In which I dabble in the world of modelling...

People always say that a good writer has ‘life experience’.  Basically this translates as: a good writer has a whole bunch of memories and adventures that they can draw on as inspiration for their work, giving it that much needed sense of realism.

So to my mind, that means that a good writer should act a little bit like Jim Carrey from Yes Man. They should become the epitome of spontaneity; they should have eagerly outstretched arms, ready to grasp every new opportunity that flies their way.

Which might explain why, when I got the opportunity to do a modelling shoot, I confidently said yes before kicking my shy alter-ego backwards into the freaky cupboard in my university room where she belongs.

And well, well, well, look who turned out to be called ‘talented’.
(Yes they may have been fibbing, but they still said it.)

A week or so ago, I dragged one of my closest friends with me to Leicester and spent about 3 hours in a studio; the focus of a camera lens. We had numerous shots taken in numerous outfits, all the while laughing about lighting and the inevitable language barriers we were having with our Polish photographer – whose English was actually really good, and simply made us realise that for two English students we use slang way too much

 Suddenly, midway through the shoot, confidence levels began to drop. Luckily, someone had some rather eclectic but mood boosting music on their phone, (I tried not to cringe too much when the familiar tones of Busted sounded out from my Blackberry….)

Then, a pink feather boa got brought out.

Cushions appeared.

 Wind machines were used and became known as ‘our little friend’.

 All in all, it was ever so slightly surreal.

But the fun didn’t stop there. We had to do an introductory video about ourselves after the shoot where we suddenly transformed into ‘part-time models’ and got spoken to like we were professionals, rather than two 20 year old English Undergrads who thought it sounded like something fun to do on a Saturday afternoon…

Our egos were boosted even more that day by the lovely young man who served us in the chip shop on the way to the station, as we guiltily gave in to temptation and bought some chips to share on our way home. He said:  ‘I’ve given you some extra chips because you’re both so pretty, is that ok?’

We beamed, we blushed, we left.

But now I’m home, the excitement has died down a bit and these niggling thoughts keep entering my head. Regarding the chips – yes of course free fast food is a lovely gesture, and a true student would never dream of saying no! But another part of me, deep in the depths of my conscience is saying, ‘Of course it’s ok! But when I get fat because of all those extra chips would anyone think the same then?!’

I’ve also just seen my video. My first thoughts were ‘OH.MY.WORD.’

 My hair is flat, I have an annoying strand covering my eyelid and I ‘um’ and look down at the script we got given way too much. Is this the start? Am I becoming too vain and self-criticising? Am I becoming a REAL model?

I know. I need to swat the thought away like I would one of those annoying flies that delight in buzzing around your ear for hours.

Besides, I’ve finally seen some of the photos from the shoot and I actually quite like them. Maybe a little embarrassing, but truly they’re not that bad at all...(I hope)

 Plus, it gave me another subject for one of these blogs – maybe experiences really do create words…

Perseverance & Planning

Plans. They make you feel more organised - more focused, don’t they? Maybe I’m slightly OCD about things like this but when I’ve got a checklist of things to do, or things to achieve with little check boxes to happily tick away, I swear my productivity soars.

There ain’t no stopping a girl with a plan…

Let me explain. Last week after researching my next steps after graduation - my baby steps into journalism if you like - I reacted somewhat melodramatically upon my discoveries. Postgraduate study is nowhere near as easily funded as Undergraduate study, studying in London is impossible unless I find a stash of money hidden in that hole Bailey’s been digging in the garden, and living back home whilst I study might be necessary if I actually want to still be able to eat for a year… This might not seem so bad, I’m still left with options after all, but to me it seemed like yet another mountain of obstacles in my path. Without a safety rope to climb over it, I did what any individual in despair did. I sulked for about an hour. Then I got upset for a further half hour. Then I gave Bailey a cuddle and thought about it all again. I spoke to a few people, did a bit of digging, a bit of writing and HEY PRESTO! With the help of my unbelievably supportive parents, I realised it’s not so bad after all. So what did I do?

I came up with a plan.

So now you’re wondering what this magnificent plan I keep banging on about entails right? Well, the first step is experience. Despite spending two weeks on a blogging internship this summer which I loved, I still need to get some media experience, so for ages I’ve been trying to get a contact or even get in contact with someone at a local paper to apply to spend a week there. But without success. For the Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism I want to do next year, you need some physical experience at a local/regional newspaper or magazine to even get looked at seriously when you apply. It’s a basic necessity. Yet, for an awful lot of local papers and magazines, you need to already be on this course to even get looked at for the experience. As a local journalist quite rightly pointed out to me, it’s a vicious circle. I took numerous rejections but in true journalist style I persevered. I phoned and emailed my CV everywhere I could think of and…I might have to wait until Easter but I’ve only gone and nabbed a week at a local paper! That’s a tick in box number one I think!

