In the Meantime

Please bear with me while I finish my dissertation and tie up some loose ends. This weekend I went to my friend Rose's 'Carnival of the Animals' themed party dressed as Bjork's Swan dress and ate lots and lots of fantastic homemade falafel. The next day we miraculously managed to get some Glastonbury tickets in the resale and then celebrated my best friend's birthday with a champagne breakfast in our pyjamas.

But now the slog continues and this blog will remain a little empty until my May Day deadline. In the meantime, why don't you listen to this fantastic song by Pete Dunaway from the 'Black Rio 2: Original Samba Soul 1968-1981' album? Reading wise I recommend 'Faster or Greener.' It's a new blog written by my friend Joanna. Often when I read a new blog I find that I can tell it's new and needs a bit of time for improvement. But Joanna's is fantastic and not at all like that. She's been a big blog reader for years (as well as being generally one of the most well-read people I know) so she knows how it's done and Faster or Greener is already packed with well-written and thoughtful posts. From beautiful photographs from around Montpelier (where she is currently living) to helpful documentary compilation lists. Anyway, I like it and I think you will too. We had a fantastic time couchsurfing across the United States a few years ago and for the sake of nostalgia and friendship I will post some photographs of our adventures here. It is also worth a shout out to Lily, my childhood best-friend who introduced us in the first place and Patrice who we shared fun, a comfortable room and Denny's breakfasts with at Coachella (and who took most of these photographs)

Hobbies of the Flimby New Balance Men

This morning I found myself on the 'Visit Flimby' website which is the love child of New Balance and the West Cumbria tourist board.  Flimby is a town on the border of the Lake District and home to the UK's New Balance factory, and indeed you can 'visit Flimby' and have a tour around the factory which is exactly why I found myself on the site in the first place on a rainy Thursday morning when a day trip elsewhere is an attractive prospect. The site is a great read with some beautiful photographs and videos (by North West photographer Percy Dean) documenting the community and some of the men who work in the factory.

I'm always interested in people who are dedicated to a particular hobby- I wrote about hobbies here last year- and these videos focus on the curiosities of the New Balance factory employees. Bill climbs the local peaks when he's not working, Wayne races pigeons, Mark plays in a band and Roy who is a leather cutter during the day, is a fan of Northern Soul and still has the recordings he used to make from the balcony of the Wigan Casino in 1973. You can watch the other videos here but naturally the irresistible pairing of New Balance and Northern Soul was too good an opportunity to miss for posting Roy's video:

No, really. What's In Your Handbag?

If I was a magazine editor I would run the show with an iron fist. I'd keep the iron fist in the top drawer of my desk and bring it out on one occasion, to enforce one very special rule. The only rule. I'd send a memo around to all staff on a Friday night, just as they're leaving the office and thinking about all of the fun ways they're going to spend the weekend. They'd quickly scan my email, informing them about the meeting being scheduled for 9am on Monday which will be held in response to one of the features being run in the April issue. I will tell them that it has come to my attention that a feature is being run which violates The Rule. Every experienced member of staff will know word-for-word how this meeting will go, even before it happens. They will think about it as they're putting on their coat to leave the office that night and again while they're browsing flowers on Columbia Road on Saturday morning and again when they're handwashing their tights over the bathroom sink on Sunday evening.

The meeting will be tense but short and to the point. And everybody who attends the meeting will never forget the words of The Rule. The assistant who wrote the feature will absolutely never forget the rule and for 6 months will carry her belongings to work in her pockets in order to avoid the associations with The Rule as provoked by her handbag.

The rule goes like this:

"In the event of a 'What's In Your Handbag?' feature, please ask yourself these questions and only proceed with the article is the answer to either is yes. 1. Is the subject Mary Poppins? 2. Does the bag belong to a traveling salesman specialising in now-defunct magical sweeties only available on the black market (which are still, miraculously still within their expiry date)?"

My point and my question really is this: "Why are handbag features a thing?" Like all brilliant imaginary magazine editors, (or the Carrie Bradshaw of 2013) I voiced this question aloud on Twitter. These features are really, really not very interesting. I would much rather see the contents of a fridge or a wardrobe or a personal photo album because these things are actually revealing of a person. (Well, the fridge doesn't really, in the food department I'm just nosey) But anyone can carry around keys and a phone and some lipbalm. And what makes these features boring is the fact that they are usually completely unbelievable, comically so! If you look into one of these bags, on a blog or in a magazine, they contain 2 heavyweight SLR cameras, a dog-eared copy of Camus's The Plague, a Stila blusher, a small shell-shaped compact mirror, an iphone and a moleskine. Come on! Where are your tampax? Look into your best friend's bag and it will contain a bus pass, some loose filters, a snotty tissue and a McDonalds straw wrapper. (I know this because she faithfully replied to my tweet listing the exact contents.)

