editorialgirl

I recently found a story I wrote in secondary school that’s made me rethink the way I write. Or don’t write, as is more often the case.

The story is called Prejudice. It’s the tale of a girl called Jo, who’s being bullied at school and decides to run away. (I know. Just… stop sniggering.) It hasn’t got a date on it, but it does have my class number, so I know it was written in the third year, when – as one of the youngest in my school year – I would have been 13. (Yes, you can read it in a minute. Just indulge me, please, by reading this first.)

I remember this assignment being set for us quite clearly. Our usual English teacher was away so we had a substitute; a young woman we hadn’t met before, who’d obviously been drafted in at the last minute. I don’t remember the lesson itself, but for the homework, she had simply asked us to write a 1000 word story on the subject of “prejudice”.

I can remember the joy I felt at this. After our usual lessons, which would involve reading and analysing set texts, perhaps writing an opinion piece or even a creative piece based on one of those, it was liberating to be given a vague theme and told to come up with whatever we liked.

I still work best when given a theme, a word count and a deadline. But usually I’m writing non-fiction, for work. Reading this story now has made me pine for the creative writer I was then.

Yes, there is plenty wrong with it – not least the knuckle-chewingly dreadful naivety of a young author writing on a subject she knows nothing about. But it’s what’s right about it is precisely what’s missing from any writing I do now: I didn’t worry about anything – I just wrote.

And what’s more, if you can ignore the haphazard punctuation, slippery spelling and terrible paragraph control, it’s actually quite well-structured. It’s (more or less) got a proper plot curve! The scene is set at the beginning, with some flashbacks to place the character and introduce some tension that will need resolving. The journey continues to a climax point, whereby a conflict enables the character to put her own problems into context. And so the tension is resolved.

Okay, you can read it now. I’ve copied it out exactly as it was written then, dodgy grammar and all.

So over the next few weeks I’m going to try and channel my blithely confident 13 year old self and try and write short stories the way I used to. I’m going to pretend that, once again, my standard sources are dad’s Daily Mail, mom’s Women’s Weekly and whichever books from Hall Green Library’s “young adult” aisle I am currently reading. Who cares? I’m going to try not to worry about a thing – and just write.

Every week for the last – ooh, I dunno – six months? A year? I’ve looked at “your pictures” in the Guardian Weekend Magazine, thought about sending one in, and haven’t. Finally, about a month ago, the theme was “derelict”, so I sent a picture of Moseley Road Baths – and two weeks later, I was honoured to see that it had been picked as the lead.

Of course, I’m really chuffed. But I must admit it wasn’t just about getting one of my photographs printed. I hoped that it might get Moseley Road Baths a bit more recognition.

The Guardian’s byline referred to the picture as showing “an abandoned swimming pool”, something that the Friends of Moseley Road Baths picked up on a few days later, saying: “The article incorrectly describes the swimming pool as abandoned (there is another fully functioning pool on site), but it’s not difficult to see why they drew that conclusion.”

Indeed, when I visited, the Gala Pool certainly seemed to be abandoned. And upstairs, room after room of dust and neglect. Boxes of photos and certificates dating back thirty or more years. Paperwork. Pigeons.

Even though the future of the Baths hasn’t been decided yet, it’s still a Grade II* listed building. According to English Heritage, Grade II* means it’s a particularly important building of more than special interest. Yet Birmingham City Council aren’t making any repairs at all, even tiny ones that could save a lot of money in the future. To my (admittedly cynical) eye, it does look as though the building is being left to rot, to make future bulldozing decisions easier.

I wrote about what I’d seen in the Gala Pool on the B13 forum after visiting there to take the pictures last August.

“…it’s in a dreadful state. There seem to be a lot of little things that could be done to save disaster in the future, but it’s almost as if they’re letting it run down on purpose.

For example, there’s a pinhole leak in a water pipe above the unused pool. All it would take to fix it is a stepladder (it’s not very high at all) and some epoxy tape (or even a bit of rubber and a pipe clamp, which would last a few years)… but no.

Instead, this tiny leak has already rusted all the metal in the seats and railings on the two stands below it, decayed all the plastic and rubber on the two floors – and is presumably therefore destabilising the structure underneath.

