boycott topshop

Photo source: fashionmagazine.com

Up until now I've tried to not really mention my opinions on Topshop on this blog. Mainly because I'm quite conflicted about how to explain them, but also because I know people don't really give a shit because they do what they do really well. If you like that sort of thing. But fuck it. It's something that I feel really angry about & if a blog that started off kind of personal style like can't talk about Topshop then the universe must be broken right? Because most people I talk to about this don't know & I think that's the problem.

So right. 

We all (mostly) know that Amazon, Google and Starbucks don't pay their tax. But why does no one ever mention Arcadia? Probably because no one's heard of them. Arcadia Group Limited own some things you have heard of though; Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Wallis, BHS, Topman & yes indeed, Topshop. They are theoretically owned by Lady Christina Green, or Tina Green. She happens to live in Monaco, haha isn't that handy? A tax haven! Of all places! (She also, on a side note is a white South African, which is something that sits with me extremely uneasily.) Her husband, Sir Philip Green is actually the owner of Arcadia Group and all the others. He does the day to day running and for all intense and purposes is the owner, except he lives in London. Where you (well.. most of us) have to pay tax. So you know as a gesture to make her feel involved or whatever he put his conveniently placed wife at the helm. Imagine earning £1.2billion one year and not even being the owner! No wonder David Cameron asked Sir Green for advice on how to cut government spending, considering he managed to cream off all that profit. 

This wasn't the thing that made me stop shopping there though, like 3? 4? 5, maybe, years ago though. No. It was the experience of being in a Topshop. The images showing girls with personality, models that you'd heard of, wearing clothes you could actually buy. & this is the thing "personality". I think Topshop was the first place where I ever really felt like they were trying to sell a personality to young girls. You know, like buy this dress & you'll totally be Kate Moss! Buy these shoes & you'll be Claire Danes in My So Called Life! Buy these & that guy who's never spoken to you will immediately love you! I know all advertising is like this but it felt more so in Topshop for me. I also felt like their copies of runway looks were being sold to people without the information. & the fact that Topshop is now trying so hard to drive the London Fashion Week scene makes me sort of physically sick. The fact that Samantha Cameron can pose with designers, Philip Green lurking in the background, whilst her husband diminishes the arts and pretends the fashion industry isn't one of the only things we still have going for us in this country. That the name St Martin's resonates around the world more than Eton should fucking mean something, should translate.

But it doesn't. Instead they churn out polyester copies at massive prices and inadequate quality & then turn round & tell us they know so much about fashion because they've worked with a couple of brilliant designers. & I can't say the collaborations are a bad thing to be honest, apart from the obvious fast fashion (& high fashion) guilt about eastern factory workers & the fact that they are essentially more expensive Topshop clothes that they didn't have the guts to make themselves. I also can't explain why I still shop in places like H&M or Zara who pretty much do the same thing. Well actually, H&M doesn't pretend to be anything it's not. It's collaborations are a genuine surprise and it is fast fashion but it doesn't ever say it isn't, it doesn't tell me it knows more than I do about how to dress myself. 

So basically I'm still very conflicted. But my anger remains and that keeps me away. I read someone's post about Topshop clones once who probably wrote this out better than me. I mean my generation did it because it was there, I don't hold it against them. I like that everyone looks better than they did in the 90s, is more aware of fashion than they were, I just fucking hate that they all look the same & that that seems to be the ultimate goal.

You know?

photos from new york

So whenever I get back from a holiday I always kick myself for not having taken more photos, I did alright this time but oh well. Here are the highlights I managed to get my phone out for! Top right to left.

1. A plate of meat. Yes, yes. All flavoured amazingly (can you see that red bit, yeah that's spices!) From Peaches, the best restaurant in Bedford-Stuyvesant. It was also followed with the best brownie I've ever tasted in my life.

2. Central park on my 21st birthday, the weather swung between sunny and cold and snowy and cold. Luckily this was a sunny day so I could just about get away with my silk birthday dress.

3. Kiosk is an exhibition of everyday things from around the world. It's a nice little break from Broadway (which is like a crazy shopping boulevard) up some dodgy looking stairs. Every item comes with a little personal story or some information. It was lovely! Plus they had a doughnut map of New York. Definitely a must investment for my next trip to NY!