For research purposes, please allow me to reveal the mediocre contents of my bag for your delectation:

You will find: Wallet (in dire need of a sort-out in light of fact that fat receipt situation will not allow the clasp to close), 2 separate sets of keys, a bike light, headphones, a make-up brush (yet notable absence of blusher) Railcard, Make-up bag, 2 pens, an orange, deodorant, chewing gum, lots of tissues- grabbed from the dispenser of the toilet on the train I travelled on this weekend.

I very much enjoyed some of the contents of bags on Twitter which did indeed reveal something about the owners and lack any of the glamour of the unbelievable magazine features. See Anna's rotten apple and selection of whiteboard pens which show in very real terms her progress as a teacher-in-training. Teachers in cartoons have shiny apples on their desks! They must end up buried forgotten in handbags, slowly rotting.. Kat, who describes herself on her Twitter bio as 'A lover, not a fighter' carries Pom Bears in her bag. Naturally, the ultimate sharing, caring, extended olive-branch of animal shaped potato snacks. Fiona's bag pays tribute to her Easter bank holiday, containing confetti and eggs shells from a 'drunken Easter egg hunt'. Brilliant. Evidently a lot of what these features are missing is the crucial back story behind our bag crap. As the famous saying goes, "On the shoulder of every Great Woman, hangs a mediocre handbag."

Letter From Manchester

 

In Manchester, the End is Nigh. Of course, only for those who are at the end of their University experience and must remind themselves this is a rite of passage and one that has been lived by many before. There are those, like myself, who live everyday leaning towards some Reality Bites inspired 'end of University angst', occasionally sighing forlornly 'only 8 weeks to go now. We'll never see each other again.' There are also those who roll their eyes in response, swig their last slug of beer from their can before realising, equally panicked that the End is indeed Nigh. The time is 2am and that was the last can. Such small crises continue in the midst of the bigger one.

Final papers are being handed in, bikes are cycled through bitter winds and into University to collect grades which finally mean something. Those in relationships are determinedly ignoring June and the future, and others are snogging old friends before it is too late.

Future plans consist for some of blank pages, for others trips to Malaysia or graduate schemes in which one must once again start at the bottom as the runt of the litter, but with the pride of telling relatives at parties that a salary is in sight. While we stir our meals in big communal pots at dinnertime someone asks 'who will be the first of all of us to have a baby?' with the same wariness and excitement reserved for the one who will cure cancer. Gigi, obviously, we quickly conclude and go to scrape the lentils which started to burn in the pan while we shallowly contemplated our own lives as if we were starting to sketch the storyboard for our own future-montage scene. The rest refill their glasses and continue with the next and darker instalment of 'Would You Rather?' with a gruesome scenario which involves a life of being forced to watch your parents most intimate moments, or worse.

Lots of us have left already for Easter and today me and Nanon spent all of our time together, walking along desirable streets after stopping at the greengrocers, pointing at the houses we fantasise about living in next year. I put on a comedy Lancashire accent and tell Nanon "ooh, you could be a modern day Lowry with all them bricks around you, stand still and I'll take a picture." She poses and says "I'm just like Ian Dury" before realising that she meant Curtis, but that Curtis definitely wouldn't have worn a camel coloured coat with slightly puffed shoulders. We continue the househunting like an older and wiser couple and come up with equally fantastical life plans and wonder if they might actually be achievable. We'll get jobs as waitresses and rake in the tips which are currently elusive to us, and in the evenings write the screenplay for a truthful sitcom all about women in their early twenties which will be dazzling and successful and will inevitably recieve comparisons to Girls, because it's about girls, but that's okay, you can't change everything at once. We'll never fall victim to those days when try as you might you can't get out of bed and we'll do all the things and more.

We come home to mine once the snow has returned and our eyelids are too cold to take any more fantasising outdoors and we cook more lentils and together with Yas we youtube 'Can't Hold Us Down' by Christina Aguilera and Lil' Kim and remember who great it is, being overly nostalgic about something that only happened in 2002. We think about how nostalgic we'll be in 10 years time, we'll really have license then, but realise that in 10 years time nostalgia will probably be a luxury, and just a way for students with few hours of classes and no real concerns to pass the time, which is okay for now.

The Conversation

Click for Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. 

It is rare that I read or watch an interview and feel that I've been left with something useful. Every month a glut of interview features amass the shelves of newsagents and supermarkets and bookshops and yet they mostly lack any wisdom or thought-provoking nuggets. The work commitments of actors, creatives, business people and musicians who have albums, books and records to promote seem to be viewed as separate from an opportunity to have interesting conversation. It is understandable, I've watched Notting Hill, I know how these tedious press junkets work. But it is disheartening to buy a glossy magazine and to always read the same formula. Female subjects are usually wrapped up in an oversize mohair jumper, looking natural and wearing little make-up and talking about things that ultimately aren't massively interesting in a self-deprecating way. Or maybe the problem is that so many of these subjects aren't massively interesting to me in the first place. So you have a slightly bland star dominating the interview feature for 4 pages and then someone who really is interesting- Tilda Swinton, say, who is featured in the 'My Life in Books' feature, with something a little more meaningful crammed into 300 words. It is frustrating but also a practice that I shouldn't expect mainstream glossy magazines to move past anytime soon.

