On 31st October I was fortunate enough to be invited by radio station BBC Wiltshire to sit on a panel to talk all things Brexit in the light of the failed October exit day and the announcement of 12th December election.
It was all very last minute, I got invited in at 16:30, an hour later I was in the radio studio! However, having since listened to the entire recording I happen to think it’s turned out better than expected. An example of when not having the time to overthink a situation can be a good thing!
Below is the edited audio featuring all my interview segments, an extended clip with everyone’s hopes for the future of the UK and a delightful secondary discussion around pizza. Enjoy.
**
Did you enjoy this content? Please buy me a coffee to say thanks by clicking here:
I’ve been writing for five years, during which time I’ve been amazed by the level of joy it brings to people like you.
As it stands I make a loss from MHAM. Why? I pay money to WordPress (website platform) to maintain my domain and remove adverts but, because I don’t earn anything from writing, this blog is a vanity project.
Buy Me a Coffee (BMC) is a platform that allows people like you to make one off donations to support creative types like me to do what they love most. All the money I receive will be taken with many thanks and love and then reinvested back into my website’s maintenance and/or (future) publishing fees as I work on my first novel behind the scenes.
Want to give a hardworking writer a helping hand? Click here:
(Alternatively you can click the ‘Buy me a Coffee’ tab in the navigation pane at any time.)
I was watching The Great Hack the other day. In essence it’s a documentary looking at how third parties, specifically Cambridge Analytica used data on individuals to shape public opinion, even going as far as having an influence, if not complete control, political votes and elections across the world. See the full trailer here. It’s unnerving stuff, mind Facebook and social media aside, thanks to the growing popularity of my blog a Google search for my name (which used to pull nothing linked to me at all), now gets this:
(Contrary to some of the images in the top 14 I am still alive.)
For the most part these are images coming from this blog (public), Twitter (public) and LinkedIn (public). Further down my Instagram profile starts cropping up (public by choice, my account is a laugh a minute). Seeing a theme? I don’t have a problem with it, but it’s interesting that Facebook doesn’t seem to factor when it links to my very public Facebook page for this blog.
Watching The Great Hack I felt fairly confident that Facebook or other sites couldn’t possibly be harvesting my data or at least not harvesting it to any great use. During the run up to the Brexit referendum in 2016 I saw no specific content linked to the vote and right now I’m getting a number of adverts for razors, shaving foam (a bit harsh Facebook) and Laughing Cow cheese. I didn’t like Laughing Cow cheese when I was five years old, why would I like it as some kind of snacking cheese now?! Hand me the brie, real girl’s gotta eat.
So I went to bed that night thinking I was safe, only to have a weird dream…
**
Dream squiggles
It was a sunny day in Stratford (Upon Avon), I think it was a Saturday. I came across two European school kids with a Tesco trolley down Henley Street. And we were outside a Costa and WHSmith (which is nuts because Costa and WHSmiths are no where near Shakespeare’s birthplace which happened to be a couple of doors down from where we were). The kids wanted to find a Boots store so I told them to try the Costa instead(?) for whatever it is they wanted, I think it was souvenirs. And I told them they had to cover the shopping trolley in fake tan(?!) so the three of us were desperately trying to cover this Tesco trolley in fake tan, but oddly enough the tan kept spilling through the gaps.
Then my sister, India, said “Alice, we need to photo this trolley” in a really aggressive way, like I should have known this already. Suddenly we’re on a South Devon cliff edge, facing into Coleton Fishacre gardens (which is nuts because their box gardens are located no where near the cliff edge, duh Alice!) But we needed to photo the trolley and get one of the kids in shot as well (the other child I think went off to Starbucks in the meantime). And then the child said he was going to push the trolley, with the fake tan, off the cliff and he started dancing around the edge even though there was a skull and cross bones sign right there. I was yelling to India to hurry up and photo the trolley because the sharks were coming and I didn’t have the right insurance(?)