[here I linked to a picture by Keshvala, showing some of the worst rust, but it no longer exists on flickr]

I think that depressed me the most. It implied that there is no intent to stop the rot at all.”

I still worry about what I saw now, nearly a year on, because I know that all the leaks are still there. It can’t be long before the Gala Pool becomes too unstable to even walk around.

However, despite all of this, I haven’t joined the Friends of Moseley Road Baths – and that’s because I’d feel like a fraud. The fact is, I probably wouldn’t swim there. I just don’t go swimming any more. (On the rare occasions that I get the chance to, I prefer the quieter pool at Aston University). Of course, I want the building to be done up and maintained, but the FMRB campaign is for the pool to be refurbished as a pool. Should I be supporting this, if I don’t have any intention of following through and using the pool in the future?

(I certainly can’t think of a use for the Gala Pool if it wasn’t a pool, though. A gym area, perhaps? …Actually, I’d love to see it as a art gallery, but I know that’s just being silly.)

The Victorian Society, (who, in 2007, featured Moseley Road Baths on its list of the ten most endangered buildings in Britain) seems to think that turning it into a different type of venue is a problem that other Baths have faced before, so have pledged support for the pool to stay a pool. They said in 2007: “Knowing how difficult it is to find uses for swimming baths that fall out of use, we are urging Birmingham Council to do all they can to safeguard the future of the pool…”

So perhaps there isn’t any middle ground. Perhaps we do only have a choice between a fully refurbished pool or nothing. Whatever the answer, the Council aren’t telling us. They’re choosing to prevaricate instead. Everything has to fit into a wider strategy of health and fitness provision, which includes Sparkhill Baths, also currently closed. For the last few years there’s been a lot of talking – about sports halls, fitness suites, saunas, new pools – but not a lot of doing.

And if you were Birmingham City Council – already in the red and, as we’ve seen with Central Library, big on change for change’s sake – what would you do? When you can have a brand new pool for millions of pounds less, would you bother looking after a money pit, no matter how pretty it is?

You can see all the photos I took at the Baths, including more of the Gala Pool and the upstairs offices, in my Moseley Road Baths flickr set.

I went to the Birmingham Seen exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery today. Its run has been extended until January 31st – next weekend – so rather than wait for someone to come and see it with me I thought I’d better JFDI and went along on my own. (Actually, I’m glad I went on my own. It’s been ages since I just went somewhere on my own.)

BMAG vs Gas Hall

Getting there was a bit trickier than I’d expected. The exhibition was advertised as being on in BMAG, so I went in via the main entrance, up the big steps and through the massive doors. (They’re rather imposing, so pushing them open makes you feel really important. I like that.)

The trouble with going in this way, though, is that you can find all the old stuff quite easily, but there aren’t any signs to the Gas Hall… which, it turns out, is where most of the interesting temporary exhibitions are, including Birmingham Seen.

I ended up asking someone – and to get to the Gas Hall from the main exhibition galleries, I had to go through an unmarked doorway, round an unmarked corner and down some unmarked stairs. When I got down there, I realised everyone else had gone in via a side entrance, which would have made more sense, but how was I to know that? (Um, apart from the fact that I’ve lived in Birmingham all my life and should probably just know things like that?)

I do think it’s strange to advertise something as being on at the BMAG, but then put it on in what is pretty much a separate part of the building and not tell you how to get from one bit to the other.

The exhibition

So. The exhibition. If you’re from Birmingham and you fancy a bit of local history, the exhibition is just lovely. The theme is quite vague, in a good way, so anything that documents Birmingham’s history is in there. Oil paintings, watercolours, pen and ink line drawings… and lots of photographs: professional and amateur, fine art and documentary. There are a load of photos from the Central Library’s national collection (which, incidentally, should be given the dignity of a permanent home in a dedicated photographic gallery for the city instead of being stored in a barely viewed archive… but that’s another story). Exhibits date from the 18th century to the present and are shown in more or less chronological order.

Remembering how to remember

Leaving the content of the exhibition aside for a moment (again – sorry), what I found weird on a personal level was that I had forgotten how to “do” an exhibition like this, where there was so much I wanted to take in. I felt almost panicked when, within the first ten minutes of my visit, I saw a photo I really liked. How would I remember what I was seeing? I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I think it’s simply down to being online so much. I’ve become so used to being able to click around from one thing to the next, immediately recording (copying and saving) or bookmarking what I see, that I’d forgotten how real life works. “How to remember”, if you like.

