Five films to watch if you're feeling blue

So, the weather dreadful and it’s two weeks until pay-day. You haven’t stuck to your self-imposed, restrictive healthy eating plan (or is that just me??). What films should you watch if you’re in need of cheering up? Here are my personal recommendations. Please feel free to add your own.

1. My Neighbour Totoro

DIr: Hayao Miyazaki

Fun for all the family. Although this is a children’s film, we watched this long before we had kids and it brightened up a dull, Sunday afternoon.

MEI and SATSUKI are two young sisters who move to the countryside with their father while their mother is having a prolonged stay in hospital. They meet up with a friendly neighbourhood troll one day and their adventures begin. Totoro - the troll in question, is the most adorably squidgy fellow that you’d ever hope to meet. Enough said.

2. Life is Sweet
   

Dir: Mike Leigh.

Jane Horrocks plays NICOLA; a young woman with lots of issues. She is anorexic, unemployed and generally pissed off with the world. Her favourite word is ‘Bollocks’, which she casts about constantly. Claire Skinner plays her tomboy twin sister, NATALIE, who works as a plumber and has her life sorted. Jim Broadbent and Alison Steadman play their hapless parents, ANDY and WENDY.

This is a joyous film; full of warmth and hope. It also has moments of bathos and comic absurdity.  Andy’s friend, AUBREY, (played by the brilliant Timothy Spall) opens a restaurant serving a menu of disgusting and pretentious sounding food.

What I like about ‘Life is Sweet’  is that, issues surrounding eating disorders and unemployment notwithstanding, it is a positive, unpatronising portrayal of working class life. Kind of the antithesis of ‘Rita, Sue and Bob too’ (although I do quite like that film too). It is moving without being sentimental. Long before Leigh’s ‘Another Year’, it has a happy marriage at its core, based on mutual liking and respect. The family love and look out for each other, even if they don’t necessarily understand each other.

3. Amelie
   

Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

As we walked into the cinema, my companion said to me, ‘The review of this film says that it defies anybody to be unhappy when they come out of it!’ He said this to me because a) I can be perceived as a bit of a stroppy cow and b) I was in a bit of bad mood that day. Anyway, the reviewer was right; a wonderfully weird and romantic film with stunning visuals, I definitely came out happier then I went in (and not just because of the ‘family’ bag of Revels I’d just had).

4. Zoolander (the first one!)

Dir: Ben Stiller

Delightfully silly and surprisingly subversive (their criticism of the fashion industry is spot on - eating disorders, exploitative trading practices with developing countries etc). Phrases like ‘blue steel’ and ‘u-goo-gilly’ have made it into common parlance now.

5. It’s a Wonderful Life
   

Dir: Frank Capra

James Stewart and Donna Reed. A depressed, suicidal man, GEORGE BAILEY, is shown what life in his hometown would have been like if he’d never existed. Slightly schmaltzy in parts but we can forgive Jimmy Stewart anything. Brilliant scene at the school dance. If you’ve never seen this then you’re in for a real treat!

The 10 best books about adolescence

What is about books about teenagers that make them stay with us? Is it because this time represents a comma in our own lives - the time before everything changes? I've compiled a highly personal list - feel free to contact me about any glaring omissions or suggestions of your own.

1. The Soul brothers and Sister Lou by  Kristin Hunter

I got this out of the school library when I was about thirteen and it really made an impact on me. What I remember of it is that it is about a young girl/woman finding her identity and negotiating tricky areas of race and politics. This is a book that doesn't talk down to its readers. This is the description on Amazon (other web based book suppliers are available):

African-American teen Louretta Hawkins discovers music and, through it, the worth of her black identity. She navigates an urban world of poverty, overcrowding, hostile police, and feuding gangs to emerge triumphant, secure in her talent and in the love of her family and friends. Winner of the Council on Interracial Books for children award as the year's best book for older children. "Packs a wallop Taut, fast-moving, absorbing, and believable, it probes with honest realism the problems of a wide range of unforgettable characters This powerful book deserves wide reading." -Book World

2. Are you there God, it’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume

Judy Blume was/is the queen of adolescent literature and this book deals with all the issues surrounding puberty. I think that it resonated with me at the time because Margaret was also dealing with issues surrounding the fact that her parents were from different religious faiths. My own issues were slightly similar (although in my case it was cultural differences) I can’t remember whether it’s in this book where Margaret thinks that one of her neighbours is Hitler, living incognito! I remember questioning everybody about whether Hitler was actually dead, when I was a child, him and Jack the Ripper.

3. Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume

Almost the companion book to the one above in that this one deals with puberty from the male perspective. I was quite confused as a child as to why the main character felt the need to wear long coats or carry a book around with him at all times to hide his groin at certain times of the day! All is clear now…I think!

4. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

One of my all time favourite books! Cassandra, her older sister, Rose and their younger brother, live in genteel poverty in a ruined castle with their eccentric father who has written one brilliant book, years ago but nothing since. The really wonderful thing about this book is that the characters are so life-like, the main character, Cassandra, sounds particularly authentic. The book deals with first love but the more interesting relationships are the family ones - between the two sisters and between Cassandra and her father.

5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Amazon again: The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky, Perks follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I hold my hands up here - I haven’t read it! Shameful to include it in the list but the film is so brilliant that the book just has to be, too!

6. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Katniss Everdeen kicks ass and shoots to kill. She is resilient and resourceful as she negotiates her way around the dystopian landscape. She is also compassionate and loyal - a true role model!

7. My Mad, Fat, Teenage Diary by Rae Earl

The genuine diary of the teenage Rae Earl  which tells of her struggles after her spell in a psychiatric ward. She has issues with her weight and with her mother but there is a thread of humour and self-awareness, running through the diary which prevents it from being depressing.

8. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Not strictly about adolescence but had to include it as Jane grows up in the book. She refuses to be beaten down, by Mrs Reed or by her teachers or by Rochester or St John Rivers - the ultimate rebel and feminist heroine, lives life on her own terms. Writes for another position after becoming bored at the school in her role as teacher.

9. Jacqueline Wilson, ‘Girls’ books - Girls in Love, Girls under Pressure, Girls out late etc.

If Judy Blume is the American queen of teen, then maybe Jacqueline Wilson can be said to hold the British mantle. Friendships, eating disorders, love, betrayal.

10. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman

I read these as an adult. Wonderful, brilliant books that detail alternative realities and quantum physics and murder and betrayal and religion and sex! (Do Lyra and Will have sex at the end? I remember having many pub conversations about this. One thing is clear is that they have some kind of sexual awakening which could be perceived as sin but in these books signals the beginning of knowledge and enlightenment.)

Adversity makes for more interesting reading

Be honest with me, reader, do you ever look at the pictures that people post on Facebook of their wonderful holidays or blissful days out, and just think - 'Oh, sod off!' Particularly if you are having a cruddy day, yourself. It is partly the fault of social media, we tend to put up the edited highlights of our lives, cherry pick the photos and neglect to mention the crippling diarrhoea that had the whole family in its grips on day two of the holiday. (unless you are Billy Connolly and get a whole stand-up routine out of it). Don't worry, this isn't one of those, 'Isn't my life wonderful' pieces, this, instead is a catalogue of mild mishaps, accidents and calamities that happened on a family day trip on one day - today in fact. People seem to like lists (I'm very fond of them myself) and they do seem to be easier to read, so I'm doing this in list form.

1) We set forth, with joy in our hearts, to visit Arundel Castle (although perhaps the joy thing was just me - I love castles). Only to find when we got there that the castle is closed on Mondays. Never mind, Arundel is a charming little place, crammed with antique shops and second hand book shops and old fashioned sweet shops where they weigh out the sweets. (none of which we could be bothered to venture into with the kids). We stopped for lunch in a coffee shop, had some very nice cake, spent a surprisingly large amount of money and decided to go to Littlehampton instead, which was just round the corner.

2) Got to Littlehampton, went down onto the beach. Buffeted by bracing winds but the kids seemed to like it - drawing pictures in the sand etc.. Kids went looking for rock pools, younger daughter fell over in the sea and got soaked from head to foot. We did NOT have a change of clothes for her, so after much dithering, decided to walk into to town, find a cheap clothes shop and buy her a tracksuit or similar. Halfway to town, had to double back because older daughter needed a poo. Half an hour later, walked into town again.