4. The view out my window in Brooklyn

5. Birthday breakfast at Pershing Square across from Grand Central Station, waffles, waffles, waffles. (did I already use this? Oh well, waffles, waffles)

6. View out of the MoMA which was an experience in itself!

7. The High Line in Chelsea. Reminded me on the one in Paris, but converting old disused railways turned into gardens is such a good idea, just imagining it in summer...

8. Shark graffiti on Mulberry Street!

9. Coney Island classic view.

10. Screw the Guggenheim, my favourite gallery in New York is the one next door. The National Academy Museum and School had the best modern art exhibition I've maybe like ever seen. There was so much breadth, from textiles (this is just the sculpture in the circular stairway up to the exhibitions! I wanted to take it home with me...) to sculpture to everything in between. It was just lovely. And after the hectic MoMA definitely some needed relief.

11. Williamsburg after the snow, just round the corner from the Barclays Centre (where the Nets play) and Brooklyn Flea. I did my most successful shopping here because the boutiques have the most amazing stuff in the world but the people who work there don't make you feel like a lesser human being (does that make sense?)

12. Narwhal skeleton!!!!!!! In the American Museum of Natural History (from Night at the Museum haha) a bit of a disappointment but it was our last day & we were kind of exhausted so... It was still amazing to see it though, all the dinosaurs and that. & it was the best gem exhibition I've seen, ever. Plus you can touch everything! Which makes it surprisingly better somehow...

11. Again the exhibition at the National Academy Museum, this was just sharpie on fabric but I've made a note to try it myself!

12. The Strand bookshop, (in the snow!) 18 miles of books! It was so overwhelming to go into a bookshop and have it all buzzy and busy (is was a Sunday) and it was just so overwhelming  We spent like an hour in there and barely scratched the surface. I grabbed a mug as a present and left before it swallowed me forever & I spent millions. Definitely going back though every time I'm in New York.

13. Green eggs and ham! Not sure which came first, the book or just pesto in scrambled egg but this was so fucking delicious I'd eat it again even if it wasn't Dr Seuss. From Brooklyn Label which also had amazing coffee. So. Good.

14. BIG BIRD IN CENTRAL PARK

Seems like the perfect note to end on. Phew.

observations from new york

Going over the Williamsburg Bridge (complete with yellow taxi, hell yeah!) from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Anyway, BACK. Hello, hi, how are you? I see some comments have built up that I'll attend too and need to get back on with reading etc, but I think I'll prioritise washing and getting back to the right time zone first if that's cool. In the meantime here's a few photos and some of my observations from New York.

VISITING THE MoMA WAS BOTH INCREDIBLY INSPIRING AND SCARY AS FUCK

Seeing extremely famous works of art in real life is always incredibly surreal, Gogh's Dolce Vita, Rosseau's the dream, Friday Kahlo, Mondrian, Picasso, Matisse... You see where I'm going. And then we came to the work on the cover of the MoMA's current programme, The Scream by Edward Munch. Now this to me was incredible, to see this close up and real. Every fucking stroke of the pastel. But instead when we got there, the painting itself was illuminated by a thousand flashes and lights from cameras and phones and the crowd of people around it were stood back, not because of an enforced fence, but to get a better picture. The irony and absurdity of travelling all the way to New York, fighting your way through the crowds to the exhibition and then to simply stare at it through another screen just, well, I was speechless. So after standing in front of their flashes for a few moments to really see the piece I moved on. But man I wish I'd got their picture.

THE BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH HIPSTERS IS TO EAT

Ok let's get more specific. One of my main aims in NY was breakfast food. Waffles, pancakes, French toast, eggs, whatever, as long as their was an option to swamp it with maple syrup I was there. One of the unexpected consequences of this is that the places where we wanted to go (mainly Soho and around or Williamsburg) are like hipsterville. This is probably an outdated method to refer to them, but I'm not too down with the kids so let's just say, all in black, apple laptop, iced latte and granola (if any food at all). Sitting in the middle of all these skinny hipster boys and girls (often though not always vegan) and eating plated piled with stodge, calories and bacon is like THE most satisfying thing ever. If you don't understand then you're probably "one of them". (Just kidding guys you know I love you really)

FREE WIFI BREEDS ROBOTS

I don't know if its because of the "hick" town I live in or because I'm at work most weekdays but the whole going to a cafe with a friend to sit opposite each other on laptops thing really hasn't caught on here yet. And I hope it never does. In fact Grey Dog had a sign up about not hogging seats and using laptops (which sort of makes up for putting all our pancakes on one plate...). But in Williamsburg we were looking for a bun and a cup of tea and were faced with two places both with rows of people's backs against the windows, laptops in front of them. We dubbed them the robot cafes. I guess if you don't have Internet at home, but to actually sit there with someone else and barely look up just seems like, unnatural to me.

