In Praise of Breathing Space

I have not been very prolific on the blog front lately. In fact, I haven’t been very prolific on any front. I haven’t been writing music, or planning my long-gestating novel, or creating a new business plan, or engaging in the creative arts, or actively fighting for a political cause, or knitting more ponchos. I haven’t been working particularly hard at my ‘real’ job since the exams finished. I haven’t been upping my exercise regime to fill the vacuum afforded by this boost to my leisure time. What have I been doing instead? Not a blinking lot because, frankly, I’ve been a bit knackered.

I have been eating, sleeping, breathing. I have been looking after my body more carefully than I otherwise would by doing the things I can’t usually be bothered to do like moisturising. Who normally has time to moisturise, for goodness’ sake? And I’ve got one heck of a lot of moisturiser since it’s been the go-to Yuletide present of choice for the uninspired in my life for the last ten years or so. Oh, I have been learning about plant-based cooking - this sounds better - less scary and ascetic than veganism – and experimenting in the kitchen. I do love to cook – it relaxes me.

I have also been reading more than usual. I usually read quite a lot, but I have found time to actually finish some of the books in the eight-title book pile by my bed. This might be why I have problems sleeping – the burden of the unfinished tomes by my resting place taunting me until morning – rather a neat metaphor for all the other unfinished things in my life.

What else? I have been visiting places. Catching up with people. Trying to get out into nature at least once a day, even if it is the urbanised nature of Mina Road park and the City Farm in St Werberghs. I have been going to festivals, plays, cinema, bowling. I have been having fun – or trying to. I think this might be what ‘retirement’ is supposed to be like, or rather, what it’s fabled status purports to be in the future, like some kind of mythical ‘Sanctuary’ (see Logan’s Run – a lot of my references are from Logan’s Run, which made a disproportionately enormous impression on me as a child).

Let me turn your attention, in case you missed it, to the important phrase ‘trying to’ in discussing having fun. Have you ever experienced the phenomenon of busy-ness, fetishized it to such a degree that even the ‘fun’ things you plan with as much seriousness and vigour as anything else in your life, become almost as much of a chore as traditional ‘work’ or important appointments like the dentist? All too often I have. It’s like a little mantra in my head. It has the same volume as the one that tells me I should be doing something, like, all of the time, and that I’m lazy if I’m not. I should be having fun, goddamnit, not wasting a single second of my precious existence on this blue and green ball of rock. And it’s exhausting. Anyone else know what I mean? I think one or two of you might.

Yes, in the developed world (for want of a better term) we at least have some leisure time to fill with innumerable activities and pursuits in the name of fun.  But the pressure to have a good time, or the guilt attached to not doing something wholly 'productive', can often taint what should be pleasurable activities. And yet, doing nothing of consequence, or even just nothing at all, is so important for our wellbeing.

So I'm learning something from this extension in leisure time. Things have started to slow down for me in a good way. My anxiety symptoms are abating, and so I can only conclude that doing nothing is GOOD, and just being is EXCELLENT. We should feel no guilt from this, in spite our deeply ingrained cultural ideal of doing things equating to virtue. The very rich are idle as hell and you can bet that they feel no guilt whatsoever. So, if you can afford a little bit of breathing space, I highly recommend it for shutting out the chattery monkeys in your head. You’ll be surprised just how productive you can eventually be when you are not distracted by a million thoughts and feelings of not being quite good enough because you’ve not done any one thing particularly well. And productive in a shorter space of time too, which means you have more time to be ‘idle’, or in other words, see friends, smell the roses and do all the things that make life worth living.

I read Bertrand Russell’s essay ‘In

Bertrand Russell idly chewing his pipe

Praise of Idleness’ once. It seemed like a good idea to me. I re-read it yesterday just to make sure that I still agreed with it just as much as I had done the first time. I found myself nodding very enthusiastically indeed. It’s not just that he lets you off the hook for not multi-tasking for a million hours a day, it’s that he explains why being ‘idle’ is good for me, you, for everyone (except perhaps for the very, very rich who are already using up everyone else’s leisure time and then some) and that the very act itself is a subversive one. And who doesn’t love a bit of subversion? I know I do.

Rewiring my beautiful broken brain

My name is Jo Priest and I am an anxiety (and depression) sufferer.

