Another one from deep within the MHAM draft posts that never made it to air…until now.
Back in 2021…
I was thinking to myself the other day “you know what? There aren’t enough podcasts in the world. And golly, there sure as heck aren’t enough opinions being shared around. I should do something to rectify this immediately!”
Or, alternatively, I saw an advert for the free podcasting creator, Anchor, and thought I’d give it a shot.
Several coffees later and some playing about with low-budget graphics and ta-da! A podcast was born:
(Before you say anything, I really cannot stress the low budget-ness of this production. Low budget in the sense there is none.)
Who knows what will become of this, but basically it’s me talking to myself for up to half an hour and in episode one I talk about what lead me to start writing a blog. If you enjoy the concept of a one-woman natter then you’re in for a right royal treat.
I honestly could not be selling this venture harder if I tried. It’s just something I’m giving a go at for a bit of fun.
Surprise, surprise, it didn’t catch on and after forcing myself through four recordings I stopped podcasting and went back to pure writing. I think as much as anything it was the realisation that podcasting with free software is difficult (in that I found the free to use software incredibly limiting and of overall poor production value).
I’m currently in the process of getting the original recordings saved (would you believe it, the platform appears to give podcast owners no access to downloading their own work once published).
For now, enjoy the bittersweet car crash that was the MHAM podcast and who knows, maybe I’ll revive it one day on better terms.
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This one comes from the Alice archives, from a time when I was channel flicking and came across this beauty of a clip from the Channel 4 reality TV show, “Celebs Go Dating”. I recorded it on my phone, hence the iffy quality, but it’s still a classic.
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You know how it is. It’s a Friday night, you’re a single woman with the world at your fingertips and anything is possible. You could go out, let your hair down or…you could stay in and give your kitchen a deep clean.
Thing is, I’m not even embarrassed to admit this. In the same way I’m not at all ashamed to say the only bottles this girl was demolishing the other night were these:
(Obviously in non-drinking, sense. Please don’t call 111.)
With cleaning plans firmly lodged in my head, I changed out of my dress and put on a black vest, thus transforming me into a low-budget search engine result for “contemporary dancer near me”.
(No refunds for crimes against the aeroplane dance move.)
First item in my line of cleaning sight (yes, this was genuinely how I spent my Friday night), the fridge. Breaking this mighty deliverable down into smaller, manageable, chunks (who said bringing the day job into personal life isn’t exotic?), I went for the bottom drawer first.
This was followed by a healthy amount of neighbour stalking / Alice rambling (feat. actual cleaning).
Several hours later, and after inhaling quite a considerable about of cleaning fumes in a confined space, this happened.
I’m not going to explain nor apologise. I sent it to my close friends and the responses speak for themselves.
So that’s how I spent my crazy Friday night, what about you?
Having been cooped up for what feels like a lifetime, I was overjoyed to hear that Eurovision is going ahead again this year.
In celebration of this wonderfully cheesy event, here are a selection of songs which could describe the stages of British reactions to Covid (anything to make this a bit more topical).
British Politics, as Told Through the Medium of Eurovision Songs
Before Covid, everything was wonderfully normal and all we had to worry about was accidentally winding up on a date with someone you think is famous, but is actually the Bruno Mars tribute act playing at your best mate’s wedding
That, or the effects of drinking river water contaminated by the chicken farm upstream.
And then Covid kicked off, and suddenly it was like we were being plunged into a world were being happy wasn’t allowed.
Stuck at home, everyone took to bombarding social media with photos of their baking and back-garden boozing (often at the same time).
And, like the song, it quickly became very old.
But while we all stayed at home and kept our distance, our front line workers in industry and health care continued to press on tirelessly, whilst scientists around the world battled to find solutions to this global pandemic.
And, for the most part, the UK government was like this:
And self-employed / small businesses were lobbying for the easing of restrictions, like…
And young people with buggered-up A-Levels and university studies were like…
But as far as Boris Johnson’s public ratings were concerned…
(Coupled with a bit of…)
It wasn’t all doom and gloom. Initially, we were allowed to go out more than once a day and countryside walks were back on. Mind, the British summer though…
Then the pubs started opening up again, shops welcoming customers. For a (short) period even international travel was back on. Happy days!
And then we c**ped it up again.
Nil-points. Ah well, back to restrictions and excessive handwashing it is.
Still, they couldn’t stop us dreaming of a world free of limitations.
Even if some of those dreams were a tad surreal.
And others more nightmarish.
But with vaccine rollouts now taking place in many countries around the world, and shows like Eurovision being staged, it serves as an important reminder that we will get through this hardship. The show must go on!
Reminds me, I better dust off some of my unworn dresses from the back of the wardrobe.