CONEY ISLAND IS EVERYTHING I HOPED IT WOULD BE

After looking at what to do in Coney Island before we went and realising that everything was still recovering from Hurricane Sandy, I was a little apprehensive about what we would find. But to be honest everything was back together, Nathan's had a sign up saying that it would all be fine and since everything was due to open in time for Easter like a week after we were there, it was all done. And however cool it would've been to see it in full swing, there's just something about seaside towns in off-season that intrigues me. It's sort of the appeal of the abandoned park in Berlin, even though there were more people about. The creepy face too was just perfectly eerie and seeing the houses on the way as well as being able to go on a beach just 20 minutes out of the city is amazing. I really can't wait to go back and do everything, the museum, the hotdogs, the mermaid parade!

So yes. My birthday in New York was just perfect. It's a city I've always sort of idolised in that way that Europeans do about America and vice versa, but this was something else. I thing I've eaten my body weight in maple syrup, batter, pizza and Mexican food and I've spent enough money on incredible clothes to (hopefully) last me the year. I've also made a little map of my favourite places in New York and Brooklyn, mainly for me but its public so yeah, if you want tips! Shout out to Chuck too who guided some of our best food adventures. And well just phew, 25 hours of travelling there and back makes it almost nice to be home!

mother's day and new york

Once on Mother's Day me and my sister (or was it just me?) sang Mama by the Spice Girls to my mum. Nowadays though I think the Kanye West one would fit much nicer. In fact another nod to my sister, we went to see Kanye West together just after his mum had died he did this song stripped back, spotlight on him and there was no one left without tears in their eyes. I've been listening to a lot of early Kanye recently. Like remember how he was always so political? & yet people were surprised when he said all that stuff about black people in New Orleans. & that people don't know that his whole jaw has been reconstructed & is made of wire, when like his whole first album was about that is kind of weird to me. He's also an amazing artist, he dresses impeccably & shit I mean, sometimes his lyrics are just insane. Anywho, back to mum. Happy Mother's Day!

I'm off to New York for my 21st Birthday tomorrow, because you know, it seems fitting to be in America when I turn their legal drinking age. It's gonna be a different holiday than I expected but I really can't wait to explore & we're staying in Brooklyn so hopefully I can just pretend I live there for 10 days. I'm not timing any posts because I figure you guys are used to me disappearing & sticking up some half hearted shit seems against the point. I might be a-tumbling though since we're meant to have wifi... So yes, I'll come back with lots of photos & stories & hopefully some perspective (too much to ask? definitely).

See ya!

tumblr feminism

Right so this is really fucking hard to write. I'll start with the fact that tumblr has taught me a lot about how to talk about things & not be an ignorant dick about stuff, but it also makes me sensor myself quite a lot. I over think reblogging or reposting or commenting on anything because I do not ever want to derail a conversation I'm not meant to be a part of, I don't ever want to make someone feel shitty because of something I've inadvertently done because I don't know any better. & basically this comes down to the fact that I'm a white & cis. So my opinion has obviously, been rammed down everyone's throat for years. Not as long as that immovable object that is the white cis man but you know, I get it. Here's my privilege if you want to check it for yourself.

Let me point out too that cis, privilege etc are all things that I've learnt on tumblr. They also mean that I take a fuck load of white feminism with a massive pinch of salt because whilst you can obviously only talk from your own experience, you should also halt yourself before you try to apply that to a whole gender. 

I've always approached feminism with caution, because to be honest, a lot of it to me is very problematic. The fact that somewhere along the line the shift refocused to academia from self empowerment bothers the hell out of me. When I talk to my mum's friends about the fact that I don't care about whether young girls call themselves feminists, I care that they have enough self empowerment to say no to things they don't want to do, yes to things they do & generally do whatever the fuck they want without anyone (male or female) judging them for it. That's more important. It's more important that every single woman in the world has the ability to do whatever the fuck she wants.