But after bumbling around a bit, I relaxed into it and started spending a long time looking at each picture. I carefully read the blurb next to it a couple of times. I stood back and looked at it from a couple of metres away, then I went in close and studied the detail. If I saw something I really wanted to remember – the name of the artist, perhaps a streetname or detail of old Birmingham that I wanted to be able to talk to my dad about later – I made notes. Actually, I made a lot of notes. And it made a huge difference. Slowing down to take in these details, instead of clicking ’save’ and moving on, made a big difference to my mood – and I started to remember why we do things like this for relaxation.

Highlights

For me, the highlights of Birmingham Seen were all relatively recent works and my preference for these was probably as much down to recognition of the subject as appreciation of the style. I liked James Priddey’s bold pen and ink drawing of Moseley village from 1969 and Des Gershon’s Balsall Heath Anthology, a series of street photographs from the summer of 1970. Tom Merillion’s “Concrete Dreams” – superb tilt shifts of classic Brummie scenes like New Street Station and Spaghetti Junction from 1999 – were a very pleasant surprise (right up my street, as you can imagine) whilst Roy Peters’ photos of glum councillors couldn’t help but bring to mind this more recent tumblr blog.

There are also some detailed models and drawings of Manzoni’s original plans for the civic centre of the city, where Centenary Square is now. I didn’t know that Baskerville House was the first building in a grand plan that was never actually realised. It was supposed to be just one of a whole set of European-looking civic buildings. Seeing it its original context was fascinating.

Finally, though, the sadness I felt as I watched 7 inch cinema’s Birmingham timelapse film – a collection of photographs by Derek Fairbrother showing the Victorian Mason College building being demolished and Madin’s Central Library taking its place – knocked me for six. I sat on the little bench and watched it through a couple of times on the large screen… and I’m not ashamed to say I shed a tear for our poor city, destined to regenerate and regenerate, adding folly after folly without ever really getting it right, or even stopping to check. But again, that’s probably a rant for another day.

If you do fancy Birmingham Seen, it’s only on until next weekend so you’ll need to make it quick. (And take your mom – there were so many questions I wanted to ask that I knew my parents would have the answers to.) I highly recommend it – although I really hope that at least some of the photography collection will see the light of day again in one form or another.

I’ve been answering questions on formspring.me this week, as I’ve found it a good way to “just keep writing” (which would be a new year’s resolution, if I did that kind of thing).

The questions I’ve been asked so far have been quite thought-provoking. I’ve found myself writing a lot more little memoirs, on and off the site, which is the sort of writing I like to do.

But one question took me a while to answer: Of friends you’ve lost who do you miss the most? Am I alone in thinking this question was a bit… I don’t know, sinister?

Anyway. If you’d like to ask me a question – although if you ask me something as thinky as this I can’t necessarily guarantee an answer! – please go ahead.

The Birmingham Photospace team spent most of this weekend preparing for our latest exhibition, Birmingham’s People, which launches at The Drum on Wednesday night.

Birmingham’s People is made up of photographs of people who visited this year’s Artsfest in September. The Birmingham Photospace team set up a small studio in Victoria Square and invited anyone and everyone to have their picture taken by professional photographers (and team members) Matt Murtagh and Jennifer Peel.

There are 170 portraits altogether, 15 of which have been printed larger-than-lifesize (20″ x 30″) and the rest of which are printed smaller and mounted onto massive photoboards.

Like the Flashswap that we ran in March – and everything else that Birmingham Photospace does – this exhibition is to raise awareness of the fact that Birmingham needs a space for photography.

We’re really proud of the Birmingham’s People show, not just because the photos are really good (and they are) but because we’ve proved to ourselves that it is possible to put on a photographic exhibition to a professional standard without a great deal of cash (Birmingham Photospace is completely self funded).

But on to the real point of this blog post.

