2010 - Looking Forward

I’m not usually one for New Year’s resolutions (well, I am, but they’re never realistic, and I don’t usually plan on sticking to them). But, you know, it will soon be 2010, and this seems like as good a time as any to try and turn over a new leaf on certain things :) But no promises, because I’ll probably have given up before the month is out:

1. I’d like to read at least one novel a week, and either vlog or blog about each one. This may require me to spend less time procrastinating on the internet, and more time doing my pre-internet hobby, reading, but that’s a sacrifice I’m becoming willing to make :)
2. I’d like to become more fit and healthy. So, vary my diet to include things other than pasta and bread when I’m at uni, and get ‘some’ exercise, instead of none.
3. I’d like to work towards more regular communication with friends that I’m beginning to lose touch with, and let the friends and family in my life know that I appreciate them.
4. And this is more of a goal than a resolution, but I’d like to get a 2.1 for my degree, and know what I plan to do for the next year or two before my exams. I have some rough ideas, but things need applying for and setting in motion.


I was going to do some predictions for the next decade, but if the noughties taught me anything it was that virtually every big moment or trend was unexpected for most of us. So perhaps there’s not much point in guessing. I think a lot of the big problems of this decade – global warming, the credit crunch, Afghanistan/Iraq, terrorism and Islamaphobia – won’t be ‘sorted’ in the next one, though hopefully things will improve. I think Obama will be a good President, though won’t achieve as much as people hoped. I think Cameron will be an unpopular PM, though people will take a while to decide this, and that David Miliband will be hugely popular at first, and will then become increasingly controversial. I think, as many people I’ve spoken to recently do too, that communication will become ever more varied and easier, that we’ll increasingly spend more time talking to like-minded people on the other side of the country or world than those around us, and that this will have both pros and cons. There will be bigger and more world-absorbing interactive game experiences, where fiction and reality become blurred. TV and film will become more interactive and visual-focused to try and stand-out from the web. The news will continue to follow internet trends. Online will be the place to be.

That’s all for now :)

2009 - Looking Back

(Warning – it’s probably going to be a double-post day).
It’s the last day of the decade (well, that’s debateable, but I say it is), and I feel I should be getting all reflective and ponderous, because that’s what History students do at times like this. The ‘noughties’ have been a hugely complex ten years, though, so I’m not quite sure what to say. Or perhaps every decade seems like this when you look back on it so immediately. I’m going to do this the easy way, and talk about the ten things that I think we’ll remember about 2000 – 2009 for some time to come. I’ve probably missed out a lot of important things :-s But, in no particular order:

1. 9/11. I remember that the millennium was full of talk about the things that would dominate the next ten or hundred years, all these plans and hopes, and then something smashes, out of the blue, into the world’s consciousness in 2001, and everything changes. Of course nothing ever ‘just happens’, there’s always a build-up of history and policies, and the reactions to them, but for most of us this seemed to come out of nowhere. Deaths are tragic, civilian death tolls that run into the thousands even more so, but it was done in such a visual way, and it was broadcast so widely, that it’s difficult to imagine people forgetting about 9/11 for hundreds of years. And it’s difficult to see America and the UK getting out of the direction of foreign policy that was chosen afterwards for quite some time. The aftershocks could still be felt in thirty or forty years. But perhaps everyone says this about the tragedies that happen in their lifetime. I wonder how the next generation will see it.

2. The media got . . . wider. I’m not sure how to explain this, just that there are more television channels than ever before, and more ways to access news and shows online . . . it’s bizarre now to think that most of the UK only had four TV channels back in 1999. Now, even if you have the standard Freeview package, there’s 30 or so. Wider means more choice, but perhaps it also means those shared shows becoming less frequent . . . certainly, back in the day of two or three channels there were certain TV ‘experiences’ that the whole nation had, and everyone talked about it. Even now, Doctor Who, Wallace and Gromit, reality show finals – some of these draw in 18 or 19 million viewers at their peak. These TV ‘events’ seem to be declining, though, and I’m not sure if we’ll experience TV in the same way by 2020.

