February round-up

How was your shortest month? Here's my February highlights.

Feb 1st - 7th
I kicked off the month with my good friend Jess, setting the world to rights and drinking medicinal amounts of wine in Firebug, Leicester. I hadn’t seen her in far too long and a thorough catch up was needed. We covered most topics including mutual friends who were now married (frightening) or had kids (more frightening - how are any of us from school possibly old enough to deal with this?), horror films, general life and her new Doctorate. She is super clever and I am very proud of her.

My family of cacti have been spruced up and after many years in their own pots, have moved in together. They all came from the Eden Project at various times, and moved home with me in December last year. I like my succulents to be well-travelled. Their new residence is a not-terribly-old casserole dish from Whitemoors Antiques Centre which was the princely sum of £2.00.

Top left - Brian, Lord Bucketon. Top right - Gary. Bottom right - Rufus.

 Feb 7th - 14th
The month brought lots of video games and pizza with my boyfriend – he lives in London so we are roughly 100 miles apart most of the time. It hasn’t always been this way, but we are currently doing the long distance thing which means jaunts to London or Leicester, and trawling the shops for decade-old PS2 games and treats from the old fashioned sweetie shop.

I finally found a record which had been hiding in a safe place for a long time – it’s one of my treasures and I’m super pleased to have rediscovered it. For the benefit of the tape, it's a 12" vinyl copy of Manic Street Preachers single You Love Us, released on Heavenly in 1991. I've probably played it twice, and I mostly Gollum over it. It's reminded me I have tickets coming for a gig in May and I think it's close enough now to get officially excited.

My preciousss.

Feb 14th - 21st
I’ve walked a lot in February – at the time of writing, my Fitbit One says 84.34 miles (135.73 km), and this is a bit below my normal monthly average. I’m not a huge exercise fan, but I would walk 500 miles. Ahem. I've taken photos from my walks before, which you can see here. Bonus features from walks this month include discovering some brilliant road names, finding beautiful spring flowers and hearing a skylark singing just outside the city.

What's your favourite Leicestershire street name?

Feb 21st - 29th
The month is rounded off with a trip to the capital to spend the weekend doing fun stuff. We’re visiting the Magical Lantern illuminations at Chiswick House and I am SO EXCITED for it. I absolutely love gardens and ones filled with beautiful Chinese lanterns in the dark sounds amazing.

It's a leap year! I love leap years. This one is especially brilliant because it means I am one extra day away from turning 30 next year. Thirty has always sounded worryingly grown up, but as I fully endorse the Peter Pan message, I won't grow up; it's a trap.

Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows - or maybe not.

Here is a little known fact for the day – you don’t have to be okay, all the time.
Surprised? Don’t worry, all will become clear. Put down that fake smile and come with me.

Lifestyle and beauty bloggers, to name but two kinds, often present an image of jovial perfection; a glossy haired, toothsome happiness surrounded by kittens and muffins and must-have eyeshadow palettes.

My presented image is the wonky thing we all see each day. I choose to talk about things that happen to me, or things I question, or just simply have the odd moan. You can still be productive in this way, but for this, I’ve come under fire from some people for being a misery. Or rather, sounding like a misery. I can absolutely assure you I’m quite alright, for the most part, and a lot of my angst is worn like an old overcoat; something I can slip on when the mood takes me.

Here is a short list of things I categorically love:

• My boyfriend, family and friends. These are my favourite people. I think people are ace and my people are especially brilliant.
• Toast. Yeah. Toast is incredible. Toast with jam, toast with almond butter, toast with coffee. All the baked goods, all the time.
• Being healthy. Generally speaking, and touch wood, I am in rude health.
• Puppies. Like WHOA. Hell yes, puppies. If there are cocker spaniel puppies near me, I’ll basically have a cute overload and melt.

I’m not going to tell you about the things I hate, because it would take too long, and frankly it would depress the hell out of all of us. But what I am saying is it’s okay to hate things, to question things, and it’s fine to be sad sometimes. You don’t need to face the world with a plastered on grin or have it all together. You can be covered in mud, trailing bits of twig in your laddered tights, sobbing deliriously into a Thermos flask filled with your own tears (if you like, or soup is good). Being alright isn’t mandatory, but it can be a small beam of sunlight into what can be a dreadful day. What I’m really saying is be you. Always.