But India was too busy debating the colour of jelly fish with some National Trust members in the shop. And I kept yelling “the pirates will take the trolley!”
I woke up at that point and spent the next two minutes convinced that the whole thing had happened and that the National Trust were going to send the police to my house. Nothing screams a woman who is old before her time more than someone genuinely concerned over the wrath of the National Trust.
Interpret that dream analysts!
**
(And this is why data harvesting doesn’t spook me, because I just hand personal, unnecessary, insights to the world on a plate.)
Things Escalate Quickly When you Buy From the Chinese
With this in mind I was on Wish the other night. Wish is a shopping app, owned by an American firm, but a site which is filled with sellers based in China offering items for sale at supposedly lower prices than UK shops. The catch? Delivery takes forever and additional postage charges hike up the overall price.
On Wish you can buy clothing…
…building materials…
…Cat harmonicas…
…And this…
It really is the ‘anything and everything’ shop of the internet. Never do you go onto Wish looking for a specific item because nine times out of ten you won’t find it and the tenth time you’ll have also bought an aquarium tank for fish you don’t own.
I was having a scroll through when a particular image made me stop abruptly. I opened it up to get a better look at the product.
Now those who see me often enough will know I like my dresses, I wear them pretty much every day. If you’re wearing dresses in the United Kingdom then you’re going to be getting through a lot of tights. But never have I stood in a shop and found myself wondering “hmm, will these stand up to having a cat thrown at them?”
And then, because I’d opened up one listing which featured tights, Wish quickly directed me to another.
‘Tights’ isn’t even mentioned in a product which opens with ‘Pineapple socks’. Again, I’m not really sure if the Chinese know what people are looking for in hosiery.
Then Wish went a bit mental. Because by now the data harvesters of the web had clocked on that I was looking at a particular type of product but not buying. Never had I been bombarded with so many options for all the things I could do with (or in) a pair of tights.
This one:
…this one reminded me of a classic clip from the mockumentary Summer Heights High where Mr G delivers a performance to his class dressed in a bag (skip to 1:17).
And then the concept of hosiery tights translated into something a lot darker than I expected. I mean, with ‘pineapple socks’ at least the app understood part the requirements of tights, that they were everyday items. Mind, I don’t know what kind of algorithm I would think I’d class this as ‘everyday wear’…
My feed was suddenly full of things which, quite frankly, I didn’t want to be seeing whilst watching Antiques Roadshow on a Sunday night with my dinner.
And I’ll be honest, this was the tamest screen shot I could get. The terribly photoshopped cat says it all:
I showed my friends what my innocent click had brought about. “Sure” they said, “sure you accidentally got these kind of tights as recommendations…”
Needless to say the app has now been very much deleted and left me defaulting back to the safe and security of making purchases from places where the website/shop assistant won’t instantly suggest I visit Ann Summers. That said, given the products from Wish are coming from Asia it now means governments now have more than enough information to completely own my soul and do goodness knows what when I’m a mega famous superstar (why are you laughing?)
Me posting this I hope will prevent that, after all you can’t blackmail what’s already common knowledge, err, I mean what’s already fake knowledge.
Ruddy Chinese.
Bonus Content!
Want to read another crazy dream I had? See the screenshot below from the first draft of this post. I kept it because I found it rather amusing how the dictionary function on Chrome suggested the correct spelling of Zuckerburg was Beefburger.
Originally drafted in August 2019 for later publication.
Did you enjoy this content? If so, please buy me a coffee to show your thanks by clicking this link:
The following morning I received an email from the dating facilitators to announce that the tick system was now open for submitting my yays and nays. My two friends submitted their ticks within half an hour of the email coming through alongside nearly all of the guys. I however felt strangely disengaged with the idea of rushing to make my decision, I already knew what my responses would be.