3. Reality TV, and 'interactive' TV in general – celebrity culture, the changes to the music scene brought in by these ‘vote for the next music sensation’ shows. They dominate more in America, perhaps, than they do here, but there’s been a steady decline in dramas and more serious documentaries for these cheap to make, and crowd-drawing shows. I’m as guilty of watching as the next person, and some of them are genuinelly entertaining, but when they are so easy to make, and often more popular, than more ‘quality’ TV, what will this do to the industry in the near future? It will be interesting to see if any channel, apart from the BBC, will still be making dramas by 2020.

4. We wanted to communicate with each other, and we did. Whether it was writing a blog, or uploading videos onto Youtube, twittering, finding a new unsigned favourite singer, or abandoning TV for short-films made by someone in their back-garden, the middle-man was cut out as we talked and got creative. This is a trend that I hope does continue. The world seems like a much smaller place.

5. Celebration of nerd culture. Suddenly nerdiness was cool. Comic book movies and sci-fi reigned at the box office. Animation was king. People expressed their inner-nerd on the internet, and TV and the movies scrambled to keep up. You were left wondering how many of us had been nerds all along, hidden in the corner as the cool-kid minority ruled.

6. The environment and global warming became big news. These topics have rarely been out of the classrooms, news and documentaries for most of the decade. We saw extreme weather and natural disasters, we began to worry about where our food was grown, our carbon footprints. Sci-fi show after sci-fi show began to focus on how the world would be, not in two hundred years time, but in fifty. Sadly, 2009 has ended with little answer from the politicians, so everything still seems up in the air.

7. The credit crunch. Proving once again that house prices cannot just go up and up and up . . . I still don’t understand the ins and outs of it, because I don’t have a head for finance, but I think it’s safe to say that it will be a while before we, especially those of us in the UK, see our countries recover.

8. Hurricane Katrina, and the Boxing Day Tsunami. Both already seem partly forgotten by anyone not directly impacted, but I wonder if each won’t be seen with renewed importance as the years go by. Both were devastating, though on two different scales. The response to each said a lot about society in this decade, both good and bad. I think the two disasters will be re-visited a lot by the historians of the future.

9. President Obama’s campaign. Whether his presidency will be remembered fondly remains to be seen, but the whole grassroots and new media movement that helped get him into office was exciting. Suddenly everyone wanted to be American. Politics had never been so interesting. It was thrilling to feel part of something like that, and I’m not sure there’ll be another campaign with that ‘hopeful’ feel for a long time – we tend to get cynical of these things second time around.

10. And I guess that, on a personal note, this was the decade where I did most of my growing up. I was 12 when it started, and I’m 22 now, so the ‘noughties’ saw me through high-school, sixth-form and most of university. I made lots of the decisions about who I was, and what I liked, and where and what I was going to study, that will probably affect most of the rest of my life. I made some good friends, watched my younger siblings grow up, and am hopefully at least a little more balanced than I was ten years ago :) So these are ten years that I’m certainly not planning on forgetting.

The Christmas blog

These blog posts seem to be getting further and further apart . . . perhaps it’s just that not much happens from day to day in the holidays for me, because I’m very much a stay in and watch TV/ Youtube/ read a book/ pointlessly surf the web until the wee hours of the morning/ play on the Playstation kind of person. All the days become a blur, and then there isn’t much to write about.

But it’s almost the end of the decade, and I want to write one of those long and reflective posts in a couple of days time, which I’m sure will even make me fall asleep when I read it back in a few weeks time :) So I feel I should fill this in with everything that’s happened recently. Which actually won’t take that long:

1. Snow – and lots of it! Perhaps three or four inches, which I think is more than I’ve ever seen before, and it’s not melted in about a week now. For a few days it was amazing, and magical, and we built a snow-thing, took tons of photos, had snowball fights. Now it’s just icy and a little annoying – we’re not exactly snowed in, but we live on a hill, and both driving and walking down it feels a little scary at the mo. Everything takes twice as long.