Thursday: benefits, squirrels and fruit bowl politics.

Today I gritted my teeth, swallowed my tea and walked two miles into town to register for unemployment benefits. This isn’t the first time I’ve signed on, and I doubt it’ll be the last dealings I have with the DWP. The last time I was officially titled 'Jobseeker' was thanks to "education, education, education". Like a lot of people my age, we were fed the ideal of education being your liberator, your passport to the world of work, so I went to university.

I graduated with my degree, followed it up with relevant work experience and then took a post-graduate diploma course to further my prospects as a modern, urban human. Education³ soon became

"employable, experienced, quite good at application forms". That excitement soon paled into nine months of unemployment, six spent on benefits. It ended well when I finally got a job. One I enjoyed, and one that led to my first career.

Writer, GSOH, WLTM new employers for meaningful employment. Contact me on Twitter for promotional posts, cute animals, and the occasional old-man-shouting-at-clouds observations.

The UK is keen to paint a picture of employment bliss. Figures from the Office of National Statistics released yesterday (17/02/16) sing the praises of the final quarter of 2015. According to the ONS, unemployment fell by 60,000 to 1.69 million in the last three months of 2015, and pay increased by 2.0%. Wowzers! It’s worth noting Christmas temporary jobs are often well underway by October, and paid hourly bonuses – let alone monstrous bankers’ bonuses – are paid out at the end of the year. Funny, that.

What I want to know is this: How many of these extra people in work are still in their jobs? I know in my old company the UK workforce would increase by roughly 2,500 to care for the extra business Christmas would bring. You only need 24 companies to recruit similar quantities of staff to quickly find the 60,000 people suddenly in temporary work.

These tiny daffodils are growing valiantly on a scrubby patch of ground beside a very busy road. Hope springs. 

This time, I’m out of work. I have several years of NI contributions on my side, but hell, do they make it complicated. Regulations are there to stop people from screwing the system, we all know that, but I just need some money. I need a haircut, for a start. There are so many options and clauses it makes your head spin.
“You can have this apple only if you don’t already have some bananas. If someone you live with has seven apples, you can’t have any. Have you been sourcing your own apples? What variety? Have you eaten them? Have you ever given one to a passing squirrel?” Incidentally, I am well up for being paid in apples. I like braeburns best.

Hopefully my adventures in unemployment will be short lived. I hope the people represented by numbers are still in work. If not, I’ll see them in the queue. But only after I’ve juggled with fruit, claim codes, and reimbursed my squirrel friends.

Walking with words

On these long winter afternoons, I normally go out for a walk in what sunshine there is, and see what I can see. I find walking really helps inspiration, and as I've said before I really enjoy getting much-needed oxygen to my brain to get the synapses firing again.

I live in an urban sprawl of a village - it's really just a suburb of the nearest town - but some things here are pretty and I've captured a few of my favourites from today (12/2/16.)

A tiny rainforest

Seasonal yarn bombs on the church

Park grass and gloomy sky

Pitted tarmac and wannabe beach huts

Tough urban chicks

Lost time

All photos were taken on a Motorola Moto G 1st gen, and only cropped for size. No filters. If you want to use any of these, email me for permission.

Is a 25% response rate to applications acceptable?

Imagine walking into a crowded room, introducing yourself and only a quarter of the people there bother to look up and say hello. It would instantly put you on edge; is there something on your face? Is your dress tucked into your tights? Have you in fact turned invisible?

Sending job applications in the digital world is, to use a lovely and vulgar phrase, much like pissing in the wind. You research the company and think “these look like the sort of humans I would enjoy working with”. You write a detailed letter full of shining examples of your brilliance, you apply, and you wait. And wait. And then – nothing. Radio silence. Have they even received it? Sometimes companies will grace you with the automated reply email, which is greatly appreciated. But more often than not, you will receive nothing back whatsoever, and I don’t think that’s okay.

Out of the 16 most recent jobs I have applied for, a mere four people bothered to respond with what I call the “Thanks, but get stuffed” email.
They often go a bit like this: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because we’d actually already decided who was being internally promoted, but we had to advertise the role externally anyway. Sorry about that.’

