So Unlike The Home Life of Our Own Dear Queen

Our boiler is broken again. Well, it is a day ending in ‘y’.

Said boiler had some sort of identity crisis on Tuesday and we have been without hot water ever since. A wee man came to fix it, which involved replacing a valve and a pump - that provided a basin of lukewarm water on Wednesday afternoon, but then it seems a different part of the machine took the huff, 'cause it promptly stopped working again. Cold showers and copious amounts of deodorant all round, then.

However, this situation has at least taught me something about our washing machine (there’s never a dull moment in my life, I’m sure you’ll agree).

You see, the questionable quality of all our white goods (fridge seal broken since we moved in, fire hazard toaster, had to buy our own freezer because the landlord doesn’t deem it a necessary commodity) meant we were not optimistic our washing machine would prove modern enough to have its own water-heating element. After conducting predominantly fruitless internet research throughout the week, today I ran a wash to see. It turns out the machine does in fact heat the water itself, which is very exciting, so now I do at least have clean clothes.

Of course, there is no quick way to dry said clothes (a tumble drier? You’re having a laugh) as we have no heating. This wouldn’t be so bad if I had any dry and clean undercrackers, but of course I do not – an issue which also makes it slightly more difficult to take up my friend’s kind offer of a shower at her house, 2 miles across town. What seems a pleasant forty-minute walk under ordinary circumstances seems to take on a hellish chafing aspect when completed in wet or already used necessaries.

I am therefore faced with a choice of using a hairdryer to render my laundry wearable, which will take ages and use a silly amount of electricity, or being brave and having my second ice cold shower of the week. The last cold shower did make my hair feel quite soft... but it also made me want to die inside.

The esteemed Captain Tact feels particularly resentful because this is the sort of thing that’s meant to happen to students, not responsible tax paying adults like us. Surely we are not meant to be at the mercy of other people any longer? But apparently we can’t get someone in ourselves because technically the landlord has fulfilled his contractual obligation to send someone (even if it is someone who failed to fix it and failed to come back yesterday morning as promised). Supposedly this means that if we get another guy in (one who actually sorts it out) we have to pay for it (on a Saturday, which willnae be cheap).

Of course I realise there are worse things going on in the world today, and one week without hot water is but a blip on the radar which will be forgotten in due course. But for crying out loud, one of our flatmates has absconded to Glasgow so she can have a shower there! Is this really what adult life in the decadent west is supposed to be like?! I say no. The revolution starts here.

How to Cope With Short Term Contracts

At the end of March, my current temp contract ends. Having been in the same place for a year (“I’m taking the ‘temp’ out of temporary,” I joked to my peers and oh, how we laughed), I’m a little bit on edge about what I'll do to pay the rent next. Still no joy making enough cash from pitching articles to go full time self-employed, you will be amazed to learn, and when Captain Tact signed up to my agency recently they said they’d probably be able to find him a few hours here and there, but there’s not a vast amount of stuff about and for goodness sake don’t rely on them.

The papers continue in a similar vein, which is a little insensitive given the people who have the most time to read the papers are the unemployed, nicking free wifi from outside Britain’s cafes. The Guardian is probably the worst for this – they keep conducting case studies that actually make me want to cry. The constant commentary on unemployment figures (still pretty high, who knew) is enough to strike fear into the heart of any human and I am terrified by the prospect of joining their ranks once more.

So what is my solution to impending employment tragedy? Well, I am going to leave the country. That’ll show ‘em.

As regular readers may already know, I’m not one of your London based journos whose parents can bankroll them to intern unpaid at a broadsheet for as long as it takes for someone to give ‘em a column; I’m a freelance/office temp in Scotland who struggles to get commissioning editors to reply to the most basic of queries (frinstance ‘do you accept work from freelances, Y/N?’). This means that when I say I’m leaving the country I don’t mean in order to travel around the world for a year, to spend some time writing my new book in America, or even to TEFL for a few months in Asia. Instead, my many months of scrimping and saving equate to having almost enough cash to go backpacking around mainland Europe. For a month.

Still, whilst it might not measure up in terms of distance to the travels of my friends and family (who have variously TEFLd in Thailand, Chile and China, volunteered with animals in Honduras/South Africa and orphans in Sri Lanka, not to mention worked their way round Oz, New Zealand and Canada), it’s likely to be the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. My gap year, lest we forget, was spent working for the council whilst I tried (and failed) to get work as a hack in exotic Dundee.

Captain Tact has been prevailed upon to come too, and assures me he’s looking forward to four weeks of sleeping on trains to avoid paying for hostels, walking everywhere by day to avoid paying for transport, and reading the same book four times to avoid paying extra money for the privilege of taking two books on a Ryanair flight to Berlin. It is the sort of once in a lifetime trip dreams are made of, I’m sure you will agree. I don’t know why all those pesky JSA claimants don’t just save up for an austerity gap month too.*

In the mean time, though, I will keep perusing the job adverts and crying quietly to myself. Hooray!

*other than the fact that if you tried to save up for it whilst on JSA it’d take you about twenty years.

Taking Responsibility

Yesterday I left the house wearing what turned out to be inappropriate footwear, covered in the alluring smell of Deep Heat, and with a slightly out of date microwave meal in my bag. In this manner I set myself up for A Good Day, if by ‘good’ you mean ‘irritating’.

The casual reader might think my own incompetence set me up for a fall, but I would counter that with another point – everyone is stupid except me.
Well, maybe not everyone, but a significant portion of the people I have to deal with on a daily basis.

Of course when I say ‘deal with’, what I mean is ‘attempt to contact in vain via a third party’. The flat I currently share with three other struggling artists is ostensibly let to us by an agency, but when things go wrong they don’t send a maintenance person, they refer it to the landlord. Who does nothing.

On Monday I called about the boiler (broken for just under a month) and the downstairs intercom (broken for over a year) for the nth time. “That’s not very good is it,” said the woman on the phone sympathetically, “I’ll send an email to the landlord straight away.”

Because as we know, people are brilliant at reading and responding to emails. I’m certainly not surprised or unreasonably grateful when I come across someone who not only replies to messages but actually reads and digests the content therein. And our landlord must be the crème de la crème of those email reading people, the evidence speaks for itself! (/sarcasm, as we say here on the internet.)

