You won't fool the Children of the Revolution

I really enjoy retrospective English films that go to great pains to capture the aesthetics and character of the age they are portraying. There have been a rush of them lately... Nowhere Boy, An Education, and most recently Cemetery Junction.

Cemetery Junction, like the others, explores the psyche of England in its chosen decade ( in this case early seventies) and explores the need for escape. Escape from the rigidity of the older generation, from expected norms, from damaging relationships, from prejudice, from class expectations, etc. Great care is taken to portray the struggle between old values and the expanding horizons of youth, and the film has a distinctly English flavour i.e. its honest. Instead of a glossed over glory days outlook, it instead works to portray an era as it is - the good, the bad the ugly.

Any age is not without its strengths and weaknesses, and any piece that is retrospective will always marvel at the innocence of days gone by. Hindsight is 20 20 as they say, and it is much easier to take a diagnose a societies ills post facto, however it is a shame that more film makers cannot make such incisive films about our own age.

Sometimes it seems as though the world we live in is spiralling out of control. With the media ever more prevelant in our societies the youtth of today live under the shadow of a bevy of big stories that are bandied about in a constant frenzy of fear and disappointment - dramatic financial upheaval, weak leadership, a dragging war, the shadow of terrorism cast across life in large cities, so called Broken Britain, the disengagement of youth from society, etc. I often here people say that our generation missed all the good stuff, we missed the change and we missed the party. Fuck that - the change is here, the party is happening!

With the proliferation of the mass media comes that more many chances to know. You can read mainstream media, or you can read blogs, or other people's tweets, or podcasts - you have an abundance of information you just need to learn how to filter. And if we are so dissatisfied with our leaders and the paths they have led us down in recent years, then do something about it. Register to vote, make yourself heard, discuss politics - we have a very well protected right in this country, to chose our own politicians and to make ourselves heard. The very same people I know who have bitched and moaned through the expenses scandal, the Afghanistan war, the recession, are now telling me they can't be bother to vote. Can't be bothered to register. You want to make a change? Now is the time. Don't wait for someone else to tell you what to do - go out there, read, talk to people, watch the debates...Engage!

And those of you who believe you missed the party... Travel has never been as popular or as possible. With the advent of Facebook, we are all keeping in contact with people we haven't seen for years, all over the world - Show up at their doorstep. There are countries all over the world waiting for you to visit. There are people to be met and things to be seen, and a million lessons to be learned. Go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, a Full Moon party in Thailand, Hogmanay in Scotland, Carnival in Rio, Oktoberfest in Germany. Go diving in The Bahamas and feel the spray of Victoria Falls soak your skin in Zimbabwe, drink tequila in Mexico and have tea in Morocco. Hike the Inca trail, and see the Sistine Chapel, and have your own revolution... Go get a passport.

Sometimes these things are easier said than done, and there are a great many things from other eras that I wish I had been a part of...But the point is, those things had to happen so I could be here now, doing what I get to do. There is still a party, and we still have a chance to make a change...we just have to grab them both!

Rant over.

An Edinburgh Adventure

My Heart finds its home in Edinburgh. The sense of homecoming I felt on my first visit to the city has haunted me ever since - how is it possible to feel such sheer belonging in a space that is foreign. The familiarity is still there on all subsequent visits, and I continue to fall deeper and deeper in love.

This most recent visit was different as I was treated to the superior tour guide qualities of my dear friend Jen. A fellow history dork and pub enthusiast, she mingled facts fables and food, with a generous selection of watering holes. My stay was blessed with a surplus of sunshine, and so the slow meanders we took through the winding streets of the old town were warm and relaxed. A great portion of Jen's expertise seem to lie in affordable culinary outings, and thus one day we were treated to a gloriously over stuffed potato from a shop with a rather axiomatic name - The Potato Shop. We devoured these treats in the beautiful Princes Street Gardens at the foot of the castle (once this park was a lake of poo, but we weren't to be deterred). Later was a 4.95 feast of chicken fajitas at a trendy restaurant near the university. This wowed my London wallet, now used to being extorted for a mere muffin. We had steak ciabattas, peppered with political conversation, and fruit cider accompanied by reminiscence - I had forgotten the great luxury of catching up with long absent friends. Jen took me to do a little shopping, and I picked up a pair of perfect green button earrings, and a blue vintage bag (it was a necessary purchase as the strap on mine had gone). I was really pleased with the shopping options in Edinburgh though - Cockburn Street comes highly recommended.

