Happiness

I'm pretty sure I vowed at the end of last year to not be this busy in 2011. After months and months of my evenings and weekend being packed full of exciting things, I decided that I needed to cut down on the socialising and concentrate on writing, perhaps enrolling on a part-time MA course to actually learn how to do it properly. After a hectic year, I thought that a big change was needed to get me through the next twelve months but, you know what? I reckon it was just a bit of end-of-year burnout doing the talking.

We're now a month into the new year and I don't think I could be any happier. One person is mostly to blame for the massive grin that's spread across my face most hours of the day, but being happy again has also made me re-evaluate my 'action plan' for 2011. The more I thought about it, the idea of giving up a huge chunk of my spare time to go back to studying simply lost its appeal - especially seeing as I would need to go down to a four-day week at work to fit in all the lectures, therefore losing money too. Do I really want to do this? I'm not sure yet and, despite the inevitable cost-savings that would occur by doing a masters degree sooner rather than later, think that I need to not rush into something that's such a big commitment. If I was sure I wanted to change careers then it wouldn't be an issue but, right now, I think I'm happy with my life just the way it is.

To a Mouse

My mother was born in Lanarkshire and moved to Ayr as a teenager, where her parents continued to live once she had settled in England. This meant many trips to the west coast town as a child, to visit my grandparents and scoff an awful lot of tasty Scottish food. As my memories of Scotland mostly revolve around the dinner table and tend to be from a part of the country obsessed with Robert Burns, I think it's only fitting that I mark the whisky- and haggis-fest Burns' Night with a blog post. As far as I can remember, my gran's favourite Burns poem was the delightful To a Mouse (see Wikipedia for an English translation if it's too much like hard work!), which is appropriate seeing as I often see them on the Tube tracks now that I live in London.

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An' fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't.

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld.

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

Image via Ernst Vikne's Flickr photostream.

Coping with jealousy

Jealousy is a strange beast. When I tell people I'm non-monogamous, the first question they ask is often about whether or not I get jealous. Well, I do... I just try very hard to manage it. The strange thing is that it doesn't get any easier. In the past I have written about how to cope with jealousy in relationships for BitchBuzz and have told people that only you affect your relationship, so jealousy is actually rather silly. The problem is, no matter how many times I tell people this, it's still really quite hard to follow my own advice.

I think you're either the sort of person who's not really bothered by things and have a cast iron ego, or you're always just a teeny bit insecure and worried. No matter how hard I try to be the former, I am always the latter and it's even worse at the start of a new relationship as every chat with someone else (usually on social media websites) sparks off feelings of "I want to be there", "I wish it was me", or "we never do that together". However, I have been trying to beat those feelings into submission until they become envy, which is an emotion that I like to view as being a bit more positive. Envy can be "I wish I was doing that too, but it makes me happy that you are". Envy can mean smiling at the other person's excitement.

I have some wonderful people in my life right now and being monogamous would mean that I have to stop seeing all but one, so it's a small price to pay to let them do the same. Even though non-monogamy means that you have more of the tricky stuff, it also means you get a lot more of the good times. So, not only do I sometimes get to enjoy obscene amounts of happiness, but I've also learned an awful lot more about myself in the last few years. I think this is what's commonly known as A Good Thing.

The fashionable feminist

On Saturday, I spent the day with my younger sister. As well as discussing her impending nuptials and visiting high-end department stores to look at shoes, we also chatted about her MBA and an idea she's had for starting her own business when she finishes. A few years ago, I could see a day with her featuring shoe shopping and not much else, but now we're both older and wiser it was possible to wander through Harrods chatting about marketing concepts whilst also stopping to admire the workmanship in an expensive beaded evening gown. This reminded me that Polly Vernon wrote the last of her What I Bought This Week columns for The Observer the other weekend and decided to dedicate it to why it's OK to be a fashionista. Vernon says:

Don't feel bad about caring about fashion. It is not a bad thing to do. The presumption that those women who concern themselves with fashion, with clothes, with style must be dim, superficial, vacuous or some combination of all three by definition is a straightforward expression of misogyny. It's founded on the belief that women's brains are too small to deal with more than one preoccupation at a time and that we must be protected from our daft, vain, shallow, anorexia-aspiring selves or heaven knows how it'll pan out.