Part of the reason I rang again was because I was due to despatch my sister to the local post office to pick up a third batch of Christmas shopping the postie couldn’t deliver (owing to the broken buzzer). You might argue that I shouldn’t be buying presents online when there’s only a 40/60 chance they’ll actually get delivered first time, but it’s not like I can just pop into Etsy for a look round.

There were four items to collect, but just for a giggle the Royal Mail decided they were only going to send one from the depot. The post office then claimed that I should have filled in the online redelivery form four times, one for each package.
If that were true (which it isn’t; I picked up three things after one form filling exercise only last Saturday) they should have given me four cards and four reference numbers to type in. Which I wouldn’t have done, incidentally, because the four bus trip across to the outskirts of Edinburgh to the depot - although massively inconvenient - works out cheaper.

Anyway, my inclination at this point was to shout at someone, but a) I was at work and b) finding direct contact details on the Royal Mail website is some sort of creative thinking challenge, so I filled out their generic online form. Because we all know people read emails properly and consider all the information therein…

I won’t lie, I found this un resolution unsatisfactory. So unsatisfactory that I found myself becoming the impotent emailer I previously derided, sending stiff notes first to the letting agency to follow up on Monday’s call, then the Palmolive corporation about a complaint I made several months ago.

By the time I’d made my three separate cases of mild annoyance I was so incensed that my damp feet in their inappropriate shoes dried off and the Deep Heat on my back began to work afresh, wafting round the office and putting colleagues in mind of old sports injuries.

And so it was that the annoyingness of other people helped me move on from my own cack handedness. Personal responsibility, who needs it.

How To Cope With Rejection

A lot of people on the internet tell me that as a writer/journo I should be prepared for rejection. It is possible they do not appreciate the massive drawerful of rejections I already have, from all sorts of exciting places. DC Thomson, The Guardian, The BBC, Historic Scotland, The National Gallery, three independent publishers and a couple of theatre groups, a company called Seafish…

Larger still is the number of newspapers, magazines and other organisations advertising social media/copywriting/coms jobs that have ignored me entirely. The List, The Herald, The Scotsman, Edinburgh University, The Scottish Government, The Lyceum, The National Library of Scotland, several Edinburgh PR companies, the SYP, SCVO and RIAS are just some of the folks who haven’t even seen fit to send a ‘no thanks pal’ over the past couple of years.

All of which is actually fine by me. I’m currently quite happy temping and writing in my spare time. When I was unemployed, and later when I was in a job that regularly made me cry, I spent a lot of time and energy applying for Anything At All. These days, I only apply for jobs that would be Really Genuinely Amazing, on the grounds I currently have it pretty good (till my current contract runs out in March, at any rate).

One such RGA job was Temporary Magazine Journalist at The Beano, for which I was interviewed a couple of weeks back. Interestingly, so did my other half, the enigmatic Captain Tact.

Generally speaking, the Captain and I do not apply for the same jobs. This is not actually through design; it’s just worked out that way. However, given we met through writing jokes for a spoof paper at university and both have aspirations of making a living from words (perhaps even funny ones) there was always danger of overlap – it was just a question of when it would occur.

The day we received our identical ‘come for an interview’ letters was strange indeed, mixing natural excitement with trepidation about what would happen if one of us got the job. Having three rejection letters from DC under my belt already I was a bit more pessimistic than the Captain. I was also a bit worried about the potential for emotional fallout - I spent a year after school trying to get them to take me on and failed; how would I feel if I finally got to interview stage only to be beaten by him?

He meanwhile was concerned about the logistics of the situation. How much would we see each other if he was commuting from Edinburgh to Dundee, and how much would it cost? Would there be any scope for flexible working; even working from home, or would it be 9-5 office hours? If it’s the latter should we consider moving, or is that silly given the role is maternity cover and won’t last more than a year?

An insight into gender difference, there. Still, there was no point worrying about it before we’d actually been in.

The face to face part of the interview seemed to go OK for us both, but we were less optimistic about the 40 minute grammar assault (so many pages! Neither of us finished) followed by the 45 minute ‘write four 150 word pitches - two strips and two features - yes, The Beano has features now’ test. Never let it be said their interview process is not rigorous.

As it turned out, yesterday we received identical rejection letters; avoiding the feared emotional and practical turmoil and enabling us to chalk the whole thing up to interesting if slightly traumatic experience. However, they did say we interviewed well and should not be put off applying for other roles in the organisation…

Next stop, The Dandy. Followed by The People’s Friend.

Twitter

Today I want to talk to you about Twitter; or more specifically, hashtags (#).

On Twitter, hashtags help people who are all tweeting about the same thing to find other tweets about the same thing.

So, if you're watching something on TV and also tweeting about it (which is the main function of the site if you’re a comedian or arts journalist) you can put a hashtag at the end of your message, which then automatically becomes a link. Click on said link, and it takes you to a list of all the other tweets on the subject.

When loads of people are using the same hashtag to talk about something it becomes a trending topic, which means Twitter features it on the right hand side of the page. This can wind up being a funny mix of things, because people use the hashtag in a variety of ways.

- One way is to break or gather news stories. Today STV Edinburgh started the #whyedinburghrocks tag so they could put together a list of reasons using Storify.

- It can also be used to ask questions – the BBC are quite good at this, and often tell listeners or viewers a hashtag to use at the start of a programme so you can discuss it online. Similarly, this weekend I am doing an online Q&A with The Edinburgh Reporter about 12 books, where people can submit a question via Twitter using the tag #askaligeorge.

- You can also use hashtags to connect with other people of similar interests. When I tweet about the 12 books project I quite often use the #amwriting tag so other writers know it's a post that might be interesting for them. Similarly anyone attending the West Port Book Festival in Edinburgh over the next four days can use the hashtag #wpbf11 to find out what events are going on and what other punters will be at them.

- Another popular use is to play games (a recent favourite of mine was #hiphopgroceries - Will.I.Ham, for instance. Twitter is full of people who are overly fond of punning.)

- And some people use it to share advice. For example, at lunchtime today, one of the top trends was #arealboyfriend – aimed at facilitating discussion as to the best way a boyfriend can behave towards his partner. Some of these made me laugh a lot, although I fear that was not necessarily the intent.

I made a list of my highlights, anyway.