Where I bought me lovely bag

The new (necessary) bag

The new green button earrings

Rory, Tiff, Jen and I indulged in some liquored hot chocolate, while basking in the golden glow off the setting sun streaming though the windows of The Elephant House. This is the bohemian coffee shop where JK Rowling famously penned her first two novels, having not enough money to heat her flat. From these windows she saw the castle, an elite, turretted boarding school, and the Greyfriars cemetry, one of whom's grave stones bares the name Tom Riddle - Enough inspiration me thinks...

Golden Jen, in the magical light of The Elephant House

Being a medieval city Edinburgh is dominated by its castle. A hulking figure huddled on a hill of volcanic rock, it looked unusually cheerful and care free with a spread of freshly sprung at its feet. Edinburgh Castle sits at the summit of the Royal Mile, an ancient pathway that cleaves through the Old City and comes to an end at the Holyrood Palace, the Queens official residence in Edinburgh.

Edinburgh Castle

Deeper into the Old City lies the Graveyard, an historic burial ground filled with immense crypts and mausoleums that dwarf the insignificant remains they house. The site is home to the world's most well documented case of a poltergeist - The McKenzie Poltergeist. Poltergeists are believed to be formed from large concentrations of hormones such as pheromones. While pheromones are the 'sex hormone' they are also released with adrenalin, associated with fear and fright. In the case of the McKenzie Poltergeist, it was first documented after a rather terrifying incident where a tramp landed in a mass of embalmed bodies in the McKenzie mausoleum, which naturally scared the crap out of him. According to the guide, this might have been where the poltergeist originated. Needless to say, it has sent many a tourist screaming out of the cemetery with freaky appearances and aggressive behaviour.

Edinburgh once more overwhelmed me with its beauty and history, its buildings and natural surroundings. It was made all the better by having such a like minded (in most ways, lovely Jen) friend to share it with. The planning for a return during the festival is already under way.

An Open Letter to my Sixteen Year Old Self

I turned twenty six yesterday. It was birthday, and this time of the year always tends to rock my boat. Because it is a celebrated landmark, it inevitably draws attention to where you were this time last year, what you had hoped for and how far you have come. Inevitably I end up being underwhelmed by my progress and wallow in existential crises as long as anyone will let me. In the run up to the anniversary of my birth this year the usual anxieties surfaced, however yesterday I suddenly realised that I was 26! I had lived 10 years after my 16th birthday. This seemed such a milestone. Sixteen was a landmark year for me. It is when I started to realise who I was, forge my identity, become an adult. Looking back I was so remarkably like myself already, and yet there was an innocence that I dearly miss, and a self doubt that I do not. I think everyone has a few things that they would love to share with their younger selves, a few lessons you wish you hadn't had to learn the hard way. And so...

Dear Young Hayley

Some advice...

Playing dumb is not attractive. You have a brain. You have (strong) opinions. You love books, you look things up, you like using big words, you are interested in politics...These are all things that you will learn to be proud of, and will define who you are. Stop thinking anyone knowing that you are a clever girl will lead them to assume you are dull. Don't let people assume you are a bit of a giggly airhead, because you will waste much valuable time having silly conversations with silly people. Your brain is one of your most attractive qualities - use it, and show it!

Give people a break. You are arrogant and you think you can imagine every conceivable situation and how you would react...you have no idea. You cannot know a person until you have walked two moons in their moccasins. Judging people will get you nowhere, and sometimes you will wish you had asked more questions, because you will find yourself in the same situation.

Your parents are people too. They have all the same problems and hang ups and difficulties as you, so stop expecting them to be above human weakness. Mum is the best friend you will ever have, stop throwing tantrums and give her a break.