3) After a fruitless trip to Lidl, eventually found suitable clothes in another shop, bought replacement clothes and as we were leaving the shop noticed that it was absolutely chucking it down outside. Put rain cover on pushcahir. After some tedious wrangling, persuaded older daughter to put her hood up, put my hood up and ran across the square with her. This was where everything seemed to turn into a bizarre cine film from the 1970s. I was holding my daughter's hand and I felt her slipping over, I held on harder and tried to pull her up, but instead of keeping her upright I fell down with her. I think I somersaulted over her and landed slap, bang on my face. Is there anything quite so exquisitely painful as slapping your forehead, nose, mouth and chin against concrete? Everything burned and my nose burst open. I righted myself, looked round to check on my daughter (who was fine) then proceeded to cry, noisy, embarrassing tears from the pain and the shock. (I think I might have also uttered an expletive). Everything speeded up here, my other half hurried over, asked someone if they were all right (I assumed he was talking to my daughter as we tend to ignore each other's physical complaints since we've had kids; 'you've got dengue fever, never mind, man-up and give the kids a bath!') He was actually talking to me though, as he helped me up he said - 'you're really bleeding!' He then (out of all concern but more stridently than he realised) came at me with a tissue and I felt like my nose had burst afresh! All this time it was still chucking it down with rain, my older daughter had started crying, more at the sight of my blood, we think, and there was a dispassionate audience huddled under a shelter at the edge of the square. I was mortified and scurried into a corner where my husband passed me tissue after tissue and it felt like the blood would never stop. (I've never had a nosebleed before, so forgive me if this all sounds a bit diva-ish) Amongst all of this a kind woman (perhaps not all the spectators were as uncaring as it first seemed) came up to me with a wad of tissues. I hope I thanked her, I think I did.
'Do you think my nose is broken?' I asked the old man.
'I don't know.' He replied. 'Does it hurt?'
It was more numb than painful and nothing hurt more than my wounded pride.
A broken nose is all my (already asymmetrical) face needs, I thought, bitterly.
Anyway, we repaired to a pub where I changed the younger daughter into her new, dry clothes. And I had hot tea and a brandy - I don't care if there is no scientific proof that brandy helps with shock or that people mock soap opera characters for offering tea in times of distress, both things helped me.
On the way home my older daughter said to me: 'I fell over in a puddle.'
'Never mind', I said, 'I bust my nose open'. (I know I shouldn't, I know I should have played it down but I couldn't help it).
'And I fell over in the sea', the younger one piped up.
We laughed!

Stranded with my Cosmopolitan

There I was, in a packed pub, getting hotter and hotter in my coat, scarf, jumper etc. All my friends; all the people I wanted to talk to, were embedded deep into other clusters, like chocolate chips who had sunk to the bottom of a cheap, badly made sponge cake.  My drink was precariously balanced, I stood on the brink of an abyss. The vultures were circling - two women; women who I knew but wasn’t particularly friendly with, looked me up and down. Yes, they did! They did that scanning thing that some women subject other women to, like the Terminator doing his 1980s, computerised assessment. Age - wrong side of 40, weight - fatter/thinner than me, clothes….

Why do some women do this? It is immensely unsettling. If you are born into a gender that is constantly judged on its appearance then it is somewhat inescapable. Your weight, especially, is under constant scrutiny and because of this, you turn it (the scrutiny) on the other members of your tribe to ascertain whether they are fatter than you. It is total bullshit and I do try to avoid it at all costs. I wasn’t brought up in a bubble though and there was almost a sense, in my house, that the thinner you were, the more morally superior you were. I try to resist, at all turns, being drawn into discussions about my own or any other woman’s weight, but, I am ashamed to say, that I do notice it (I just try not to comment on it).

Anyway, there I was, undergoing the Terminator scan, neither of these women said ‘hello’ by the way, wondering what they could find to assess, as I was cloaked in my heavy winter coat and massive scarf. My scarf is hectares long and a silvery grey colour and really thick. Wearing it feels like being enveloped by a benevolent yeti. It seems extravagant to say that you love an item of clothing but I bloody love that scarf (I also love my slippers). Perhaps the Terminators were admiring my scarf?? Perhaps I’m being paranoid in imagining that I was so interesting to them (this is entirely plausible and brings back memories of changing rooms and my my mum saying - ‘no-one is looking at you!’) But, if we are being uncharitable, then perhaps we can assume that I was being assessed, (perhaps) being found wanting and trying not to spill my (expensive, ill-gotten cocktail - the barmaid had rolled her eyes when I’d ordered it). I circumvented the group of lions (so it wasn't an abyss then, more of a savannah; pick a metaphor, stick to it) went round to the other side of the massive group and a male friend of mine cheerily called, ‘Alright, how’s it going?’