#arealboyfriend chase after you when you walk away
- That could be a boyfriend, or it could be a total stranger with mugging in mind. Just saying, boyfriends aren't the only people that give chase.

#arealboyfriend doesn't annoy you and make you cry.
- Duh, yes he does. If he never annoys you then you either don’t care/notice what he does, or you’re a robot, or you’re deluding yourself. A good boyfriend likely doesn’t do these things on purpose, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t do them at all.

#ARealBoyfriend sees the pain in your eyes, while everyone else believes the smile on your face.
- This was from a man whose profile said he respecks females. I think he may be trying too hard. That or I have no soul.

#arealboyfriend kisses you on the forehead.
- So does your mum.

#arealboyfriend will give up his hoes !
- And other gardening equipment, the bastard.

#ARealBoyfriend will finger u ont bus
- LOL. How inappropriate.

#arealboyfriend plays an important role in the ecosystem as a pollinator, with larva considered problematic to vegetation in agriculture.
- Science wins again.

Autumn

After the overwhelming response to my last post (which was roundly ignored by everyone in the world) I have made the executive decision to continue ‘beauty blogging’ at least until the end of September on the grounds it might be useful for book 9 of the 12 Books project.

Today, dressing for autumn.

Here in Edinburgh, the average woman on the street (or on the streets involved in my work commute, at any rate) completed the autumn change-up on September 1st.

I am vaguely aware from the style supplement of the newspaper that fashion goes in seasons, which are loosely based around the weather. Some of you may remember the good old days when there were four quite disparate seasons, which were called spring, summer, autumn and winter. These days, of course, we only really have two and a bit seasons: autumn, winter, and a fortnight of sprimmer which is spread out on odd days here and there between April and August.

During sprimmer, a lot of women do their level best to pretend it’s nice enough outside to justify cotton dresses, sandals, and even a day or two of bare legs – although for the intervening days it’s necessary to supplement these items with cardigans, leggings, and mackintoshes. This is because sprimmer is unpredictable – a day will start off with blackened skies and thunder in the air, and by lunchtime it will have morphed into the most beautiful sunny day since records began.

Autumn is different. This is a season where you know what’s what: it might look nice outside but it definitely won’t be warm; if it looks like rain it’ll probably snow; and either way you’ll want waterproof shoes and an industrial strength brolly. Preferably adamantium.

As a result, the women I see on my daily walk to work are now clad in knee high boots, wool coats, scarves, jumpers and so on. They look fabulous.

Having said that, I haven’t conformed to the autumn change-up myself. Well I have a bit, but not really so as you’d notice. My main concession was to buy a pair of jeans that fit, because gale force winds are likely to be commonplace between now and next April so I won’t get away with wearing skirts every day.

What I tend to do in lieu of buying lots of new things when autumn hits is go to my bottom drawer and come back with another layer to add to the clothes I wear all year round. So for instance if I’m wearing one of my four dresses, I’ll have a long sleeved T-Shirt under there instead of a camisole. Either that or I’ll wear a cardigan over the top. Not both, though – that’s wintertime layering, baby.

The reasoning behind this is pretty exclusively financial, although there are elements of sizing tied in. Since I reached the dress size 16-18 mark (about...oh, 6 or 7 years ago) I have avoided buying new stuff where possible on the grounds I’m going to lose a bit of weight any day now, so there’s no point. My inner accountant claims this is canny, and the part of me that wants to indulge in retail therapy compensates by buying books I don’t have time to read; and occasionally updating the tech in my life under the guise of it being useful for freelance journalism purposes.

It’s probably just as well I’m conditioned not to update my wardrobe correctly, though, because have you seen what’s in for autumn? Neither had I until I looked it up just now, and I can tell you its high necked, 20s style dresses of the sort that only look reasonable on ladies the shape of Kiera Knightley; ponchos to give the impression you have no shape at all; and snakeskin.

Snakeskin? Really? What is this, 1972? Seemingly that rebirth of tastelessness originates somewhere in the vicinity of Jimmy Choo and Kate ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ Moss. Years of replacing food with Class A drugs will do strange things to a person’s perception of what looks good. I think I’ll take my chances with my 8 year old polo neck from the British Heart Foundation charity shop...

Anyone Still Here?

Hello, patient readers. Several apologies for neglecting this blog for an entire month, I am most embarrassed about it - especially after going down to one post a week, which ought to be pretty manageable.

The excuse, as you might expect, is the 12 Books in 12 Months blog, which I have been comparatively successful in updating every day should you be interested... there's stuff about the Fringe and Edinburgh Book Festivals, an interview with Mr Gum author Andy Stanton, and this weekend I'm embarking on THE GREAT KINDLE CHALLENGE where I read a book or two on the kindle to see if it can turn my head away from traditional print.

Other than that I have been bumbling away as usual, not quite managing to fit in all the things I want to do but getting around to some of them in a haphazard kind of way. Last week I actually made myself a timetable, which I mostly ignored, but getting so close to that level of organisation was pretty exciting. Today I hope to tidy up a bit and perhaps timetable next week in a more efficient manner. Said timetable will include scheduling a post on here, although I'm not sure what about yet - I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

Although having said that, maybe you can help. If you would like to read some more beauty blogging in September, let me know in the comments - but if you found that dull and crappy (the hair one wasn't very inspired, I know) also let me know that too. I will take your thoughts into consideration, then do whatever the hell I want.

In the meantime if you want to hear from me on a properly regular basis (yo), click on 12 Books in 12 Months. September's genre might be entertaining because it is humour, which is a wide ranging and frightening choice. I haven't started the book yet, but I'm thinking in terms of a novelisation of Confessions of a Jobless Graduate... Some of you may remember that once upon a time I was going to blog about that for The Skinny, but it never quite happened. I believe it's high time The Unusual Handyman was immortalised in fiction.

Dressing For Your Body Shape

Dear Girl I saw at Canonmills the other week,

I am writing to ask whether I have missed a meeting about patterned tights/leggings vis a vis the legs of ladies who are blessed with a pear-shaped body.

Of course I am aware of the predilection many people have for donning coloured or patterned tights underneath denim shorts/hot pants, but I had always worked on the basis that this is a look that can only be pulled off by the slimmer lady and therefore ignored it.

