editorialgirl

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?

Argh! Due to Other Important Writing Commitments it’s got really late, so I’m ashamed to say that, on only the second day of NaBloWriMo, this is me publishing some nonsense that I really only wrote for myself, and didn’t intend to use, in the rush to get something out before midnight. So please forgive me for the ramble you’re about to read.

Who is editorialgirl?

I know this isn’t really what Jenny had in mind when she asked me about “the journey to editorial girl” in a comment on previous blog post (and I do hope to write about that “journey” a little bit over the next month), but this is about the name editorialgirl.

With apologies to my parents, I have a rather boring real name. It’s… common. My first name – whilst pretty, I guess – is currently the most popular girls’ name in the US and has always been in the top 20 in the UK. My last name – according to Wikipedia, at least – is the second most numerous surname in the UK and I’m pretty sure that’s been the case for about a hundred years. So, yeah, Emma Jones is a common name. There were at least two of us in my school (and it wasn’t a large school).

On the internet, a common, boring name is both a blessing and a curse. It means I can be as anonymous as I like (you’d have a job finding me via google if you only knew my name… which is fine by me) but it also means I can’t use my real name as a username anywhere on the web. And as for domain names – forget it. The journalist, the “it girl”, the poet and the “home business expert” have always got there first.

So – once I decided I needed one – I had a bit of a quest to find a usable username.

At first it was a variation of my first name. Emma is a short name and it’s how I prefer to be addressed if you don’t know me. If you do know me, I don’t mind you calling me Em, or even EJ, but not Emmy and definitely not Ems or Emsy. At one point in my mid twenties, however, Emma took a rather unexpected turn; from Emma to Em, to Embob. Embob was shortened to Bob and for some reason, I was Bob for ages. Some people were introduced to me as Bob and never knew what my real name was. One group of friends went the other way and took the name Embob to new extremes; it became Embobina and eventually Embolinajolie, which is, frankly, embarrassing when it’s used in public. …I’m digressing. For a while, my online username was Embob.

It was only as I turned thirty and started to need to use my online identity for work-related stuff that Embob started to seem a little… silly. Not only had my circle of friends changed, but I was starting to realise that my web skills could get me work, and that the best way of promoting my web skills was… well, on the web. I couldn’t use my real name, but I couldn’t seriously put a portfolio online under the name Embob, especially since no-one even called me that any more. I needed something more relevant.

I decided to go with something wordy. I’ve been an editor of sorts since the 90s and by now I was specialising in online editing. Whilst I was playing around with words including “web”, “web writer”, “web editor” and “web editorial” – searching for usernames that hadn’t already been taken – I found that something strange had happened. A song had stuck in my head. Like it or not, I was humming Madonna. It took me a good five minutes to realise why; to realise that my mind’s eye (ear?) had read “editorial” and mashed it into a song I used to dance around my bedroom to when I was ten. “For we are living / in editorial world…”

Yes, it seemed that my subconscious had chosen the name editorialgirl for me. Every time I read it, the song would start up in my brain again. Although I hadn’t planned to use the word “girl” in a username, the whole concept tickled me so much that I tried it out on a few websites (this was pre-Twitter, so I think I was looking for a Blogger ID). It was available everywhere I looked. I’d found my new name.

These days, I identify with the name editorialgirl (all one word, please, and all lower case) as much as my given name. I might even prefer it a little, since it’s virtually unique. I feel complete ownership over it. It’s my name on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Identi.ca and b3ta (to name a few) and if ever I find someone else using it – and there have been a couple – I feel absolutely indignant. I love editorialgirl.

And the downside? Well, of course, there’s the whole “girl” thing. Yes, for a while I worried that – even before I’d really started using it – I wasn’t a girl any more and that if I was still using this name in my old age, I would look like the virtual equivalent of mutton dressed as lamb.

But then I remembered Madonna in that leotard… and figured things didn’t seem so bad.

It’s November tomorrow, and I haven’t blogged since June, and that is a Bad Thing.

It actually got to the point where I didn’t feel that I could post anything, because it had been so long and the first post after such a break would have to be something really worth writing about. That’s nonsense, of course. But I do need to get out of the rut, which is why I’ve decided to give NaBloWriMo a go.

