Why I Sometimes Wish I Still Read from the Children's Section.

One of the hardest transitions to make from children's lit to adult novels is the simple fact that what you want to happen might not. In children's books the hero almost always wins; the shy, quiet girl who you're rooting for gets the lead in the school play or the cute boy. In novels written for adults this does not happen. The woman who desperately wansa baby but her husband isn't convinced remains childless. The man with cancer dies. Unhappy marriages continue, unhappily. You end up feeling angry, really angry, that the author hasn't done what you want. How dare he not? You get so used to authors writing what their audiences will like. Sometimes it's even worse - there is no resolution. You reach the end of a compelling, well written novel with characters that you care about and you don't find out what happens. You don't know if a marriage survives, if a man makes peace with his children, you don't know how the events of the book continue to resonate through the lives of people you feel you know.
Moving from Jacqueline Wilson and Roal Dhal to Christos Tsiolkis and Cormac McCarthy is very difficult, because the writer is no longer writing to make you feel better and relieved and resolved; they are writing to challenge and provoke you.

PS. I turned 17 years old yesterday. We went to Cardiff and Barry. It was lovely and pure.

LONDON.

Last week I went to London with my friend Abi. Abi is a girl I've only met this year but I like her a lot. She's sarcastic and very funny and not really all touchy-feely which amuses me. Her parents drove us down and then they left us in our hotel room and we knelt up on the chairs and lent out the window and just kind of went "why has anybody left us on our own in London?" It was a crazy feeling. Then we got the open top bus around the city and it was just sun-setting time on a Sunday night and loads of church bells kept playing and I felt so happy and it was when we were on there, both grinning like loons, we looked at eachother and said "I want to live here." I've had cities do that with me before - New York, Chicago, Boston. That instant connection with a place that makes you feel so completely involved and alive.
We got the Underground all week (the first time for both of us) and by Friday we knew the lines like Londoners. The Tube is a brilliant place. I loved it. The smell and the bustle and the people and the escalators. And, there were lots of pretty gorgeous suited men on the tube, who I kept faling into and having to apologize too.
We did Oxford Street and Topshop and Urban Outfitters and saw Jude Law and Sienna Miller. We bought food from Tesco and ate it in our rooms. Abi tried to dye her hair and then nearly got an allergic reaction and I panicked about taking her to a hospital because the only one I know in London is St. Barts (and we were miles from that.) We had a fire alarm at half six where I panicked again and ran out of the room sans shoes, knickers, bra and room key. And then there were hot firemen (who knew they existed?!) Then we got ourselves so hyped up that night about creepy Simon's in our room and fires that we shat bricks and had to run down stairs in panic, and the concierge laughed and gave us new room keys.
We breakfasted in Costa with good-looking BBC employees and rang people up pretending to be their lesbian girlfriends (it's a long story.) We made bears in Hamley's and got leered at in Selfridges and gorged ourselves on Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
This one day we went to The Globe theatre to see Merry Wives and at the end all the actors were dressed up and dancing and singing around us and I wanted to cry because I just kept thinking "there's this. whatever else happens in my life there's this. there will always be places like this where I feel like myself." I was so happy.
It's hard to explain but it's moments like those where you realise that you have so much joy in your life and you can't bare the thought because you're so filled up with wonder at living.

I'm going to live in London. Everything feels dull in comparison and I want to go back there and start to live my life how it's meant to be. I fell in love with a city and a feeling.

FRANCE.

A couple of weeks ago I went to France with my best freind Alice. The place we stayed was this beautiful little cottage with goats and swings and chickens and a trampoline. We cycled for ages this one day and sat on this bench and it was calm and quiet. We had a gin'o'clock and we read books and Alice played Kate Bush and Frank Turner. We went to pretty little towns like Bar Fleur where I couldn't order food in French and we walked barefoot in the sand.
The room we stayed in had an opening sash-window where I would stick my feet out and read my travel books while she napped. There was fresh bread and cake and butter with salt crystals everyday and I ate and ate and I felt so healthy because the air was cleaner. We stayed up late into the night talking about crap and phillosophy and the future.
There was a beach called Glatigny and I think it was the most desolately perfect place I've been in a long time. The sun was setting and it felt like the sea was going to carry on forever and forever and I was with my best freind and I felt so happy and calm and peaceful.
When we jumped on the trampoline and then lay on it the net felt like it was going right up into the trees and it was strange and wonderful. We talked deeper than I think we've ever talked without things feeling heavy. We watched series four of Doctor Who and Sherlock on the BBC and we talked about Benedict Cumberbatch and David Tennant and I beat her little brother at Monopoly.
One night we stayed up late drinking cider and then her Mum and Dad were telling these stories from when her Mum was a nurse and went to biker bars with the Irish and Carribean nurses and her Dad was a trainee teacher. I laughed so hard and I thought they should write a book. I think everyone should write books.
Alice is my best freind, but I kind of feel like she's my family sometimes, too. I mean, she has her own sister and everything but sometimes I think she's my surrogate, the replacement for something I couldn't have. I always felt I was too strange, too different, too uncomfortable too find someone who would be like that but I'm dead lucky to find her.