However, having seen you out and about and drawing attention to your rather larger than average thighs by stretching leopard print across them under shorts that were bursting at the seams, I can only conclude that the rules must have changed when I wasn't looking.


Either that or dressing for your body shape is out, and wearing the first thing to catch your eye in the hosiery department is in.

I love pink leopard print as much as the next girl (probably more, actually - I am genuinely quite drawn to the stuff, like toddlers are drawn to things with sharp edges), but when you're curvier you need to accept there is a time and a place and a complimentary wardrobe that the hot pant is not part of. You can still wear the tights, but for the love of Betsy pair them with a black dress or skirt that falls closer to the knee than the bummock. One statement piece at a time, woman.

Kind Regards,

Ali.

Surprise Ninja Full Body Massage

Once Upon A Time I had a Very Stressful Job, and the less said about that the better. In fact, during the later months the only way I coped was by developing a policy of not talking about it to anyone other than my colleagues, and keeping it totally separate from the rest of my life. When Captain Tact asked how my day was, there was no way I was going to make him listen to it all again, so I just said ‘fine’, ‘rubbish’, or ‘usual’.

My teenage monosyllables were not enough to fool him into thinking it had all got better, however. He’s quite canny when the need arises. So he decided to help by buying me a relaxing beauty treatment for my birthday. Don't laugh, I have inner beauty.

He wanted to surprise me, so he dispatched a flatmate to deliver me unto a mysterious facility at Ocean Terminal whereupon I would be offered a choice of treatments. Something involving getting my nails done, or a facial, or whatever. You probably know more about spas than me.

Unfortunately, this is not what transpired.

Flatmate got me to Ocean Terminal OK – we’re not idiots, we can catch a 36 bus. She then delivered me into the hands of a bevy of beauty experts and said she would see me in an hour or two.

The exact nature of what Captain Tact had paid for was unclear to us both, although it later transpired he had told the spa it was a birthday surprise and he wanted to take advantage of this offer they were doing where you can have one of three treatments, according to your whim. He wasn’t sure which of these I’d choose, but vaguely thought maybe I might go for a massage, maybe.

Beauty therapists apparently don’t do nuance. I was bundled through the back with a dressing gown, and told to get my clothes off and await further instruction.

Standing in the changing cubicle I did my best not to panic. Was I supposed to get totally naked, or could I conserve a smidgen of dignity by keeping my knickers on? I considered texting someone to ask, but who would know the answer to this question and be sitting on their phone just waiting to reply to a message from me? Nobody, that's who, and anyway there wasn’t time, the beautiful people were expecting my imminent arrival in a room filled with sofas and fish tanks.

You might think it strange, but I have never seen the attraction of lying in a darkened room and being rubbed by a stranger. It strikes me as a violation of privacy; something that’s probably fun between two consenting adults who know what’s planned but not one to be farmed out to bored looking girls who probably compare notes on which of their clients feels the most like a manatee. That’s what I’d do, anyway.

Given a couple of months notice and some giggling female company, I could probably build up a tolerance to the idea of being massaged. But with five minutes warning and the pressure of having to pretend you’re up for it because it’s a thoughtful birthday gift, the experience is actually pretty stressful. It certainly isn’t long enough to get over a lifetime of disinterest / outright mistrust of the practice.

The woman was probably nice enough, but it’s hard to say that for sure when you’re lying face down on a table in the dark, taut with the tension of knowing you’re about to be touched but with no idea which part of you, or for how long. I don’t know whether it’s common to carry out a massage in complete silence, but that's what happened in mine. Silent but deadly, like the ninja. I flinched almost every time she touched me.

It genuinely never occurred to me to just say no. It would have been churlish, I thought, after the Captain went to such trouble to come up with a thoughtful birthday surprise. At this stage I had no idea he hadn’t just booked a straightforward massage, and I spent most of the time trying to concoct a convincing sounding lie of gratitude.

The best I came up with was that it was ‘an experience’, although by the end of the ordeal I was nearly in tears and fairly sure that anything I said to him later on would bring on an attack of the weepies. The masseuse later admitted (when Captain Tact phoned up to complain) that I hadn’t seemed entirely comfortable. But what was she supposed to do? She presumably had no idea that I hadn’t signed up, and was probably a bit confused as to why I was there if I was so averse to the idea.

Nearly a year on the anxiety dreams have subsided, and I think we all learned from the experience. The spa learned that when a customer says they want a choice of three treatments as per the advert, they may not mean 'rub my girlfriend'. Captain Tact learned that sometimes you should not concentrate so heavily on the aspect of surprise. And I learned that I was right to fear masseuses, and if anything I should have been actively arming myself against them for years rather than dispassionately saying 'it'll never happen to me'.

You have been warned.

Sensible Shoes

There are only a few periods in life when you can get away without owning a sensible pair of sensible shoes, and all of them are related to employment - or lack thereof.

If you are a student, for example, you can get away with dossing about in the same pair of converse with the sole flapping off for 3-4 years (assuming you aren't working in a restaurant / bar / hotel / shop to pay your way, in which case your manager will probably call you on it after about year two).

Similarly (although not in the literal sense of the word), if you're 8 months pregnant you can probably forgo the smart patent kitten heels for a time. And I'm sure there are other exceptions that could be listed here for the sake of padding out the word count, but the upshot is that sooner or later you're going to have to bite the bullet and get yourself some comfortable, non-trainer type footwear to model about the workplace.

If you're me (which you probably aren't but I wouldn't want to rule it out completely - there are several copies of the Fortean Times in my bathroom so I know to expect the unexpected), you may have a bit of a bee in your bonnet about forcing exercise into your daily routine on the grounds you're too busy/lazy to do it as an extra thing on top of all your writing.

That being the case, the aforementioned work shoes will also need to be sturdy enough to walk to and from the office/library/ice cream van in. Ballerina pumps look cute to begin with, sure, but walk the streets of Edinburgh in them for a minimum 3 miles a day and they get shredded.

One must therefore consider what shop is synonymous with the description 'sensible, reasonably smart and well priced work shoes'?

I got my current pair from Clarks for £35 - a bit more than I wanted to spend, if I'm honest, but that's because I'm a bit cheap on account of never knowing where my next contract is coming from. They're basically fine, except for one rather discomfiting design flaw in the form of the elastic trim.