Personally, it took me a fair few years to realise that being a fashionable feminist was OK. When I first discovered feminism for myself, I thought that my obsession with clothing was far too superficial to co-exist with this vastly more important interest, but my 30s have taught me that is a complete load of crap. As Vernon points out, it's no different to being a foodie or a sports fan - it's just one aspect to my life. I love how good being well dressed makes me feel, can appreciate the look and feel of well-made garments, am intrigued at how designs filter from catwalk to high street (and vice versa), and am fascinated by the politics of cheap mass-market clothing. Just as not all football fans are drunken hooligans, not all women with an interest in fashion are shallow.

The queerest of the queer

From the moment I first heard the rather splendid Garbage song of the same name, I have become somewhat fascinated by the word queer. Originally meaning strange, odd or different, the word was adopted in the early 20th century as a pejorative slang term for homosexuals but, in recent decades, has been reclaimed by the LGBT community. However, despite having many friends who identify as queer, I have come to realise that I don't really know what they mean by that. Wikipedia's entry on queer went some way to clarifying things:

The range of what "queer" includes varies. In addition to referring to LGBT-identifying people, it can also encompass: pansexual, pomosexual, intersexual, genderqueer, asexual and autosexual people, and even gender normative heterosexuals whose sexual orientations or activities place them outside the heterosexual-defined mainstream, e.g. BDSM practitioners, or polyamorous persons.

For some queer-identified people, part of the point of the term "queer" is that it simultaneously builds up and tears down boundaries of identity.

So, perhaps I'm queer? After writing recently about the need (or not) to label our sexuality, I realised just how limiting most labels can be. Even if you select them yourself, other people already have preconceived ideas of what those words mean, which they will then attach to you whether they intend to or not. Label yourself queer, and it might mean that people pop you in the box marked 'different' at the very worst... or maybe they'll just go and look the word up.

Staring the year with a bounce

Thanks to everyone who left comments on my whiny self-indulgent pre-birthday blog post last week. I spent the day pondering whether or not to tell my colleagues, who appeared to have forgotten, and moped around a bit for no real reason. By Friday, when my colleagues did remember and I also had a gorgeous birthday lunch and gift-buying trip to Fortnum & Mason courtesy of Topper, I was feeling much cheerier and ready to tackle the blog post I promised you. Then the weekend happened. Thankfully, the delay has meant that I can now adorn this post with this delightful birthday image, sent to me by the fantastic starinmelbourne. Wonderfully smile-inducing for a Monday morning!

Elizabeth left a rather moving comment on my last post, regarding the problems of birthdays that are wedged firmly in a time when everyone is Thinking About Other Stuff. She tells us: "As you know, I am a fellow sufferer of being an early-January baby. It has totally sucked hairy balls over the years. And I know my story is probably no different from anyone else born from Christmas Eve onwards. I have had best friends drop out of my 18th birthday night on the town at the very last minute! I have had joint Christmas and Birthday presents. My mother still wraps my birthday present in Christmas wrapping paper.

"But I think the saddest year was when no-one, literally no-one turned up to my 8th birthday party. I had even gone out with my Mum to buy all the party decorations, we had blown up balloons, hung streamers and I had made up 10 partybags for my 'friends'. After half an hour of no-shows my Mum started frantically calling everyone she knew with kids to try and drag them out. In the end, a couple of kids down the street came by and we played about with balloons. But the scar still runs deep... However, I refuse to ignore that it is the day of my birth even if everyone else does. In my ideal world I would get a bouncy castle like all my siblings did, because 28 or not, I can still find pleasure in jumping on a giant inflatable castle!"

Elizabeth is a woman whose interests are as varied as the English weather. She blogs anything from outfits and recipes, to car boot finds and photographs from her day-trips/travels. Visit her blog Rosalilium for an insight into whether or not the 8th birthday party incident has had a lasting effect on her life (you could even enter her generous Birthday Giveaway!). Perhaps she'll order that bouncy castle for next year. If so, I shall most definitely be inviting myself round as it sounds like the perfect way to banish those winter blues and cheer up a birthday week that can so often be disappointing. It'd be a great way to warm up too! But first... let's get on with 2011, eh?

Let's all celebrate me

Birthdays are a strange thing. Despite the fact that they should really only be celebrated when you're growing up, we continue to the tradition throughout our lives even when we're down to three cards and one gift, if we're lucky. As a child, birthdays are one great big OMG-I'm-a-Year-Older excuse for gifts and parties but, as an adult, they're simply an annual reminder of just long ago those days were. No, I'm not six-years-old any more... I'm three decades away from that, in fact. Getting older is not a problem in itself as I'm happy to trade a tiny bit more wisdom for a drop in skin elasticity, but every year as a kid birthday parties were an exciting social whirl which was rather delightful. After 21, it's nothing but "sorry, I'm busy that evening". I guess we all have other things on our minds these days.