Other than Mr Dominatrix, the man who thought (and failed) to weird me out, everyone had submitted their responses by 20:00. I was sat cross legged with my laptop resting on my calves, donning my Gap jogging bottoms and a baggy Southampton hoody (the one someone gave me in the back of a disgusting nightclub in my student days, but that’s another story). I set my cup of tea down and opened up the laptop.
My likes and dislikes were completed swiftly and without much thought. No, no, no, no, no… I ticked no to all the eleven men I’d been on speed dates with the night before. Next came the mild curiosity to find out which, if any, of the men had liked me. To find that out all I had to do was hit the big submit button. The system tried to get me to rethink my decision but I overruled it. The men had all been pleasant enough, but Alice just was not interested.
Submit.
I opened up the next screen to see five guys had ticked yes to me. Five guys that would either be gutted or indifferent that the feeling wasn’t reciprocated. Three of the five guys had also ticked yes to one of my other friends which led me to believe in the age of quick hit love they’d get over me pretty quickly. My friends and I were all were equally fine with sharing updates and matching,texting and dating overlapping men (or in my case taking my off-casts). The girl chat continued late into the night and I went to bed content that at least my two friends had better luck than me.
I woke up the next morning and underwent the normal routine to get myself in the right mental state for work. I logged onto my work laptop at 7:55 with a strong Americano in hand and pulled myself, sip by sip, into a mental state fit for work.
I made it to mid-morning before I started reflecting on things outside my work. I started thinking about my dating life, about how in Swindon it was non-existent and how in London it was over-existent. How repetitive and tedious the dating apps were, what with all the constant swiping and then, assuming you even got any matches, how tediously dull the small talk was only for people to disappear, blurt out something inappropriate or stand you up on a date. All things I’d experienced far too often in the past year. Most of all how much time I was wasting on something completely unproductive and unfulfilling.
The writing had been on the wall months, if not years. I’d already been banned from apps Tinder and Happn after trying to convince too many men to read my blog (causing me to be wrongly reported as a bot or fake profile). I’d become fatigued with the premise and the creepy men that I actually took the bans as a blessing in disguise.
I’m single but happily so. If I can buy and run a house by myself, go on holiday by myself, have fun with my existing friends then why trawl through the 4am matches in desperation to find someone just to validate I mean something to someone? Some people have insecurities and need to hop from relationship to relationship, and good for them. But for me my independence means so much that the idea of losing that makes me do this inside:
(Not an attractive look on dates.)
So why on earth am I trying to force myself into a serious relationship? Why am I digging out and enhancing photos to make myself look more appealing? I know I’m awesome so why am I trying to make men see that from just a handful of photos? And the same for men – who gave me the right to judge men in a similar vein when I’ve always said it’s not how I would find or build a connection with anyone – man or woman, relationship or friend.
I want to do more with my life while I can, I want to write more, do more, be more. I want to think “wow, I did something good this evening” or have a lazy, evening where I can watch rubbish TV guilt free, instead of beating myself up because I didn’t get any matches on Bumble.
That has settled it, I’m deleting the dating profiles, removing the apps and focusing on me. I’m not saying I’ll never return to dating apps and I’m certainly not about to become a nun, but right now I need the detox. If someone happens upon my path then I at least know it’s natural and, dare I say it, fate.
I’ve signed up to a writing course and am now dedicating my energies into that alongside my career, Swindon 18-30 and volunteering at my local Samaritans branch. I genuinely won’t/don’t have the time for time wasters.
Watch the clip below. Right now I’m Owen Wilson’s character but with time and dedication I want to become more like Corey Stoll’s (aka Hemingway).
I wrote this and The Time I Discovered I was a Dominatrix in mid June so by the time you read these I’ll already have removed myself from proactive dating and be very much stuck into my writing course. If for the time being I don’t post as much on this blog, you know why.
Middle-length story but I’ve only gone and paid for a premium account! From now on expect zero adverts, a new website address (coming soon) and good times all round.
This post features images of taxidermy. To understand why visit the Powell-Cotton Museum website. “The past is a foreign country” – L.P. Hartley.
