Gone West... Life is Peaceful Here

I'm currently in Cornwall. On my own. I'm still working for clients. And I'm trying to write. Trying really hard. The beauty of being freelance is that I can work from anywhere really, as long as there is a good WiFi connection and power. I can go anywhere.

So I decided to trundle off to Cornwall because I am lucky enough to be able to stay here free.. And it is beautiful. I am situated in a tiny village called Kingsand which is on the Cornwall / Devon border of the South West Coast path. I can walk for miles and miles with beautiful views over the coast and cliffs. I have already seen at least thirty butterflies since I have been here.

It's kind of my safe place. My place of firsts too, I've been coming here for 22 years. I saw my first brawl outside a pub, I also saw a stripper here when I was about ten; it was someones birthday in a pub and I stood on an outside table to see what was going on. I think I first got really drunk here when I was 15 too.

What Future for Words?

This is the first in a series of posts Ì have written on the Cheltenham Literary Festival. I tried to blog #live-ish from the event, but bearing in my mind I'm rubbish at filing my blog copy when I have a laptop and three free hours...trying to do it between talks and book signings and dinners was a little difficult.. and I was a little lazy.

The What Future For Words? debate was sponsored by Warwick University and asked just asked that questions and furthermore, what the challenges and opportunities facing a new generation of writers in the shifting cultural landscape were. 

Chair Roly Keating of the British library was joined by writer, AL Kennedy, publisher Gail Rebuck, spoken-word artist Amerah Saleh and games writer and novelist Rebecca Levene to discuss the future of writing in the UK.

Teh Internet is Serious Business at the Royal Court

Hi my name's Jessica and I'm an addict. My drug is the Internet in all its forms. It's Twitter and Facebook, Flickr and Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, Wikipedia and Pinterest. It's blogging, it's tumblr.  It's memes and virals, YouTube videos and Buzzfeed. I binge and purge on blogs and share, share, share. I spew my soul on Blogspot, I repeat code with glee. A share, a like, a follow, a retweet and I tremble with pleasure. Take me away from my phone or some sort of virtual hug and my fingers itch, knees weak, arms are sweaty. Take me away from my wifi and GPS and I know not where I am.... 

Seriously though, the Internet, is a serious business and most of us know it, though we regularly ignore it. Through the collective efforts of Tim Price's script and Hamish Pirie’s production, the Teh Internet is Serious Business at The Royal Court, tries to illustrate where we are with the www. 

Eight Online Gurls Worth Stalking

I've been working so much recently that my evenings haven't been filled with the sort of sparkling shenanigans that usually grace these pages*. So I've decided to write a post that I've been meaning to for a while on the beauteous women of the internet. The fiercest tribe of womanhood wit, repartee and just damn humour that keep me clicking, liking, scrolling, tweeting and just generally abusing the www until my thumb aches. These gurls inspire me to write better, banter quicker, live more and just generally be the types that they are. They all blog or write to some degree (though some are also marv on twitter) and they're 90% Brit, because I'm patriotic like that. Generally though they just put life into succinct snippets that are digestible over your lunch hour or during a particular dull day at your desk. So subscribe, like and follow etc etc and I promise your life will be rosy.. Or at least you'll feel that someone else says it like you may think it. 

Superlatively Rude
@superlativelylj

Laura Jane Williams is my soul girl. She writes from the heart. From her sex life to her job situation all of it flows with warmth warmth warmth. She's cynical and sarcastic and talks about vaginas, yet the most earnest person ever and totally not afraid to say how she feels. Totally my kind of woman. She recently did a whole fitness body makeover kinda thing after being a "fat" girl for years... All of it was documented and she never lost her voice. 

On Instagram she posts pics of her enjoying London and heartfelt quotes that somehow she never makes corny- how does she do that!

She also gave up a regular job to go traveling round Europe recently. I mean, the fire! <3 

60 Postcards

@60Postcards

Rachel, Rachel- actually started her blog for a reason and with a big project and then less than a year later she got a a book deal. And she bloody deserved it. It's unusual for blogs I read to actually have a point. Rachel lost her Mum to cancer, very quickly and she left her a ticket to Paris and she used it and started the 60 postcards journey. It was an admirable feat that left her leaving postcards (60) with messages around Paris and then waiting to hear the response. It became an international journey where she made friends and inspired people along the way. And obvs got a book deal.

These days she writes about other admirable ideas or causes as well as updates on her own life. 

I dare you not to get involved in the 60 postcard journey once you read about it...

It was Against Her Better Judgment

@Blonde_M

I'm not sure what Blonde's name is I just know she's bloody cool and she writes in that succinct, observation of life kind of way that I so admire and so can't do.

From stories about her life to what she reads it's all with the controlled loquaciousness that perhaps Bridget Jones would of had if she had a few less Chardonnays and channeled a smidgen more Anna Wintour/Beyoncé.