But most importantly. BRING ME MY FRIENDS, BRING ME THE CHEESE AND BRING. ME. THE. PARTY!!
If ever there was a cartoon strip more applicable to me and less applicable to everyone around me right now, it would be this…
And equally, a cartoon strip that made me smile so much when I saw it but couldn’t be of less interest to most my ‘normal’ friends, followers etc.
I mean, you can tell I enjoy writing, can’t you? The person who drew that cartoon strip, they themselves probably spent less time formulating the concept and execution than my internal predicament about sharing it on social media.
I just love the damn cartoon, alright?
Another reason I find this image particularly relatable is because it is me right now. Yes, I am indeed a stick drawing with a blob of a body, tirelessly reviewing and re-reviewing every joke and humorous jab listed in my manuscript.
It’s 90k words, it’s a comedy-farce, there’s A LOT of one-liners to review. And I’ll be honest with you, a lot of the time I re-read stuff on this very blog and go ‘what the fudge was I on that night?’ Let alone what I’m going through right now.
Seriously, how do you guys put up with some of the things I say?
If in doubt, I’m editing.
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1998 this song was released, 19-flipping-98. Still a belter but golly, are we all getting old. And please, don’t come back to me saying you have no memory of this track or, worse, you weren’t even alive then. I-I just can’t.
Any who.
After the questionable success of my previous post, My Sister, On…, here is the “me” version of that. Don’t worry if you haven’t read said post, you’ll get the hang of this very quickly.
Alice, On…
Alice, on…Responsible drinking
Alice, On…Effective conflict resolution
(For context – I picked a fight with a pavement.)
Alice, On…Tropicana on a budget
Alice, On…Workplace integration
Alice, On…All-nighters
Alice, On…Open bars
Alice, On…Bathroom fittings
Alice, On…Haircare
Alice, On…Summer
“Alice, why are you taking so long to rub the sun cream in?”
“No reason!”
“Well then, can I get up?”
“DON’T YOU DARE GET UP YET!!”
Alice, On…”Does my bum look out-of-proportionately big in this?”
Alice, On…Any kind of headwear
And finally (for now), Alice, On…Basic photographyskills
Oh, trust me, you’re welcome
**
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Candles, erosion excitement and a scurvy-inducing diet, we’ve got all the reasons (and more) why I’ve quite possibly still yet to become one half of a “smug couple”.
Why Alice is Still Single…Probably
First Things First
I can’t help that a pandemic happened.
I don’t proactively choose to shun humans (Yeah, I’ll call up my insurance firm now. “Hello, I’d like to record my profession as ‘Aspirational Spinster’ please? What do you mean, that’ll increase my premium?”)
Although, for the benefit of reassurance, I am attracted to humans.
(But I am also attracted to that part of YouTube.)
I’ve Made My Memory Foam Bed, and it Serves me Well
I live where I live and do what I do. And before you give me that Sliding Doors baloney, “if only you’d taken that fictional job somewhere else, then maybe things would be different”, I mean, sure but…
A) Not God.
B) There are loads of amazing things I’d have missed out on.
C) I lived in London for a year and guess what? Despite getting my bag stuck in the Tube countless times and missing countless more trains altogether, John Hannah still didn’t show up and I’m still not Gwyneth Paltrow.
(But at least my accent isn’t that grating.)
My Cooking is Beyond Questionable
Case in point, I routinely eat leftover Chinese with pasta. I call it “East Meets West” (no, really, I do).
I know what you’re thinking and yes, I am the kind of girl who brings a stapler and a rack of business cards to dinner (and you thought the Chinese was hot stuff).
As a rule of thumb, the dishes I cook involve three ingredients. E.g. scrambled eggs: eggs (no milk), bread, butter for bread. Soup: tin of soup, bread, butter for bread. Chips, fish fingers, peas.
I also routinely snack on dry cream crackers.
#NoShame
I’m Not in the Market of Being Someone I’m Not
I’m so out of habit with makeup I barely wear it nowadays. The idea of putting all this stuff on my face to create something to satisfy everyone but me just doesn’t do anything for me (you can’t see your own face after all).
Looking at this from a positive angle, this is presently the worst I’m ever going to get:
*Well, excluding when I’m chilling out in the back of Shoreditch clubs.
Moving on…
Everything Excites Me…But Men
Things like having David Nicholls, author of One Day, like my Tweet:
(Reason .5 for staying single – I like using words like golly)
I also like seeing the effects of coastal erosion on tiny pebbles:
I didn’t even care they only were available in a men’s size. Why? Because I’m now the proud owner of Picasso socks. Duh.
It doesn’t take much to get me excited, but on the downside, it doesn’t take much to get me excited. I don’t need a guy to be the *sole* provider of my joy…unless you have Picasso socks. And yes, pun intended.