**
Sometimes on those rare moments of peace and tranquillity I take a step back and think to myself, “where does my creativity come from? My ability to construct a half decent sentence together that delves deep into an experience, item or concept while also being able to pull out some humour that keeps people coming back time after time to this humble website of mine?” It’s on such occasions I naturally turn to my family to find the source of my flowing words…
…and realise I really must have been adopted.
Despite the fact my normal dress sense makes me a walking advert for the French rom com Popularie (and something I’m completely fine with, even if it is set in 1958)…
…the Cotswold Bennett clan were in fact dressed up to the nines in the Powell-Cotton Museum at Quex Park for a family wedding. The union of my lovely cousin Stella with her Welsh husband-to-be Alun. Because if there was one thing our family needed, its more Welsh (given I’m only 25% of the rugby-mad stuff this marriage couldn’t come soon enough, our family is becoming far too English).
The day started in the same way most my weekday mornings do, wondering why the hell I was awake and why wasn’t I drinking coffee. Not that it got in the way of me catching up on the zzz’s, I woke up some 2.5 hours down the M25 to find a blob of saliva on my dress and a chicken roll having appeared on my lap. I think India might have thrown it at my face. If my bodily fluids didn’t ruin my make up before then the massive size-of-your-face chicken roll did. Again, I took a bite of the roll to be very concerned over the amount of red behind (thankfully my lipstick, not thankfully an expensive brand of the stuff).
Once we’d arrived at Birchington (where Mumma Bennett had booked the apartment for the extended weekend) there was a delightful scene where the postcode wrongly took us to the wrong spot, causing us to drive up and down the street multiple times. When people in mobility scooters and shorts start giving you looks you know you’re looking like class A muppets. A particular highlight was when Papa Bennett proposed us three women get changed at the wedding venue seeing as it was apparently so close to where we’d be staying. The response?
As if we’d even be dared seen by other guests before we’d got into our wedding gear. I only had one of my normal 50s outfits on! Men.
Flash forward a few hours once we’d finally found the apartment, got bags, got changed, went to the loo, changed shoes, updated make up, went to the loo again and hopped in the car for all of the two minute journey and were at the venue. One of the first people we saw when arriving at the venue was Aunt Shiona, mother of the Bride.
“What are you doing all here so early?! We had bets on you!” She said as she gave us all hugs and chatted briefly before dashing of to more important matters.
“What a funny thing to say about having bets on us.”
“I can believe it.” Mumma B said.
“I think she was joking.”
“We’re a whole forty minutes early Dad,” I interjected, “that’s not like us at all.”
And then we were chatting and chilling with relatives and I was complaining that I couldn’t be the little toddler who got to wear a pretty dress and roll around in the dirt on a wedding day.
“I mean you could,” Uncle Martin said.
“Don’t worry, on Alice’s wedding it’ll be all mud pies and S Club 7 songs” Mumma B said. While everyone laughed I muttered to India “do you think we can get Aqua live?”
And then the wedding happened. Sorry Stella and Alun, I know you guys love my blog but I honestly can’t think of much to say – I wish I could write something wonderfully romantic but unlike your friends I stuffed up my poetry module at A Level. Urm…
The ceremony was wonderful // Stella’s dress was anything but colourful.
(I think I’ll stick to the writing.)
Here is a very small sample of some of the photos taken of Stella and Alun on the day.
And here is one of the child I want to be when I grow up.
And here are a selection of all the many selfies I did whilst we were waiting for the drinks reception.
And then things ground to a temporary halt while we tried to fix the selfie stick/camera.
But luckily Aunt Yvonne was on hand to capture me at my most beautiful.
I never met the guy stood behind me in that photo but I think he liked me, that or he felt pity (very easy to get the two mixed up in my world).
And lets take a moment to admire how amazingly my bun held up, despite the four hour drive/sleeping/undressing-dressing/just being me.