Yes, it does sound a bit like NaNoWriMo, doesn’t it? It’s not that. There is no way I could commit to writing a novel in a month. This is the National Blog Writing Month. A post a day for the whole of November. It’s doable, isn’t it? It certainly sounds doable. (Oh god, I’m scared now.)

So if you’re reading this – and especially if you’ve read my blog or Twitter stream before now – what would you like to read about on here? What should I fill a month’s worth of blog posts with? Personal stuff? Photography stuff? Facts; fiction? Work stuff? Funny stuff; serious stuff? (I can’t really write about current work stuff, actually, but I do have some ideas about blogging some “writing for the web” things, editing, browsing shortcuts and the like…) Or are you secretly cringing at the idea of a post every day from me?

Any kind of suggestions would be lovely and motivating, so please pop them in the comments. And if I don’t get any feedback, I’m still going to give it a go (so nerrr). I need to get into the habit of writing more than 140 characters at a time again.

Wish me luck!

Last April’s 4am Project was a bit of a washout for me. I didn’t plan anything and didn’t even give the idea of leaving the house a second thought. Instead, I woke up at about twenty to five, stumbled to the window, took a blurry shot of the street and went straight back to bed.

This time, though, was different.

I went to bed at about ten o’clock last night; set the alarm for two forty-five and actually managed to get up and out of the house by three. Nick Lockey drove us down to Balsall Heath where we picked up Matt Murtagh – and then we set off for the Lickey Hills.

Turns out Birmingham’s pretty busy at twenty past three on a Saturday night. The fast food restaurants were still serving and we saw lots of people zig-zagging their way home from all sorts of nights out. It wasn’t until we reached the city boundaries and the time crept nearer to four o’clock that we started to feel a bit more like we were doing something out of the ordinary.

As we passed the site of the former Rover Works at Longbridge – now an empty site surrounded by hoardings – I got a sense of what Karen must have had in mind when she first came up with the idea for the 4am Project. Seeing rows of diggers silently lined up in the gloom where the massive factory used to be was eerie, and the jaunty marketing notices on the site’s advertising boards seemed… well, a bit apocalyptic, quite honestly, without the bustle of the Bristol Road’s daytime traffic to give them some context.

At the Lickeys we left the car just outside the visitors’ centre car park (which is locked at night) and walked up the path to a vantage point that we’d already researched as suitable, because it faces East. We’d brought torches, but didn’t really need them – it was light enough to see where we were going.

By four o’clock we had set up our tripods and started taking photos – mostly of the city spread out below us (and of course, a few of each other, taking photos). Nick took some long exposures of himself swinging torches around and made some cool spun-sugar-esque light trail photos. We didn’t really talk – we were just enjoying the feeling that Karen writes about in her description of her inspiration for the project: “The city was asleep and it felt like I had it all to myself.”

At first, the only sounds were the odd chirrup of birdsong and the faint rustling of the bushes and trees – but within ten minutes, the birdsong had escalated into a full dawn chorus. Blackbirds sang in the trees above our heads, flitted around the undergrowth and perched on benches in the murky light. It was lovely.

At half past four, we heard voices – a couple had come to the same spot to enjoy the sunrise. They said a cheery “morning!” but then stood quietly watching the sky brighten in front of us.

Although it had been a dry night, the sun itself didn’t really appear until it had gone five – but when it did, through a thin horizontal gap in the clouds, it was magical. The couple who’d come to watch were delighted too. The man said, “here she is!” and I realised that they weren’t just enjoying a daily constitutional; they were here for the solstice.

To our surprise, on seeing the sun for the first time, our new companion produced a cow horn and blew it three times, like a bugle. He went for a fourth, but fumbled it and made a noise like a dying duck – but it didn’t matter. We knew what he meant.

As the sun rose higher the world began to feel normal again. The couple left us (“see you next year!”), we sipped tea from a flask (thanks, Nick!), then we packed up and wandered back to the car. The city was just as we’d left it – busy – but with joggers in the place of wandering drunks. I got home just after six and went to bed – then slept for a few hours and woke wondering if it had all been a dream.

So that was my 4am Project. Although I didn’t get many good pictures, I’m really glad I made it out this time – mostly thanks to Nick and his infectious enthusiasm for just about everything. And despite my cynicism for most things spiritual, I’m glad I saw the sun rise on the solstice and shared it with the mystery horn-blowing man, for whom it obviously meant a lot.