Teenagers are a hideous, mutant subspecies - try not to behave like one.

Don't drink that bottle of Malibu at 17 - it will put you off for life, and make cocktail choices very limited.

You are going to have more fun than you can imagine. Your life is not going to be boring, and everything happens after High School. But don't believe the bullshit Hollywood is selling - life isn't like that, and God you'd probably hate it if it was.

Stop blindly following fashion. You don't look like those girls, and who wants to look like everyone else anyway.

Some of the prettiest adolescents are unremarkable as adults, and you grow into your face, so don't worry too much on that account.

You will always miss dad, but you are so like him that he is still here.

This is not the worst day of your life, neither is tomorrow or the next day, or the one after that. Tough times are coming, so save the drama. You are strong and you can deal with it.

Stop fighting with your hair, stop brushing it, and please god, don't cut it again.

Tortured artists are overrated, and you are too high maintenance for their own self absorption. Move on, its never going to happen.

You have to learn to let go of things. Realise that things change, people change, you will change. Everything is not forever. Sometimes people are in your life for a short time, and that's okay. Don't flog a dead horse - you need to realise when its time to move on. By attaching yourself too firmly to people and places you will stagnate. Not every decision is life altering. Start going with the flow now - I need the practice. You will lose some people along the way, but never the things that you shared with them. Let them go.

You'll be fine, you'll see.

Love Old(er) Hayley

** I have finally figured out how to sort out the commenting feature on this blasted blog, and so you no longer need to be logged on or whatever to comment...give it a try, and let me know if its working!

Covent Garden - the Centre of my London

Covent Garden has long been the heart of my particular London. Every time I return to London it is one of the first places I visit to prove to myself that I am back.

There are so many aspects to Covent Garden. I love the street performers, from the folk singers, to magicians, to break dancers - everyday a new audience. The concealed Neal's Yard is like a hippy hideaway, unyeildingly cheerful despite whatever is happening beyond its walls. It harbours a host of hopeful humans who serve hummus and smiles in equal amounts. The streets are home to shops filled with hundreds of harajuku inspired knick knacks and stationary - all covered in kittys, pandas and frogs, and boutiques of beads, and outlets for the sale of Smartie inspired jewellery. DocMarten Mecca is filled with a mixture of floral, embroidered, metallic and patent boots that make my heart all a flutter. The thrift stores, spotted up and down Monmouth street, smell like old people and attics, and crowded on the rails are a multitude of frightening wardrobe throwbacks hiding the few vintage gems.

I have watched Noah and the Whale, through the windows of the closing Lastminute.com shop, and seen the irony of a homeless man dance to 'Streets of London' performed by a busker. At 18 I remember drinking Pina Colladas at the RoadHouse and thinking it was not possible to feel more grown up (and it probably isn't). On this most recent of missions, I happened to look up at the right moment and found a Space Invader, my first in LondonTown. In Neal's Yard we found a meter box covered in Fridge Poetry that anyone can rearrange, and a studio where much of Monty Python was written. Everytime there is something new, and so I will continue to return to the centre of my London.

Identity at the Wellcome Collection

I went to a fascinating exhibition at the Wellcome Collection with some of our Psychology students on Thursday. Called Identity: 8 Rooms, 9 Lives, it deals with concepts of the self and how we as people construct our identities. It contains a succession of rooms, each dealing with the issues arising from the chosen subjects struggle with the many different strands identity that make up the self. Some of the chosen case studies were truly fascinating. I was particularly intrigued by the room about Claude Cahun. A woman before her time, her primitive and stark photography is strangely enthralling, dealing with notions of sexuality, gender, beauty, and logic. She looks at what constitutes a woman. This particular display I found so interesting because lately I have been reading a book about women (a somewhat feminist rant, I admit) and how sexualised they have become in our society. The books central premise looks at how our society has come to think that this is actually evidence of our equality in society, when in fact it is pretty much nothing more than the narrowing of people's ideas of sexuality and womanlyness, and the 'plasticising' of women. The prevalence of soft pornography in every aspect of our media means that sexiness now seems to be the sole jurisdiction of the porn star. I have to be honest, having seen Cahun's photography, as androgynous and bald as it appears, I still find it a more pleasing reflection of femininity than the Jordan wannabes that populate our local newstands, fetished, bronzed and remodeled to the hilt.