To promote the exhibition, Matt Murtagh was interviewed for BBC WM radio last week by DJ Loyd Williams. We were really pleased to get the coverage – not least because, despite the 10pm Saturday night slot, the blurb on WM’s site promised a programme dedicated to “showcasing local artists and keeping you up to date with the region’s arts scene”.

I was a little disappointed, then, to hear Matt – sandwiched incongruously between the “dance anthems” – subjected to a rather bizarre line of questioning.

Near the beginning of the interview, Loyd said, “So, you’re focusing on Birmingham’s People. I have to ask this – presumably, you’re local?”

Now I don’t know if I’m making something out of nothing here, but the way this question was framed (“I have to ask this…”) sounded to me like he was expecting a different – perhaps more controversial – answer. Matt doesn’t have much of a Birmingham accent, so perhaps Loyd was surprised when he answered, “yes, certainly – I was born and raised in Yardley.” He certainly sounded surprised, because after a pause, he answered: “OK. Oh – the posh part of Birmingham.”

Ye-es. I know Yardley isn’t the poorest area of the city, but it sure ain’t no Harborne.

Perhaps this could be put down to the fact that Loyd himself isn’t local, coming as he does from Burnham On Sea. But what of the next question?

Matt was explaining what the exhibition comprises. “Over the weekend we managed to take 170 portraits, which was an average of one every six minutes, I think. And we pledged that we’d have everyone’s portrait go up. So we’re going to have 170 prints and 15 large prints, which we’ve decided to be… well, the best photographs we took.”

“So tell the truth then,” began Loyd, “what was the criteria for choosing them? Was it based on attractiveness?”

Matt was, quite reasonably, stumped. “Well… it depends how you define attractiveness, I think,” he said. He got a guffaw in response. “Really? Tell the truth!”

Now I, along with the rest of the team, was part of the panel, so I know the truth. I know that we chose the photos based on… the best photos. How would anyone choose? The best photographs Matt and Jen took, of the 170 taken, were naturally going to be chosen on an aesthetic basis. Which 15 portraits would represent the 170-picture exhibition as a whole? Which were the best composed; the best directed? Which were technically of a particularly high standard? Would they work together as an exhibition, hung slightly away from the other 150-odd?

The best photos would naturally have to include the old, the young, the ugly, the pretty; people with props and without (there were plenty of other artists at Artsfest, so many had brought their art with them); black, white and Asian people; single people, heterosexual couples, same sex couples and families – because these were the people who came through the door. We wanted the large pictures to demonstrate all of this – to demonstrate the huge variety of people at Artsfest: and by extension, Birmingham’s People.

“There was a small panel of people choosing, but we chose the ones that we thought were most representative of what our vision of Birmingham is,” said Matt, finally. “And our vision of Birmingham is one that’s… it’s multicultural, it’s across all age groups, it’s… a perfect mix, I think. Which is what gives Birmingham its strength.”

Obviously Loyd had been waiting for the M word. The reaction was immediate. “Well you say that,” he began, “but some critics might say… because you touched on the word there: ‘multicultural’ – and as soon as you start sort of bandying words like, I don’t know, ‘ethnically diverse’, ‘multiculturalism’… people get a little bit scared and think that often it’s going to be a little bit… worthy. Have you had any sort of criticisms of that nature at all?”

Matt ummed again and Loyd continued, “’cause I’ve looked at, you know, the promo stuff, as I say, and there is a mix of ‘us ethnics’ in there [laughs] – which is good, that’s not a bad thing – but it does leave yourself open to criticisms of ‘is this really representative of Birmingham?’”

I have to admit to being saddened by this line of questioning. I love Birmingham because of its diversity and I don’t see an opportunity to put that across as “being worthy”. Multiculturalism in this sense doesn’t just mean “including black and Asian culture” – after all, a young girl with tattoos and piercings is definitely going to be representing a different culture to an elderly man in a crisp white shirt and tie – and that’s what the exhibition tries to show.

To put it another way, the fact that not everyone is like me – and my appreciation and love of that fact – is definitely representative of the way I see Birmingham.

I don’t know why it upset me, really. I just think it was a bit sad to bring it down to that level, although maybe it’s been good for us to think about it.

What I do know is that the photographers took pictures of everyone who came through the door volunteering to have their portrait taken. Every picture taken is going up on the wall at The Drum. And the fifteen portraits chosen to go up as large prints were chosen because they were representative of the 170, and look great together as an exhibition.

