#10 Convenience Foods - The Kari Lloyd Dedicatory Post

I've been struggling to think of something light hearted and whimsical to post following my last two missives. I was about to just write HA HA LOOK AT THE DAILY MAIL in 72 point Comic Sans (ooh, Comic Sans - there's a whole post right there) when this Twitter conversation occurred.

apopquizkid
What the hell is a Fray Bentos? Is it seriously a pie in a can?

hoola
@apopquizkid really? YES IT IS PIE IN A CAN! Go to the supermarket and look in the canned goods aisle.

apopquizkid
@hoola OK. Asked dude next to me in shop "What the hell is this?" He looked confused, then said "I think it's a pie."

hoola
@apopquizkid he knew, he was just embarrassed to admit that such a thing existed. See also Pot Noodle & Heinz breakfast in can

apopquizkid
@hoola Breakfast in a can? Have I been in a coma the entire time I've been living in the UK?

hoola
@apopquizkid I fear you've missed out terribly. You must be educated in the world of British convenience food. You've had Viennetta right?

apopquizkid
@hoola I was told Vienetta was for communists.

Kari, for those who are unaware of her genius, is a fellow foodie and writer. And foodie writer. She's my evil yankee twin and my daily dose of social networking LOLZ. Kari also introduced me to such atrocities as the Whole Chicken in a Can (I feel in many ways this is NSFW) and the Pizza Burger (which raised feelings of inner conflict not felt since Kylie's gold hotpants).

But she doesn't know about Fray Bentos! This must be set right. So here I present to you, not only in honour of Kari but in honour of all those, like me, who draw the convenience food line at those packets of fresh pasta, Britain's best (worst) convenience foods.

Fray Bentos
It's a pie. It's in a can. There is something inherently wrong in this scenario. I have never eaten a Fray so I probably shouldn't judge but COME ON PEOPLE IT'S PIE IN A CAN! What's wrong with pie in a box? Pie in one of those little tin foil containers? Pie in a damn pie dish? Pie should never, ever be in a tin.

Interestingly the Fray Bentos name originated in Uruguay where a plant manufactured corned beef on behalf of a company called Liebig's Extract of Meat Company. Yum.

HP All Day Breakfast
If there's one thing Britain does well it's breakfast, nowhere does morning sausage quite like a greasy London cafe, right kids? So why oh why oh why did someone think it was a good idea to do this to it?

I admit that in some ways I am to blame. I used to eat these. I thought they were lush when I was fifteen. Now I know better. I know that breakfast should not be despoiled and corrupted in this way. Nothing called a 'chopped egg nugget' should ever be allowed to exist. That's right - chopped egg nugget - essentially what appears to be a snack egg jammed in amongst beans thus rendering it soggy to the point of almost, but not quite, disintegrating. Equally vile are the slimy bacon inserts. Blee.

Please note that the Heinz equivalent, the London Grill, featuring beans, sausages, bacon and (for the love of all that is holy) kidney is no longer available. Thank goodness some sick fucker on Facebook is campaigning for its return.

Pot Noodle
I have eaten Pot Noodle only once. It was a Duke of Edinburgh expedition in which myself and approximately seven other friends slept in the one four man tent. I made the Pot Noodle as per the instructions. I ate three bites. I poured it down a hole I now realise was probably home to a poor unsuspecting bunny wabbit.

Producers of Pot Noodle, it doesn't matter how hard you try with your advertising, the old internet joke about 'having a Pot Noodle and a wank' will always be the image your appalling plastic pot of evil creates.

Smash
Those Smash robots were dead good weren't they? Sadly, Smash is shit. Really, really shit. To my mind it tastes of the smell of wee. That is all you need to know about convenience mash. And PS: peel potatoes, boil potatoes, mash potatoes up - it's not that hard is it?

Tip Top
Tip Top and canned fruit used to be the dessert of choice round ours. Actually, it's awesome. Leave Tip Top alone.

Dairylea Lunchables
It's not the cheese and the crackers that offends me about Lunchables. It's the ham. Look at it, all flacid and pink like a slice of a leper's willy. It makes me think of that ham with the boiled egg in the middle. Like gala pie but no crust? THAT is the foodstuff of satan.

