Just a Little Note Before the Year's End

It’s the last day of 2012, and I’m finally sitting back infront of my laptop and writing. It’s been a very long time. Sorry everyone. Before I wish you all a VERY happy new year and all that, I’ll give you a quick round up of the last few months of my life. 

This Winter I Have:

è Left my internship post at BritishAmerican Business, New York, leaving behind many awesome people and unbelievable career opportunities.

(Much as I appreciate the total, unbelievable, super-fantastic-ness of the experience I was cutting short, not one sad goodbye was said. Since landing back in the UK neither of my feet feels the least bit shot at, and I am happy and safe in the knowledge that I will never be a high-powered business woman. I don’t miss America at all. If anything - and I know this sounds bad – it’s become even more of a strange and distant land, which I regard with no emotional attachment at all; just morbid fascination, curiosity and occasionally the tiniest amount of sick in the back of my throat. The amount of syrup they put on their waffles – and their bacon – is a little too much for me. As is the general optimism and happy confidence in the people. No bad feelings, America, you’re just not my place).

 è Worked lots and lots, to make lots and lots of money

The slight problems with leaving early from a year-long placement abroad are the costs incurred.  Needing to pay back the money spent on my visa for the time I won’t be using it, and buying rather too many flights on rather too few student loans payments has left me sitting in my overdraft, with a cool sum of about £1200 in debt.

è Moved back to my hometown, saw my friends, family, ate Christmas dinner and generally got back into the swing of England life (obviously starting in the pub).

It feels really good to be home. I don’t mind the rain. I don’t mind how awful the buses are. I don’t mind not having my own place to live. I don’t mind everything being shut by 6pm. I like the comfortably silent London underground. I like the BBC. I like chip shops. I like that I haven’t put on a pencil skirt or blazer in 5 weeks. I much prefer working any and all shifts that Waterstones St Albans will give me to working 4 days a week in an office, getting stepped on in stiletto heels and being told to ‘mingle’.

So not having to go back to New York has really made this Christmas for me. I’m just about to go out and see in the New Year with friends, beer and takeaway. In contrast to my usual, chronic cynicism concerning New Year’s Eve, I’m getting a bit tingly and excited. I will probably be merrily shouting along to Auld Lang Syne with the rest in 6 hours’ time, giving my hands to all my trusted friends, and anyone else who walks past, having downed many a cup of kindness. I’ve loved seeing and hugging and nibbling and tippling with all the people I know and like, and hope 2013 will be equally weird but a little less stressful than 2012.

So expect many more posts in 2013. As I’m now unemployed and not again planning to persue any careers unsuited to me, I should have much more time to wast- I mean, write. 

Merry Super Happy New Year everyone!!!!!

A small Christmas present to my hometown:

Central Ave, Brooklyn

The Literary Review Just Got Exciting!

Well, it actually has been for the past 20 years, I just didn’t know. 



As a student of English literature, I’m no stranger to the Literary Review. It’s a place I regularly find myself trawling through, looking to impress my tutors with up to date criticism. I hope they might be duped into thinking that my fantastically relevant reference articles are pieces I merely happened across while eagerly flicking through my monthly subscription, rather than the product of a few haphazard taps of my keyboard (I don’t even have to type it all out any more - my igoogle page remembers my frequent and frantic search on the eve of every deadline).

But oh, how I have missed out in only giving this magazine the minutest fraction of my attention! I have been so dismissive and unappreciative. Blinkered by my narrow search criteria, driven solely by my quest for a precise result. And consequentially I have denied myself the world of pleasures available to those aware of all that this esteemed and valuable publication has to offer.

Did you know they do a BAD SEX AWARDS!?!


That’s the problem with us students. We’re only after one thing. Once we have our references we just toss the magazine aside, not taking the time to discover all its other beautiful aspects. Philistines.