Click here to listen to the interview and hear how Matt actually answered the question (very sensibly and philosophically, of course… the star).

And if you’d like to come along to the Birmingham’s People launch night for the Artists’ Talk (with a glass of fizz!), to view the exhibition for yourself and find out a bit more about Birmingham Photospace, don’t forget to reserve yourself a place on our Eventbrite page.

I’m not happy about the new Twitter retweeting system. I’m blogging about it now in the hope that in a couple of weeks I’ll look back and think “what was I moaning about?” It takes time to get used to anything new, so I’m hoping that’s what will happen here.

Up until now, Twitter has watched and understood its user activity, then implemented new features based on that user activity. For example, the evolution of @ replies. Twitter noticed that people were interacting by putting an @ symbol before a username, and built on it to create the replies feature that we know today. However, the new way of retweeting doesn’t actually replicate or build on what users had been doing.

How it used to work

Retweeting had evolved to work like this: you copied and pasted the tweet, including the originator’s username, into your update box. Then you added RT at the beginning (eg “RT @username1: Have a look at this funny thing!”).

It had its flaws, of course. Often, including the RT and the originator’s username would take the character limit beyond 140 and you’d have to edit the original tweet down (sometimes this was done badly). Then there was the problem of retweeting something someone’s already retweeted. Do you include both usernames (eg “RT @username2 RT username1: Have a look at this funny thing!”) or just the originator’s username? Or just the most recent retweeter’s name? Or scrap all of that and reword it, adding a “via” at the end?

But, despite its flaws, lots of clients (including Dabr, the client I use on my phone) and add-ons (including the greasemonkey script I use on the web) include a retweet feature that works in this way. It puts the whole tweet, including “RT @username” at the beginning, into your update box – you then edit it where necessary, and update. And these client ways of retweeting work well, in my opinion.

How it works now

But the new “retweet” doesn’t work like that. Now you press “retweet” and it posts the original tweet, wholesale, into your followers streams. It has the originator’s name at the beginning with a small symbol to show that it’s a retweet, and it shows your name underneath, in small letters: “retweeted by @username”.

I don’t like it! I know they had a big job on their hands trying to come up with something that took into account the flaws with the old system, but I don’t believe it works. Here’s why:

• No ability to add context. This is my biggest gripe. Under the new system, you can’t add anything to the message you’re retweeting. What if I wanted to retweet an opinion that I found, say, distasteful – but also wanted to point out that I didn’t agree with it? What if I’m retweeting something as part of a bigger conversation I’m having with a group of users, and wanted to add a message about how it might be useful to that conversation? On Friday, one person I follow wrote “any scriptwriters on here?” I wanted to retweet her message, but to direct it to a couple of people I know who are scriptwriters, by adding their @usernames in brackets at the end. Instead, I had to just retweet the message and hope that my scriptwriter buddies might spot my retweet in their stream, instead of having the insurance of it appearing in their @replies. Not having the ability to add to a retweet is going to have to change the way I tweet, which is a shame.
• No way to judge context. When my eyes scan the stream and see a (new style) retweet, I find I need to know who is retweeting it before I can fully understand the message. I’m thinking “who wants to show me this?” I find I need to see my friend’s name first – that’s what tells me why I’m seeing it. “This is going to be funny”, “this is going to be serious”, “this one is interesting to photographers”, “this one is political”. I find myself looking for the “retweeted by…” first, before I read the tweet.

  Perhaps it’s something I’ll get used to, but this lack of context means I’m finding it more difficult to scan my stream. It’s like following someone new, but all the time! When I follow someone new, it always takes time to get used to seeing their name in my stream. For a while I am thrown and, on seeing their tweets, have to give myself a moment to remember who the person is and how come I’m following them. Now I find I’m having to do the same for retweets. It’s an extra “think-layer” that I wasn’t expecting to have to go through.