Lunchables: for when you can't even lift your hand to slice cheese.

Brain's Faggots
The only good thing, surely about Brain's Faggots is the endless array of jokes that one can invent involving the name (ok, just the one joke, but you even try asking a shopkeeper 'where do you keep your faggots?' without smirking). I've never eaten a faggot (go on...) and suspect that a good, fresh one may be rather yummy in a haggis type way - they're similarly made with membrane...stuff. It's the frozen side of things which worries me. Fishfingers should be frozen, faggots should not. It's that and the general image faggots conjure of old person dinners - three day boiled marrowfats, wee-mash (see Smash), lumpy gravy.

Pork Pie
I am aware that this is somewhat controversial as most Brits love a pork pie. And living only 20m immediately south of Melton Mowbray I am probably putting myself in a somewhat dangerous position by saying this, but aren't pork pies a bit disgusting?

I'm not talking about a rustic handcrafted pie of pork, although only a nibble of said pie would pass my lips, I'm talking about those cheap service station ones with white stuff on the bottom and all the jelly. Oh, the jelly. The jelly which puts one in mind of...

Spam
It's Spam. Nobody in their right minds eats Spam.

Findus Crispy Pancakes
The staple diet of any child of a working mother raised in the 70s or 80s, the Findus Crispy Pancake is at best a bit odd, at worst downright filth.

This can be illustrated by this video. Watch the close up as teenage boy slices in to his beef pancake. Mmmm, give me that runny stuff, that beefy runny stuff that only gets served up when mum's not around because men can't cook or look after children (ah, the 80s, a simpler time). I suspect that folk are only eating the things to this day because their tastebuds have been entirely stripped from their tongues by the extremely dangerous Pop Tart-esque filling.

I could go on with the bizarre council estate foodstuff of the 80s - Bernard Matthews Turkey Drummers, Mini Kievs, potato waffles (they're waffly versatile) those appalling roast dinner ready meals - but I shan't, I'll be here all week and I've got a plate of faggots and mushy peas awaiting my attention.

But can we please all take a minute to remember Gino Ginelli ice cream. RIP Gino.

Tutti Frutti, what a cutie!

#9 My Kids Are Just Like Me? Can't I Pick Somebody Else For Them?

My recent post - you know the one in which I complained that NHS staff need to be more accepting of people with mental illnesses? - has got me thinking (I can't type that without an annoying Carrie Bradshaw voiceover in my head. Gah!).

Has this illness always affected me? Is the 'illness' just the way I am? Should my condition excuse my flaws? Do I look for reason in every negative experience because I'm bipolar? Do I use too many question marks?

Earlier today, walking home from a children's party (yes, a children's fucking party people, I am that lame), trying my very hardest not to cry like a teenage girl who's just been dumped in front of all her mates, I wondered whether I'd be helped out by wearing a t-shirt bearing the slogan 'I'm not rude, I'm just bipolar!'. See, during the course of said under 5s shindig I was entirely unable to communicate with the people around me. Partly because I didn't know many of them, partly because some of those I did know I have little in common with aside from having children of similar ages, but mostly because social situations are very much not my bag.

I imagine much of this discomfort, along with the shaking hands, racing heart and slight sweats, comes from what has been coined by my local friendly psych as Social Phobia (and possibly the result of one bottle too many last night). But, I wondered on my little meander, hiding my face behind my hair, whether that meant that I'd always been phobic. See, I've never in my life, even as a child, found it easy to speak to people, to make small talk and deal with people that I don't know or don't like. Can you be born with a social phobia or is it something that develops? And if it's something that develops over time does that mean that I'm not in the least phobic, just rude and uncommunicative?

One of my abiding memories of sixth form college is of a girl who I'd got to know over a period of time telling me that she was scared of me when we first met. I was sarcastic and grumpy and she thought I didn't like her. Wrong! The fact was that I seemed grumpy because, well, that's how my face is, and my extreme reliance on sarcasm is something that provides an effective cover for nerves. Ever since that conversation I've realised that I give off this air - I'm unapproachable and aloof, even if I don't mean to be. Thing is I can't switch it off no matter how much I want to, no matter how much I like you and would actually love to be your friend.