The Wellcome Collection also has a collection of modern art. Modern art is a strange one, always thought provoking yet often not visually pleasing. The large jelly baby featured, Jelly Baby 3, above was very appealing but not terribly thought provoking, while the I can't help the way I feel is incredibly unpleasing and disconcerting by immensely thought provoking. The accompanying text explained that the possibility of the emotional landscape of the body becomes manifest in its surface. The way in which the flesh grows can be seen as a metaphor of the way in which we become incapicitated by the emotional landscape in which we live and over which we have little control. Intense...

Roll on the Festivals...

Bridge and I chilling at Reading last year

Festival season is looming, and money is haemorrhaging from my account as I grab as many gig tickets as possible. So far I Florence and the Machine, Band of Skulls, Hard Rock Calling and the Isle of Wight festival lined up... Due to the all round averageness of the Reading, I have been saved from having to shell out for that one, but now am looking towards perhaps a little outing to V festival.

For those of you who have never done a big music festival - do it! I went to

Reading last year and it is like a living monument to hedonism. I have never been to Vegas but I assume it operates on the same principal. Basically, it is a place that offers you every type of pleasure (okay not every...), at all hours - its what life would be like if we were millionaires and indulged our every whim - the way we would like to live in our wildest dreams.

As if days of watering ourselves with yummy cider and indulging in the great sounds of Rock 'n Roll weren't enough, when the last band left the stage every night there was a plethora of activities - a fun fair, an outdoor cinema, a silent disco and people taking every type of drug (I abstained of course) and doing every type of crazy shit - the last night is kind of like the maddest party you have ever been too, but on steroids... People are dressed up all mental - near our tent we had a bunch of guys who were all dressed up like vikings, there were boys in wedding dresses, smurfs, frogs, people in full on lycra suits that went over their faces - every kind of madness...

The funniest encounter we had was on the last nite - we were sitting under a gazebo at about three in the morning talking shit and slowly drifting down off the high of a 3 day party with the greatest music, when a ginger haired wild child proffering a glo-bracelet stumbled towards us from the dark. She told us her name was Sophie, she was a lesbian and she hadn't gotten lucky since Thursday and she was looking for another lesbian...apparently at this point she had trolled the camp site looking for hopefuls but had been unsuccessful and was now desperate enough that she was A) approaching groups of men in search of hidden lesbians, who inevitably asked her if she wanted to change her mind and return to the mighty phallus (to which she declined) and B) offering the glo-bracelet as an engagement ring to the next willing sexually confused yung'un she found...

After amusing us all no end with her straight forward desperation and proliferation of names for the female reproductive organs she headed off telling us to send any other lesbos who stumbled upon our little campfire after her...You just can't put a price on amusement like that...

One of the best things about festivals is seeing all these people in wonderful clothes and accessories, all chilling out and being someone else for a little while. The hats, sunglasses and wellies are wonderful camera fodder, and I wish people dressed like that all the time. In June last year I went with my lovely mum and aunt, and many others, to watch the amazing Bruce Springsteen play Hard Rock Calling. It was one of the greatest gigs I have ever been to. And my mom was totally channeling a sixties festino, and so she is my festival style icon...

Saturday in Southend

After the last couple of weeks of madness at work, and ongoing eye infection, it was such a treat to spend the day away. In the morning me and a few of my work favourites hopped on a train to lovely Leigh-on-sea in Essex. We began the day with cockles, still sandy and salty from the sea. Walking around the lovely Old Leigh, replete with cobbled streets and clapboard cottages. Alas, Kent had stolen the sea, but the whole place still had that sea salt scent that I haven't smelled since I left Durban - it made me quite homesick.

We moved on for fish and chips in Southend where we got to whip out the wicked 'I heart South End' pendant from Top Shop. Awesomeness - they also have a Billericay necklace too (ala Gavin Stacey)- that looks a little like the carrie necklace. It's brilliant! To walk off lunch we had a walk along the beach front where we found an abandoned boat, which we commandeered for a mortifying ammatuer photo shoot.

