.  The very, very, American musical.  I thought it was hilarious personally.  But to quote someone we all know far too well by now, "it's no Shakespeare".

Tom Hiddleston in Coriolanus: not a thing that happened.

Last note on the culture thing - LONDON AND ENGLAND ARE NOT THE SAME PLACE YOU STUPID, STUPID BITCH.

Onto the traffic:

"But, the most treacherous thing about London traffic? It's walking across the street. You see 99% of the world drives on the right side of the road. And by right I mean right side of the road. And 99% of those crossing the street in London are foreigners. So, 99% of people are going to look left, even if your condescending crosswalk reminder says to look right."

How is it condescending to give helpful advice on how to not get hit by a car?!  I suppose we shouldn't fucking bother.  And because "everyone else does it", is that really a good reason for us to change?  If all of her friends were jumping off cliffs for fun, would she?  Probably, actually.  And 99% of people crossing the road being foreigners is an interesting one, but I have to give it to her.  I have a confession to make.  In my 31 years on the planet, I have never crossed the road in London.  I've remained on the left.  I see all these foreigners doing it (and miraculously not being mown down by the traffic?) but I've been too scared.  Oh, to be a brave American!

"And who the crap looks down at their feet when crossing the street?"

Uh, you did?  Else you wouldn't know about our "condescending" (there's that word again.  Feeling inferior, much?) signs, or have been able to take the photo of one you posted.  Idiot.

"Not my brother, a casualty of looking left when he should have looked right, who got assaulted by a mirror on a double decker bus right after we said goodbye on that fateful day. Don't worry, he's ok (sic)."

Oh thank Cod, I wasn't hoping he'd died just out of spite, by this point.  Assaulted is an odd choice of word when she admits it was her brother who deliberately stepped out into traffic after looking the wrong way, rather than the bus driver targeting him because he looked like the wanker he almost certainly is.  I mean, this sentence pretty much sums up this woman's woeful world view.  Goes to another country, doesn't observe the rules of that country even though they're clearly written for everyone to see, then blames us when she (or in this case, the brother, gets hurt).  I mean, SERIOUSLY?  If bet she's at some point been to Australia, ignored multiple signs saying not to approach wild kangaroos in wildlife parks, and then blamed "stupid Australia" when one kicked her in the face.  Although the head injury might explain a lot of the subsequent blog posts, I suppose.

My point?  I was brought up to believe that if you didn't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all, but I suppose ALL AMERICANS (gross generalisation status: active) weren't quite so well brought up.  

In other words, shut your mouth, you rude, mean, stupid, uneducated, ignorant and nasty piece of work.