Living in Edinburgh, you come into contact with a high percentage of cobbled streets. If you catch a cobble at a funny angle, it's pretty easy to twist your ankle.

The fun thing about the cross bar on these shoes is that if your foot hits a cobble at a funny angle the elastic stretches, so your shoe doesn't necessarily go in the same direction as your foot, exponentially increasing the possibility of ankle sprainage. Undoubtedly this is good comedy value for people walking behind you, but it's damnably awkward and uncomfortable for you as the wearer.


Then there's the side trim, elastic again, which make these shoes nearly impossible to wear with bare feet. It catches and rubs at the skin, creating blisters or at the very least sexy red marks that make it look as if you've had an allergic reaction to your own ankles.

They're basically fine with tights, but sometimes (alright, three that I've counted so far this year) you don't want to get your deniers on because it's too warm. Sadly if you're on a restricted budget of one pair of work shoes at a time, you either have to sweat it out or invest in a layer of plaster to go across most of the foot area. The plus side to this is that you can invent a series of outlandish stories about how you gained your injuries.

I also discovered in one of the monsoons we had the other week that these shoes are not entirely averse to letting water in. You might even say they were pro. Quite frankly it's a wonder I'm not laid up in bed with two broken ankles and a case of pneumonia, all as a result of buying a pair of not-amazing-but-not-terrible-enough-to-justify-the-expense-of-new shoes.

It is, as they say on the twitter, one of those #firstworldproblems that would never have come up if we had simply embraced Communism when we were told. But such is life.

Scienticians Create New Shoe, Women Rejoice

Scientists based in Leith have invented a new type of shoe which they believe may be able to cure back pain, headaches and mild nausea through frequent wearing.

Nicknamed the 'schlub', the shoes are shaped like ballet pumps with a low platform sole made out of memory foam, of the type you get in more expensive mattresses. The pump part of the footwear comes in a variety of this season's colours and is made from a special mixture of deep heat, silicone, and moonbeams.

"Shoes are crap, aren't they?" said Professor Felicity Findlemong, who is running the operation from a small office on Constitution Street. "They always hide under the sofa so you can't find them, or rub your tootsies to create unsightly blisters, or cause terrible arguments with your sister over whether you were allowed to borrow them or not, often resulting in long, bitter family feuds spanning decades."

When prompted, she continued, "this is why we created the 'schlub.' The memory foam sole means that each shoe will be unique to the owner - it will keep a memory of the person's foot and anybody else wearing the thing will say 'oh, good gracious me, that is not my shoe!' And also the shoes will be so relaxing to wear, because of the medicinal effects, that people will not be feeling angry or stressed as long as they are wearing them."

The shoes are tipped to be on sale to the general public as early as 2014, but Professor Findlemong says there are a few teething problems to sort out first.

"Sometimes the shoes will rise up against us in mutiny and we have to shoot them all," she admitted, "that has happened a couple of times. But we will wear them down. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing well."

Lothian Superinjunction Shock

The latest development in the wave of superinjunction revelations was accidentally exposed by an elderly lady who volunteers in Barnardo’s on Tuesdays and Fridays, we can exclusively reveal.

Maggie McCochrane was overheard telling a friend that her nephew, left back for the Porty U-21s team, had taken out a superinjunction to stop anyone finding out about his affair with that Lauren who works in Gregg’s.

The player, known affectionately by friends and passers-by as Scabby Knees Leslie, has been engaged to school sweetheart and onetime Britain’s Got Talent auditioner Morna McLaughlin for two years, and the couple have recently welcomed a small kitten, Precious Angel Leslie-McLaughlin to the family.

However, it has emerged that Leslie (19 and 3/4) was carrying on with this lassie fae Gregg’s for almost 8 months between 2009-2010 whilst Morna was queuing for her BGT audition. Even though that isn’t her real hair.

“While poor Morna was practicing her ‘Heart Will Go On’, there he was with another woman all amongst the sausage rolls,” Ms McCochrane told our reporter over the phone when she was asleep. “That’s ma nephew and I love him, but what he done wasnae right.”

When asked why he felt the need to take out a superinjunction over this, Mr Leslie indicated it was to save the feelings of the cat.

“It was a different time then,” he said, “a dark time in my life. I had a bit of a sair knee, Morna was busy and sometimes she didnae text me back right away... I was lonely, and I did a stupid thing. I took out the injunction cause I didn’t want Precious Angel to suffer. Me and Morna have worked through it all, and Lauren’s away to a Gregg’s in Scarborough to start a new life. It’s all in the past now.”

Unfortunately for Scabby Knees Leslie, the front page of tomorrow’s tabloid newspapers may tell a different story.

Probably not, though.

Apocalypse Now

Apocalyptic weather conditions left many people stranded at random destinations across the country last night, prompting many to ask the question:

Why does nature hate public transport?

Snowmageddon may seem like a distant memory for some, but only because they’ve put in the concerted effort to remove the months of pain, frustration and mild frostbite from their minds. And now that summer ought to be upon us, it is the turn of the wind to behave like some sort of chilly weather bastard.

Reports appeared yesterday that cars were crushed beneath trees, beloved family pets decapitated by falling roof tiles, and little old ladies whisked off into the air, never to be seen again. All this, with the promise of Icelandic ash to follow. And it makes you wonder, does it not, what the blithering chutney is going on.

The ironically named Reverend Iain Scientist (BSc) suggested these words by way of explanation:

“The gods are angry. You must all repent now for your materialistic ways; for your illegally downloaded music, and pizza for breakfast on the weekends, and comparatively well run public transportation network. If you don’t return to a simpler way of life, the Western Isles will be blown so far out to see that even satellites won’t be able to find them again.”

Reverend Scientist went on to say that thereafter would follow “a plague of owls as big as a man’s torso,” and reports have been filtering through on Twitter that a group of these have been sighted in Inverness today.

“At the moment they appear to be feeding predominantly on foxes and large dogs,” said ornithologist and TV personality Bill Oddie, who phoned us just now for a chat, “but should they start to crave human flesh we’re done for. Could you fight off a carnivorous owl the size of a man? Of course not.”

If you’ll excuse us, we’re off to repent by cutting up our Ridacards.

Bold Move From EIFF 2011

Questions are being asked this week about the decision of the Edinburgh International Film Festival not to screen any films this year.