I love the BT Family.

I mean, they've been in my life since 2005. I've seen the begginings of Adam and Jane's relationship, the difficulties they've come through with her children, the problems with Adam having a job far away, the moving house, the proposal... and now mabye the baby!

You might see this as sarcastic, but I genuinely get warm fuzzies at the BT adverts. Now they're asking us to decide wether Jane is pregnant or not. Personally, I want her to be preggers. On the BT website that's how I've voted. I also quite like the suggestion made by 'Princessannie':

"Jane should be pregnant...then on her hen night (a weekend away in center parks norfolk) go into labour one-month early. Adam (who is in Newquay on his stag do) gets a flight from Newquay to London Stanstead and a taxi to west suffolk hospital (bury st. edmonds) keeping in touch by phone, and get there just in time to see his baby born!"

Maybe I'm to into this... but then again, 'Princessannie' probably is too.

I've been to New York Three Times.

I firmly beleive that the best feeling in the world is coming away from JFK airport in a yellow taxi, with a cab-driver who is freindly and chatty and the map of Manhattan on the back of his seat. You'll drive through suburbs and past big billboard signs for Broadway shows, and then you'll go under a bridge and when you come out the other side you'll see it. It won't be for the first time, because it's everywhere. In films and TV shows and on adverts and in postcards. You'll see it all the time but when you see it in real life it's completely different. The Manhattan Skyline is a site you'll never get bored of seeing.
The first time I saw it, it had been raining for a week. The kirb was flooded. Out of the mist rose the sykscrapers. I thought I might cry.
The second time was about 4 months later. It was the hottest summer in 5 years. The street steamed. I had the window down and my head out and the sun was warm and the car fumes in my hair and then I saw them again, in the heat-haze. It was beautiful and magic, like the first time.
The third time it was Christmas and it had snowed. It was so cold the windows in the cab were frozen shut. The snow transforms everything and makes it better and that's what it did to New York, even though I didn't think it was possible. That time I really did cry.

I'm making no apologies for not blogging in a while.

(Well, except this one.)

The last couple of months have been hectic. I had my AS exams, which went from okay to very badly. We'll see how that goes on August 19th. Then I've had The Four Week Plan at school, and endless university open days and lots of time spent discussing my future with my father. I've been doing a lot of shitfs at work - I need the money. My summer is an expensive one.

This week - I'm in Manchester doing work expeiriance at a top law firm. While I am looking forward to this I know I'm just going to be exhausted.
The Friday I get back - I'm working 8pm till midnight to prepare for the Next sale. Then I go back in at 5am the next day, and working till midday. The Sunday I'm doing a 10:30/4:30.
The Monday after - Community Day at school. Bleugh.
The Tuesday - Sports Day. I'll probably skive.

Then I get a few weeks at home, before I go to France with my friend at the end of July - which should be brilliant and relaxing and fun. I get back for half a week before spending a week in London with my freind Abi, where we're going on an English Lit course. They're taking us to the theatre and teaching us old english and we're going on the open top bus. It should be good, too.

I'm looking forward to my summer.

The Family Playlist.

I listen to The Guardian Family Podcast, and each week they get this person (almost always a Guardian Newspaper contributer) to talk about 3 songs that mean something to them about family. So I shall do that now.

1) Frank Sinatra - My Way.
My Dad used to play Frank all the time, since I can remember. It's his voice that is car journey's of my childhood and it makes me feel safe. My Dad can't sing at all but he always tries and gets all the notes wrong, but we're always word perfect. And Frank Sinatra is, like, the bomb. This song in particular is my favourite.

2) Garth Brooks - Friends in Low Places.
Well, first off, this is probably the best song ever. And Garth Brooks can sing. This is also a song that reminds me of my mum and playing so loud in her car that the speakers broke. It's just one of those songs that makes me feel close to her because we just laugh all the time when we're singing it as loudly as possible, especially when we get to the low bit you can't really sing without testicles. She's passed on her love of country music to me and it kind of culminates in this song.

3) Gordon Haskell - Harry's Bar.
His album always used to be playing when my parents had dinner parties when I was a little girl. So I associate it with sitting on the top of the stairs looking through the bannisters at my slightly tipsy parents and their friends. It's a cliched memory but it's true. And his voice... you can tell he means what he's singing.