Ok, so there I am, trying not to seem rude at this party and I look at my kids. While everybody else under five foot is screaming around like gremlins on e-numbers *my* offspring are sticking together, not really talking to the other kids, not really joining in with anything. They're me.

As any parent can probably well imagine, on realising this my heart breaks in to a thousand little pieces like somebody just punched it really hard and, wouldn't you know it, it's made of paper thin glass. My beautiful, intelligent, kind and loving and loyal and funny kids, who will make the most incredible friends for any other person with an iota of sense, are afflicted with this same pathetic inability as I am. And whether it's nature or it's nurture it's all my bloody fault.

Is my phobia or otherwise hereditary or have they seen me behaving in my bizarrely aloof way - despite all my best efforts to put on an air of confidence in their presence, to make friends and to encourage them to do the same - and imitated me?

Perhaps that t-shirt would come in handy after all, at least my excuse for being so weird would be out there. And folk might be less inclined to judge me and more inclined to take pity on my situation. At least the whole 'waiting at the school gates' (the perennial highlight of the day for the middle class mum, the equivalent of having my fingernails plucked out one by one for me) would be less agonising. And then of course I could leave it to the kids in my will too.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't hide behind my bipolar or my social phobia, I don't use it as an excuse to be anti-social or inadvertently rude, at least not to others - it's a fail safe excuse I make to myself, 'I can't help it, it's an illness'. And I have never found myself with a lack of friends, I want to be absolutely clear on that, I have been lucky enough to have a group of friends, incredibly supportive, incredibly faithful friends, who have been with me through thick and thin since I was at school, some of them from age five. And indeed since my bipolar diagnosis I've found myself with a whole new group of wonderful women around me who have been very understanding and non-judgmental, not to mention ridiculous fun even on those days when I can't see a reason to get out of bed (you know who you are). So I know that my kids will find their place in a group or in groups. But I still can't help but wish that they could do what I can't, that they could have that thing that makes it simple to be everybody's mate, to have those meaningless conversations or simply smile and say hi without feeling as though they might collapse with a heart attack, to speak confidently without turning a shade of red more normally seen on a pillar box.

I hope that whatever friends my children do have as they get older will be able to do for them what those select few who, whether they really understand my issues or not, do for me - help by introducing me to their friends or by sticking with me when I'm alone in a crowd. Because in those moments, when my heart is about to pound out of my chest, when I'm faced with the social situation firing squad (currently those braying mummies who pretend class doesn't matter when it so clearly does - proof that they have none), those friends are as valuable as diamonds and as brave as any superhero to me. And knowing that somewhere out there those people will exist for my children provides just a little bit of superglue for my splintered glass heart.

Read more about Social Phobia/Social Anxiety here

♯8 We're Mad, Not Stupid

Let me start by getting one thing straight. I don't hate the NHS. In fact, Mr Beven, I adore it. I know, I know, it's a hugely flawed system but it can't be denied for a moment that the NHS has saved more lives than it's ended. How can I not be grateful for the defective but wonderfully utopian invention that allows Britain's people, regardless of class, race, religion or gender medical treatment at no charge.

Indeed I could write a whole post defending the NHS, weighing up arguments and talking about it's good and bad points. But I'm not about to.

No, this post is about something entirely else.





Last week, Tuesday if I remember rightly - maybe Wednesday - Elinor O'Neill was taken to hospital having experienced numerous black outs.

Elinor is a friend of mine. In that we know each other. In that we met once. In that we're friends on Facebook and have exchanged 'tweets'. In web 2.0 terms we're bosom buddies. And we have things in common.

Like me Elinor is a young, female journalist living in Market Harborough. And like me Elinor is bipolar. We're even under the same consultant at the nutter unit. There's coincidence for you. However, Elinor is much more proactive than me, she even has her own mental health supporting charity thing going on here.