This is how I feel I should introduce myself to new people at times. Just get it all out there in case I act weird in any way whatsoever, because that’s what I’m bound to do sooner or later. And that will explain my weirdness, surely? And so the spiral of self-doubt goes and goes, until it turns into a double helix of self-recrimination. This is usually, though not always, accompanied by heaving sobs and plenty of snot which I need some serious woman-sized tissues for.

The Doctor c. 1980, a true style icon

Where did it all start? Not to put too fine a point on it, I can’t remember much of a time when I wasn’t suffering the symptoms of anxiety. I can vaguely remember being a gregarious, happy little kid. When mum took me to playgroup, apparently there was no clinging on of skirts or tears for me. Instead, I shot off and got stuck in. But then things changed. From about three years old, I learned that my world was not safe.

My teachers and others outside the family thought I was shy and quiet by nature when in fact, I was just very stressed and very sad for quite a lot of the time. Sometimes my native personality took over and I would be a happy, smiley and sometimes cheeky little thing. At other times, I would be withdrawn and retreat into my own little fantasy world of drawings and books and made-up stories and cuddly toys with fully formed personalities. And I always had music – Top of the Pops was my absolute favourite. Well, Top of the Pops and Doctor Who. I used to pretend to be the Doctor circa Tom Baker replete with felt hat and scarf. Make believe always formed a huge part of my play and I almost always pretended to be men! Robin Cousins anyone? Showing my age here.

I had sleep problems throughout my childhood; insomnia and nightmares were routine, including the kind of night terrors which would leave grown men quaking and tearful. Nobody ever came to comfort me when I woke up crying and distressed. I called, but no one came. I had a permanent knot in my stomach. Little things terrified me. Actually, almost everything did. I’ve since learned that this is because my brain got stuck into a hyper-aroused state and, well, hasn’t come out of it much since then or at least, switches up to a very high gear very easily.

My panic attacks didn’t start until early adulthood but I was not diagnosed until much later once they were really bedded in. Instead I was forced to undergo test after test for heart problems and multiple sclerosis among other things. Believe me, that sort of thing does NOT make the anxiety go away! Luckily, modern medicine has since caught on to the anxiety and depression thing, but the first doctor I saw was a total prick and made me feel 100 times worse. He actually laughed at me when I suggested that it could be stress! Laughed. Well, I had the last (hollow) laugh because I was fucking right. Ha. Ha. Ha. 

Some of my earliest memories are incredibly vivid and lodged in a part of my brain that, as I’ve learned recently from reading an excellent book called The Compassionate Mind Approach to Recovering from Trauma by Deborah Lee, doesn’t usually store memories, but instead in a part of the brain stimulated by trauma. This is why traumatic memories stay with us for so much longer and are often as real to us as if they happened yesterday. And I certainly have a lot of traumatic memories to store. Let’s put it this way, I recently worked out my ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) score and it was (conservatively) a score of 4 but could be anything up to 6 if I adjust the wording of the criteria very slightly. Basically anything over 3 and you’re likely to have problems as an adult. Anyone with a score like this is likely to have mental health problems, likely to suffer from addiction, and replicate abusive relationships in adulthood either as victim or abuser. It is also supposed to knock twenty years off your life. Fun. And in case you were wondering, I scored a dizzying five out of 14 on the resilience score.

So yep, check, check and err…check. It’s been a hell of a ride so far, and by that I mean that really terrifying ride that seems to go on forever and makes you feel really really sick. Oblivion at Alton Towers maybe – I kept my eyes screwed shut for that one and screamed until my vocal chords bled. Nearly. It’s not like my life has been all bad. I’ve had some absolutely wonderful times because I’ve made them happen. When I’m in a good space, I would not bet against me to achieve pretty much anything I set my mind to. But in the dark space, I can’t remember anything good. Or rather, the memory of the good is far less real to me than the bad.

I am not willing to go into huge amounts of detail about the WHY of the original causes of my anxiety because I’m not quite that brave yet. I wish I was but I'm working up to it. Baby steps. I'm already being super open about my mental health issues as it is. But I want to get to the point when I can share at least some of what happened. It's the silence that kills, after all. I've recently joined a community on social media of people who've had similar experiences and it's helping, though some of the stories... It's not easy reading, that's for sure. But when we turn away from each other when we are in pain, a little bit of our humanity dies. We have to look at the ugly parts if we are to find a path to beauty. 