If I want something really satisfying I have learnt to bypass the usual titles (even those fashion magazines that parade as different and as promoting strong women but ultimately don't) and stick to some tried and tested formulas. Jessica Stanley's blog is one of my absolute favourites and I always feel satisfied after reading one of her compilation posts of interesting articles and interviews from across the internet. She has a knack of finding opinion pieces or articles, from random blogs I would never have found, or maybe something from the Paris Review archive. Maybe it will be about the romance of being single, or the creative process or a really touching and well-written piece about a memory of living in New York. Either way it is the sort of thing I'll read while I eat my porridge in the morning and it will stay with me for the rest of the day, or maybe even longer. Magazines like The Gentlewoman and Apartamento also hit the mark for me in terms of insightful encounters with subjects and I remember enjoying this interview with Sheila Heti on KCRW via 10.17.

When I read an interview I'm ultimately curious about how people live their lives, because if we're not making it up as we go along, then we're quietly watching others for clues. I want to know about their routines or their self-doubts or what they've recently watched or read or thought about. I'm a big fan of 'isms' and maybe my requirements of interviews are ultimately selfish, by wishing to be left with something for myself at the expense of a subject revealing something about themselves. Really though, I know it isn't selfish, more a wish to be left with something more meaningful than the release date for a film.

Last weekend I spent 45 minutes or so watching a 4-part interview with Nick Cave on Youtube and it is absolutely an example of the 'satisfying interview'. A conversation between the interviewer and the subject rather than a personal portrait laden with a heavy portion of flattery. The interview is from 10 years ago, and very informal with the conversation between the two men starting with some memories of the last time they met and Nick Cave asking "Are we doing this? Are you filming?" about 3 minutes in, after their conversation has become the interview but without a cue to indicate it. I would really recommend sticking the kettle on for a cup of something hot and watching the 4 parts which are broken into the topics of discussion 'Habits and Routines', 'The Creative Process', 'The Love Song Lecture' and 'Self Image'. A lot of the brilliance of this interview is down to the interviewer himself, by asking interesting questions and knowing what Nick Cave has to share. Nick Cave, cigarette in hand, is all the time speaking very much within himself, and using his energy to find the right words rather than channelling it into being self-deprecating and fun and liked. This is definitely something I notice a lot in a majority of interviews and I think it is something we do on a daily basis in our conversations with each other and sometimes it takes away from what we're actually saying. Not that we have to always be serious and thoughtful, but the very British habit of being self-deprecating is one that sometimes becomes draining in social situations. Either way, I recommend all 4 parts to be enjoyed with a cup of Earl Grey and a slice of Banana bread and a blanket over the knees.

Apron Appreciation

I bought this dress from the JW Anderson x Topshop collection last week and man, I like it. It makes me feel like a French painter or a baker who means business. I work at the cafe in the Whitworth Gallery and there is a woman who works at the gallery who always comes in for a bowl of soup at lunchtime wearing a fantastic denim apron. It is sturdy and a dark wash of indigo with paint flecks and cutting dust along the sides. All good aprons should have various dust on the sides- the greatest pleasure in wearing one is being able to wipe your hands on yourself when they're dirty like you did as a child without any adult instincts getting in the way, and for the muck to actually add to the personality of the denim. A crumb, paint, coffee gradual, jammed, free-for-all.

My dress isn't quite in the same category as hers but I like it with its little frills. I wore it to my Aunt's 40th over the weekend. Before I left the house- in some anti-Coco Chanel philosophy- I added a couple of accessories. (Sacre bleu! She always says to remove them! Well, I'm never much the accessories type, so if anything I should always follow the opposite of her 'isms') So on when my banana brooch and up went a ponytail. All after a brush of the teeth, of course. 

Hot Stuff

Jumper: Uniqlo, Dress: secondhand, Bumbag: Mr Ben Handbag + Luggage, Clogs: Topshop, Neon Nail Varnish: American Apparel.