Horses, courses, men and novels. What more could you want. On twitter she's dry as fuck. How I lurveee that. 

Girl Lost in the City

@girlostincity

It's hard for me not to put the entire Debrief staff on this list (there's two(ish) of them on it) because quite frankly, they're all fucking fabulous. But Emma Gannon (Social Media Editor at Debrief) writes one of those to-the-point blogs that you just gotta read. Whether it's on social media, the pay gap or marriage, she talks about it, like you'd talk.. you know. 

Bloody amazing on twitter too. To the point and not too up her arse to fangirl Zoella, cos that's what we all wanna do really. We want to talk about serious shit then get excited about what we're having for lunch. Biggggg stalking love. 

Marawilsonwritesstuff

@MaraWritesStuff

Otherwise known as Maltida and the little girl from Mrs Doubtfire and Miracle on 34th Street, Mara is now a fiery, smartcastic writer with an attitude. I'm new to her musings but all know is she's hilarious on twitter and the bits of her writing I have read are to the point yet really intelligent. Take her piece on OCD, as an on-and-off sufferer, it's really impressive to me that she write about it with such clarity and no hysteria. 

Also she's just one of those girls who dismisses the haters with a cool, clean nonchalance. 

LLG
+Liberty London Girl 
@LibertryLndnGirl

I feel a bit bad putting Sasha on this list like she's a newbie because she is the one who introduced the concept of blogging to me. I've read her blog since I basically knew what one was and despite her immense success she still does it with calm class. Writing on fashion, events, cooking, her life, her friends it's all casual and engaging. Unlike some lifestyle bloggers who seem to live the life of dreams  with no awareness or gratitude for what they are so lucky to have, you know with Sasha that she's working her arse off, but she loves it. Also she always says when she's been guested or comped by someone.

And she's bloody stylish and I just wanna go for a glass of champagnne with her and talk about how she did it. My idol.

PandoraSykes.Com
@PINSykes

Pandora Sykes should be one of those girls that jelly bitch girls hate... incredible wardrobe and figure, good haircut, oh so fashion forward and yet bloody intelligent, but she's not. 

She was Fashion Editor at the Debrief (there's the other one), but has moved to Sunday Times Style as Fashion Features editor, big hurrah. She bloody deserves it (not at all simmering, I'm all gal power me).

The thing with Pandora is, it's more than one read. Because basically she's a wordsmith too. Fucking love her instagram pics and her satirical comments on life.

Love London (Formerly This Little Lady)
+LOVE_LONDON 
@Love_London

JJ Miller know lots about London and she tells us all about it with ease and modesty. She just your mate, you know. I'd always take her restaurant and bar reccs. And the fact that she has lived with CFS and Fibromyalgia (look it up it's bloody horrendous to live with and basically means chronic pain) for the last few years is just an additional fact. Because she writes about well-being and happinesss from a place that really understands and values it. Her posts make me happy and appreciate my life and then she chucks in a sample sale or an unknown London event and I love her even more.

Big kisses to JJ.

So these my gurllllssss yeah. Go and stalk them and read their bloody amazing writing, because they're all class.

PS: Hope none of them are too offended by my stalker tendencies... I'm just a fangirl ya know

In Praise of Americana

Friday was the 4th of July, Independence Day, a celebration for Americans across the world. Generally as a fastidious cynical Brit there's plenty of things I like to criticise about our friends over the pond notably language, faux-positivity an geographical ignorance. However really the United States of America is a complex and astounding country that has given the world a lot of impressive objects, laws, celebrations and notable figures. In honour of the 4th July, here is my personal and current top 10 brilliant Yank things or people:

1) Attitude

Yes, yes, yes. Well done. You can. Congrats. The yanks are streets ahead of us in celebrating success. The clichéd and much maligned American dream is still woven into the fabric of the country. Every small town gal and guy can make their dreams come true and America praises them when they do. They're proud of their countrymen's success. 

Whilst there may be a lot to criticise about the American attitude towards various things, they rarely tear down and scorn the successful as we often do in Britain. Surely success should be encouraged (ungrit your teeth).

2) Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Country Music and Hoedowns

Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, the man in black, drug addict, lover, prison reformer and epic songwriter and singer. I pine for his dark tones and languid lyrics. I do not recognise his world and yet I lap up the emotion he conveys. I want him.

Dolly Parton and her hoedown contemporaries are part of a genre that we will never have in GB, despite our recent bout of nu-folk bands. Oh how I yearn to journey to Nashville and dance in cowboy boots all night...

3) Denim

Levi's were the first, hard wearing clothing for the workers which have since become an international unform for hipster teens, weekend dads, chic oligarch wives and everything in between.

God bless America for making our lives easier...