On a positive note, I will say that I have recently felt an upturn in mood and significant decrease in anxiety. Hooray! I am coming off of anti-depressants which is not an easy process. Even though I have been taking a low dosage, with the main side effect acting as a kind of sedative taken at night to help with insomnia, halving the dosage overnight was probably not the best idea. I’ve since read that antidepressants should be decreased by 10% of the original dosage and that it can take some people months if not years to come off. I fail to see how you can accurately chop up a tiny little pill into 10 parts, but hey. It seems I’ve been doing it all wrong all these years (I’ve gone on and come off these SSRIs for almost all my adult life including the ‘worse than heroin for withdrawal seroxat’) and should have asked for a liquid form. But I haven’t been taking direct medical advice, instead going it alone, as is the way I roll in pretty much everything. But this cavalier attitude to my brain chemistry is very likely the reason why I’ve had a bit of a rollercoaster few weeks in terms of mood. 

Big pat on my back here, but I have recently overcome a massive fear and applied for an actual job. I rang up the last place I was employed, my heart thumping in my chest, because I’d convinced myself that as I had spiralled into a double helix while trying to do that job and a full time tutoring schedule and was down to two hours sleep a night, that they all disliked me and would not give me the reference. I was wrong – they will. It was actually a really lovely conversation. Sometimes people surprise you in good ways. This is a REALLY BIG DEAL, because in spite of a confident exterior, I am almost always convinced that people will not want to employ me, or that once I’m in a post, I am not very good at it. I have in the past had some not so great experiences with workplace bullying, so I think I can be forgiven for feeling a bit worried about it.

In fact, in terms of bullying experiences, I think I’ve pretty much got the entire sticker set. I used to think this was because of some defect in my character that made bad things happen to me, but I think it’s a lot more complex than that. Firstly, I think that there are a lot of toxic people out there. Secondly, I think I was bad at spotting the signs. Thirdly, I put up with a lot more than I should have. Fourthly, there was some bad luck involved. Fifthly, most people don’t think a female who is a little shy of five foot three is going to put up much of a fight. For what it’s worth, most people who have attempted to bully me sooner or later learn that it is a very bad idea. But sadly, it’s usually done yet more damage to my nervous system in the meantime. Fuckers.

So, what else am I trying that I haven’t tried before? I’ve read that a magnesium deficiency can also be responsible for anxiety symptoms and insomnia. A person suffering prolonged bouts of anxiety and stress will basically experience all the vital minerals leach out of their system anyway. On the advice of a friend who knows about such things, I did some research and found a magnesium oil spray which goes straight into the skin. Apparently the tingly, prickling sensation experienced on application should last a few days but shows that there is a deficiency. It’s been a week and a half and I have not lost the sensation, though it does seem to be less intense than when I first used it. I’m hoping this is a sign of its efficacy.

I am also keeping a track of my moods with a website called Moodscope. I’ve long been curious about my moods and whether or not there is a trigger or pattern that I can discern for an upturn in anxiety or downturn in mood in general. It’s also good because it means I can remind myself to do it daily and kind of check in with myself. For anyone who experiences difficulty with their mental health, this is something you get pretty good at doing anyway, but I find I slip into bad habits if I don’t keep an eye on it. Apparently using the buddy system and knowing that there is someone out there who cares about you, and learns how you’re doing, has a boosting psychological effect.

For the time being, I am being careful of the amount of alcohol I’m consuming. Depressants aren’t the best idea for someone like me, and probably not for the vast majority of people. It seems that a heck of a lot of people in this country have a very unhealthy relationship with booze. I am also trying to cut myself some slack and do things that will keep me calm and grounded. Music is the biggest pleasure in my life. I listen to it as much as possible and play and create. I go to gigs whenever I can because it does things to my brain that no drug could ever achieve, and there’s no hangover or come down to negotiate. Music is my drug and when I’m in real trouble, Howard Jones is my happy place. It’s not cool but it works for me. For the record, he is an awesome individual who lets people download sheet music scores of his songs for free though he suggests a donation to the Red Cross. 

Howard Jones - Thrilled to know he is my 'happy place'

I’ve no idea which specific things are causing my mood to improve and my outlook to brighten as I’m throwing as much at it as I can. But I’ve a hunch that it’s a winning combination of pretty much everything. Whatever, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. I also do the usual things…exercise, good sleeping patterns, decent diet, a bit of mindfulness (when I remember), talking therapy etc.