It saddens me when I think about all the years of my life I’ve spent, unaware of the amazing invention that is The Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award. I feel similar to how I imagine the second dude to leave Plato’s cave felt. After continuing to resolutely face the cave wall, calling the first guy who climbed out a wally, telling him to stop talking nonsense, only using him to bring back that outside-chicken he got that somehow tasted so much better than shadow-chicken, I’ve finally seen the light. And I now know that I was the real wally. I’m newly enlightened, and embarrassed that I wasted so much time in the dark eating ghost meat.

Every year the Review holds a lush ceremony in London, where one deserving author (if they are brave enough to attend) is presented with a statuette of a naked woman splayed out across the pages of a book, and the title of ‘author of the worst description of a sex scene in a novel’. The award excludes erotic and pornographic fiction (so not a whiff of Christian Grey anywhere near this year’s shortlist). What they are looking for is ‘bad sex in good books’ (so again, Christian Grey nowhere in sight). The magazine’s website explains that the award is designed to draw attention to ‘crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description’, a common crime in contemporary novels, according this entertaining and informative video.

The Review are seeking in their own way to improve the standard of modern fictional sexy encounters by highlighting authors’ awkward metaphors and evasive similes; hopefully discouraging such badly written inclusions in future. The founder of the award, former editor of the Literary Review Auberon Waugh, started it due to his belief that publishers encouraged the inclusion of sexual content to boost novels’ sales.

On a serious note, this is an awesome cause: eliminating poor obligatory sexual content, and working towards making sure modern novels retain a beautiful literary standard. I don’t want sex scenes to become shoddy laboured requisites in every novel, be they crime, historical, or that Alan Bennett one about books and the Queen. I don’t want to become desensitised to the danger and excitement of a good sex scene by recurring dodgy content. I really like that there’s a (sort of) quality control working to stop rubbish sex scenes being brushed over by editors and publishers, due, I can only assume, to some sort of universal sub-conscious recognition that sex is always crude, and therefore can be crudely described, even in a really good book. Sex can’t just be prudishly accepted by authors and critics as resident in the land of awkward, embarrassed euphemism and unhelpful metaphor, not requiring the same powerful, expressive language one would use for describing deep seated emotion or a picturesque landscape.

On a less serious note, it’s also REALLY REALLY FUNNY. My favourite example is from 2010 winner, Rowan Somerville’s The Shape of Her:

'Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her' 

Is it just me who found that more reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs than of anything remotely sexual?

This award is without a doubt my best discovery of 2012. It’s light-hearted, entertaining, and is simultaneously allowing us to laugh out loud at awkward and far-fetched descriptions of sex, while keeping sacred our ability to have a little naughty giggle at the good stuff too.

Here’s some extracts from this year’s shortlist (hee hee hee!) I don’t know about you girls, but no part of my body is a bakewell pudding, or a light-sensitive manual camera. And jockeys don’t (to my knowledge) go inside saddles (pelvic or otherwise). And my Lady Jane is definitely nothing like a chrysanthemum (though I will admit my plant knowledge is pretty shaky, and I had to do a quick google image search just to check). Enjoy! 

The Quiddity of Will Self, Sam Mills

'Down, down, on to the eschatological bed. Pages chafed me; my blood wept onto them. My cheek nestled against the scratch of paper. My cock was barely a ghost, but I did not suffer panic' 

Noughties, Ben Masters

'We got up from the chair and she led me to her elfin grot, getting amongst the pillows and cool sheets. We trawled each other's bodies for every inch of history'

Back to Blood, Tom Wolfe

'Now his big generative jockey was inside her pelvic saddle, riding, riding, riding, and she was eagerly swallowing it swallowing it swallowing it with the saddle's own lips and maw — all this without a word' 

Rare Earth, Paul Mason

'He began thrusting wildly in the general direction of her chrysanthemum, but missing — his paunchy frame shuddering with the effort of remaining rigid and upside down'