And that's the biggest thing. Every woman. Regardless of skin colour or wealth or appearance. Because the biggest thing tumblr has highlighted for me is the divisions in race. I knew racism is everywhere, I know this, but now I see it everywhere. It's like when you first realise that as a teenage girl you are suddenly sexualised & start to see signs of that everywhere, you can't stop seeing it ever again. & it makes me pissed that not everyone sees it. For example, the other night on my way back from work (6ish, so not late but dark) a man walked up really close behind me and then overtook me with inches between us. Now ok from his point of view he's just trying to get home, he's in a rush, I'm walking slower than him, whatever. But rape culture means that as a woman, at night on my own, if you walk that close to me it's a fucking declaration that my feeling of safety does not concern you. He doesn't see it because he doesn't have to. This is so much of why racism was all but forgotten by white feminists. Because they just don't fucking see it.

Tumblr means that I can follow debates and learn a fuck load about what isn't being seen. I can check my privilege and adapt my behaviour in my real life. I can call out racism when I see it. But again, as a white woman it's not my debate. I will never comment on a post by the "woc" that I follow because it's not my debate, my opinion does not matter & they are not fucking posting to teach me, it's got nothing to do with me. But I can observe and come away educated and move forward as a feminist who doesn't want to make the same mistakes of the past.

Shit I really hope I've articulated this properly.

boycott amazon

Whatever your opinions on the book vs the e-reader (& I could write paragraphs on why you'd be wrong if you picked e-reader, in fact I just did & deleted them. Because.. you know.. focus) there is absolutely no reason to inflate the profits of a company intent on putting multiple staples of our high street & our lives out of business. I do not want to live in a world without books, but more than that I do not want to live in a world without shops, where the only place you can shop or need to shop is Amazon.

As much as that, I do not want to buy my nails and hammers from the same place I buy my DVDs. I want to talk to a human being & not scroll through reviews before I can be bothered to make my own mistakes and form my own opinions about things. Specialism is good. Come into the bookshop where I work and the first table is called "Staff Picks" because we know the stock best, we can pick out all the best things because we love them, because we can see past spines and because we know what we're fucking doing.

Of course one of the reasons Amazon became so popular (apart from price, which we'll come to) is because this is dying out, or was. Because scorny faced bored looking assistants in Urban Outfitters don't make me want to shop there. I know they probably get treated like shit & their managers a dick or whatever, but to be honest I don't care. If I'm having the shitiest day in the world at work I'll try even harder with customers so that they don't know that, so that they come back & I still have a job next month.

Now. Back to the most important thing. The thing that makes people mention the "A" word to me at work, immediately deeming them unworthy to shop there; the prices. How can you buy a book on Amazon for half (or even more) than the price in a bookshop like where I work? I'm not going to talk about the tax dodging because if you care enough to read this I'm sure you know enough about it. So let's focus instead on the main costs that Amazon and bookshops share: rent, staff, stock and why it's a totally uneven playing field in those areas as well as tax.

Rent. Bookshops need to be in prime locations so that it's convenient for customers and attracts passing trade, like any real world shop. The rents in these locations are completely extortionate as the private rental market drives them up and up at inflated prices because (some) chains think they can afford them. There are also business rates. Which charity shops do not have to pay, that's why they spring up in prime locations when other businesses can't afford to be there. At these locations too, space is limited, obviously, meaning stock has to be limited. Meaning bookshops can't have every single book you have found in the recesses of Amazon, because we wouldn't expect to sell it. 

Amazon on the other hand, well they rent warehouses. The four in England are in such top locations as Marston Gate, Rugeley, Peterborough, Doncaster and Hemel Hempstead. In the first six months of opening a warehouse or industrial building you pay no business rates. In this time they've probably made up their initial outspend to set up the warehouse. Imagine if your average retail shop had this kind of initial crutch? Although the rent and business rates (when they start paying them) are more, they're huge enough to house enough stock to make this worthwhile in a way that a small shop on a high street is completely unable to.

Staff. The minimum wage in the UK for people my age (20) is £4.98 an hour, I earn more than that in the bookshop where I work & after a review last summer I got a raise because of my high performance. We're also becoming a sort of John Lewis co-op thing as soon as the company goes into profit. My manager treats us with total respect, in the 2 years I've been almost full time I've learnt every aspect of the business, had my input in the running of the shop & been listened to when I've had concerns. 