And I am convinced now more than ever that my problem is and always has been a nervous system that has been dysregulated so much that it malfunctions all too often. I don’t believe I am naturally a depressive personality (is anyone?), or melancholic by nature, which is why I put the depression into parenthesis at the beginning of this blog. I believe that by nature I am an optimist. I am also outgoing and creative and generally quite brave. I am working hard to rewire my brain; to mould it into something that works for me instead of against me. I am working hard to cultivate compassionate thinking as I believe this is the key to everything. I am working hard every day of my life. So please, if you see me behave ‘weirdly’ or act out in a way that is clearly a stress response, please be kind as in that moment, I really can’t help it.

Incidentally, it’s probably best if we’re all kind to everyone anyway. Imagine what could be solved if we were?

Last night, I saw a performance by a truly remarkable woman called Viv Gordon - 'I Am Joan' - at Circomedia. In this astonishing one woman performance, she was both open about the abuse she suffered, and the mental health issues she suffers as a result. It was deeply moving and inspiring. 

Maybe one day I'll write that book.

Women’s writing - An act of rebellion?

When asked to recall the greatest writers who ever lived, who do you think of? Shakespeare? Orwell? Tolstoy? Male writers have dominated book lists and Booker Prize nominations and indeed classrooms (for every Harper Lee there is a Steinbeck, a Golding, a Dickens etc) for a very long time. In 2015 when Tramp Press asked authors submitting manuscripts to name the writers who inspire them, only 22% were female. If our classrooms are dominated by male writers, then it is likely that people will gravitate towards male writers as readers later in life. This leads to ideas of a female inferiority when it comes to writing, an idea that is as old as, if not exactly time, then certainly the last four thousand years or so. Recently, a bookstore in Cleveland, USA turned around the books written by male authors so that only female authored books had their spines showing in honour of International Women's Day on March 8th. The results were startling. Startling, but should we be surprised given the scale of our unconscious bias against female writing which leads publishers to dismiss women's manuscripts without even reading them?

Then we come to another problem. Namely that the vast bulk of male produced fiction is about men and men’s lives. Without strong female role models in literature and popular culture in general, we struggle to provide our girls with the confidence in their abilities that they so desperately need. We also struggle to engender empathy for girls and women in our boys. For example, let’s not forget that the only woman in ‘Of Mice and Men’, one of the most ubiquitous books to be studied at GCSE, does not have a name of her own, meets a violent death, and is considered a ‘tramp’ thereby bringing it on herself. Considering the endemic and pernicious scale of male violence and sexual violence towards girls and women all over the world, this is not something we can afford to ignore.

The world's first named author, Sumerian Priestess Enheduanna

But ignoring women is one of the things humans do best. Did you know that the first named author in all of recorded history was a woman? The Sumerian poet Enheduanna’s poetry was produced during her lifetime between 2285-2250 BCE, just a little before the institutions of patriarchy were written into law and the movement and lives of women became restricted in all spheres. Prior to this deliberate dismantling of the rights and powers of women, it was not an aberration to see women holding high positions in earlier societies. This idea that our highly unequal society is just the way it is and always has been (and thus by extension we should accept the status quo as the ‘natural’ order) is completely false. In fact, this deliberate restriction placed on women about four thousand years ago, is responsible for all of the imbalances and inequalities women are faced with today. Why have we never heard of Enheduanna? Probably for the same reason most people have not heard of Aphra Behn, who broke cultural barriers to become the most popular playwright of her day in the late 17^th Century and is now buried, not in Poet’s Corner, but a more obscure corner of Westminster Abbey . We just don’t study women. Not in English and not in history.

It is worth noting that in spite of incredible odds at times, women’s writing has overcome huge obstacles of systemic oppression. Some of our most celebrated works of fiction have come from the minds and pens of women. Jane Austen, The Brontё sisters, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, JK Rowling. But how many more women’s voices have we lost to obscurity thanks to patriarchal institutionalised bias? While the male voice is ascribed the term ‘genius’ often and with ease, the female voice is rarely recognised as such. When you have a member of the European Parliament suggesting that women should be paid less because we are less intelligent in our supposedly enlightened 2017, we know we still have a long, long way to go.

In recognition of this bias against women, the history of great literature is littered with examples of women changing their names in order to be taken more seriously as authors. Even JK Rowling who made Harry Potter the main male protagonist - even though without the brilliant Hermione’s intervention, he would not have made it alive past the first book - obscured her own femininity by adopting the gender neutral initials JK over her first name Joanne so that young male readers would not be put off.