2. Christmas!!!! I still manage to get excited, more with the anticipation of it than anything else. I think it was Michael Buckley who said it feels different every year once you’re older, and there’s no point in forcing yourself into holiday giddiness that you don’t really feel – just go with the flow. He’s totally right. I still insist on ‘tradition’, as do my siblings, much to the amusement of our parents. There’s a set list of Christmas Eve Christmassy videos to watch (the tape is from 1998, and wobbles like crazy!) – The Snowman, Father Christmas, The Bear and The Tailor of Gloucester. We eat fish on Christmas Eve, turkey and trimmings, then Christmas pudding for Christmas lunch, smoked salmon and salad, followed by trifle for tea, and cake for supper. We get ‘Christmas sacks’ instead of stockings – pillow sacks full mainly of numerous but cheap goodies from charity shops and joke stores – at the end of our beds on Christmas morning. Mum used to buy all the stuff for them, but now we’re given the money to each buy the contents for each other – it becomes a competition to make it the best. Dad still puts his Santa hat on to deliver them – the only night of the year when we’re all in bed before 11.30pm. So it’s the sacks in the morning, usually some Christmassy film (Muppet Christmas Carol is fast becoming a new tradition), lunch, very slow present opening afterwards – we all go one by one and oooh and aaaaah over each gift we’ve got. There are seven of us, so this takes a long time. My nan died earlier this year, but she used to insist that we stop to hear the Queen’s Speech at 3pm. I missed it this year, it felt a bit strange to watch it without her. And then it’s the Christmas tea, and usually a full schedule of TV specials to watch afterwards. This year’s line-up could have been jaw-dropping, and was still really good, even if it didn’t quite live up to expectations. Doctor Who was brilliant up to the last five minutes, which just seemed to push it a little too far . . . . but I can’t really decide until I’ve seen the second half (on New Year’s Day – I have such crazy mixed feelings about it at the moment. There’s so much David Tennant stuff on tv at the moment that it’s as if the nation’s gone into mourning. He’s everywhere. And however much I tell myself it’s a TV show, I know that whether it’s a brilliant, emotional final episode, or a stinker of a let-down, I’m going to be in a bad mood because of it all weekend :) ). Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special was nothing too exciting, and Poirot was a let-down, mainly because it was such a dark, grisly episode that it felt totally inappropriate for festive viewing. It was probably the gloomiest Poirot I’ve ever seen, so it was strange to show it on Christmas Day :-s
But, overall Christmas was great. Present highlights include some awesome kids’ books (Morpurgo, Snicket, Gaiman) from my parents, one of my favourite films (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) on dvd from my brother, and lots of other bits and pieces – chocolates, bath stuff etc. Good times.

3. Project for Awesome – the nerdfighters taking over Youtube by spamwowing charity videos to get them into the most discussed list – awesome. So, so much fun. It was the first year I’d got involved, both making a video and spending a scary amount of the 48hours tuning into the livestream and commenting away . . . my parents thought I was slightly mad, but it really did feel exciting, like properly being part of the community :D Especially when Maureen Johnson encouraged us to the top of the twitter trending topics for half an hour or so – wow in so many ways :)

4. Total lack of work so far :-s Well, I’ve done a little, but I’m pretty much going to have to write a couple of thousand words every day from here until I get back to get that first draft in when I said I would :(

That is actually pretty much it :-s The last two weeks. Doesn’t seem like much when you put it like that. I’ve read a couple of (mainly trashy) books, watched too much TV, spent too long online. And I’m going to work for the next ten days, I have a dissertation to write.
*crosses fingers in hope*

The Chistmas tree is up . . .

Yes, the Christmas tree is looking at me from across the sitting room, all blue-lit and shiny :) My sisters decorated it this morning - I thought it best to stay away, as these things can get a bit cut-throat . . . I hoovered the house and watched last night's comedy awards on ITVplayer (so, so happy that Outnumbered won three awards, and that the little 8year old girl from it won best newcomer). And for the rest of the day I avoided doing important things, and instead watched trashy TV (Joe won Xfactor - it's disturbing that I actually care), surfing the internet (I've decided that I want to move to Canada after watching Twilight. The scenery is gorgeous, and the visas look relatively easy to get. I know it was America a few weeks ago. I'm a very fickle person), and, ummm, reading Twilight (yes, I know :-s I was very much persuaded into it by a friend. And my belief that you can't truly make fun of something until you've experienced it. Verdict 134pages in? Once you get past the grating prose, and remember that it's meant to be from the point of view of a rather pretentious and self-absorbed teen, it's not as bad as I feared. I mean, elements of her relationship with the Cullen are disturbing, especially his posessive nature and age, and I like it more when he's not around, but aspects of it are embarassingly reminiscent of my own hormonal teenage years - admittedly, more at 13 or 14 than 17 - and occasionally it has moments that are insightful, almost sweet. Bella is likeably indie, if annoying in many other ways. Anyway, there are still a few hundred pages to go, and it could certainly go downhill. It lacks subtlety, and steals many basic plot elements from 'True Blood'. And this is meant to be the best of the series, which is concerning. But I've certainly read worse - I've read bestselling adult books which are worse. And I can see why many a teenage girl relates to Bella, even if she is a weak role model).