According to recent press releases, this year’s event will steer clear of glitzy premiers and star studded parties in favour of a more organic approach.

The opening gala is to consist of gathering film enthusiasts at random around a laptop in Starbucks to watch the top YouTube videos of the week. They will then get to express their feelings by hitting the ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ buttons provided, neatly dispensing with any need for long winded, fatuous dissections of what has just been witnessed.

And instead of getting special deals for buying multiple tickets for film screenings, this year punters will get to be part of the film making process as extras in EIFF: The Movie.

“Films are ultimately pretty dull, aren’t they?” new festival director A.N. Orstralian told the media at EIFF’s launch.

“What’s really interesting for the public is the immediacy of the film making process. So rather than getting bogged down by the end product, this year we thought, ‘why not get people involved in the excitement of filming themselves?’”

“Ordinarily you have to wait for the DVD to come out with that disc of special extras before you can witness the magic of the crew marking up a set in different colours of leccy tape, or to find out that a particular sound effect was made using just a cheese grater and a baby rabbit. But with this year’s festival you get to live through the entire process, as an extra in the film of the film festival.”

If the director is to be believed, there are up to three other positives to this radical approach. One by-product is that in removing the need for the involvement of cinemas, the festival can branch out to countless other venues across the city – including Edinburgh University’s Teviot Building which, prior to this, was famous only for its disconcertingly sticky floor.

Teviot will host several art installations as part of the festival, including one entitled ‘a shelf of DVDs under a spotlight in an otherwise white and empty room.’

“It symbolizes the fact that in order to enjoy a film, yeah? You don’t actually have to watch a film?” artist Jason De Grunier has stated on his blog.

Sage words indeed.

But what of the public reaction to the changes?

“I think it’s a great idea,” gushed PR guru Crinoline McKendry, who cites her favourite film as Pokemon 5: Latios and Latias. “So innovative and now, y’know? I heard that on one of the days they’re going to use a twitter hashtag to write the script for a crime thriller which they’ll actually film as and when the lines come up on the feed. And they’re not using professional actors, because that wouldn’t feel authentic – they’re bussing in an amateur dramatics group from Auchtermuchty. Brilliant.”

Other film fans were less convinced.

“It’s going to be awful,” said Jimothy Ombudsman-Smythe, who uses the money he earns as a labourer on a building site to pay for his Cineworld movie card. “Nae films in a film festival? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Your FACE doesn’t make any sense,” the festival director replied, when we put this complaint to him.

Then he ran away, giggling like a schoolchild.

It seems that the jury is out, and at the end of the day when all is said and done, only time will tell whether the gamble will pay off at the end of the road when the chickens come home to roost.

CEC Crackdown on Cars

In a move experts have branded ‘unusually dystopian’, The City of Edinburgh Council announced this week that they would be banning the use of Vauxhall Astras in the city.

“For too long these cars have plagued our streets with intrusively loud sound systems and obnoxious hubcaps,” said a representative from the Transport Department, Anonymous Phelps.

“90% of the complaints we receive aren’t to do with the state of the roads, misspelt signage, or even the dreaded T-word as you might expect. In actual fact, the main concern for the people of Edinburgh is the sudden and dramatic onslaught of these horrible cars.”

New legislation will mean that people driving astras within the postcode area EH1 through to EH32 will be have their cars imprisoned in transparent cells not unlike those used in X-Men 2: The Last Stand. The bulletproof casing is unbreakable, and is thought to be based on a design by NASA.

The council is urging astra drivers to trade in their cars for a more suitable vehicle, such as an Aston Martin or S-Type Jaguar.

“It’ll make us look more classy,” explained the Council Leader at a press conference in Dalry. “The international view of Edinburgh is very much that we’re a working class type of city, which just isn’t the impression we want to promote any longer.”

“The thought of people knowing about our homeless population, or the fact that one or two of our residents live in poverty… well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. The astra is a symbol of everything we want to distance ourselves from.”

Professor Memory Callaghan of QMU’s Car Driving and Parallel Parking Institute offered a very different explanation for the decision.

“The real reason the council have taken against these cars is because a senior official was caught in a compromising position with one back in November last year,” Callaghan opined, drunkenly.

“Vauxhall threatened to tell everyone and the result was the classic messy break up, with one party leaving and the other threatening to imprison anyone who reminded it of the relationship in bulletproof boxes on North Castle Street.”

Vauxhall declined to comment other than to say merely that this was,

“A silly story, with no basis in fact.”

Well, quite.

The Glad Game - Conflicting Advice

Regular readers may be aware of the fact that I've been interested in journalism since the age of fifteen. Occasionally I branch off in other directions, drawing pictures and writing fiction and whatnot, but I always come back to journalism as a core career aspiration.

I didn't study journalism at university because I thought it would make more sense to go and learn about a whole host of stuff and things, and write for the student press at the same time. I could learn technical or administrative things like writing /ENDS at the end of a submission later on.

I did however get into the habit of writing for whatever I could whenever I could to build up a portfolio of work. A couple of things paid (arts reviews in Perthshire local press), and a lot of things were done for love (The Vine, The Chihuahua, Odd Socks, and various society newsletters).

In my first job after graduating, I volunteered to write copy for in-house publications, the website, and community newsletters published in our area. This was done in addition to my normal duties and didn't involve so much as a byline, but it was experience nonetheless.

Currently I write for a number of hyperlocal sites and a couple of comical ones, all for free because nobody has worked out how to make money from them yet. I figure this is a good way of building up contacts and experience, but having been volunteering for over a year now on top of working in unrelated jobs to pay my rent, I have started to think that I ought to cut back on unpaid work a little.

There is an ongoing Q&A on The Guardian website with a chap called Chris Wheal which aims at helping answer the questions of unpaid journalists, and I thought it might be a good place to ask how to make the transition from often unpaid volunteer to paid journalist. I perhaps assumed a level of hyperlocal knowledge that Chris didn't have, because here is what went down.

Me:

I am starting out as a freelance journo, and I have a pretty good portfolio of work online - I write for a lot of hyperlocal sites in Edinburgh including The Guardian, STV and other independent news sites, and I think I'm gradually getting my name known. I do not have an official journalism qualification and I have mostly been volunteering my services for free to gain experience, but I am slightly concerned that I do this indefinitely I will remain a citizen journalist / blogger forever, and never make the transition to making a living from my writing.