4) Teen Drama TV

Not sure if I would have got through the relative vanilla-mess of my Home Counties adolescence without Dawson, Jen, Joey, Pacey, Ryan, Marisa, Brooke, Lucas, Chuck and Blair. Well in to my early twenties these kids had my heart and the wardrobes I wanted. Why did public school boys from Guildford not have the rippling abs of Ryan or the deft wit of Seth, the sexiness of Chuck. Why didn't we have jocks and keg parties and incredible vocabularys...

In "teen-drama" land if you drunk a few drinks every Saturday, you were probably an alcoholic, the boys next door were cute (they NEVER are) and it was quite normal for close friends to die or have sex with your boyfriends...I bloody miss them and their prematurely 30-year-old acerbic wit...

(*side note: also weird how the actors playing their parents were probably about five years older than some of them)

5) ScarJo

Yes, I know her parents are Danish and Russian or something similar, but she is seen as the modern classic American sex symbol, and she is. At the top of my #girlcrush list... there are little who rival that blonde bombshell look. She makes some good films too... but to be honest I just stare at her face.

6) Hollywood and Films

This could be seen to be a tad wide perhaps.. but the USA is the centre of the film industry, the championer of the Talkie, the location of the famous Hollywood Hills. Some of the best movies in the world ever have been made there.. and some more of the best have been funded by money that comes from there.

I can't really write too much about films without being terribly sweeping and I love too many. So I'm not going to, but you get my point.

7) Martin Luther King

 “You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

8) New York City

  There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless. Simone Beauvoir

I lived in New York when I was 19 in 2005 for three months with one of my best friends. 

We had a tiny apartment in East Village that was infested with mice, we had no TV and lived on Chips Ahoy and Reeses Pieces. By day we interned at an advertising company and a photography studio. At night and at the weekend, we walked and shopped and explored. We only walked though, we had no idea how to use public transport.. occasionally at night we'd shell for a taxi. We blagged our way with terrible fake ids and the most British accents we could manage into clubs: Duvet, Marquee, Bungalow 8 and then stood silently staring at everyone, impossibly glamourous American everyones. And there we were in our peasant skirts and coin belts weighed down by beads, as was the way.

We snuck into gallery openings and drunk all the free wine. One time we stayed up all night dancing in the W Hotel basement and then later in The Coffee Shop with some boys from New Jersey who bought us club sandwiches and champagne. 

Us in NYC, 2005

We stalked the Olsen Twins, devouring US Weekly and the like to try and guess where we could run in to them. We bought so many clothes that we couldn't afford. We stared at ground zero sadly. We watched live music in little dive bars in Greenwich Village and skipped down the street at midnight singing Downtown by Petula Clark..

The thing is... we just weren't aware. We knew we were lucky, but we weren't aware how lucky.

New York is beautiful city, an impossible city, a city that deafens you and hurls you around. It is in your face you see, but it's also layered and witty and clever. And small enought to really know. And big enough to hide. And you can just walk everywhere, which I love.

9) F Scott Fitzgerald and His Contemporaries

20th Century American literature has always been one of my favourite eras. I just loved what they were searrching for, Fitzgerald, Williams, Salinger, Miller, Walker, Kerouac, Lee and then later, Palahnuik and Morrison etc etc etc. It was so different to everything I ever read before when I started reading it at 16. It was so about the now and the future and little to do with the past... It was so about the pressures of success and who belonged. What made one acceptable or a decent person. Racism, Sexism, Capitalism it was all so exciting it burned me up inside and kept me searching for more from over-the-pond.

This may be another too-wide reaching paragraph. But it's true.

10) Computers and Social Media

Bill Gates; Steve Jobs; Marc Zuckerberg; Jack Dorsey... I salute them all...

We're All Going on a Much Documented #Selfie Saturated Summer Holiday

I have a question for you, or a few if you don't mind. If a modern guy or gal goes on holiday and no one sees a #selfie from it, has it really happened? If a person enjoys good weather, ice cream and super strength cocktails at an achingly cool bar and no #hashtags are employed, was it worth it? If a beach view is enjoyed and marvelled over on vacance, but not snapped and shared and Instagrammed the crap out of, is it as beautiful? I think you know what I'm getting at kids.. The holiday overshare, the boastelfie, the validation vacation, the inherent obsession that the modern generation have with documenting our leisure time, with making sure everyone knows that we are having FUN in the sun or other, around the world. Check out our beach bodies, how cool we are, you're in the office so...

I do not protest my innocence in this. My Instagram feed is choc full of exotic check-ins, #Ibiza selfies, sponsored by aviator, here I am chilling on the slopes, at a sunny English seaside town, cityscape of #HongKong. It's all there. I work in the travel industry, I understand the power of an image believe me.. Half of my job on the online side relies on the fact that people love to take a piccy on hol. In our image-obsessed, digital society that shares life's highs everyday, holidays are the most aesthetically pleasing and probably flushest time of our years...