Or this: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because Geoff has retired, and no-one has ever been entirely sure what his job role was, but he did at least 54 different tasks and we basically just need him back. If you are Geoff, please apply below.’

Sometimes: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because you do not have the precise degree we require for this extremely general role.’

But most regularly: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because you don’t have the necessary experience, and we won’t help to provide that by offering you employment, you totally useless oxygen thief.’ You get the picture.

The flicker of hope soon fades each morning – somewhere between the fifth cup of tea and the second dramatic sigh. You’ll sit and refresh your inbox like a dog waiting for the postman. To only receive a response, not even feedback, from a mere 25% of recruitment teams and HR departments is not enough. I need to at least know they are listening. To paraphrase wildly, despondency is the thing without feathers, that sits on your head and eats your motivation. If you don’t know the status of an application, it breeds false hope.

Communication isn’t just one of my “skill set” or something in which I have “extensive experience” – the buzzwords don’t apply. I talk. I listen. I learn. Communication requires more than one person, so recruiters and potential employers: just send a response. Interact with your fellow humans, and you never know what might happen next.

Five years’ time? I don’t even know what I want for dinner.

Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?

Ah, old friend. We meet again.

For anyone who has recently attended an interview, this question should be all too familiar. I think the idea behind it is to evaluate your career goals; to see whether you are gutsy enough to say “doing your job” or if you just shrug violently with a panicked expression.

Fortunately, the question seems to crop up less frequently as you get older; I imagine because in five years’ time you are supposed to be an Adult, or at least a bit more adulty than you currently are.

(By the way, “in space”, “older but cooler”, “in a tree”, “eating more cake” and “I don’t have a clue” are apparently not deemed valid answers.)

How can anyone know what they want in the near future? I struggle to choose which socks to wear in the morning: I can’t be trusted with life goals.

No, there has been some sort of mistake. A paperwork error. I am not an adult, and I am opting out of ever having to be one. I don’t want to make boring decisions about mortgages, careers or other people. I want to live in a world where half curly fries and half chips is still a pressing issue.

Other things I find frightening in interview situations, ranked for your reading pleasure:

1.       Desk etiquette.

I am a leaner. I lean on things. You know the expression “if there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean”? Yeah, well that’s me. Not content with sitting upright like normal homo sapiens, I tend to lean forward on the table, resting a combination of my elbows, bust and forearms – or sometimes all of the above – in what can be deemed either an aggressive, lazy, or possibly bad-backed manner. Should you lean first, or wait for the interviewer to lean? Why won’t I stop wildly gesturing? Why are my palms sweating? Is that boob sweat? Oh, god.

2.       The drinks question.

Yes, I would love a drink. I’d really like a cup of tea, so I can clutch it to my chest and partially hide behind the steam. They only have coffee, and I am an over-oiled machine after drinking coffee. A hyperactive chihuahua; a gremlin fed after midnight. For everyone’s sake, don’t give me coffee. There’s water? Excellent. We can all watch my sweaty hands steam up the glass and pretend not to see it happening.

3.       Where do you put your stuff?

I have a lot of stuff. Normally my stuff is contained in one sensible bag (but not a sensible bag, like sensible shoes, just a spacious bag) but occasionally interviews call for me to take my laptop along. Does it go on the desk in front of me? Too presumptuous. Does it go under my chair, ready to be trodden on? Absolutely not. Should I just switch it on and offer everyone a go on Tetris? And don’t get me started on coats; coats are a special nightmare accessory. The hider of sweat patches, the hugger of shoulders, left stranded on the back of my chair, where it will invariably slither off and land in a soft crumple on the piebald carpet to join lonely crumbs and old map pins.

4.       Talking.

Don’t misunderstand me here: under normal circumstances, I am brilliant at talking. I remember to not drop my H’s in polite company, I say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘yes I am fine’. I even do quite a good Alan Bennett impression. But at soon as it comes to the talky bit of interviews – the whys, hows and whens, I lose a lot of my words. They evaporate. I vote to conduct all future interviews through interpretive dance – the kind I do in supermarkets to the muzak – via a decent game of charades and finally, crucially, through the tea test. Can this employer make good tea? Never mind me telling you about a time I planned ahead through both proactive and reactive methods, has anyone got a dog? I love dogs; all dogs, dogs in neckerchiefs, dogs that look like bears, dogs with overbites. Let’s talk about them instead.