Secondly, whilst doing this I also sent some theatre reviews in to some local publications. I’ve hence transformed from dreaming of getting my name in print within a local paper to actually achieving it. I am on the website for one local paper (http://www.worthingherald.co.uk/lifestyle/entertainment/arundel-festival-s-shakespeare-season-the-taming-of-the-shrew-1-4205184) and in print for another local paper  (The Littlehampton Gazette)- published this week! Tick in box two, perhaps?

So that leaves me to my next step -locating where I want to study journalism once I’ve graduated from Nottingham. Ambitiously my first thoughts were of the bustling centre of London or the familiar yet lively city of Nottingham, but once I looked into the details I realised I might have to become a home girl once again….But to be honest, Brighton’s really not that bad is it?! Especially when the sun is shining!

So as I sit, awaiting numerous prospectuses to be delivered through the door, it feels like now I’ve identified what qualification I need to get and managed to book some experience in, I finally am moving on again in my progress. I can still apply for graduate schemes and internships etc, but for the time being my mindless floundering through the murky depths of journalism is at an end. I have joined the throng of dedicated writers, armed with nothing but a mind, perseverance, curiosity and a pen. I suppose it is true, if you want something hard enough you just need to keep trying until you get there.

So, after spending a minute doing a well-deserved victory dance in the style of Zingy – that little orange blob on the EDF adverts – I say bring it on. 

For I am a determined girl with an ambitious plan.
Watch out world.  

Twitter Grammar

So I’ve returned to Nottingham for a few days which has proven to be quite a nice change of scenery, despite the rain that has just attacked the world outside. So, sitting in my room with the rain hammering against the window I have decided to update you lovely readers with the amusing evening I had last night. It came in the style of a Twitter feud…

Remember when you were at school and your teacher used to correct spelling or grammar mistakes with the boldest red biro she could possibly find, scrawling over your work for everyone to see and placing a big red circle around any missed apostrophes and capital letters?

Well, the comment and reply features on social media have, for me, turned into something pretty similar to this. I’ll admit that when I first started texting and using the website Bebo before Facebook became popular, I ashamedly wrote in text-speak. That illiterate and indecipherable-to-adults language all teenagers at some point in their lives rejoice in using, spammed up my profile, my emails, my texts…everything except my everyday speech and thankfully, my academic work. Then you seem to hit a wall. You realise you actually have a Querty keyboard with all the letters readily available to you…you don’t need to shorten words when you can type just as quickly the full morpheme as you can the abbreviation. Text-speak died when that realisation struck. That and the one that made me think I just looked like an idiot typing ‘C U l8r bbz, luv ya’. Really?!

So, when I began writing properly again on Facebook and joined Twitter, I thought that any little grammar slip would easily go unnoticed because at least I wasn’t writing like a complete pleb anymore.

Oh how wrong could I be…

As an English student it seems that my friends delight in pointing out when something I’ve written in a hurry on my phone and speedily uploaded without proof-reading is wrong. When I’ve missed an apostrophe because I’ve been too tired to notice, or when, in my eagerness to upload my message I put two dots in the aposiopesis instead of three…

Last night was such an example. Laughing at my childish excitement at the return of The Great British Bake Off, I was called ‘cute’ and quickly made into a tweet… a tweet which I for once, could say was grammatically incorrect as my friend wrote ‘exited’ instead of ‘excited’. To my shame though, she was quicker to notice and promptly deleted her faulty tweet making my sly dig look rather stupid. But she still retaliated. And before I knew it we were firing amusing tweets at each other about grammar errors, which ironically led to more being made. In between our fits of laughter as we thought up the most annoying comebacks, I thought I’d be clever and explain that as Twitter was social media, my lack of compliance with standard grammar and punctuation rules was acceptable as it created a more casual, informal atmosphere with the friend I was speaking to.

‘I sEE wot u meen! Good point!’ she quipped.  Text speak was back.

And so continued an evening of petty remarks amidst more laughter as we set about publicly shaming each other on our Twitter profiles. Thank God we found it funny, because the amount of people who normally delight in picking up on my grammar mistakes is ridiculous to the point of annoying. Am I not allowed to slip up occasionally?!

I suppose not. Twitter is a grown-up’s version of social media. You have 140 characters in which you have to be as witty and amusing as you possibly can…it’s no child’s play. They’ll be no Bebo gifts to send to your friends here.

I should have learnt my lesson . An aspiring journalist can afford no personal slip-ups when it comes to their own writing – especially when it gets published worldwide. Back to proof-reading everything I go.

But despite all that, it’s still tempting to create one tweet in the style of the good ol’ days…

TxtSpk FTW ! Lol. 

Ralph Meets Rust

Meet Ralph, my nice little red Ford Ka. 