A Cleveland bookstore showing only female authors

Famously, the Brontё sisters submitted their manuscripts under male pseudonyms to great critical acclaim and success, with publishers assuming that Wuthering Heights in particular, with its visceral darkness and passionate tone, could only have been written by a man. Only once success was achieved and they no longer ran the risk of being passed over for their sex did they reveal their real identities. The idea of male and female writing being easily distinguishable from one another is an idea that persists today, though with little credible evidence to back it up. And women know from long experience, once ‘difference’ is established, it is a very short step to ‘worse’.

If we look back at relatively recent history, for example, as recent as a hundred years ago, women were assumed to have an inferior writing style to men. One such example comes from the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, who argued in 1922 that women were unable to innovate with language, and less able to martial complex thoughts into sentences with multiple clauses. He also noted that:

‘Women much more often than men break off without finishing their sentences because they start talking without having thought out what they are going to say.’

As well as being an example of overt sexism, it clearly did not occur to Jespersen that the reason for this might not have been women’s ‘natural’ intellectual inferiority, but a lack of confidence in their own views. No doubt they were as accustomed as we are today to men interrupting our thoughts and speech, or not listening at all. Compound that with the inequalities in access to education one hundred years ago, and we have a far more plausible explanation for Jespersen’s anecdotal ‘evidence’.

We might think that this is all part of ancient history, and that things have moved on so much further since the Brontёs took their precautionary move. Perhaps JK Rowling was being a little over-cautious? But, as in all things, unconscious bias otherwise known as internalised patriarchy, is still very much alive and well. If we look at the case of the author Catherine Nichols, while looking for a literary agent, she submitted an identical manuscript under both her own and a male pseudonym ‘George’. It seems that unconscious stereotypes about the key differences between male and female writing were present even in the descriptions of her words as ‘lyrical’ under her own name and the more masculine and robust ‘well-constructed’ under her male alter-ego. Indeed, such was the extent of this bias, ‘George’ received seventeen expressions of interest to Catherine’s two, prompting Nichols to note that he was ‘eight and a half times more successful than me at writing the same book’.

If the pen is truly mightier than the sword, perhaps this is why women’s writing remains a subversive act in some ways. If words have a power by themselves, then the ability to wield them competently and with influence provides women with that power - a power so often denied in other spheres. Our classrooms and our libraries and cinemas and televisions are full of tales of male achievement, daring, dominance and success, whereas there are relatively few stories of women fulfilling the same roles. This is not simply a reflection of the ‘natural’ way of things, but a deliberate construct borne out of centuries and centuries of spurious notions of gender difference, and the hierarchical nature that exists to make girls and women second class to boys and men. It is something that needs to be challenged by all people every single day of our lives so that we might see some lasting and significant push towards equality. Only through diversity and equality will we achieve our greatest potential as human beings and meet the very great challenges we face as a species.

Stage fright, anxiety, and the fine art of procrastination

I am limbering up for my first ever performance as a solo musician in a week and a bit’s time when I ‘launch’ an EP of five songs that I wrote, all by myself, into the world. I am struck by the fear. Since 2017 became a reality rather than a far-off future event, and I realised that I was actually going to do THIS THING, I have been struck with the FEAR at all sorts of inopportune moments. Maybe people have noticed my face darken slightly, a frown creeping across my brow, as I suddenly remember that I have to do THIS THING. Or I find myself ruminating in absurd detail about all the things I have to do and all the disasters that will no doubt befall me, right when I should be sleeping. I am almost immobilised with THE FEAR at times. Why am I putting myself through this? I have thought all the unhelpful thoughts like…nobody cares about your music, you’re too old for this, you’re a shit piano player/singer/songwriter (delete as applicable or all of the aforementioned) etc etc. No one will turn up. Or what if lots of people turn up, and hate it. And thus me. And I have to leave the country.

Self-doubt is normal, so I’ve been led to believe. If it’s normal, then I am achingly normal. I have self-doubt running through my very veins on a regular basis. If I were a stick of rock, you could break me open at any point and it would say ‘she doubted herself’ in bold pink letters. What is more, music is personal. These songs are personal. So I feel very vulnerable and exposed when I think about the launch. Just how do musicians do it? How do they put themselves out there and believe in themselves enough to perform without needing to go off and vomit? Or run very, very far away?