• No quick way to see how many of your friends retweeted something. When it says “retweeted by [your friend] and 4 others”, why can’t I click to see who those others are? Using the “old method” I could gauge a tweet’s popularity within my social circle. I would see the same message three or four times in my stream – which, yes, could be seen as a flaw, but also served as a popularity-meter for the tweet. Now I get it once (which makes sense) but I don’t immediately get to see how many other friends wanted me to see it (which removes a level of context). Yes, I can go to the “retweeted by others” link to find this out, but again, it’s an extra click and an extra “think-layer”.
• Your retweets don’t appear in your own stream. It’s as if they’re not real tweets. Using the old method, you are effectively saying “I want my followers to see this message” and your followers are treating the message in the same way that they treat other messages from you. Now the message bypasses you and just appears in your followers’ stream. Yes, it means that tweets can’t get mis-attributed, but now your followers not only have to judge the context for themselve, but they can’t reply to your retweets. I guess this is a combination of the first two problems in that I can’t use someone else’s tweet to begin a conversation or make a point.
• Tweets of yours that have been retweeted don’t appear in your @replies. Looking at your @replies is a quick way of seeing what sort of feedback you’re getting, both via people replying to your tweets, and people passing on your tweets – but now, the two forms of feedback are separated by two or three clicks. To see who’s retweeting you, you have to go to “retweets”, then click on “your tweets, retweeted”. Not intuitive and not part of your overall Twitter conversation.

I guess I could sum up my discomfort thus: I feel that, rather than build retweets into the loop (as users did, then Twitter clients built upon), Twitter has taken them out of the loop. Now, you’re simply pushing other people’s content to your followers. Twitter is a conversation – but retweets aren’t part of that conversation any more.

You might have noticed the whole NaBloWriMo writing-a-blog-post-every-day thing has fallen by the wayside somewhat. Well, I’ve decided to take some advice from every mother ever: “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. Writing every day would be good, but if it means personal posts every day, then I’d just rather give it a miss.

Back in 2005 and 2006, this blog was more of a journal. The first post was about a disastrous holiday I’d just returned from, where my then-boyfriend and I spent most of the week arguing and the Spanish police carried out a terrifying raid on the next door apartment, involving guns and smoke bombs.

That was about as upbeat as the blog ever got.

Over the next thirty or so posts, I covered my struggle with a ten year marijuana habit that had turned into an addiction, my unhappiness with my job, the breakdown of my relationship, the deterioration of my uncle’s health and then his death, my dad’s heart attack and finally, the death of my beloved Nanna.

It wasn’t very chirpy.

Worse than that, though, it wasn’t helping. In hindsight, it was a cry for help at probably my lowest ever point in life – but hardly anyone read it and those that did couldn’t help me. Yup – only I could do that. Eventually I realised this and, against every instinct in my then-addled brain, started leaving the house again, forcing myself to be sociable, finding “hobbies” (hello, flickr chums!) and giving up the weed.

The last entry in my old blog, before I deleted it in January 2007, read:

It’s said that you should dress for the job you want, not the job you’ve got; wear a managerial suit and you’ll soon be the boss. If I’m going to show a face online, it should be the face of the person I want to be, not the person I am at the moment. If editorialgirl’s going to be online, she might as well be someone who inspires me.

Everything changes and I need to learn to live with that. Life is all about grief and how we handle it. And you don’t handle it by moaning to strangers.

So this is the (cliche and metaphor ladened) end of editorialgirl as you know her. No more “ooh, get me, I’ve given up weed”, no more “boo hoo, everyone dies”; just a CV, an eye on the web and some photos. From now on, editorialgirl is fucking ACE.

See you in my future.

And so here I am, in my future. Hello! It is no exaggeration to say that today (three years almost to the day since I last needed a smoke, by the way) I’m a completely new person. And I’m happy to announce that I don’t need a journal any more. I mean, I’ve got a handwritten diary for those moments where things go a bit wonky – we all need to “let it all out” occasionally – but I don’t write about it online any more.

This blog is still for me, but it’s for things I want to be pleased to look back on. Posts with a point.

Ooh, lasagne!

Well, not quite. Okay, so it’s only day five and I haven’t actually got anything to blog about… already.

I had great plans for this evening. I was going to get home from work and have a bite to eat, then my Flickr friend Steve was going to pick me up, to go to the Lickey hills and take some firework photos. Then I was going to come home and blog about it.