But how much is too much? Do we miss out on actually absorbing the experience as we view it through a lens and worry about the lack of fucking wi-fi? When does it go from fun to irritatingly irksome.. Or is it simply the present day diary and a given in our social world. Inspired by a recent group of some of my bestest friends (they know who they are) who seemed to narrate their recent holiday from start to finish with images of them looking absolutely gorgeous and sun-kissed and oh so desirable. Here are my rules:

1) Bikini Overload

A couple of casual bikini shots with your friends or a kooky pic of you on the beach is fine.

However, an entire album of you posing, pornstar/fashion model-esque on the beach in a variety of poses is not..

Rihanna and Kelly Brook are prime examples... okay okay, they are models and singers who make money from their looks, so perhaps we can forgive them for it. However, when I see "normal", yet perhaps unfairly aesthetically gifted girls posting picture after picture of themselves in their bikinis, I just cringe. Sure, we may marvel at their insane bodies that they have probably worked extremely hard for, but eventually it just seems a little sad.. the need for that constant validation from your friends, followers and random #pervs screams lack of self esteem and real love of your own body.

2) The excessive "Check-in". 

I learnt this the hard way.. see examples below..

 

Whilst it may fun to share your enthusiasm once that you've arrived in Mykonos, are swimming in Maya Bay (is there 3G there?) or have climbed Kilimanjaro, numerous check-ins narrating where you are every moment of the day is bloody annoying and to be honest, no one cares. They are not there. Whilst your Facebook friends may "like" one or two check-ins when they know you deserve a holiday, five per day on a week's holiday that include Nikki Beach, VIP Champagne bar, Les Caves Du Roy etc, just makes you look like a tool, a gold digger or an alcoholic. Do you even like half these places or are you just worried that you won't remember where you've been. :P

3) Couples, again, calm down with the sick-making holly snaps. 

Yes you're both gorgeous and having a wonderful time, but stop taking photos and actually enjoy each other. 

This is sweet:

This type of thing (below) on the other hand is cringe... fine for your personal collection or on the wall of you house, but not for sharing.. We get you're happy, tanned and attractive.. we don't need to see your pre-coital beach moments...

4) Group shots should be relaxed and natural or in action...

A couple of my holiday snaps...

You are not models on a beach... unless you actually are.

How long did it take you to get in those poses anyway... surely spending half an hour getting just the right shot with you all looking fit and hip and unbothered by life or having a v posed HILARIOUS time could be better spent actually partaking in your holiday. This leads onto...

5) The timing rule.

This basically says that it is acceptable if you go on holiday and upload maybe one or two photos whilst you're there, then an entire album of mildly-cringe shots, mixed with some pissed blurry ones and a few scenery/artsy snaps once you return. This was one album that you spent five minutes uploading in the hours you returned with a major case of the holiday blues.

Updating your Instagram with hashtags whilst you are on holiday, putting every photo up and replying to comments.. just ain't. Again, I reiterate, are you bored by the company you are in, or so addicted to networking that you can't leave it alone.

6) I don't want to see every meal you eat... (this goes for non-holiday life, for some people too)

Unless you are offering me a recipe, then I'd be quite keen. Yes the tomatoes are plumper in Provence and you're eating a real Italian pizza in Tuscany, fabulous for you. But I can't fucking have it. You are just wanting people to be jealous of you again.. aren't you... Why is that?

*Note, extremely aesthetically pleasing images, or great photography can be forgiven.

7) Keep the "in-jokes" n #holidaybanter to a minimum.

Wittily titled albums and smartly captioned twit pics are only funny for people who are there... We've all been on one of those holidays, where we spent the whole time laughing and wanted to spread the joy when we return. However, other people won't get it...and again most of the time.. they'll just cringe or think you're a dick.

To be honest, there's hundreds more I can think of.. all of which by the way, I have certainly done. Writing this post has simply made me ask why we do it.. why we overshare our most precious time away. There seems to be three main reasons to me:

1) To make other people jealous: So we all may do this occasionally, but constantly throwing your fabulous life in other peoples faces is just so unnecessary, do you want to make people feel bad.. Something we should all grow out of before our 25th birthdays..

Similarly

2) Validation: Look how great I am, look how attractive I am, look how happy I am, look what hip places I go to APPROVE of me... PLEASE. Need I say more. Do you approve of yourself darling?

3) For laughs: This I comprehend more, because videos of you and your friends drunk dancing or belly flopping in a packed pool probably will be funny to other people, not present. As long as your not just showing off (see 1 and 2).

Having said all this.. maybe I'm just being a bitter, singleton with a far from perfect bikini bod who isn't going on holiday till September (watch for the selfies). Who knows???? :)

#BeachSelfie