I wore this a couple of nights ago for a fantastic night of dancing and blowing off some post-essay steam. There has been an increasing trend in Manchester (and I'm sure many other UK cities) of clubs advertising nights as playing Disco and Boogie when in fact all they do is play Deep House for half an hour and then the night descends into a tedious beat from midnight with a room of people pretending thats what they're really into. It's not what I'm into. I don't understand why there has to be ambiguity about clubs advertising a certain genre of music which they have no intention of playing just to tap into some retro nostalgia. The point is, I like dancing to Disco and I get bummed out when promises are broken. The beauty of Thursday night however was that it was disco and boogie and soul and perfect merriment free of House music pretension. Just good old lashings of Donna Summer and Kool and The Gang and lots of rosy cheeks and wide smiles and a mirrorball  So anyone in the Manchester area, I urge you to keep your eyes peeled for Stevie Wonderland. (My own enjoyment of the night had absolutely nothing may have had something to do with it being my namesake.)

In other news I've sacked off being a blonde and returned to the reddish shade I had a few years ago and it feels good. 

Lastly, here are two videos for your Saturday viewing pleasure:
( I recommend them thoroughly and personally can't stop myself from watching Sunset Sam and Lucy and Ramona hanging out in their rollerskates and tight pants.)

moodboard

Hello, hello. It's Monday, the start of a new week already. How does it keep happening? I'm back from a weekend away in Snowdonia with a big group of friends for a birthday. We hired a big lodge beside Llyn Gwynant and after arriving in the dark, my weekend started with an astonishingly beautiful view of the lake as I opened the blinds, the steep slopes of Snowdon visible amongst fog. Picking my way through the bottles of wine from the night before and sharing a cup of Earl Grey and the view with some of the bleary eyed gang in a novel location was a great start to the weekend. Later we went on a walk which blew the cobwebs away and spent the afternoon playing cards and Jenga, a perfect antidote to the stresses of the final year of university and the slight uncertainty surrounding our futures which is something we're all experiencing at the moment. Now it is back to reality, but here are some of the cool things that have been pleasing me and punctuating my essay writing. 

Some cool things: (Clockwise from top left) This guy with a snake around this neck from the Spring Summer 2013 collections editorial in the March issue of Dazed and Confused. / Tom Waits, as ever. But particularly so in this photo. I've been listening to Nighthawks At The Diner a lot recently, particularly 'Better Off Without A Wife' for its celebration of the romance of singledom. ("Goin' out when I want to, comin' home when I please, I don't have to ask permission if want to go out fishing, and I never have to ask for the keys") / The fantastic Supreme x Comme des Garcons lookbook with Chloe Sevigny and Jason Dill. While the streets (at least in England) have become somewhat saturated with Supreme logos and similar knock-off streetwear odes, this lookbook still looks fresh. It's Chloe. It's always because of Chloe.. / Bay Garnett's instagram -her daughter's transfer tattoos and two badges reading 'lover' and fighter'/ Beautiful snapshots of the American outdoors by photographer Jocelyn Catterson via Miss Moss / A poster on a wall in my friend's house which reads "How to survive times of austerity.. loot the shops and paaarty!" Smashing sentiment!/ A Jenny Holzer truism- 'Raise Boys and Girls the same way."

God Only Knows

Hullo thah. What have we here? Rare, full-frontal, shameless sunshine beaming down on Manchester. Days like these require a swift departure from the house, sunglasses (while it lasts), some Mac lipstick in Morange and lots and lots of Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys. If you can only do one of these things, make it Pet Sounds. Seriously.

On a side note, hopefully some more frequent posting can continue soon. That place I'm swiftly leaving the house for is the library. Final few months of studying and all that. 

moodboard

A few things:

Composition 10 by Sam Falls (see here) which has made me want to dash to an arts supply store and buy paints in the colours of avocado and butternut squash to create something similarly bright. I miss how much time I used to spend drawing and painting and cutting and sticking when I was a teenager and a desire to spend an afternoon doing something with my hands and a paintbrush has really sprung upon me this week.

Another fantastic outfit from Anne Bernecker. The whole patterned trouser/trainer combination really is infallible.

Valérie Donzelli, director of Declaration of War  with her burnt orange hair, head thrown back, red lippie and white heels. I can take or leave the bag but the shoes-the shoes are putting all kinds of ideas about wearing something snowy coloured on my feet. A proper pair of point-toed white heels, the kind that Carrie Bradshaw or Gwyneth Paltrow would probably have worn all the time with a pair of slightly bootcut jeans back in the day. Trust me on this one, they'll look great with a summer tan and a dress (will the day ever come?)

Rise Early, Be Industrious! I've had this poster on my wall since Olivia Plender's well-named exhibition was at the Arnolfini in Bristol last summer. It sits above my desk to inspire me when I get up in the morning. Like all things permanently stuck to a wall, or the everyday objects in our lives, I've become pretty used to it and don't always really see it. But it's still the philosophy I like to start my days with.

Amanda's painting. Also appealing to that "where are the paintbrushes?" sentiment, this painting by Amanda that I spotted over on her blog. She painted them of friends in Paris, on the metro and on the streets.