Do you have any thoughts about the point at which you should stop volunteering and start charging? I would also appreciate any advice you have on working out the best people to pitch to, and ensuring you have the correct contact details - sometimes it's hard to tell whether you're being ignored, or you've contacted the wrong person.

Chris:

Sounds like asking directions from south-east London to south-west London. The only real answers is "I wouldn't start from here".

Oh. Well. I have, so…

How, having worked for free, do you start charging? You have already set the value of your work at zero. How can you justify charging for something you have not value before?

I know that is not helpful but that is the potential barrier you need to overcome.

Under what agreement did you write for these organisations for free? How much editing did they do on your work?

It was always voluntary, as they have no money to give me. I wrote for these sites to gain experience and build a portfolio because I don’t have the official qualification almost every journo job vacancy wants, so I felt I would need a very strong CV to overcome that. In terms of editing my work – not that much, by and large.

Have you tried approaching the people you worked for?

No, I haven’t, because they’d look at me like I’d gone wrong. “Oh hai Edinburgh Reporter / Broughton Spurtle / STV Local, you look nice today… Anyway, I know you don’t make any money and that you rely on voluntary contributions to keep your sites going, but I need to become your only paid contributor now yeah? Cause volunteering is like, exploitation? Kthxbai.”

I'd probably start by making contact and seeing if you can meet for a coffee/drink. Find out what they liked about your work and what they might like you to do in the future and then bring up the issue of being paid. You may need to accept a lower payment to start with but make clear that if they like your work they should be paying you full rates, so only agree to a small number of pieces at a lower rate or a rising scale over the next few pieces.

Well, I could ask my assorted editors what they like about my work, yes. But that still wouldn’t give them the resources to pay me for it. What I need is advice on working out the best people to pitch to, and how to ensure I have up to date contact details – you know, like I asked?

At the end of the day you may have to refuse to supply any more unless they agree to pay you.

At which point they will presumably say OK, bye, best of luck.

Each commissioning editor will be different. They will have different drivers. What motivates them will be different and you need to stress the skill you have or the way you will work that will help. So one may be impressed by a cracking intro, another by a high profile subject, another by perfect English and few corrections. Whatever it is that motivates the buyer is what you, the seller, needs to provide.

Yeah alright, I’ve got The Freelance Writer’s Handbook as well. I get that different editors go for different pitches on different days. But that doesn't help with the fact that I don't know any of them personally, so I don't know who specifically to pitch to or on which day. And it doesn’t get me past the fact that because I'm a total stranger and they presumably get pitches all the time from people they already know and trust, that by and large they ignore my emails.

Understand what will make them buy and offer that. And remember, charge them for your work. They are publishing it. You're worth it.

‘Understand what will make them buy'? HOW? I am going in completely blind, pitching to total strangers, half the time not being 100% sure that I'm even targeting the correct person. I know what I am trying to sell and the audience I'm trying to sell it to, of course I've researched that - but which editor am I meant to speak to about it? Switchboard don't bloody know. Systematically emailing all the editors whose names you can find generally meets with no response. Other journos tend to go ‘sorry, not a scooby, that's not my area.’ I know I'm worth it, but no other sod does…

So, what have I learned from this?

Well, it seems I need to be a damn sight more specific when asking for career help. And apparently I need to cut back on volunteering significantly to avoid de-valuing my work any further in the eyes of editors, who hate it when people try to build up their experience by any means necessary. So much for that to-do list I had put together to try and maintain a high profile.

In fairness, I have been spreading myself too thin, and I probably would benefit from concentrating more attention on fewer things rather than trying to be everywhere at once. But I find that the more I have to multi-task, the more productive and creative I am. It's a difficult balance to strike.

And what is there to be glad about here? Well, it annoyed me enough to buy a new book. Maybe this one will actually answer my questions.

Spoilers...

Sorry for the silence, I've been doing an awful lot of things. See Confessions of a Jobless Graduate and 12 Books in 12 Months for more specific information.

I do have a couple of posts in the pipeline, and tomorrow I might even have time to type them up and schedule them! But now I've said that, I almost certainly won't do it.

Just to whet your appetite, one is a final 'glad game' about the joys of conflicting advice. A journo recently informed me that by volunteering for so many hyperlocal websites (which I've done partly to build up my portfolio and partly because I think Edinburgh is a bit good and people ought to be told) I have devalued my work. If I don't charge for it then why would anyone ever pay me?

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of hyperlocal there, frankly.

The other thing I have to write about because it is pissing me off royally, but not right now because I'll get all worked up and won't be able to sleep, is the fact that Guardian Edinburgh is going to be closed down at the end of May, along with the other hyperlocal sites. I think it's a ridiculous thing to do, and will tell you for why - whether you like it or not.

In the meantime, though, click this cute dragon to 'like' 12 Books in 12 Months on Facebook. I want to get to 200 by the end of May. If you help, I'll reward you with a mystery prize...

Glad Game - Waking Up When You Don't Have To

On Saturday, I set my alarm for 10:30am.

For no very good reason, I proceeded to wake up at 8.34am, as alert as a child on Christmas morn. And in spite of really needing to catch up on missed zee’s (as Sesame Street might call them), I couldn’t get back to sleep.

I lay there, eyes shut, trying to remember what I had been dreaming about, to no avail. Not that that would have helped, necessarily – the last dream I remember involved my dad having an in-depth conversation with his pet rabbit about why if wouldn’t get out of its hutch. I don’t think my dad has ever had a pet rabbit, much less an agoraphobic one.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Captain Tact enquired, aware that the amber nectar is often as good a remedy as any to my ills.

“No,” I wailed, prostrating myself a melodramatically amongst the covers as was the style at the time, “I’m going to try and go back to sleep.”

About ten minutes later, I sheepishly went through and made my own.

Waking up before the alarm goes leaves me feeling morally and spiritually bereft. How can you possibly enjoy anything at all if you haven’t had at least 8 hours in bed?!

Lately I’ve only been getting 6 or 7 hours a night during the week due to all the writing. This is OK up to a point, but means that a lie-in at the weekend is imperative for my mental wellbeing. Unfortunately that isn’t always possible due to prior engagements, and adding self-sabotage to the mix is not the plan I had.