It didn’t really work out that way. Despite blue skies all day, as soon as it got dark (just after four o’clock) it started pissing down with rain. So after a brief text conversation with Steve we decided to knock it on the head and save the night shoot for another (drier) evening.

Instead, I got a bus from work straight to the pub. After downing a couple of pints, we went for tapas and vino.

I’ve got this far, so I might as well let you know what we had:

• peppers stuffed with couscous and feta
• pork in Malaga sauce (ie sherry) with pine nuts
• manchego cheese with quince jelly
• paella valencia
• quesadilla (cheesy flatbread)
• pork with garlic and paprika
• calamari
• aubergine in vinegar (tastier than it sounds)
• chorizo in wine
• a duck dish that never arrived, so doesn’t count

and of course, olives, bread and two lots of pathathath bravath.

So, um, there you go.

Tomorrow we’re off to Eastbourne for the weekend to see the inlaws, so my blogging will be brief for the next few days. Yay, seaside!

This photo is of my great grandfather, Ernest, with his sister Jessie and his brothers Frank, Sid and little Freddie. Of the older boys, I’m not sure which one’s which, but my guess is that Ernest is second from left.

There are eight years between little Fred and Jessie, the oldest - so if he’s about six and she’s about 14 in this photo, that would date it at 1897.*

I don’t know where it was taken, but all of these children were born in Birmingham, as were their parents. This branch of my family – my dad’s mum’s dad’s side – is listed on censuses over the years at addresses around the Bordesley area – Deritend, Small Heath, Hay Mills – including, in the 1881 census, an address at Muntz Street, then the home of Birmingham City FC.

By the 1901 census, the boys and their parents had moved to Crayford in Kent, where Ernest met his future wife – my great grandmother – Rosina, before bringing her back to Birmingham with him to start a family. Jessie stayed in Birmingham, working as a tailor.

I have a tangible connection with Jessie; I wear her ring on my right hand. She left the ring to her favourite niece – my Nanna – Ernest and Rosina’s daughter. And Nanna left it to me.

Intriguingly, someone has been snipped out of this photograph. You can see the line where it’s been cut, between the boy on the far left and the others, leaving only a bit of spooky trouser leg.

*EDIT: I saw my dad at the weekend and he showed me the original photograph – here’s what was written on the back:
Frank Herbert 9 yrs / Ernest John 10 yrs / Jessie May 11 yrs / Sydney Charles 8 yrs / Frederick Clifford 3 yrs
This would date the photo at 1894.

Dad hadn’t noticed that someone had been cut out of the photograph – he couldn’t explain it either…! He did tell me about two more brothers, who wouldn’t have been born when this photograph was taken: Reginald Joseph, who was born in 1897 and died in a POW camp in 1918; and Horace Richard (Dick) born in 1901.

Dad has an amazing scrapbook full of pictures like this, with captions explaining who everyone is. I spent a long time poring over the photos and watching these children growing up, having children and grandchildren of their own and getting old.

I’m getting married next year. It’s all been going swimmingly so far – we’ve booked a venue and a registrar, we have a vague idea of numbers; we’ve even booked the cake (hi, Jenny!). But the one thing that we haven’t been able to have a proper conversation about without big frowns, waving of hands (and even, dare I say, a bit of going all silent) is the music.

It’s weird. We both really like music. We even have a big crossover of tastes – there are loads of bands and styles of music that we both listen to and enjoy. So surely it should be easy to make a list of music we want at our wedding…? But no.

For some reason, whatever I suggest “isn’t weddingy enough”. Yes, my husband to be, who has the biggest CD collection of anyone I’ve ever met, who buys at least three new albums a week; who goes into the record shop to “look for things I’ve never heard of”… seems to think that because it’s a wedding, things have to be done a certain way.

He wants us to have a cheesy DJ at our wedding, playing fucking Abba.

I know what you’re saying. “But everyone likes Abba!” I don’t. If there’s one band I will never, ever listen to, it’s fucking Abba. I hate them. I’ve got nothing against the band themselves (or even the songs, when it comes down to it – there’s no denying they were extremely cleverly written perfect pop songs) but whoah, I just hate the Abba sound, and what it represents. I only have to hear the first note of Mamma Mia or Waterloo – god! I’m having trouble even writing this, for fear I’ll get something stuck in my head! – to feel a deep, visceral STABBINESS.