I'm probably just grumpy because an early January birthday means that many people forget mine, and even fewer want to spend money on socialising. As a kid, it was perfectly acceptable to complain when people forgot your birthday, but now I have to just pretend I don't really care. Perhaps I shouldn't care? Perhaps I should designate a day other than 6th January as my birthday? Perhaps I should request that people celebrate it in some un-traditional way? Actually, that's not a bad idea. Instead of a card, how about some fan art? It doesn't have to be as elaborate as Bill Mudron's fantastic depiction of Amy Pond (although that'd be nice), because a cameraphone photo of you with a Post-It stuck to your face that says 'Happy Birthday Lori' would make me smile just as much.

It's a bit late to worry about all that this year, so I shall plan something for 2012. Instead... talk to me! What do you like about birthdays and what do you hate? Were you born on Christmas or New Year's Day so everyone forgets it? Do you celebrate? What would be your ideal alternative celebration? I shall compose my next blog post entirely about the person whose comment I like the most.

Men, women: Different, equal

Before my festive blogging lull occurred, I was chatting to some female friends and discovered something so surpising that it was worth keeping in mind to blog about it now. The five of us were sat enjoying a spot of bubbly and some seasonal food, when the conversation somehow turned to feminism. I forget exactly what we were chatting about at the time, but the highest paid and probably most career-minded member of our little group told us all that her husband had said he thought she was a feminist when they first met, but now he knew that was rubbish. She agreed. Er, what? I would have said that, other than me, this woman was the most feminist out of our little group and now she's saying she's not only scared of the f-word, but she actually doesn't understand what it means. Oh dear.

To be a feminist, you don't have to hate men, refuse to wear make-up, go on protest rallies or despise pornography. There are many types of feminist, and the vast majority will not tell you how to live your life. However, we do believe in gender equality in all aspects of public and private life, agreeing that restrictions on females in many societies must be removed in order to bring about such equality. Whether or not you like the label 'feminist', most decent human beings already fall into that category so please stop believing in the stereotypes. Spread the word.

Image via Zed Books.

The time I met that bloke off of Blue Peter

When I turned 16, my parents told me I had to get a job. I protested but, after my mum pretty much wrote a job application for me and took me to the interview, I decided that there was no way out. I totally wasted the time of those poor people at Sainsbury's that day but decided then and there that, if I had to get a job, it would be somewhere I actually wanted to work. After that, I ended up with a shelf-stacking/till trainee job at WH Smith and a rather nice 25% staff discount. I tell you, my CD and video collection rather spiralled out of control over the next few years.

I stayed in that job throughout many years of further and higher education, and learned how to do pretty much every task in the store. I have many fond memories of the place and the people I met there. The uniform may have been crappy, but fun times were had and I obtained some interesting tales to tell. Some stories stand out more than others though, and my encounter with a minor celebrity one day has stayed with me ever since.

It was the early 1990s. I forget which year, but I was probably doing an art foundation course, or back home for the holidays during my first year at university. Either way, I was working upstairs in the stationery department in WH Smith on a quiet weekday morning when, all of a sudden, the assistant manager rushed up to me and said there was something urgent he needed my help with. We raced down the stairs and he kept far enough ahead of me that I was unable to ask what this was all about. Covering for someone on the front tills who needed a break perhaps? Why would it be this urgent?

We reached the front doors of the shop and then he hit me with it: "This is Peter Duncan. He needs to throw you over his shoulder for a photo". Er, what? In front of me stood the ex-Blue Peter presenter, dressed as a Viking, looking just as perturbed by the situation as I was. Duncan is not a tall chap and, despite being short myself, I am (and was) not the lightest of women. How on earth was this going to work and, more to the point, why? I didn't get a chance to ask questions, and the rest of the incident is now a bit of a blur to me. Suffice to say that it went as badly as both of us feared it would.

Afterwards I found out that Duncan was appearing in Erik The Viking at the local theatre. I also found out that I was the only young female member of staff in the store that morning, hence my selection for the task. After the shame subsided, I told my friends about what happened and shared the story of meeting someone who I'd watched on television nearly every week in the early 1980s. Sadly, they didn't believe me as the local rag never printed the photograph. I always wondered just how bad it was.

Originally posted on orbyn.blog as part of a series called Curious Things. Image via neonbubble's Flickr photostream.