Around this time of year I get, what I have less than affectionately termed, my ‘motor month’. Around now, everything from car insurance to the M.O.T expires. Taking a deep breath and a noticeable chunk out of my bank account, I keep my fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong. Ignoring jibes from male friends that this is such a girl’s car, and dismissing suggestions that I look for a newer vehicle or try to sell Ralph, I still vainly hope that all goes well so I can keep him for yet another year.

I have a history with Ralph you see. He’s ferried me to and from both college and work, as well as making it easier for me to get to my Dad’s house not to mention all my friends, who cleverly decided to live at least twenty minutes away.  He’s pretty much what you’d call a run-around car, which means he doesn’t have many miles on the clock, but nevertheless I still insist that Ralph is much needed and - strangely for an inanimate object - much loved.

So this week, I optimistically drove him to the garage for his yearly M.O.T, fully believing that all would be well. I waved away any doubts and fears that were expressed over his brakes, his clutch, his windscreen wipers and any kind of obscure mechanical fault that I wouldn’t fully understand. “He’ll pass” I insisted, giving him a confident pat before I zoomed off.

He failed. Ralph had rust.

Disappointed, we forked out just over £100 to cover the test and the welding Ralph ended up needing, whilst I silently cursed myself for being so confident and jinxing his fate. He’s back now, parked for the time being in the lay-by outside where I can see him. But I just can’t get something out of my head.

When I told a friend about my car’s failure, he grinned at me and slyly asked, “You know what they call rust for cars, don’t you?”
I shook my head.

“Cancer.”

I blinked. I laughed it off. But I faintly remember hearing this before…

So that’s it. Despite being reassured that he won’t need any more attention for at least 18months regarding his rusty underside, I can’t help feeling that I’m dealing with a case of impending car cancer.

Poor Ralph.
(...I wonder how much a Fiesta would cost...)

Money in the Boot

Car boot sales: a land of cowboy-hat wearing, banter loving traders of junk right? Wrong. 

This summer, cleverly missing all the seasonal job vacancies after my internship, I returned home, opened my wardrobe and decided I would make my millions like Del Boy; selling my childhood miscellany. I decided, sentimentally, that I couldn’t quite bring myself to part with my box of Barbie’s just yet, so I packed up the rest of my unwanted belongings and packed them snugly into Ralph, my little red Ka.

Yes I had to rise at an abominably early hour on the day, driving bleary eyed to the market. 

Okay I also had to sit in a queue for over an hour because, even at 6AM, it seems to be a universally known fact that no matter how early you arrive at a boot sale, there will always be a queue of cars waiting before you.

Nonetheless, I managed to grab a pretty decent spot next to a man who seemed to trade in hardware tools attending an impressive 3-4 markets a week! I’d like to think we became friends after he offered me some of the raspberries he’d just bought… Later a lady from the stall opposite rushed over, buying a pair of sunglasses from my display. She was so immensely grateful that I had these –on a hot day she’d tragically left hers at home. As I explained to my pitch neighbours that this was my money making scheme for the summer, they quipped that they expected to see me the following week. It seems my dear readers, that I have been welcomed into this dusty community… Trotter’s Independent Traders watch out!

Asides from breaking into this exclusive circle, I spied some other interesting characters. An elderly man wandered past my pitch with multi-coloured hair – I’m not even joking. If anyone does a remake of that McFly song about the girl with 5 colours in her hair, they should look to this guy for inspiration. Old and rocking it…

Or there was the little old lady who stopped by my table to rummage through her handbag looking for a small packet of Extra mints…once she finally found them, she kindly offered me one. Okay so she didn’t buy anything from me, but that’s rather sweet right? Or there was the kid, early teens, who flicked through every game I had repeating “got it…got it…got it”. Needless to say he didn’t find any he didn’t already own.

But some odd personalities did actually buy something. There was the father who bought his little girl a soft toy; a cuddly dog. This was her second choice though. She had originally reached for the fluffy purple unicorn provoking her Dad to say, “That’s a Unicorn – they’re not real.” Her face crumpled; I’m pretty sure her childhood dreams were crushed that day. She settled for the dog.

So asides from the people-watching that would make the likes of J.K.Rowling proud, did I actually make a cash profit, making the early morning worth it? Did I heck. £60 later and I found myself gleefully jingling my money bag home thinking to myself…I wonder how much I could get for those Barbies… 

An Ice-Rink, A Swimming Pool and Africa.

Although the title might suggest otherwise, I haven’t actually spent the last week travelling across the sahara on skates before jumping into the red sea. But I have been busy.