I haven't been to a fun fair in years. The last time I did go was on the Durban beach front, probably in the early years of high school, and South End's Adventure Island put us African types to shame. It was a total sensual over load of flashing lights, cranking machinery and overly stuffed soft toys. In an incredible show of sports womanship (a word?) I won a oversized Mario mushroom, and proved my bravery by riding the giant pink phallus of terror (pictured below) - really, amusement parks are kind of like drippy versions of Gladiators!

Also at Adventure Island I noticed the traditional Essex girl uniform. It is not compulsory, but is widely sported in the area. It is comprised of a fanta hued fake tan, tarantula like mascara, more eyeliner than I would wear to a KISS concert, and many a TopShop knock off. These girls are pretty trendy, but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing - and in the case of this seasons overwhelmingly popular floral print, there is only so many different patterns you can wear before you become a Biggie Best nightmare.

It was a day of gales of laughter, and good food and company, so many thanks to my companions and host! Viva Essex, I hope its not too long before I see you again...

Spring: is there an app for that?

Our first daffs of the year

The silence is due to my new iPhone...it's just so lovely! It arrived yesterday and I have spent the last 2 days lovingly adding apps, music and photos. It has taken my mind of the sty still taking advantage of my eye's apparent hospitality. It seems to be on its way out thank god.

The other thing that's been making me rather chipper the last couple of days is a big bowl of daffodils we have on our mantelpiece. They have all burst into bloom, and are filling the room with a scent of spring, and whenever I look at them I remember that their brothers and sisters are poking their little heads out of the ground all over England and that spring is surely here now and summer soon to follow. The sun has got his hat on...Hip hip hip hip horray...

Shantaram: So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky.

As soon as I finished reading Shantaram I wanted to start all over again. I knew that there was so much wisdom I had failed to absorb, and so much I had failed to understand. And now they are making a movie, and while it is to star the wondrous Jonny Depp, I know that the beauty will be diluted and much of the message will be lost in the translation. So I urge you, dear readers, to read this book before the hype begins, and you end up going to see the film, and this experience is lost to you.

Here are a couple of extracts from Gregory David Roberts' masterpiece, to whet your appetite:

"I let the raining silence close her eyes for the last time. She slept. I knew we did not have her story. Not the whole of it. I knew the small daubs of colour she'd excluded from her summary were at least as important as the broad strokes she'd included. The devil, they say, is in the details, and I knew well the devils that lurked and skulked in the details of my own story. But she had given me a hoard of new treasures. I'd learned more about her in that exhausted, murmuring hour than in all the many months before it. Lovers find their way by such insights and confidences: they're the stars we use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky."

"...no man is saved without love. What characterises the human race more, Karla once asked me, cruelty or the capacity to feel shame for it? I thought the question acutely clever then, when I first heard it, but I'm lonelier and wiser now, and I know it isn't cruelty or shame that characterises the human race. It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive."

The whole book is not only reflections on existence, although his perceptions of the human condition particularly resonated with me. The narrative is vast and complex, filled with action, incredible characters and Roberts manages to give you a strong sensory insight into India - the sights, the sounds, the smells, the very feel of it. If you read only one book this year, let Shantaram be it.

Just a bit of Joan

The weekend was a total write off thanks to the fact that quasimodo decided to move out of the belfry and onto my eyelid...I have a huge sty which no amount of Golden Eye antibiotics or Jackie O sunglasses can apparently camoflage. Hence, I have had a weekend on the couch with Don and Betty Draper, Joan Holloway and the rest at Stirling Cooper. I have pretty much buried myself in the Mad Men box set, hiding my shameful peeper in a fugue of sixties cigarettes, slips, bourbon and sexism...

For those of you who have never watched the dirty indulgence that is Mad Men basically the show is a slick, sexy depiction of the world of advertising, and linked parts of American society and culture, in the 1960s. It's an education - just how far away is 40 years? At times the opinions and beliefs of the characters seem ridiculously quaint and old fashioned, at others the process of seeing opinions held and defended so long ago, allows you the cathartic realisation that in some aspects we haven't come that far at all.