You know, with some of the pictures I’m seeing here you’d think the official photographer could have taken the day off. Anyway moving on and back, the venue was lovely. I mean a wedding in a mother flipping museum is always going to get me excited. Don’t forget this…
…This was taken before the consumption of any alcohol. So I was living the dream being able to drink prosecco and wonder exhibitions with suited and other smart type people.
Even if it made me look like a horned beast.
But they had a kid’s trail (and seemingly unlimited prosecco and canapes) so I was prepared to overlook this.
We sat down for food and, you’ve guessed it, took more selfies (remind me again why we were there?) Mumma B tried to set the camera up for Bluetooth group photos, but by this point I was on the table wine with a stomach lined with a couple of mini spring rolls. Of course I wasn’t going to be taking anything seriously.
Stella and Alun then cut their wedding cake. FYI am I the only one thinking Stella was far too happy to be holding such a sharp knife?
Alun probably had his eye on it for his tomato addiction. His need to consume £50 worth of the little red things a week got a mention in every one of the speeches to much laughter. Everyone needs a hobby I guess.
After speeches, food and yet more table wine (suddenly the headache I had the next morning makes a lot more sense) people broke off while the function room was set up for evening entertainment.
Papa B, India, Uncle Chris and a few others got excited over a drone and Mumma B grabbed a photo just in time to get my typically Alice reaction.
Mumma B and I instead spent time wondering around the gardens and discussing flower beds and architecture. Standard. Once the evening portion of the night kicked off it was all dancing and fun way into the night. Have you ever danced to the hit song Nelson Mandela by The Specials at a wedding? Well you have not lived my friend.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m dancing for Mandela India! We’ve got to free him!”
“[Laughs] what the hell?”
“FREEEEEEE NELSON MANDELA! INDIA! IT’S MANDELA!”
(For context, Stella spent a good deal of time in Southern Africa growing up.)
And then eventually the whole night wrapped up with a UB40 song.
“What’s this?” India asked.
“The song played when the DJ wants you to bugger off.”
***
The following days were spent relaxing and enjoying the Kentish sunshine. A particular highlight was when the four of us visited Walmer Castle in Deal. India, with her expert technical knowledge helped restore my confidence that I must be at least related to her.
Further shored up when she got just as excited over a pair of mini Wellington boots as I did.
Tell you what, I have a lot of time for a young Wellington. Before I say anything further let me explain a bit of background behind the rationale.
Whilst loving life in Granada recently myself and one of the girls I was staying with developed an heightened interest in olives. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the fact we didn’t know each other and were jumping on the first connection we had but our lust of olives was just off the scale. Our friends would have told us to get a room, if we hadn’t already decided we were going to because of the olives. We bought a massive jar between us and in started taking ‘shots’ of olives and eventually skipped the middle man by carting the whole jar to bed with us at stupid o’clock (don’t ask me to explain why). Anyway, because the jar was so hard to open and because of how much we loved those olives I coined a phrase to subtly describe any man (or woman) that the perciever took a fancy to. I explain this to you now a) for future reference on any subsequent blog posts and b) because seeing a young Wellington in Walmer Castle prompted me to say it.
“Ooh. He can open my olives.”
“What?”
I related the above story to India.
“Again, what?”
**
I attended my cousin’s wedding with only my immediate family and happily so. It made me wonder why people have this need to put on their dating profiles “seeks +1 to attend weddings”. Why? What’s wrong with going solo? I had just as much fun being a plus zero, if not more so by being able to be classic Alice and wander around a museum late at night after a glass or two, pretending I was living my own version of Night at the Museum. Would I have wanted a plus one to see we twirling about and exclaiming “I love History!”? Goodness no!
The Cotswold Bennett clan left Kent early on Sunday having spent a four days in South East England, a part of the country that none of us had visited in any depth before. We came away feeling very relaxed and India and I with a long list of wedding ideas for that of our own one day (although for the love of God don’t let that be any time soon – Aqua don’t have the availability).