See more of my 4am photos
Nick’s 4am photos
Matt’s 4am photos

Prompted by this tweet from Chris Hart, I’ve been a bit nostalgic this week, thinking about the jobs I was doing ten years ago and how they got me to where I am today.

The two jobs I had between 1997 and 2003 were both life changing in complete opposite ways. The first was probably the most awful job I’ve ever had, but it taught me everything I needed to know about writing copy – and unwittingly gave me the confidence boost I had been needing since school. I left it walking on air. The second job – the one Chris is talking about – was probably the best job I’ve ever had (besides my current one, of course). It gave me friends for life and taught me everything I needed to know about the web and how people use it, which has shaped the rest of my career – but by the time I left I was a pretty broken person.

So this post is about the first one. Bad job come good.

In 1997, after leaving school with two poor A level grades and spending four years bumbling around, opening and then closing a small shop selling secondhand clothes(!) and finally doing a bit of freelance proof reading to earn some intermittent cash (I was great at the proof reading bit but not so great at the freelance bit), it was time to bite the bullet and look for some real work. My then-boyfriend dragged me to the jobcentre where, miracle of miracles, we found a small piece of card on the “no specialist skills required” part of the Jobs Wall headlined, simply, “Writer”. The jobcentre person phoned them. I went for an interview, spent half an hour there writing a feature about double glazing – and got the job.

So, from 1997 to 1999 I worked for a publishing company, writing copy for five newspapers. This sounds quite good for a “first proper job”, doesn’t it? In fact what these free “news”papers were full of was not news, but pure, steaming bull shit.

It’s known as “support advertising”. A feature about a company – the feature itself being of no interest whatsoever to the publisher – is surrounded by paid adverts from the featured company’s suppliers; the purpose being to make guilt money. If no suppliers lists are forthcoming, the money has to be extorted out of the featured company itself, even when they’ve been told they won’t have to pay.

You can imagine the kind of aggressive sales techniques that the sales teams used. Any number of awards, certificates, even new newspaper titles were invented, used and dropped in the name of money-making, loophole-exploiting, probably-given-their-own-archive-room-in-the-trading-standards-office, bad business. But at the end of every day, the sales teams hit their targets, the writers got another few published article for our portfolios… and the papers? The papers got stored and then pulped, as far as we ever knew. Job done.

The turnover of staff was immense. Sales staff came and went daily; some with slanging matches, some without. The number of times our “writers’ office” door was slung open by angry young boys in oversized polyester suits saying “I need to write a resignation letter NOW! Er, can you show me how to use the computer?” was, in hindsight, hilarious. My co-writers didn’t think so and by 1998 I was the only writer left.

In 1999 the “Directors” of the Birmingham office – a husband and wife team – decided that even they couldn’t bear it any more and left. A new Director came in – a short man from the Head Office in Derby, no less – and told me that he would no longer be able to pay me the salary I had been on. I could accept a pay cut of more than forty per cent (this would have taken my already laughable salary to £7,000 per annum) – or I could leave, so that they could get someone else in on the lower wage. Now, of course, I realise that this isn’t even legal – but at the time I didn’t know any better, so I simply refused the pay cut and made plans to leave.

But what happened next was strange – and rather cool. Having become used to this fast paced job – watching the very worst of human life argue amongst themselves every day and finding myself treated as slave one minute, IT guru the next – the anger I should have felt simply manifested itself as… energy. I was wired. I gathered my things, stored up some goodies on the PC (a rather impolite “scrolling marquee” screensaver, as well as a few read-me files telling whichever poor writer came to use it next what was in store for them) and left. The buzz that had been building up inside me since the morning’s conversation was amazing and I suddenly had the feeling I could do anything at all. I was so much better than any of these people I had met in the big wide world of work so far – and now, absolutely nothing could stand in my way.

The feeling didn’t go away, either. Over the next few months, I stayed wired. I made new friends like they were going out of fashion. I applied for – and succeeded in getting – a job I’d never have dreamt of having the confidence to apply for before, in an area I was interested in but had no experience or even real knowledge of (books about web programming).