Oh boy, I know about procrastination. I have procrastinated so much on this project, I can hardly tell you of it. From playing the songs to Rich in his studio, back in November 2015, when these were very under rehearsed songs and I thought of them as a personal work, to be recorded in a very stripped back way for my own edification, through the recording process where they became something greater with all the intricate production and layers and weeks and months of work on them, and now, finally when the songs are complete, and they have to be ‘birthed’ into the world. Weeks have elapsed with very little work at all, and I realise now that these lulls have only occurred because I have felt so unbelievably unworthy of the task I’ve set myself. They’re only five songs but it’s been a labour of…what, love? I wouldn’t exactly call it that. And how does one get the energy together to self-promote when one barely has the energy to leave the house some days?

But crucially, two things have got me to this point with a finished EP with lovely, glossy artwork, and a launch event in the diary. One is the art of breaking things into really, really tiny manageable chunks and ticking them off, with accompanying sense of satisfaction. This is proving at least as invaluable a process in the rehearsal space as at any other time. And the other, the help and support of my friends and family who believe in this project, and believe in me, even and perhaps especially when I don’t. I am profoundly grateful for all the pep talks, the cuddles, the positive feedback on the songs, and the help with photos, artwork and general advice I’ve been given. I am a lucky woman, I know.

So, I will screw down my courage because like a juggernaut hurtling down a hill, nothing will stop this now. I have to do it. And I will. Because I always do the things I’m most scared of, including zorbing and paragliding and climbing up a 25 metre rock face and going to live in a foreign country by myself.

Now for the self-promotion part. Deep breath. If you fancy coming to watch me overcome this personal obstacle, and maybe enjoy some music, I am playing on Sunday 5th March in the upstairs function room of the Greenbank pub in Easton from 8pm.

Phew.

Why I marched on Saturday 21st of January - and why I will march again

I’ve tried a variety of different approaches for this blogpiece on why I marched in the Women's March Bristol on a beautiful Saturday in January, and why I will march again for women’s rights, and the rights of any marginalised group who has been threatened by the swing to the right in politics over the last few years. It’s hard to distil my thoughts and feelings into a neat piece of writing as there is so much, so much to say, and so much emotion (not a dirty word) tied up with the events of recent months. It’s hard to know what approach to take. I've tried levity but it turns into something far more heartfelt and serious. Oh, I wish I could joke about this stuff but it’s just not that fucking funny.

I’ve been a woman, or at least female, for all of my natural life. Without question, some of the most negative experiences of my life have been because I am female. Let’s just say that I am all too familiar with the orange hate-peddler’s particular brand of malignant narcissism. He invades too many of my screens -  a constant reminder of past trauma, and how dysfunctional western civilisation (such as it is) has become that such an obvious charlatan should get into the White House. I’m sure I’m not the only woman who shudders with recognition, or who feels physically sick at the injustice of rewarding a bigoted, misogynistic serial abuser with the highest office in the western world. We don’t just fail to punish the toxic male in our society. All too often we roll out the red carpet and invite them to cause even more destruction.

And I was lucky enough to be born in a country which is relatively progressive on such matters. I’m not forced to conceal my body and face with a swathe of fabric, and I was not married off to an ancient cousin and forced to have numerous babies before I even reached proper adulthood. Believe me, I am grateful for these far-from-small mercies. And when I marched on Saturday, I marched for all women everywhere. We have to spearhead the movement because our sisters in countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and Somalia are simply trying to survive. Just as the vote for women came first in countries like ours, it gradually followed in the developing world. Sadly, that’s just how it works, and if we can’t get it right here, it’s unlikely to happen in the countries where serious human rights abuses happen every day as a matter of course.

Back in November, Trump’s election to the leader of the free world (how hollow those words sound now ) felt like a personal affront to me and all the women I care about who have in their various ways put up with so much shit. It felt personal, and so to march was a personal undertaking - a way to take back some of the power we so desperately need and deserve, and which is chipped away, little by little, often not with the obviously terrible stuff but the things that grind us down and exhaust us. Things like being shouted at in the street, being trolled online, doing a disproportionate amount of the unpaid domestic work, seeing next to no realistic female bodies on any billboard anywhere etc etc, ad nauseum. It’s tiring and it’s boring. Too many women are tired of not being listened to, of not being taken seriously when we say, really, this is just too much now. When misogynistic parliament troll and Conservative MP Philip Davies can filibuster anything that has the faintest whiff of doing something good for women, and domestic abuser Floyd Mayweather gets to speak at the Marriott in Bristol for anything up to £1000 per ticket on International Women’s Day (ffs) we know we’ve still got a long way to go.