Now, I don’t want to turn my back on the sisterhood here, most of my best friends are women and I fully realise that men are just as capable of doing the Terminator scan (and not just for assessing how fuckable a woman is). I know plenty of men who talk about people’s weight and appearance and plenty of women who don’t. But, if you are a man or a woman and someone comes along to join a social group, hovering uncertainly on the edges like an ungainly bison at a watering hole; don’t just do the full body scan, smile and say ‘hello’!  

The five stages of baking

I bought the ingredients for macaroons this week in the vain hope that I’d produce these lovely little things and save myself shed-loads of money (have you noticed how expensive they are to buy?) Of course I haven’t made them yet, who knows if I ever will, but it has prompted these thoughts about my rather complicated relationship to baking.

This relationship can be summed up thus: I like eating sweet things but am rather lazy and lack attention to detail. Here is a picture of my butterfly cakes:

A bit burnt, slightly misshapen, kinda small.

I have detailed what, for me, are the five stages of baking below.

The five stages of baking.

1. Hope - foolish optimism that I will be able to bake a thing that resembles the thing in the picture.
2. Dismay - this whole procedure seems to be a whole lot more complicated and drawn out than I’d envisaged.
3. Rage - why, oh why, oh why did I ever try and embark on this!
4. Despair - the kitchen is a mess, I've ruined at least one implement and there is a sticky layer on the counter that can’t be removed by some half-hearted rubbing.
5. Resignation - ah, maybe they don’t look so bad after all. O.K. so I used self raising flour instead of plain and salted butter instead of salted and there seems to be some kind of subsidence issue going on there but never mind! Anyway, I owe it to the sisterhood to be crap at baking and cooking as I don’t want to turn into some frilly-apron-bedecked Stepford wife.

I'll just leave you with a picture of the butterfly cakes my husband made:

Irritating, no...?

The holiday illness hypothesis

As surely as day follows night, a crass, insensitive and woefully misinformed opinion piece by Katie Hopkins follows an atrocity and Peter Stringfellow follows a seventeen year old girl around his nightclub, one or both of my children will get ill when there is a school holiday.

I should have known which way the wind was blowing, this time five years ago, when every one of our Easter weekend plans had to be cancelled because the baby had a virulent stomach bug. This was the start of a rather frustrating trend. I won’t bore you with all the tedious details, I’ll just give you a précis of the last two years. In non-chronological order: last Easter it was chicken pox, the last two Christmases, it’s been flu. Spring half term of last year it was the norovirus and this Easter it’s a chest infection!

The youngest was ill a couple of weeks ago but it seemed safely in advance of the holidays and she dutifully recovered. But then her older sister got ill last weekend (the rather alarming sounding) Scarlet Fever was doing the rounds at her school. I took her to the doctor on Monday and she didn't have Scarlet Fever but a vague, ill defined malaise. She’s been coughing all week and this seemed to reach an apex last night with a continuous hack that sounded like something straight out of a Dickensian workhouse. (I'm sorry if this makes me sound unsympathetic; I joke to hide the worry and pain...The temperature reading in the picture shows my other half's temp, BTW, he was monitoring this every hour when he was off sick the other day and texting me the results!)

So today, at 8 a.m on Good Friday, I duly trotted down to the walk-in centre with her. I don't know if you noticed but it was a brilliant, yellow morning.

“I wish it was raining!” Snarled my daughter.

Now, people who have never met my daughter but know me, might think that this miserablist attitude indicates that she’s a chip off the old block. The thing is - she isn't! She’s an extrovert and an enthusiast and (usually) as cheery and ebullient a 5 year old as you’d ever hope to meet. Lack of sleep, feeling run down and missing so much school, must have taken its toll (I know the feeling!)

“I don’t want to go to the doctors!” She said.

“I know.” I said. “But’s let’s just get this bit of unpleasantness out of the way and then we can have fun. We can go to the park...we can watch a D.V.D.”

“I don’t want to go to the park and I don’t want to watch a D.V.D!” She said, grumpily.

I could go on detailing our conversation but I think you get the gist.

Anyway, we saw a really lovely female doctor (I've made my peace with the fact that many doctors seem to be younger than me these days…) Daughter cheered right up and behaved exemplarily. We got given a prescription. We wasted some time in the coffee shop while we waited for the chemist to open. My daughter stung me for a smoked salmon sandwich! (Are you sure you’re going to eat this? It’s very expensive. Reader - I think you can guess how this story ended…) I had a latte and a cheese and tomato toastie (v nice!). The pharmacist told my daughter that she hoped she got better soon. And all the way home I was thinking - gawd bless the N.H.S! (I am an atheist so perhaps this is hypocritical - perhaps I should have been thinking Bevan bless the N.H.S!)