At Amazon workers have quotas that are completely unrealistic, are given penalties when they take a day off work even for sickness and are unable to unionise against poor working conditions. They are also made to work a night shift at the end of a 5 day week meaning they work every 7 days of the week. That, to me, is slavery. There's a great bullet point list of details things that they've done against workers on the Housmans website as well as Against Amazon if you want specifics. Bust basically if you pay staff well, reward them when they work hard and treat them like human beings that is more expensive, but I do not want to pay less for something at the cost of that.

Stock. This is the biggest issue that faces me day to day working a bookshop. "Oh you don't have it/oh it's £20, I'll just get it on Amazon." They sell books at a loss to entice you in and buy other things, something bookshops cannot do because of the two things above. They put huge pressure on publishers for lower prices, squeezing their margins to the point where authors and they earn next to nothing. How can a business be innovative and take risks when if it doesn't sell they're already tiny margins will completely disappear? Publishers are not struggling because people have stopped buying books, they're struggling because the model of supermarkets putting pressure on their suppliers for smaller and smaller prices has been emulated by Amazon. & they have everything because as well as 78 "Fufilment Centers" around the world Amazon also acts as a platform and owner of millions of independent sellers all over the world. So just because something is listed on Amazon does not mean it's still in circulation and in print and whatever. It might just be sitting at the back of some second hand shop and have been there for decades. That's why I can't get it for you. They also fulfil orders for books they do not have in stock without telling customers they're unavailable or will take longer. We've had tons of students who've ordered foreign language books on Amazon that have simply never arrived. 

In bookshops the stock has usually been handpicked by someone seeing what people have bought before, or in the case of where I work, ordered by the staff themselves from experience of what their customers want or simply what's appealing to them. Making it quirky and eclectic and always a thousand times more interesting than having all the choices presented to you even though they're not necessarily available at all.

Obviously I'm pretty biased, but look at the facts. No tax, unfair treatment of workers and a completely uneven market weighted completely in the massive company's favour. Now I get that when skint it's harder to resist, but do you really need to watch or read or listen to that as soon as it comes out? Can't you wait until the DVD goes down in price or the book ends up second hand somewhere? Lack of money is never ever ever a barrier to morality (despite what Tories might think) and in fact shouldn't the skint among us be standing up for this sort of thing? I don't want a job where I'm treated like a machine or simply like shit. I want to work in a lovely bookshop surrounded by beautiful things, recommending interesting shit to nice people. I want to build a house of books inside my walls, I want artists to have jobs designing their covers and editors to make them and commission them, I want weird books that don't make a massive profit & I want huge expensive books that become heirlom's. I don't want a mystery warehouse in the internet controlled by capitalist robots.

Do you?

my bedroom wall

Can I just take a moment to talk about how beautiful my room is looking right now? I'd finally had enough of the semi falling down wardrobe thing and got myself some proper shelves. Also, having drawers for t-shirts & stuff is so helpful. I was set on having a floating shelf about my clothes rack but Justin the builder said they never work & always end up dropping, so a small internet purchase later & the space is filled. This word banner is pretty sick & I can make anything I want, this being too much of a challenge I plonked for "Whatchamacallit" for now. I'm not really one for cliche motivational quotes so the choice is slightly limiting. 

Any ideas?

shuffling back & hoping no one notices

Changes. Changes.

What do you think? Pattern & everything. It's mainly because I want more writing on the blog & it gets a bit lost in the wider layout. However, the awesome photos hopefully won't stop. Annoyingly I lost the url for the image above, which unforgivable now I've discovered google's search by image feature, well useful for tumblr sourcing.

Anyway this is all basically to explain I've been away because I sort of ran out of knowing how to say things through this blog. It's so easy if you're a fashion blog, or a politics blog, or a design blog or whatever because there's a focus. But I've never really been able to stick to one interest & I don't really want to. I think it's more interesting to appeal to a range of people, right people? People out there who possibly read this blog?

So what have I been doing? Nothing much. Getting pissed off at work. Christmas! Man, Christmas. Was pretty good, I got lots of lovely things & had a pretty good time with the fam. I got a review published in the Runnymede Trust Bulletin. Pretty rad. I made a gender politics section at work. Filled with lovely books about awesome women & written by amazing people. I've found someone to do my next tattoo. I've listened a hell of a lot to Azealia Banks, Angel Haze & um, Marina & the Diamonds. Marina & the Diamonds acoustic covers on youtube are so beautiful. Honestly. 