Oh my goodness, the above paragraph is a mess. But I cannot be bothered to sort it out.
Quick bullet point of the rest of 'news':

*The ball was great. Lots of free food (from doughnuts and chocolate fountain, to meatballs in sauce, chips and pastries), an open bar, magicians and acrobats, bands of many genres, an awesome silent disco, and the decorations were amazing. They'd really captured the Christmas Carol spirit.

* I did manage to get to the library and read some dissertaton-related stuff, round the Twilight afternoon, packing etc. The train ride home was as gorgeous as ever. The East coast is beautiful all year round, but magical in the winter.

*I've failed to do anything productive so far since getting home. I've been on Beatles Rock Band, made a Youtube vid, been taken out for a lovely lunch by the parents, watched too much trashy TV, enjoyed Mum's homecooking, done most of my Christmas shopping on Amazon . . . and that's about it :-s This needs to change starting tomorrow.

Laters x

Hello much-neglected blog . . .

Wow, so I only posted three times last month. Which is a shame, because it was a pretty amazing month in a lot of ways. Not that I remember much about it specifically.
There were lots of trips to London to research my dissertation, a good few films watched at the film society. After seeing the 'State of Play' Russell Crowe/ Ben Affleck movie, which I actually enjoyed, I saw the original BBC tv series, which I absoloutely LOVED.
I've become slightly addicted (to my embarrassment) to 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!', mainly because I'm a fan of Colin and Justin, the slightly hysterical interior designers, and it is a fairly interesting look at a fairly nice bunch of people whose agents think they should pimp themselves out for public 'entertainment'. The body language is fascinating, and I love trying to work out how much is real, and what the editors want. Oh, I'll stop trying to justify myself. I just like Colin and Justin.

Oh, and there was nanowrimo. Oh, nanowrimo. I ended up writing almost half the novel in the last three days, which is an absolutely crazy thing thing to do, and it made my fingernail bleed :-s typing related injury! I'd written this carefully laid-out plan on the first day, and then the story went off somewhere completely different after the first chapter. The story within a story, the episode transcripts of the cancelled show that the three friends were obsessed with as children, ended up taking up nearly half the story, and being far more interesting than the main plot, which was certainly not the intention. It's very hastily written, disjointed, and feels rushed in some places and stretched in others, but it's over 50,000 words long (just), has a beginning, middle and end, and vaguely makes sense. So I'm proud of it. There's a good story lying hidden in there somewhere. I'll defintely be doing nanowrimo again, though I'll try and keep my wordcount a little more regular next time!

Oh, and my choir did our Christmas concert on Monday, and it was amazing :D I love my choir, and it's a lot of fun, but seeing as we don't have much time to rehearse, and are totally non-audition, so learn everything by ear, we're perhaps not always the most tunefully accomplished in our final performance :) And the audience is usually quite small, friends and family and former choir members, but we don't mind and have a good time anyway. This time we sounded great, really great, and the audience was big, and I'm still trying to work out what was different. We went for simpler songs than usual perhaps - our harmonies always sound better on simple acapella songs. And we held the concert in a church, instead of the usual music theatre, so I think a lot of the congregation had come along. Which was great -lots of different age ranges and not just students. Anyway, it was an evening that will stay with me for a long time, and we were all so happy and hyper afterwards - awesome. And one of my best friends sang an absolutely beautiful, spine-tingling solo in 'I don't want a lot for Christmas' - she is going to be a star one day I'm sure :)

Oh, and whilst I was nanowriming my younger brother was Hometaping - writing and recording over 20minutes of music in a month. The final product, an EP called 'Take Me Home' is free to download here: http://www.tinyurl.com/TakeMeHomeEP

It is an amazing achievement for month, and a great record in general - Ive listened to it a good few times already, and parts of it blow me away.

Oh, and I bought a really great dress today for the ball on Friday :) Yey!

Ok, I will blog more regularly this month :)