The Yips, Nicola Barker

'She smells of almonds, like a plump Bakewell pudding; and he is the spoon, the whipped cream, the helpless dollop of warm custard'

Infrared, Nancy Huston

'This is when I take my picture, from deep inside the loving. The Canon is part of my body. I myself am the ultrasensitive film — capturing invisible reality, capturing heat' 

The Divine Comedy, Craig Raine

'And he came. Like a wubbering springboard. His ejaculate jumped the length of her arm. Eight diminishing gouts. The first too high for her to lick. Right on the shoulder'

The Adventuress: The Irresistible Rise of Miss Cath Fox, Nicholas Coleridge

'In seconds the duke had lowered his trousers and boxers and positioned himself across a leather steamer trunk, emblazoned with the royal arms of Hohenzollern Castle. 'Give me no quarter,' he commanded. 'Lay it on with all your might.' 

So there you go. You may have learnt nothing new about sex, but I personally was not previously familiar with the word ‘wubbering'. The winner will be announced on the 4th of December!

My Summer in Lists

In the interest of providing some background to stuff to come, I thought I would begin by briefly bringing you all up to speed on the last couple of months through the medium of LISTS.

WHERE I HAVE BEEN IN THE LAST FOUR MONTHS

1)      Birmingham, UK

2)      St Albans, UK

3)      East Williamsburg, BROOKLYN

4)      Harlem, MANHATTAN

5)      Bushwick, BROOKLYN

6)      Bed-Stuy, BROOKLYN

7)      Back to Bushwick

(Pheew!)

WHAT I HAVE DONE IN THE LAST FOUR MONTHS

1)      Sat my second year university exams

2)      Passed my second year university exams

3)      Said many a goodbye (tearier and more slurred than I had perhaps hoped for)

4)      Made many and introduction

5)      Been made to leave my first NY apartment by my once Vegas bouncer ex-karate champion landlord

6)      Seen the Manhattan skyline light up the night from many a Brooklyn roof.

7)      Spat water/thrown cans/paper off many a Brooklyn roof

8)      Stuck my head over the edge of many a Brooklyn roof

9)      Run away from a pitbull

10)   Started work at BritishAmerican Business’ snazzy offices on the 20^th floor of a midtown building

11)   Had my laptop, camera, ipod and headphones stolen

12)   Got the subway into town and got sushi at 2am

13)   Found a new apartment which is nice and the landlord seems to be allowing me to stay (touch wood)

14)   Stood on a fire escape and sung Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, the Beatles and Frank Turner loudly into the Brooklyn night, because England keeps my bones. (And we have the best music).

WHAT I HAVE LEARNT IN THE LAST FOUR MONTHS

1)      I have the most fantastic friends in the world.
I mean, I can only really say that with authority over the bits that I’ve travelled. But from ET to GMT, they’re the best.

2)      Despite having a ‘postal service’, American’s don’t understand the noun ‘post’. You can post some mail, but mail some post and they won’t have a clue what you just did.

3)      I will never, ever be ‘street’

4)      Having a padlock on your bag is of no use if you don’t put your valuables in it

5)      Having nothing of value is strangely liberating

6)      I will always need my mummy. 

THINGS I DIDN’T KNOW I WOULD MISS FOUR MONTHS AGO

1)      Cadbury chocolate.
I never bought the stuff, but it was nice seeing it there in the shops. Hersheys looks grim.

2)      Spray deodorant.
It exists, but just doesn’t seem to be a very big thing. There’s not much of it in the shops. Apparently hygiene products in a spray can is weird over here,  but cheese? Perfectly usual.

3)      English misery.
People here are positive, friendly, confident and enthusiastic all the time.
It’s fucking tiring. A bit of cynicism and negativity wouldn’t go amiss, dudes, you're making me uncomfortable.

THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE ACHIEVED WHEN I LEAVE

1)      Be able to speak Spanish

2)      Be able to play the guitar

3)      Be able to pull off wearing a cap