Let’s face it, marchers for causes everywhere come off rather well in the history books.

The Suffragettes, the Civil Rights Movement in America, the protests against the Vietnam War, and more recently the women in Poland who protested againstpunitive abortion laws and forced their government to back down - they are all essential to creating a decent, free and liveable society. So called ‘alpha male’ types like Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, Trump? Not so much.

So on that Saturday in January 2017, when myself and several friends and a puppy took part in what was reportedly the biggest and most peaceful mass demonstration ever, we helped make a little bit of history. Not just women’s history but all of humanity’s history. There aren’t adequate words to express my admiration for those women who pulled together this massive feat of unity against our common foes of darkness, ignorance, bigotry and division, not least our very own Carly who organised the march in Bristol in only three days. I’ve since had a chance to meet Carly properly and thank her for her efforts. She is a genuinely warm and inclusive person with a determination to change things for the better. The world needs more heroes like her. If Saturday’s marches and the subsequent demonstrations are anything to go by, there are plenty of heroes out there, of all genders and races.

On a final note, there was real love and a sense of possibility and hope in our procession from Queens Square to Cathedral Green. I want to live in the world where these are the voices I hear, where women as well as men are allowed to have a voice, where our needs are taken into consideration instead of dismissed as a fringe concern or ‘minority’, where women are not hit twice as hard by austerity cuts as men, and where women are considered to be truly, fully human. 

Together we are stronger and we must not forget that, no matter how many frightened little men and women try to tell us otherwise. We have a long way to go before we see true equality for all and we cannot let this man and others like him win. 

We are powerful together. And we will march again. 

Being resolute in my resolve to stick to my resolutions

It’s a brand new year. Every year I start with an invigorated sense of purpose as one year decays and dies, and a new year starts with all of the gleaming promise of something untainted by anything truly shit happening to me. Not yet, anyway. I had a conversation with someone earlier this week who wryly observed that this is perhaps the worst time of the year to begin with resolutions of any kind, since they usually involve breaking some bad habits and starting some good ones. After all, why on earth would you decide to begin this endeavour in January, the darkest, bleakest and coldest of months? But actually, I don’t see it that way at all. It’s a bare kind of a month, with nothing of the glittering distractions and temptations to excess of the previous one, and a bit of a blank canvas on which to paint new shapes and colours. I sense the days lengthening and this gives me hope and renewed purpose.

This year has started well. I gave myself a week to fully adjust to the fact that it really is 2017 (2017!) and this week I have begun, properly, as I mean to go on. It started on Saturday when I was sitting on my sofa and I genuinely felt like my legs were full of energy, and the urge to DO SOMETHING became overwhelming. One of my resolutions is to get fit again. Not stupidly gym bunny fit. Just fit enough to run about a bit and not need an inhaler and a lie down afterwards. And so, I have started the NHS Couchto 5k podcast series which previously helped me to complete two 10k races in 2013 and 2014. So far I have completed two ‘runs’ or rather, brisk walks interspersed with short bursts of jogging that have fully underlined for me just how much fitness I have lost over the months of relatively little movement. I was a little pink and puffing after that but, oh boy! I had forgotten just how much I love the endorphins that any form of exercise in the open airs gives you. If you haven’t tried it, I can seriously recommend it. If, like me, you are worried about running or consider yourself to be anything but a runner, I cannot reassure you enough that this is by far the gentlest and nicest way to ease yourself into running that I've come across. Okay, so the music they play on the podcast is that generic stuff exercise videos employ when they don’t want to pay a lot of money for licensing, but Laura’s warm encouragements to ‘go for it’ coming in at opportune moments are just what you need, like a little friend sitting on your shoulder telling you how great you’re doing. If only I could employ Laura for all things in my life. I think I’d get that tax return done a lot quicker.