A while ago I posed the question on my Facebook status (the Magic Eightball of modern times):

Can I be a modern woman and still want Don Draper?

Perhaps an easier question to answer is, can a modern woman still want to look like Joan Holloway?

Played by Christina Hendricks, Joan is a powerhouse of a woman. Perfectly put together, she is not the obvious feminist heroine, and her pandering to the men in the office at times borders on the sycophantic, however there is no doubt that the lady knows how to get what she wants (most of the time). And she is a style icon. Her clothes make me long for a time when dressing was an art. She lived in a time when the roles of gender were easily definable, and when ideas of what each looked like were pretty set in stone too. I can do without the gender stereotyping, thanks very much, but god, what I wouldn't do for those clothes! I am the queen of low maintanence, throw on outfits, however, after a weekend with Joan, I am desperate for a little bit more femme fatale, a little less happy hippy...

My Joan inspired wish list:

Giovanni Gold Brooch

Diana Vintage look pencil dress - custom made

Vintage Pen Necklace

Mixed Tape Track 4 - 'I think you know the answer to your question'

I love a ballad, especially when the singer is sombre and there is a slight desperation to it. Emily's Heart ticks all of these boxes. I wouldn't consider myself a fan usually, and Jamie's colloquial, plaintive whinge shouldn't be pleasing to the ear, yet the lyrics are sung with such earnest and honesty, and suprisingly with little regret but much empathy for Emily, despite her crime.

Jamie urges us not to meddle with Emily's heart, and yet sadly, he meddled with his original to release it as a single. And so the link I am providing is for the longer original...Enjoy.

Emily's Heart - Jamie T

"Bruised and bloody, I'm lying on the ground,

And I am aware that I let the poor girl down,

Now I'm dying, as a message to the town,

This what happens, if you fuck around,

So meddle if you want trouble, trouble then you should meddle,

But don't ever meddle with Emily's heart…"

One from the Vaults

The Dress, seen here with fuchsia fascinator from Accessorize

The Dress, on previous outings.

This has not been the best week, work wise, and so my creative brain is taking a bit of a dive. Therefore, I have resorted to the vaults for inspiration today.

I am going to a Shebeen party this weekend, for my lovely friend Lara's birthday, and I need something a little South African to wear. I have been racking my brains, thinking about what to wear, when I remembered my gorgeous Stoned Cherrie dress, wasting away at the back of my closet. Its a full skirted wrap around, made with cranberry and black shweshwe fabric - African Modern chic! It has had several thrilling outings in its time. And so I thought I would share with you a couple of its little anecdotes...

Early on in the dress's life it visited Moyo in Durban. It was surrounded by large sculptures of seaweed made out of recycled bottles, carved wooden tables, mosaicked mirrors and lounges padded with silken, sari pillows. Its full skirt lay fanned out against the sari silk under the moon on the deck. The dress ordered a strawberry daiquiri, and tried to sip it before the Durban humidity had turned it into a pink pool. She feasted on samoosas, as she bit into them each corner spurted soft cheese and spring onions. The irony of all these tourists looking for an authentic African experience at uShaka was not lost on the dress - she took the African face painting, and the engineered township music, the native crafts, and the toyitoyi-ing waiters, with a pinch of salt. And afterwards the dress went for a walk on the beach, got sprayed by the sea, and licked the drying salt off her lips.

The dress spent a night of revelry on the River Thames with other dresses. Everyone was in their best and yet nothing could compare to the magnificence of London by night. The eerie splendour of the Houses of Parliament, as the dresses floated past, was eclipsed only by the ominous presence of the Battersea Power Station. It haunts the edge of the river, in its own mists, daring the dress to question its emptiness. Battersea knows it is safe in its position of esteemed endangered site. It does not have the obvious flash of tower bridge, or the audacious iconic nature of the Eye, and it does not need it. The dress holds her breath as the mighty station recedes into the distance, and she softly flickers in the breeze.