Yes, this “publishing” company had actually done me a favour and prepared me in a way no degree or training course could have done: as well as boost my confidence through the roof and even show me – the girl who goes red at the slightest fib – how to blag a little, it had taught me how to write. How to write about anything at all, from any amount of information, to a strict wordcount and an even stricter deadline. The best grounding for my line of work – editing, subbing, writing for the web – that I could ever have hoped for.

Well, knickers. My web hosts apparently had a “hardware failure” – some problem with their MySQL server – which resulted in all of our websites going down for a couple of days.

When they came back up, a week or two’s worth of data had been lost, so my last post disappeared and Meowseley lost two reviews and an obituary.

Luckily, Google had cached Meowseley just after the last post on there, so Daz got it back, but my Winterval post is lost. I had saved a draft locally, so I’m going to try and rewrite it, but the comments – alas – are gone for good. Sorry, Cat, Jenny and Peter (and was there another one? I can’t remember).

Yes, I’m grumpy.

The other day I noticed something strange in my blog stats – I was getting referrals from the Birmingham Mail website. Turns out my old pal Victoria Farncombe, journalist, new mum, blogger and all round nice girl, had linked to me in one of those “answer these questions and pass it on” posts. A pleasant surprise, considering I had no idea she even knew about my blog, never mind read it.

In all honesty, I don’t normally like these sort of things, but for the last couple of days I’ve been off work, sick. (I don’t mean feeling-a-bit-poorly type sick, I mean actual-physical-pukey sick. Horrible-moany-want-my-mommy sick.) I’ve no idea what it was, but I’m very glad that it appears to be over, and today I’m just moping around trying to get my strength back. And I’m bored, bored, bored.

So here we go.

What were you doing five years ago?

Oh. Actually this isn’t as cheery as I was hoping. Five years ago, I’d just been made redundant. It wouldn’t have been as bad if circumstances were different, but a year or so before, I’d moved to Glasgow with my job and even bought a flat there. I’d yet to make many friends and suddenly being out of work made everything a whole lot trickier.

So five years ago I was temping – doing admin at a company that makes deodorant and fly spray – and wondering what to do next. It would be another six lonely and confusing months before I decided I wasn’t going to make it work up there and managed to sell up and move back to Brum. In hindsight, my move to Glasgow triggered the biggest bout of depression I’ve ever suffered (it lasted for about four years). No offence to Glasgow – it’s a fantastic city and I miss it in many ways – but I’m very glad I came home.

Right. I’m sure that wasn’t really what Vic had in mind when she tagged me. Let’s hope the rest of these questions are a bit more lighthearted…

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

Being poorly (did I mention I’m poorly?) my to-do list for today is fairly laid-back:
Replenish my fluids. I’ve had two pints of water and three cups of tea, which I’m sure isn’t enough, but it’s better than yesterday.
Eat something. Yep, I managed some scrambled egg on toast for lunch and I’m getting hungry again now, so that’s all good.
Tickle the cat. Check.
Read the popbitch and b3ta newsletters. That’s my reward for when I finish this.
Try not to get jealous knowing that all my friends are in the pub. Hmm… not so easy, but I think I’ll cope.

What are five snacks you enjoy?

Snacks? As opposed to food in general? Ooh, I dunno. Crisps and sweets don’t really do it for me. Don’t get me wrong, I eat loads, but usually at set meal times. So the only two I can think of are:
Peanut butter and jam on toast. Free at work! God love my employers and their feeder ways. And
Giant pots of Greek yoghurt with honey. Nom nom nom.

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?

I’m afraid I can’t agree with Vicky, who said she wanted to “end world peace”. (Hormone-addled brain, you say?) Yes, I think creating world peace might be better all round. Saying that, I’m not sure how my being a billionaire could have any sort of an effect on world peace, so I’ll stick to:
Buying nice houses for everyone I know. Does that count as one thing?
Employing the services of a cleaner. I could have done with that today. It’s funny how you don’t think about cleaning the bath until you really need a bath, and you only really need a bath when you’re too poorly to stand up in the shower, never mind clean the bath.
Private healthcare. Am I getting old? And did I mention I’m poorly?

I can’t think of any more. I’m actually really bad at spending money. Hey, there you go – that can be another one:
Employing the services of a personal shopper. Or two.

What are five of your bad habits?