Oh, okay. I do have my reasons.

I hadn’t even really thought about Abba until the mid 90s, when they suddenly seemed to be just everywhere. It was weird, frankly. A whole bunch of films were released with Abba music as the soundtrack. People who’d never mentioned them before suddenly professed to be their biggest fans. Every pop singer in the world seemed to be doing covers of their songs. And everyone seemed to be hailing them as a genius band. Why now? It got on my nerves a bit and seemed to go on for years. They seemed to become a byword for ironic campness. Everyone liked Abba – and even now, it feels almost sacreligious to admit you’re not that keen.

But it’s worse than that. There are three main events over the last ten years that have sealed my opinion of Abba and turned my meh-ness into a near-phobia.

Reason one: Hyperactive Flatmate

When I shared a flat with my friend, back in the late 90s/early 00s, we had a brilliant time. There’s so much about that era that I remember with fondness, this almost seems rude (if you’re reading this, ex flatmate, I don’t mean it to be rude). But I don’t think it’s possible to live with anyone without at least one thing getting right up your nose. Dear reader, that one thing was Abba. Whenever my flatmate was feeling hyperactive – which could mean deliriously happy, grumpily angry, gleeful about boys or cross about work – she would go on a cleaning trip and the Abba would go on full blast. There’s nothing like walking home from work and hearing the dulcet tones of Bjorn and Urethra (or whatever they’re called) coming from two streets away, and knowing that instead of a cup of tea and cosy chat on the sofa, you’re going to open the door to a whirlwind with a can of Pledge, slamming doors and hoover dancing.

Reason two: A Funeral

In 2001 an acquaintance of mine committed suicide. A tragic, unexpected, awful thing. This person – whom I won’t name here – was only young and had a lot of friends. At the packed crematorium, it transpired that he’d in fact spent two years planning his own death, including full details of the funeral. So, after marking his life with readings, poems and words from friends and family, what poignant song had he requested to play the guests out of the chapel?

That’s right: Dancing Queen. Yes, it was poignant the first time, as the tearful congregation turned to one another to smile at the dark humour and incongruity of the music. By the fourth time, ten minutes later, as everyone was still filing out, it was more of a torture. It was on a loop, but as those of us remaining – wide-eyed in the queue for the door – knew, it would have been disrespectful to turn it off. That person, his sad life and death, and the tragi-comic ending to his funeral are still the first things that come to mind when I hear the opening notes to Dancing Queen. Even now, nearly ten years on.

Reason three: National Express Christmas Parties

Yeah, I used to work for National Express. Yeah, it was all right. After refusing, hermit-like, to go to the company-wide Christmas party for a couple of years, I finally decided to bite the bullet and join in, because there were rumours that 2006 would be the last one and, as such, might include a special guest or two.

I don’t know if it was their last party, but it was certainly mine. Yes, there was plenty of free booze, but for a start, there was also the dreaded talky DJ. You know the sort: “Let’s take it… dowwwwn a notch now, ladies and gentlemen… do you remember Last Christmas? I do. And so does [pause while he finds the right button]… so does George Michael, ladies and gentlemen, yes… this one’s for all you lovers out there…”

And okay, it was actually rather fun for a while. Until he said the dreaded words. “Ladies and gentlemen we’ve got a great surprise lined up for you tonight. This band have come all the way from… Acocks Green [laughter] to play for you tonight. We sent out an SOS [pause] and paid them some Money, Money, Money [another pause... there was no need, they were half way onto the stage] ladies and gentlemen, it’s ABBA!” It wasn’t Abba. It was someone’s brother in law and his missus and their friends, dressed in those Marilyn Monroe wigs you get from Partyland, and singing really, really out of tune.

In hindsight it’s surprising I didn’t run screaming from the ICC. Instead, I made a mental note that this was the final straw; that from now on, I would avoid any situations where Abba, or Abba-related “tribute” acts, could possibly get to me.

And that includes my own wedding.

Just to reiterate: if ANY Abba is played ANYWHERE NEAR my wedding, I will PUKE.

I’ve explained all this to my fiancé but I’m not sure how seriously he’s taken it.

After all, everyone likes Abba, don’t they?