I Have Awesome Friends
Doesn’t everyone bring hand sanitiser and a banking card reader to their girls’ night in calls?
Granted, things are a smidge surreal at the moment, but I still have my girl (and guy) friends. And if I can’t meet up with them in real life, I still can connect with them digitally.
Dressing up and dancing around my bedroom, it’s like the teenage years I never had. Back when I was too busy wearing jeans and playing about with hair straighteners and knives.
Oh, Cotswolds, you do crack me up.
Nb, that was taken on my eighteenth birthday. Disney need to do a rerun of that film, 13 Going on 30.
We’ll call it 30 Going on 13, and it’ll be 90 minutes of me struggling to comprehend water installations in urban environments:
Ten years on and I’m still trying to work them out.
Hmm, I think we’ve gone a bit off topic somewhere around here. What were we discussing, again? Oh yeah, why I’m single.
Me, Myself and I; We’ve got Our Own Thaang Going on
I Already Have an Interim Solution, and it’s a Candle
I can’t quite fathom how Glade have done this, but I swear this candle smells like a ‘best of’ man collection. It’s kinda musky and has a nice cologne-like secondary smell. I think it’s a honey and chocolate combo.
I can’t share the smell, but trust me, it’s solid. And no, I’m not backing down on this.
And Then There Are the Creeps
Ooh! Bear with, just got a new match.
Right, let’s open this up…
Ah.
In Summary
Your best bet is to cook me something with four ingredients, invest in quirky socks and dip yourself in molten wax.
Guess what? I’m eighteen years old in that one too.
I need to get into teen movies. Where is my non-existent agent?
**
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“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” – L.P. Hartley
A year ago today, I returned from a London city break and published my first post. I’d spent a year living in the UK capital, so for me it marked a refresh of the best bits of city-living, including art galleries, theatre performances and catching up with old friends.
Days after my return I was left encumbered, battling a mystery illness. Those following weeks I pressed on the best I could, putting it down as another one of those viruses which circulate in densely populated environments. A year later I’m no closer knowing what struck me down; we all have our theories.
Back then, my friends and I had whimsically noted the high-adoption of face coverings being worn by the predominantly Asian tourist base. We mused on the foreign illness that was gripping other continents, but to comprehend the possibility that our own country could already be rife with disease was a step too far. We were better than that, we were British. Instead, we continued to pack ourselves into dense sweats to watch live music, feasted in noisy restaurants and embraced fondly.
If only we’d known.
So, with perhaps a naively romanticised view of what were truly the last days of normality (late January 2020), here are all four parts of London Recalling.
For the lockdown marriage of one of my mates (remember Woman on The Verge of a Birthday Breakdown?) the groom’s sister asked everyone to record a video message to send to the happy couple.
“Sure!” I thought, “this’ll be easy. I can be classy and endearing at the same time, that’s totally me!”
Then again, this is also me:
Several glasses of prosecco down (you’ve got to get into the party vibes with this sort of thing), I set up my phone and filmed this.
“I mean, it’s something,” I mused whilst watching it back. “Not sure what that something is, but it’s that. Hmm, maybe I’ll do a second take, just in case.”
And then the cat came along…
It was a tough call between the two but ultimately I knew which one I was going to send over.
Yes, I sent the cat video.
(Jess, I hope you and Dave had a lovely wedding day. See you on the other side when we can properly celebrate. x)
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You’re only as valuable to the community as the last thing you did for it.
That might or might not be a plagiarised quote from someone notable or, more likely, something I just made up after two (large) glasses of wine, but I’ve put it in fancy italics so the point stands.
This is the story of a group. No, actually, not a group, a community. Thrown together by birth, work, or sometimes just passing through; a community of humans who came together under limited expectations, only to save something far greater.
The Birth of a Community
When it comes to community the good deeds you make only go so far. It’s harsh but true. Unlike the good old days, people come and people move on.
The movement of people was one of the reasons I initially established Swindon 18-30 Professionals. People were coming into the town (mostly for work) and then rapidly fleeing as soon as they’d decided it wasn’t a place for them. Not enough to do, not enough of a scene for young people. And I couldn’t blame them; I’d relocated to the area and was feeling the cold shoulder of the real world. A world outside education where you can’t make best friends with people simply by shaking hands or offering out birthday chocolates by means of bribery. The real world just simply isn’t like that, in or outside Swindon.
From Strength to Strength
It came as a massive relief to me when I won the support of a local sponsor to cover the essential website maintenance costs. With the free subscription membership blossomed, and with it the strength of having a group that arguably was the biggest apolitical collective of local voices the town had seen in many years, if ever.