I’ve also done my first yoga class of the year and I wasn’t quite the petrified husk I expected to be following a couple of weeks off the mat. And I’ve had a couple of nice, brisk walks around the city and in the countryside. I started on New Year’s Day where, minus a hangover (makes a nice change) I went for a walk in the rain up Brandon Hill and around and about, with nary a soul in sight. Today I went for a lovely wintry walk first thing around Kings Weston House and Blaise Castle grounds, fortified by a pleasingly sweet hot chocolate, and fine conversation from my walking partner. Two hours flew by and I felt pretty amazing at the end. We are spoiled in Bristol for wonderful places to stretch our pins and take in the sights and sounds of the city. The Harbourside is a perennial favourite, but so is the railway path that stretches between Bristol and Bath, and the Frome Valley walk through Snuff Mills, to name a few. If you have any other suggestions, and if you feel like joining me for any of the above, just let me know. It's far easier and arguably more enjoyable to stick to a new exercise plan if you involve other people. After all, friends can usually hold you to account more effectively than your own inner voice. 

Apparently it takes about three months for a habit to form. It will take more than one week of activity, but I'm confident that I'll be able to keep it  up. I wish everyone reading this good luck with all of your good intentions this year and may they manifest into something real and tangible in the very near future, if they haven't already done so.

How I learned to give up the doof doofs and the circles of shame, and became a happier person instead

Most people are surprised when I tell them that I used to be a massive fan of Eastenders.  They are even more surprised when I say that I used to watch Hollyoaks for a time as well.  And I read Heat magazine.  It used to take me all of 30 minutes to digest the reading material in one copy of Heat - the endless lauding but mostly shaming of celebrities, often on the same page, and certainly in the same edition.  I used to semi-consciously compare myself with the rich and celebrated (often because they were rich and nothing else) and feel some sense of mean-spirited satisfaction that at least I was not in possession of a blurrily-papped hairy armpit, even if I was also not in possession of the Caribbean holiday or designer swimwear of the owner of said armpit.

I used to think of it as frothy light reading to contrast with the weightier stuff I read for my work or for my own personal edification.  It was like junk food – tasty at the time, but at best unsatisfying and at worst leaving me with a strangely hollow feeling and a rather nasty taste in my mouth. And the Eastenders habit?  Again, some mindless escapism, or that’s what I told myself.  I certainly didn’t feel educated or enlightened by these particular habits, but I didn’t see any harm in them either.  That was, until I began to get the creeping sense that with every ‘doof doof’ of the closing credits of ‘Enders, I would feel ever more acutely depressed in the wake of the escalating calamities that fell on the characters’ shoulders each week.

All this changed about four or five years ago.  It occurred to me that if I were to feel pain for people I didn’t know personally, it would be better if they were real people instead of fictionalised stereotypes.  I’m not sure exactly when the epiphany occurred, but I stopped reading Heat magazine and watching any soaps of any description.  I even went for two years without a TV license, as the cockney soap was about the only thing that compelled me to switch on the TV.  Even now, although I have a license, my TV is rarely on except to watch something specific, and I fill my evenings with reading as much as viewing.

The ever-incisive George Monbiot recently wrote an article in the Guardian where he explains that society’s obsession with celebrity has been quite deliberately constructed by the media in order to distract us from what really matters, as well, of course, as selling us stuff we don’t need in order to ape the lifestyles of people we don’t know.  In the article, he says that ‘people who are the most interested in celebrity are the least engaged in politics, the least likely to protest and the least likely to vote’.  And I can say that from my own personal experience this is absolutely true.  Within a month or two of abandoning my trashy reading and viewing habits, I was engaged in volunteer work with the Happy City in Bristol and actively seeking to take part in community events.  Community and connection are essential components of a happy existence, and instead of catastrophising over fictional characters, or ogling celebrities, I was making friendships and connecting with real people, and feeling part of something bigger and worthwhile.

Over time, I also became vastly more politically aware.  In the last few years, I’ve taken part in several demonstrations, done a bit of canvassing and campaigning for the Green Party and to stay in Europe, and even considered becoming a councillor, something I have not ruled out for the future.  All of these things have given me a sense of purpose and autonomy that hours spent catching up with the ‘Enders Omnibus could not hope to produce in a month of Sundays.  I’ve also read more classic literature in the last few years than all of the previous thirty-five combined, and that’s no bad thing either.  But perhaps most importantly of all, I am a happier person than I was four or five years ago.  Happier, better read, better informed, and probably a better person too.

This post is inspired by a recent article from the Guardian entitled 'Celebrity isn't just harmless fun - it's the smiling face of the corporate machine' by George Monbiot:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/20/celebrity-corporate-machine-fame-big-business-donald-trump-kim-kardashian