Rest assured I am a reasonably ordinary human. I have flashes of bastardry, such as pressing the pedestrian crossing button a bit too early and walking across without the green man, causing angry traffic to wait – what a wag I am – but usually I live a simple and amusing life. It’s worth noting, among all the interview angst, that I am actually looking for a job. If you are reading this and wondering if you should call me, go on. It’ll be fun, I promise.

10 Crazy Tips for Tackling Writer’s Block

When Clive has stolen all your words and is holding them to ransom for biscuit crumbs, writing anything at all can be a labour of love. Confused? Don’t be.
Not knowing what to write but feeling a desperate need to creative can be a real struggle. Here are 10 of the best tried and tested ways to defeat the beast of burden.

1.       Try to write something each day.

Don’t worry if it’s rubbish; in fact, you should expect the first few sentences to be complete nonsense. Write about your view out of the window, or your cup of tea, or the guy who does that thing at the bus stop all the time. Sitting around simply talking about writing without doing anything will never shift the block, however satisfying it may feel to wallow in your creative self-pity. See Tip 7.

2.       Give it a name.

My writer’s block is called Clive – and he is a real idiot. Clive steals all the words from my head and hides them behind the settee. Like a small, yappy dog, Clive won’t let you have any of the words until you follow Tip 1 and just try to write something. He then releases the words in small batches, and sometimes I’m even allowed adjectives. Brilliant.

3.       Don’t let it win.

Writer’s block comes from many different places, and from my own experience it comes from a point of insecurity: if I don’t write anything, then it won’t be shit. But by not writing anything at all, you let Clive win his tug o’ war with your words. Just try a little bit, even a to-do list is enough some days.

4.       Drink a lot.

By this I mean drink a lot of liquids – this can be tea, coffee, water, juice, soup, wine, beer, rum, the list goes on. If you keep your brain hydrated, you stand more of a chance of getting the creative (not orange) juices flowing. If you choose to drink alcohol, you may find you come over a bit Hunter S. Thompson and your writing will get weird, very rapidly. But you do you.

5.       Get outside.

Remember the outside world? Nah, me neither. So get your boots on and go for a walk in the fresh air. Take your canine companion (if you have one) or borrow a dog, or relative, or friend and get those lactic-acid filled limbs swinging. An oxygenated brain is a creative brain.

6.       Or get in the pool/on your bike.

It turns out physical exercise is actually quite useful. Sorry, anyone who ever tried to teach me PE at school. That six-week long menstrual cycle with a twisted ankle has cleared up now, thanks.

7.       Talk about it.

Find a writing group to talk about your concerns. I’ve been assured everyone gets an attack of the Clives every now and then. Also by talking about your current work, you might even inspire yourself to revisit that frustrating chapter or unruly character.

8.       Do something else.

Yep, you read it correctly: do something else. It doesn’t have to be writing, or a creative endeavour at all. Pair up your socks, or learn a new skill. Sometimes I find clearing out a clothes drawer, knitting, practising shorthand, reading or playing video games helps to take my mind off not-writing.

9.       Research, research, research.

Where do your characters live? What do they eat? Are they even alive? Whether you are crafting a dystopian zombie love story or an historical compilation of lampshades, you can never do enough research on your topic. So bust out your library card and notebook and go forth!* Learn all there is to know about the language preferences of the undead. With snacks.

*Or you can use the internet, but you will get distracted by cats and less interesting listicles. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

10.   JUST WRITE.

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed the similarity of this tip to number 1. That’s because it’s the best remedy to not knowing what to write. The longer you allow yourself to do nothing, your brain will curl up and hibernate, taking all your inspiration and ideas with it. Clive will make a castle out of your unused verbs, and you’ll be stuck. If you were stuck down a hole, and the only way to get out was to call for help, you would, wouldn’t you? So the only way to get out of a writing rut is to write.