& as for the future? Well of the blog at least I'm gonna start by explaining some of the shit that I've put down the right hand side, because I want you guys to know a bit more about that. & because my friend Poppy said that she thought it would be good to just tell people stuff they need to know, like I do for her. Like... Don't shop in Topshop. Or Amazon is evil. But explain it. So yeah, I'm gonna do some of that because people should know! & then I won't be the only mad person going on about this shit. & do you still wanna see clothes? I'll see if I can do it in a way that doesn't seem taxing like it was before. I'll try harder with the photography I think. I mean I do have an A Level at A in it, so I should've (theoretically) learnt something.

Basically I want this to be something that leads me into something I want to do & putting everything I care about up here seems like the best way to do that. If you know what you wanna see or know from/about me then let me know. & e-mail me, neonpeg@gmail.com. Because some of you guys send me the best e-mails & I've had the best conversations with & I want to know more of you.

Alright? Sweet. So what the fuck have I missed?

So sheepishly, I'm back guys! I know I suck. I half heartedly did posts & didn't get back to reading other blogs & commenting & actually engaging with anything. But I swear new leaf & all that. I always hated people who fled blogspot for tumblr because I thought it was lazy. But man, tumblr is so easy. & unoriginal. The people on blogspot are better but the content on tumblr is so broad. The above illustration for example is by Sam Taylor for Vice, who I found via tumblr. But for now I'll try & split myself a lot better. Promise. I've put my gift guide together (remember from last year?) for next week so the posts will definitely be more frequent & I will resolutely march my laptop into work to keep up with other peoples blogs on my lunch break. Sound like a decent deal? Sweet.

Now onto some way more important stuff.

My friend Ella from way back was diagnosed with cancer last April. It came completely out of the blue & was obviously more of a shock being that she's only 20. After all the horrible chemo finally came to an end unfortunately a couple of weeks ago she was told it was too agressive to treat. Her story isn't unique but she does have a unique way of telling it & she wants to get her message out that she's facing death & she's not going to be scared to talk about it. So if any of this resonates with you even a tiny bit I massively encourage you to read her blog Day to Day Living and Then Some. She wants to answer questions anyone might have about her situation so if you have anything you want to know, ask away! I know I can trust you guys to leave awesomely lovely comments right?

Right.

Needing something to look forward to in the midst of the awful student season at work I took off to Paris for two days. In a studio flat in my favourite, the 11th Arrondisement, just down the road from Belleville. Jean Seberg, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Satre and Serge Ginsbourg at Cimetiere Montparnasse, which was stunning. Not the best thing to do in suede creepers on a rainy grey day, but it was amazing. And the Chloe exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, which was stunning. I spent about two hours there. The windows that each selection was in worked beautifully and actually getting to see the clothes up close with the embroidery and detail and everything was amazing. This exhibition really let you do that unlike other fashion ones I've been too where the clothes are mostly behind glass or whatever.

Anyway, I don't seem to have that many photos, like the first day was spent mainly shopping - lots of underwear & a jumper from COS - which isn't that interesting. Apart from getting lost in the Galleria les Halles, twice! & having people continuously try to have conversations with me in French which I got through by nodding & saying "Qui" until a point where they needed a reply & I had to default to English. Not much vintage on this trip, I didn't make it to my favorites & the low end Kiliwatch & Episode didn't have the perfect leather skirt I was hunting for. But I guess, I'll always go back to Paris.

Will be working on some posts tomorrow. I promise. I just had to put these up because I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to make tumblr suitable gifs of Malcolm's last speech in the last ever episode of The Thick of It. Which you can still see here. I literally had goosebumps. & my gif making skills have been pushed to their limits so before I drive myself crazy trying to get them tiny enough to work as a set I just thought fuck it I'll put up the big versions on my long neglected blog.

What have I been up to? Um... went to Paris, welcomed by best friend home from Russia, decided on a harlequin clown for halloween (because clowns are the scariest of all things), became scarily emotionless about dickhead students at work... That's all I can think of right now. I'm sure you aren't that interested. Oh & I saw that new Elle Fanning film Ginger & Rosa last night, it was extremely bizarre, in that is was so glossy that she made a totally unrealistic & wrong decision at the end of the film that sort of ruined the almost beauty of everything before it. I would recommend not going after a morning of watching Honey Boo Boo reality TV as well, so you're not unnecessarily cynical about staged filmic beauty.

What have you been up to?