It annoyed me particularly on this occasion because I knew I wasn’t going to be back in bed for any length of time for another 36 hours. I had Stuff To Do during the day, and was spending the evening at the Cameo Night of Horror; scheduled to run from 11pm on Saturday till about 8am Sunday morning. Then I was going over to Fife for a picnic with my family.

I was preemptively tired by the prospect, and very annoyed with my body for its nonsense.

The positive side, of course, was that I got a couple of thousand words done for book 4 of 12 Books in 12 Months that I otherwise might not have managed. I must grudgingly concede that it can be quite a good feeling to randomly gain two hours to get on with stuff. There again, those two hours might’ve come in handy during Terror at the Opera, a film by turns confusing, pretentious, and dull; but impossible to sleep through because the soundtrack is so loud it makes your ear canals hurt.

Still, concentrating on the glad aspect – no sleep = more words. Hooray!

The Glad Game - Local News

Local news is crap, isn't it.

Back in February, I wrote a post about The Blairgowrie Advertiser and their coverage of Eric the Ericht Beaver, who was kidnapped and forced into slavery at Edinburgh Zoo. You may remember that at that time, they were about to launch protesting T-Shirts emblazoned with the slogan HANDS OFF OUR BEAVERS. These T-Shirts were produced, and you can purchase them from the Blairgowrie Farm Shop.

Apparently it didn't do a lot of good though, because The Blairie has since reported that on arriving at the zoo, the beaver promptly died of shock.

And that it was a girl, not a boy. They've done the decent thing and posthumously changed its name to Erica, but that feels like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, so to speak.

To add insult to injury, they're still banging on about beavers. It's like nothing else ever bloody happens.



Which brings me to the problem I have with local news - it's a one track record.

Not a vast amount happens in Blairgowrie, but there have been some pretty gruesome assaults and the odd murder over the years. But if you relied on the Blairie for information, chances are you'd never find out about anything other than jumble sales and now apparently beavers.

Despite all this, I still have a certain amount of affection for them. They were the first publication to ever print anything by me, which was an amazing feeling... or at least it was til I read the headline they'd attached to the article.

'Live Show Is A Hit For Korn' didn't really capture the spirit of rock and roll, somehow.

And they're a bit better than the Edinburgh Evening News, which tries very hard to do proper journalism but lets itself down by being peppered with disproportionate levels of scaremongering and repetitive council bashing.

You only need to take a cursory glance over Guardian Edinburgh, The Broughton Spurtle or The Edinburgh Reporter to get a broad view of the range of stuff going on in the city that doesn't correlate to OAPs being savaged or the local authority getting it wrong - some of these sites even allude to the sense of humour and community that make Edinburgh a great place to live. But in the EEN you have to really search for anything positive.

No wonder old people think the young are out to get them.

Still, I'm glad we have local news, for the following reasons:

1) Its total lack of self awareness can make me laugh out loud.
2) Its inaccuracy - generally spotted when I know the other side of the story - is a constant reminder to try to err on the side of balanced reporting rather than rhetoric.
3) The many, many local news stories it leaves out or fails to follow up on, give me things to write about for hyperlocal websites.

Probably won't do anything on beavers, though.

The Glad Game - Old People

Before you get on your high horse, I’m not about to say that All Elderly People are A Bad Thing, or that it’s a struggle to think of anything to be glad about when any OAP is in the vicinity. Some old types are a perfect delight, what with their crochet patterns, gin habits, and colourful tales about the war (with which they were almost certainly not involved).

Other old people are just a bit sad – here I refer to the ones that brush by you in the supermarket smelling strongly of cat urine, making you wonder who is looking out for them. I don’t have any quarrel with them, though. Someone has to buy the reduced kippers, lest Mr Tesco has not enough pennies to buy his supper.

The old people I have difficulty with are the ones who are afraid of their own shadows, and take it out on me.

We all know that getting old is crap. We saw that TV film where Dame Thora Hird plays a woman who has had a stroke, and she keeps saying things wrong and is a shell of her former self (it was called Lost For Words and starred Pete Postlethwaite as Deric Longden).

We also know that as you get old, bits of you start falling off, your best mates start dying, and people like me start... walking behind you on the street in an intimidating way.

Yesterday I was walking along the road behind an older lady. That’s just how I like to roll sometimes – deal with it, society. Anyway, because I was a couple of hundred yards away from the flat, I slowed down and started rooting around in my bag for my keys rather than overtaking.

How very dare I.

Said lady did one of those not-very-surreptitious half turns people do to see who is behind them, panicked on seeing my monstrous visage, and moved to the left to let me past. Her plan would have worked perfectly, had my door not also been on the left.

As you might expect, I did not go past the lady. That would have entailed moving round her and promptly completing a 90-degree turn right in front of her wrinkly face if I didn’t want to completely miss my place of abode. Such antagonistic behaviour would have probably made her jump, key me, or at least do a little wee.

The result of our little pantomime was that she came to a complete stop right in front of my door. Defiantly, she turned to look not-quite-at-me, presumably planning to stay that way till I was safely past and she could continue her commute unhampered by my presence.

“Excuse I,” quoth my larynx, as my hand brandished keys in a jingle jangle fashion, “I’m going in there.”

Well. Such a glaring-at I have never experienced since the halcyon days of High School. You’d think I’d sat on her dog.

So what is there to be glad about in this tale of mistrust?

A lesson learned, that’s what. When I am an old lady, I will not be crippled by a fear of people walking behind me. In fact, I will campaign so that other old ladies may know that when it is 5.30pm in broad daylight, and you are in a part of town containing two piano shops and a botanical garden, the commuter behind you is probably not looking to steal your Alice band.

“If you expect people to be horrible,” I shall counsel wisely over scones and cream, “they are more likely to be horrible. But by and large, people use the street not to lie in wait to crush our fragile skulls, for the same reason as we do – getting from A to B.”

“Sucre bleu,” my fellow elderly will cry (for in the future, sugar will be blue and from France), “we thought anyone under the age of 65 lived only to set our bins on fire and con us into giving away our life savings!”

“Not so,” I will counter, waggling my finger knowledgeably. “The vast majority are just like you and I, if a little smoother of skin.”

Thus the worldwide problems of ageism and intolerance will be solved, older people will realise that the constant scaremongering of the news is just that; and the world will be glad indeed.