**
Big love to my cousin Stella and her husband Alun, I had a wonderful time at your wedding and wish you all the best now and long into the future. I’m no poet but I hope this, alongside the wire chicken egg holder (memories of hunting cheap eggs in London), I hope they both make you smile.
“29/04/18. My arms are aching, my legs are covered in bruises and I’m completely shattered. I must be in London.”
It has been a week since I vacated my flat in central London and returned once more to Swindon. It almost feels like the past year has all been but a dream, vape steam in the breeze. Invisible, abstract and only memorable by the faint smell it leaves behind.
On 2nd May I left London Paddington station for the last time packed like a loaded Buckaroo: an overfilled holdall case, a heavy rucksack, an additional handbag, a canvas tote filled with redundant bedlinen and a heavy laptop across the body for good measure. I learnt from my mistakes moving out and managed the travel back relatively bruise free, however my body has ached for days from strain. The day before I fully moved I’d completed a separate trip to Swindon with a similar amount of goods and wondered why I couldn’t stop violently shaking. I spilt coffee everywhere at the formal work function, of course. At the time I put it down to the amount of rushing around but now I see it as the culmination of mental and muscular stress.
Other than the short term pains it would be easy to pass off what I’d been through and achieved in just over twelve months living and working in the English capital as nothing more than normal. ‘Business as usual’ as my colleagues would say. But it isn’t. And it’s not just the big things that make me say that, like moving into the flat and travelling solo in Europe for the first time, but it is the little things as well. The events I put myself out of my comfort zone to attend, the weird obsession with finding the cheapest eggs, the men (goodness the men). And as I stood in Brompton cemetery one Sunday afternoon while a random man called Nicolas tried to chat me up I thought only one thing.
Thank God I’m writing this all down.
Seven separate notebooks, all documenting the experience of spending a year in London. Seven books with unique but different personalities as I went through a deeply personal and professional journey. Just glancing over extracts from book one and comparing it to book seven the transformation is really quite something (excluding coffee spilling and egg hunting, those two are deeply trademarked parts of me). Admittedly I haven’t read any of the books in depth since writing, I want to let some water trickle under bridges first. But I remember so clearly picking the first notebook off a shelf in a stationery store and telling myself I would make every effort to record the upcoming eight months in London (as it was then supposed to be) so that I should not forget the experience when I returned once more to Wiltshire. To ensure that I never let this fantastic opportunity turn into little more than a faded dream. And maybe, just maybe, one day I will do something more with my scribbles, that people will know about the time I ended up at a celebrity wedding, when the artist Grayson Perry became a fan of my writing, the time I got screen tested for a dating show. And again, the men.
If two things show how much I’ve changed over the past year then look no further than these separate quotes.
Guess who’s been writing internal news articles again? Below was produced to promote the tool I’m developing as part of a team for a sub-project at work. More details below but so far the reception to both writing and project outputs have been great.
Keanu Reeves is a Better Career Advisor than Britney Spears
When I was a little girl I wanted to be Britney Spears. Then around the age of seven I realised it would be a difficult career path (turns out it’s a ‘dead man’s shoes’ role), so instead I settled on hard-hitting journalism, only to find myself documenting the adventures of a pineapple in a party hat (don’t ask). Post University there were three years in charity and now I’m fast approaching two of the same at Nationwide but it’s only recently that the words ‘Project’ and ‘Management’ have sprung out as possibilities for someone like me.
I applied to be on a team for this year’s Association for Project Management (APM) challenge with echoes of Britney in the back of my mind. What skills and qualities do you
Take on a crazy challenge alongside the day job or delete the email?
need to have to enter it? Where do you go to access accredited material? Is Project management even the right career? I was about to call it out on when someone else said it, and then another, until we’d all agreed that between our collective 17 and a half years’ experience no one knew the answers to these fundamental questions. Our deliverable was born; in four months we’d build a tool to help practitioners focus their development time more effectively. We would call it the “Project Development Matrix” (and Michael, our project manager, would tell me to stop suggesting we wear long coats and shades like Keanu Reeves’ did in the 1999 film The Matrix). With our tool all you’d need to do is answer a few questions and the answers would automatically populate charts to help tailor the development plan of the user.