~ "Get your skates on..." ~
I conquered my fear and went ice-skating. Let me explain.
When I was about 12, I went ice-skating. I'd been before but I had never fallen over so I began confidently venturing nearer the middle of the rink. Then?
BAM!
A bulky ice hockey guy collided into me and i was knocked off my feet. Not in a romantic way either. I awkwardly got up, laughed nervously and attempted to skate off with a numb bum and a bright red face. I decided to get out of the middle of the rink (AKA the danger zone!) Then?
BAM!
Another guy, this time showing off, knocked me off my feet. I haven't quite mastered falling over gracefully, so I clumsily landed on my wrist....which fractured. (On the plus side, I got some pretty funky colours on that plaster cast...)

Since that, I’ve only been skating twice. Once was a fleeting experience with school - when I realised that my partner felt more fragile than me I decided this probably weren’t going to help my confidence levels much. The second time was somewhat better but I’m slightly hazy on the whole experience because it was back in high school and that seems like so long ago! Unless pure fear just blanked the memory out...

But last weekend I went ice-skating and I loved it. Genuinely. Even better? I’m still in one piece and avoided spending an afternoon in A&E! Happy face! :-) Perhaps it’s because this time I went with an ice hockey player rather than colliding with them. Yes I had a few wobbles, but I did it and it was fun! Maybe I will go again... or maybe that will be tempting fate..?


~ "No bombing..." ~ Either side of this skating adventure, I went swimming. My aim was to do this in replacement of the gym - gentle exercise considering I was ill last week and my stomach was angry. However, I have slowly become something of a fitness fanatic and I don’t think I can still term my swimming sessions as gentle, relaxing exercise. 40 lengths per swim resulted in some aching legs and a much needed rest-day - this gives me all the evidence I need for that statement. But what’s a bit of aching in the grand scheme of toning hey? No pain, no gain y’know...



~ "The pen is mightier..." ~

I have had an explosion of writing.
Someone told me once that if I wanted to get on in journalism I should use my student years to write for free, getting my name everywhere and anywhere. So, I’ve submitted another Huffington Post blog, finished my columnist application and managed to nab a news article for The National Student by responding to an email from the editor.  
Ok, I’ll admit, I didn’t know that much about Sudan when I replied. In fact, \all I really knew was that there was a humanitarian crisis in Darfur, courtesy of a volunteering stint at Oxfam. Now?
Now I know all there is to know about it. I know why the civil wars started, when South Sudan became independent, why so many refugees have fled and from where, and, crucially, who the president is. It looks like not only did i manage to grab another article to write which is now online (http://www.thenationalstudent.com/News/2012-07-18/the_situation_in_sudan.html) , but I also managed to get up to date with current affairs. Sometimes, I impress myself.



Now, I must love you and leave you as I'm staying up to do some more writing. I popped off to watch a play this evening, being the cultural critter that I am, and I have a very important review to write.
Watch this space.

Reflections From A Blogging Intern...

I know I've been a bit quiet on here recently, but I do have some excuses...

I got my results and, in high spirits, I scuppered off home for a week of R&R back home on the south coast; spending days with my Mum and our teddy-bear-like dog Bailey.
Except he'd had a haircut and looked more like a goat this time...

At the start of July, I returned to Nottingham and spent a lovely weekend with my Dad and his girlfriend. We checked in at a hotel in Eastwood & oh did I make full use of the leisure facilities! Think a gym, swimming pool, steam room, sauna...jealous yet?

Finally on Monday 3rd, I started my blogging internship at Skeleton Productions; a video production company in Nottingham. My main task was to contribute copy for their blog at Video Worth Sharing. But occasionally I managed to get some content on their official Skeleton Productions Website. Every blog had to be focused on video, acting as a marketing tool for the company.

It definitely opened up my eyes as to how writing can benefit businesses. I learnt about RSS feeds, how best to research content and I'm pretty sure I have now mastered GoogleDocs!

Now for the drama. My two weeks were rudely interrupted when, at the start of my second week, illness struck. I tried to plough on through but ended up going home early for two days before I agreed that a day off was needed. But fear not dear readers! I returned to full health for the remainder of my internship and I've travelled far down that road to recovery.

So my summary of the last two weeks? 

It's been incredibly beneficial. Skeleton Productions appear top on Google Search Results and I've gone and got my name all over their blog pages! I've done a bit of networking, gained some good contacts, learnt a lot and hopefully, after some team participation in a bar quiz, an office move and an office party, managed to gain some friends for life.

So what now?

My latest challenge is to apply for a columnist position at my University magazine...I won't say too much - I'm keeping my ideas tip-top-secret until I've applied...

But something has occured to me over the past few weeks. If I don't go into journalism, marketing most certainly is an option now. But being a columnist is still my dream.

However, I've always said I wanted to write something meaningful - something with a purpose. But doesn't all writing have a purpose? Isn't writing that makes you smile just as important as writing that informs you? Just because a piece is light-hearted doesn't make it irrelevant.
Sometimes people just want a break. 
A bit of a laugh. 
So why shouldn't I just try to focus on writing that shares the smiles?

Watch This Space.