Postscript:

We almost tempted the gods (as in Greek gods - those capricious bastards) by booking a holiday this Easter. It would have involved passports, flights and everything! Thankfully our own laziness and lack of motivation prevented this.

So I've been lurking on Facebook and Twitter today, casting envious and rather resentful glances at other people’s holiday snaps. The thing is, and perhaps this is me changing a habit of a lifetime and becoming an optimist, they’ll be other sunny days! (There will be, right??)

P.P.S I am aware that when I wrote the diary of an introvert the other day that I promised to write something more exciting next time - I'm well aware that this isn't it! But I do need to keep my hand in with this blogging business so, as you may imagine, I'm rather limited as to subject matter at the moment!

Finding a Voice

I read a piece by Julie Birchill once, where she talked about writing being a way of having a proper, authoritative, grown-up voice. She felt this way because her own speaking voice, she wrote, was so breathy and childlike. Whilst I don’t particularly like my voice. (You know when you hear yourself leaving an answer machine message and you think - who the hell is that? Far too nasal and high in register) I don’t feel that it is particularly girlish or childlike. What I identified with, in the whole finding a voice thing, was that, as someone who was basically shy and found big groups of people difficult, writing was a way of expressing myself - a way of being heard. 

Are you a shy person? Does the word ‘networking’, especially when applied to a work function, fill you with dread? Do you spend too long formulating answers, only to find that in the meantime, the person asking the question has got bored and moved on? Do you have a problem with job interviews? Family functions?

Sometimes I think that in every introvert there resides a massive show-off who is just desperate to break through the restraints of convention and shout - ‘look at me, look at me - I am here!!!’ This is evidenced by the shy actors and performers you come across, giving awkward, sullen-seeming interviews, mumbling into their water and being monosyllabic. Yet, on stage and screen they give effervescent, magnetic performances. They are drawing your eye and attention to them.  They like being centre of attention in the context of a work of art, but not in their real life.

Writers are not that different. The writer wants your attention, even if they go about it in a less direct way, they still crave it. And, arguably, they also want your approval. Even the sardonic, verbal acrobat Will Self (writer) once said in an interview that, with his writing he was no different from the schoolboy, buying sweets for his friends to try and get them to like him. (If that’s really the case then write something a bit more accessible, Will! His sweets would be the equivalent of someone telling you that they had a treat for you, then chucking  a packet of Fishermen’s Friends in your lap; if you’ve never had a Fisherman’s Friend, imagine that someone has taken a ball of earwax, injected tar into it, left it out in the sun to dry then rolled it in soluble aspirin. ;) )

So here I am - have I got your attention? No, don’t scroll through your phone in the meantime. LISTEN.

Just checking.

So, if I'm so shy and reserved and such an introvert, then what am I doing drawing attention to myself by creating a page for my blog? I think I've already answered that question, haven’t I? The introvert who secretly wants to be the centre of attention (did I mention that it was my childhood ambition to become an actor?)

Not just that though. If I do have your attention then I want to tell you something - come closer...I think that I can make us both happier. No, really, I know it’s a bold claim and it sounds like something that Paul (‘I can make you thin’ - no you can’t, Paul!) McKenna might say. I think that I can make us a little bit happier by a joint endeavour to do two things. Just two things; a little start in the whole happiness game. These two things are hardly scientific breakthroughs - you will probably have heard different people saying these things at some time or another, but I want to restate them here and make an attempt to focus on them. So these two things are:

1. Stop comparing yourself to other people

Don’t worry about what they've achieved and you haven’t. Don’t worry about the things that they have in their life that appear to be missing from yours.

Just keep on swimming.

Does that sound all bullshit and touchy-feely? I don’t care.

I don’t  mean that you should let go of your aspirations and stop trying - quite the opposite, what I mean is just focus on your own goals and don’t worry about anyone else.

2) Don’t regret the things that you haven’t done.

No point looking back into the past and regretting the travelling you didn't do or the musical instrument you didn't take up - you can’t change anything about the past, all you can do is either plan to do that stuff now, or shelve it and move on.

Now, let’s do that together shall we. (Sorry if that sounds patronising) I need to take my own advice and I think that you might find it beneficial if you did too, dear reader, because, I've really become rather fond of you over the last couple of pages.

Good luck!