Now, I thought I would be able to answer this quite easily but it turns out to be quite difficult. Maybe it’s because I’m quite happy with my lot at the moment.

I’ve just quit biting my nails, so that’s one gone. I don’t smoke any more. And I quite like drinking beer, so I don’t count that as a bad habit. (Apart from giving me a bit of a beer belly it doesn’t seem to have any adverse effects.) I speak to my parents every week and I’m quite good at remembering birthdays (thanks to Facebook, mostly, but who’s checking?)

I’m sure if I had been at work, I’d have had a few ideas from my colleagues. I talk too much, I hum tunes that get stuck in people’s heads, I tell the same old stories… But I’m not at work, I’m stuck at home, tickling the cat and drinking alka seltzer.

Whilst pondering this question last night, I asked my boyfriend. “You don’t have any,” he said. Oh, come on. “You can’t just be nice because I’m ill,” I pointed out. “It must be annoying when I sing along to that advert.” (You know, the one for the bank. With the cartoon train and the singer with a very high voice.) “Nope,” he said, “that’s endearing”. Really? “You can be honest with me, I promise. Anything. Anything at all.”

There was a pause.

“Well…” he said, “you do use a lot of towels.”

What are five places where you have lived?

Glasgow, Kilwinning (don’t ask – I needed somewhere to stay when I first moved up north, and this seemed to be the only option at the time), Chicago (for a month – does that count?) ermmm… Kings Heath, Moseley…

What are five jobs you’ve had?

Apart from owning a vintage clothes shop for a short time when I was twenty, and the year of temping I mentioned above, I’ve had a fairly straight career path: proofreader –> editor (for print) –> editor (for web), so all my jobs have been along the same lines.

Funny, really. If writing for the web had been a career option when I was at school, it would have been just what I wanted to do when I grew up. If only I’d known, I might have been a better student.

…………..

Well there you go. Done. Now, apparently, I have to tag five other bloggers to do the same. (This is “tag” in the schoolyard sense, not in the keyword/metadata sense.)

Who should I pick? I figured they should be (a) people I’ve actually met, if only once, and (b) as varied a bunch as possible. And boy is this bunch varied.

So, apologies to (in no particular order):

Amin, TWM Driver, Julia, Kris and Andy

…but “you’re it”.

Last week I was at London’s ExCel for Grand Designs Live, the TV show, which was filmed alongside the exhibition of the same name. Obviously I was there for work; to get photos of The House That Kevin Built and any other exclusive content for the website that I could find.

It turned out that that included trying to get celebs to comment on property-related stuff. So when I wasn’t dolled up in hi-vis jacket, hard hat and steel toe capped boots, clambering around a building site with my camera, I was hanging out in the green room, getting shy around people off the telly. A very, very random week.

I’ve realised that I’m not very good at talking to celebrities for the same reason that I’m not very good at science fiction. I just can’t … pretend. I can’t call them “the talent” like other telly people do. I can’t join in with the conversations about how amaaazing people look (unless they really do). I suppose I should try harder, but I just want to treat them like normal people, even though most of them think they’re not.

So it makes sense, then, that I got on fine with Dave Gorman (who I do actually think is great) because I could giggle with him about the naming of the “flick off for Britain” campaign and what was on the telly, like I would with anyone. But I found it impossible to even look at Kim-from-Kim-and-Aggie, especially after hearing her tell someone “no dear, I don’t talk about my personal life. It’s very private to me”. This is the woman whose autobiography, “The Story of My Brutal Childhood” was serialised in the paper, for goodness sake.

Being around “the talent” on a daily basis was one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had. I saw Denise Van Outen’s bottom, for starters. I don’t make a habit of looking at other girls’ bottoms, but she had to get mic’ed up in front of me, and there it was. (It’s teeny tiny – like the rest of her – and absolutely perfectly formed.) I heard Paul from The Salon telling some people that he was responsible for inventing the phrase “back, sack and crack”. I went to the loo and found Debra Stephenson (ex Corrie) getting changed into the most fabulous dressing-up dress I’d ever seen. “It’s not mine,” she said. “I’m going to a ball”.