Over the months and years that followed, friendships were made and romances solidified. Multiple engagements, weddings and even babies have been created as a direct impact of the conversations struck up in pubs or over bowling lane rivalries. I was humbled, that feeling that the group was now self sufficient, it didn’t need me to babysit it 24/7 anymore.
Anything But Normal
And then Coronavirus happened.
Our version of normal was now ‘old’ and everything else was now to be referred to as the new version (whatever that was). Social gatherings were illegal, mental health, financial security, a secondary concern compared to the threat of a killer virus. We watched it all slip away, like sand through our fingers.
My steadfast sponsor, like everything else, was forced to close. As their income disappeared overnight, so did the lifeline of Swindon 18-30. I sat on my bed one night, barely able to sleep. Years of hard work, of creating and building, ended before people had even the chance give it a decent send off. I was left hollow, wounded but without the blood to show for it.
“Sh*t Happens, Get Over It”
I proposed to the leadership team setting up a fundraising page. A last-ditch hope that we could scrape together enough to cover the next six months of fees (around £100).
I did some research, compared the options eventually went for GoGetFunding which was one of the few which let fundraisers withdraw money, even if they don’t make the target set on the page. This in mind, I went for a over optimistic £260 which would cover costs for a year, plus the fundraising page fees. I hit submit, the page went live.
I sent a frank and blunt email to all the members with a link to donate money and walked away. A watched pot never boils and I couldn’t bear to spend a wasted evening watching a page that got no engagement. In five years I’d never asked anything of my members, new and old, so to be begging for money now? I was adamant that they’d see me as being unrealistic.
The Kind of Thing That Only Happens in Movies
I retuned to my laptop and was taken with the number of emails in my inbox. “Probably spam,” I thought, but I was wrong. Very wrong. Because instead of the junk mail I was expecting, all the emails were notifications from the fundraising website.
Donations came in thick and fast and at values that almost made me want to cry. I probably would have if not for the personalised messages getting to me first.
There I’d been, working my socks off and building up a strong leadership team and thinking no one had noticed. That no one had particularly cared for all the effort we put in. The words I was reading now, they proved me wrong.
“Every penny well deserved!”
“An amazing organisation, I hope it carries on long into the future.”
“This group helped me take control of my social anxiety and build my confidence.”
“I owe so much to Swindon 18-30. So many incredible people I wouldn’t have even crossed paths with if it were not for the events put on.”
“Well done Alice! Keep up the good work and long live the mermaids!”
In just over 24 hours we hit my target for funding, but yet the money kept pouring in, it seemed everyone wanted to show their support and ensure the group stayed alive. And this wasn’t just current members, people who’d long left Swindon donated, keen to ensure its legacy for new batches of young professionals.
For the second time that week I found myself unable to sleep, although this time it was out of happiness and relief. The group had validated its existence, it had an army of young people prepared to fight tooth and nail to keep it running.
Stop the Press!
The local press release was published the following week with a number of last minute updates. The original purpose, framed to act as a plea for help was now repurposed as an awareness piece, to reach out to those who felt alone and isolated. That at the end of all this there would be a place to safe place to meet and engage with other people.
Like everything that happens in my life, there had to be a catch to all this positivity. For me, this came when the webpage was bombarded with fraudulent donations. The alarm bells came when the donations were coming in tiny denominations (usually £1) and from people I didn’t recognise. Later it transpired that these payments were likely stolen cards being tested out prior to the thief either selling them on or using them for bigger transactions. Wanting to do the right thing (and wanting to avoid severe penalties), I promptly returned the money back to the payment card, only to then be charged a handling fee for doing so!
I spoke with both customer services on GoGetFunding and then PayPal, voicing frustrations. They both pointed fingers at the other, both refused to acknowledge the faults in their system, both saw no reason to refund me for doing the right thing. I enchanced secrity controls, as per PayPal’s recommendation, which made things worse. The next morning I had ten transactions to refund. It was at that point, stressed and deeply angry, that I was sadly forced to close the funding page ahead of time.
If there is one top tip I can place in all of this it is to not use GoGetFunding. The commission is less but damn, you pay more in blocking fraudulent payments in the long run!
However, all said and done the final figure at the point of close spoke for itself. The group had done it, we had enough to keep going throughout the tough months to come.
The Future is Bright…
On the far side of all this (whenever that might be) it’s confirmed, that there will be a group and place for people to call their social home. A place to buy a pint or two and give toast to everything that’s made us who we are today.
Here’s to the silent supporters and the ‘this one’s on me’ drink buyers. Long live the donators of good causes, the ones who have the vision to see beyond the news headlines and the weeks on a calendar. From my heart to yours, thank you. Thank you so much.
My Housemate's a Mermaid 
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