The APM challenge is designed to develop project management qualities and knowledge of the project lifecycle. We produce detailed reports to deadlines, stage project boards with our sponsor and must deliver what we set out to do. For the finals night in May we’ll either have produce additional material or present to a panel. You’re up against teams from a range of organisations so company lingo has to be stripped away and everything taken back to APM fundamentals. The project would be enough of a challenge for a single co-located team, however we’ve added a layer of fun to the mix by basing ourselves across two Swindon and one London office.
Snow put central London into a state of paralysis
So where are we now? In February we housed a focus group to get consumer views and refine our ‘product backlog’ for the first release, with a view to develop and expand the tool and its use case after that. No project is entirely smooth running, given the snow I experienced in central London I struggled to see why the original focus group in Swindon had to be moved, but it’s the setbacks you learn best from.
The tool is presently due for release at the end of this month. Give it a go and let us know your thoughts. Any issues and I’ll don my shades and get Keanu to enter the Matrix himself and investigate further.
I was in a London bar the other night, relaxing with a book and a medium sized glass of sparkling cranberry juice. There was a nice flurry of activity occurring around me, date night couples, arguing couples, groups of friends, a solo American businessman trying to engage with conversation (bless), all the standard things you’d expect to see in a alcoholic establishment of its sort and location.
I was sat in a booth to myself and taking in the lively scene of human activity mid page (the joy of a gentle anthology) when something caught my eye. At first I thought I was mistaken by what I’d seen but then the dart happened again and again, until my brain finally came to terms with what it was witnessing less than two meters away.
Mice.
The little pests were so quick and spontaneous with their movements I could barely get my phone out, let alone take a photo, before they dashed back into the shadows or across the tiles into a new crevice. I saw one dash towards the American businessman but he seemed too preoccupied with asking the bartender to hit him with yet another whiskey so I held my tongue.
I’d only just arrived at the pub and settled down, so felt very reluctant to leave. I’d been to the establishment before and saw no sense in hurrying back to the cramped little flat I call home alongside four others. Besides, I’d paid £2.70 for my sparkling cranberry juice.
I knew exactly what to do. I put on my headphones and whacked on one of my most played songs. A classic of a classic, Ralf Vaugh Williams’ The Lark Ascending is as beautiful a composition if ever there was one. And while I can never begin to review it on a note-by-note basis (this girl dropped trombone when she was sixteen) I can firmly say that as a sentient human being it is a song that always helps lighten my spirits whatever mood I am in. I’m playing it right now as I type, listen:
So delicate but forthright and strong. Each time I hear the notes I see a different version of me play out, be it the girl in an evening dress or the girl donning her stick and hanky as she strides towards the city where the streets are paved with gold. And it was listening to The Lark Ascending that night in an average pub with mice running around that I was able to find my inner composure. Don’t get me wrong, mice or any kind of vermin indoors is not particularly pleasant, nor should it be ignored, but just listening to classical music, well, it seemed to transport me somewhere completely different. I could overlook the mice dashing about, in fact I was even able to half smile at their ill fated antics to get any distance before a human made a move of their own.
And then I looked down and saw a mouse sniffing my pump shoe and the bare foot within. Then I freaked the hell out and swiftly finished my juice as a scooted towards the door of a rapidly emptying watering hole. I left the single member of bar staff in the delightful company of the American and a newly arrived drunk local.
And it made me think, when did I start embracing classical music? What were the key tracks that started it? Well bizarrely my love of classical music all started with a free CD that came with a Saturday Daily Express newspaper. Remember those few years where newspapers gave out CDs every five minutes with a random assortment of music? Well in 2004 we got one and it must have been the Euros or something because it was called Football Passion (even though the last World Cup had been in 2002).