Phil and Kirstie were exactly like they are on the telly. Seriously. We interviewed them and they sat closely, agreeing on everything (“we’re going to get one of those for our house,” “oh yes, we’re so going to get one of those too…”) and finishing each other’s sentences. After the interview, he went shopping and she shouted jokey admonishments after him, giggling when he rolled his eyes in mock sufferance. They genuinely appeared to be best friends, which must quite a feat for two people who spend so much time working together in the public eye.

Finally: yes, The Beeny was pregnant. Really, really pregnant. And just to confuddle my brain even further, it’s apparently only her third.

I went to the optician today.

I’ve never been to an optician before; but then I’ve never had any problems with my eyes before. However, earlier this week, I was helping our Senior Web Developer figure out a rather complicated set of circumstances to code into an e-Ticket (you may yawn; we were being rather clever, actually) when I suddenly noticed a rather disconcerting black spot in front of my left eye. I’ve had floaters in the past, which usually appear kinda stringy and transparent, but this was a definite spot and it was definitely black. In fact, when it first appeared, I thought it was a fly and tried to bat it away. It was accompanied by a headache, so I got an eyecare voucher from HR and booked myself an appointment at the opticians.

The optician asked me a lot of questions. “How long do you look at a computer screen for, during the day?” About eight hours. “But you take regular breaks?” Errrr… sort of… “What about lunch?” I eat a sandwich and surf the internet. “So, you’re looking at a screen for eight hours a day? And that’s what, five days a week?” Oh, wait. Sometimes I come home and go online again for a couple of hours. And then there’s the weekends… He’d stopped writing and was looking at me with a mixture of incredulity and pity. “Do you like your work?” I love it, I said. But I realise now I may have been rather silly where my eyes are concerned. “Rather careless, yes,” he said diplomatically.

He had a good look into my eyes, shining lights right inside them, which gave me the strange sensation of being able to see my own blood vessels. I had to read the bottom line of a chart about twenty times, with and without various lenses. Eventually he told me I’m a little bit long sighted and that I’ve got a slight astigmatism. “But I can’t find anything that might be causing this black spot. Your eyes must just be very tired. You’ll have to just make sure that you take lots of breaks and make sure you look away from your screen, into the distance, more often.” I don’t think it will be all that hard to remember to gaze off into the distance at regular intervals, but at least now I can tell my manager that I’m doing it on doctor’s (well, optician’s) orders.

He also prescribed some glasses, just to use when I’m on the computer (so, all the time then) which he said should help. Because they have been prescribed “for VDU use only”, my employer will help to pay for them, which is good.

And besides, they might look rather fetching.

I’ve been so neglectful of this poor little blog that, now I come to actually post again, I’m finding it hard to know what to write about. So I’ll do a rather personal post about – well – everything, really, just to get back into the swing of things.

The main thing that’s been keeping me busy is buying a flat. It’s a dear little thing, in a lovely road, and I’ve been out doing lots of grown up things like getting a mortgage, instructing solicitors and – I dunno, negotiating and things. Nothing’s going to happen for ages though, because the people I’m buying it from haven’t found anywhere to live yet (as far as I know). I could well be at the bottom of a very long chain; who knows. I’ve just got to wait and see.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time staring at the telly. The BBC have been collaborating with flickr for a project called Britain in Pictures, whereby a group was set up on flickr for people to upload their pictures to, then some were chosen for a slideshow on BBC interactive TV. A few of mine have been chosen and every time, I’ve felt a strange childlike joy at seeing a photo I’ve taken displayed on my own television. A shot of the Oratory that I took on my first flickrmeet also made it into “Tom Ang’s Choice” and the “most popular” sections of the BBC site, so all in all I’m rather chuffed.

Another reason to be chuffed is that a nice man from the Arvon foundation called last week to tell me I’ve made it onto the Starting to Write course after all. I’m going to be going down (across?) to Shropshire in September to learn how to Tell Tales and I can’t tell you how pleased I am. Now I’ve just got to read some more of the tutors’ works and stop being so nervous about the whole thing…

Finally, I spent a wonderfully long sunny weekend in and around Eastbourne last week. I don’t know whether it was the sunshine – the East Sussex coast seemed to be having the summer the rest of us have missed out on – the sea air, the company, or all three; but it was blissful and I’ve come back feeling fantastically chilled. (Plus, I managed to take a few more photos of buildings for the BBC group on flickr. Well, it would be rude not to, wouldn’t it?)