Well much to the surprise of 11 year old me and a good deal of other Daily Express readers the CD was purely classical music. Not a sniff of Lighting Seeds in sight. And yet in a very weird way a free piece of plastic came to be the making of me. Playing it in the car for weeks afterwards I was able to formulate my own narratives around each song. The first and strongest story I devised around a song that was around the composition of William Tell Overture. Don’t listen to this and tell me you can’t picture the spectacle of the horse racing?
Picture a scene resembling the Grand National or Cheltenham Races, horses chasing up to hurdles and bounding over. Riders falling to the wayside one by one as proud owners look on to see their champions to the photo finish. So much energy and excitement.
Pavane, the song that flows straight after William Tell Overture on the CD’s playlist, created in my head the sense of disappointment of the losers.
The riders cast aside as failures, the damaged horses piled in heaps awaiting their fate as the rain starts to drop down. That or a general sense of romantic sadness, young boys packing bags and sent off to war when they barely understand what suffering is. The long days of rain and sadness.
And then, several songs later…
The slow build up, the knowing that something is about to happen, something is about to change. And then boom! The base drops and you’re filled with a sensation of happiness and warmth. The rain has stopped, war is over, there is a shining future ahead and all you can see is the goodness in humanity. O brave new world!
As crazy as it would seem, a free CD aimed at a sport I had no interest in would spark a new altogether different fascination in me. Around the same time my Mum got given a compilation CD set for Christmas called Pure Chillout.
Still played around the house some fifteen years later, the album’s selection of modern hits with a feeling of ‘future classics’ was timed perfectly to those early teenage years of trying to make sense of the world under a mountain of coursework. The Heart Asks Pleasure First has strong banking connotations in the UK, but for me I could see only two lovers running around wild meadows, pausing only to catch their breath and the beauty of their company.
How mighty is the piano.
Mum, a now retired teacher, used Adiemus for one of her class’ dance routines.
Aged about nine, I listened to the song repeated endless times in the kitchen while she formulated the choreography for a group of twenty seven to eleven year olds. I remember watching the class rehearsing the performance an thinking it very impressive given my Mum half an hour before had been teaching Maths. However it wasn’t the story I’d created in my head.
In my head I pictured it as a battle scene. The noble and good army preparing for the battle ahead at camp, heading to the field, squaring up with their mighty and evil enemy across the board field. Then the charge with an almighty crash as the two sides interlock for the first time. The bloody battle, the slaughter and long battle, ending with the head of the enemy cut clean off and rolling away. The enemy drop their weaponry and the good Queen proclaims the victory to her humble supporters.
In hindsight I understand why my Mum couldn’t have acted out similar with her students.
Spin things back to the present day and you can find Mozart sitting comfortably as playlist bedfellows to songs such as this where English lyrics start to make an appearance, but only as long as they serve as backing vocals to the main event:
***
I now find myself frequently utilising the power of the classical genre to help me focus on big tasks or help support and make sense of the creative noise in my head. With no fake beats or confusing lyrics to contend with my mind can make its own conclusions of what it hears. And like any form of artwork, I can listen to it knowing that a distant person on the far side of the world can understand the wordless track just as easily and form their own opinions and judgements.
Were years of classical music the only reason I put up with hoards of bar mice that evening? Of course not. But could I say to you, hand on heart, that without ever listening to a classical music track I’d be sat here today writing the way I do? Now that’s a tougher question to answer. Because classical music forced me to form a story based on no steer whatsoever. It began that process of storytelling that has stuck with me ever since. Without the genre I genuinely do not know if I’d still be able to pull writing topics out of thin air or even if I’d have the confidence to share my ideas for the world to see for themselves.
If it is inspiration you seek, it is classical you must find.
My Housemate's a Mermaid 