Now, as I think I've made clear, Ellie and I are not close, I don't know what kind of personality she has, I can only make assumptions based on my own experience of the devastating lows, ultra-productive, sometimes unhealthy highs, extreme obsessiveness and, perhaps most pertinently, the awful paranoia that comes with bi-polar and similar depressive issues. But what I can tell you is that, like any of us suffering (I hate to refer to it this way as I, for one, don't feel that I 'suffer') under the big black dog and his bouncing yellow labrador counterpart Ellie is a perfectly normal, sane human being who can make decisions, work, socialise, get up in the morning and wash herself, dress, eat and drink.

She just has this something else that sometimes, when the wind blows a certain way, when the situation is the right combination of bad and sad and painful, pushes her in to a deep dark abyss with horribly slippery sides and no ladder.

And what could be more bad, sad and painful than being carted to hospital, imagining (as those of us with overactive imaginations never mind mental illnesses, do) that you're dying of cancer/brain hemorrhage/heart attack?

While Ellie was in hospital I was at home, following her tweets and becoming increasingly concerned.

The overwhelming feeling I had from reading her Twitter feed and Facebook status updates, which became increasingly difficult to understand, angry and panicked, was that Ellie didn't feel that she was being listened to. And that she wasn't being listened to because she was diagnosed with a mental illness.

I know that feeling only too well. It's a hopeless, beaten down feeling that makes you think there's nothing to do but just give up, nod and smile. It's a feeling I've had not only when in the presence of medical professionals but friends and family too.

Of course, only perhaps fifty years ago both Elinor and myself would have been hooked up to electrodes and had sense shocked in to us. We would have been locked away or been put in a position where we'd have felt there was little other choice but to what I like to call Do A Sylvia (I mean, honestly: we're writers, we're mad, we're female OF COURSE we'll follow the Plath path).

No, we're lucky in many ways that the understanding of mental disorders and bipolar in particular has come so far in recent years. However, Ellie's situation proves that we still have an awful long way to go.

You see, during her time in hospital - first in Kettering General Hospital and then at the Brandon Mental Health Unit at Leicester General - I can't help but get the impression that Ellie just isn't being listened to.

Her updates give the crushing impression of somebody who just wants to know what's going on, who just wants to go home or even just be reassured that everything is going to be ok.

There it is, right there, that tendency we all have to treat those with mood disorders with kid gloves, as we would children. I'm not saying that the doctors and nurses are wrong in keeping her where she is - indeed perhaps their decision is the right one, perhaps she needs to be watched 24/7 for her own safety or for that of others, it's not my call - what I'm saying is that Ellie, and all patients with mental health issues under medical care, residential or otherwise, need to be kept well informed of their situation.

Indeed those of us with these problems need additional reassurance and care, more time spent explaining the whats, whys, whos and hows.

Imagine if you will, the inside of, for arguments sake, my head. I know it isn't pretty but there you have it.

If I could paint a picture of my mind it would be full of dark, impenetrable corners. Corners with those 'abandon hope all ye who enter here' signs hanging over them. Now ignore that bit there where Robert Pattinson, Michael Cera and the singer out of Friendly Fires are begging me to marry them - pathetic beasts that they are - and note the wide, open spaces of Don't Know and Am I Doing This Right? and Everybody Hates Me and Wishes I'd Die. Observe the Scaredy Cat Steppe; the bit that prevents me from picking up the phone when it rings or talking to perfectly reasonably looking people in the street. East of that is Paranoia Peninsula; that's the bit where everybody is lying to me and people are pretending to be my friend and, oh! it's the bit where I'm convinced that the doctor only diagnosed me with bipolar to get me to stop coming in and annoying him.

See what I mean? You're all absolutely right, we do need to be treated differently. But the thing here - the BIG thing - is that we need more information, more time, more reassurance. And it seems that this is precisely what is lacking in Ellie's care, it's certainly what's been lacking in much of mine.

In fact if there's one thing which could be said to be lacking, in every part of the mental healthcare system it's empathy. It's that thing that makes sure that you've got all the information you need, knowing that there's a good possibility that you're too scared or too stubborn to ask. It's that thing that says that perhaps when it comes to mental health patients it should be NHS staff that do the running, not the patient.

With this in mind I present you with two short cautionary tales, starring yours truly.

Cautionary Tale One:
When I was first diagnosed with a depressive disorder I was referred to a CBT counsellor. From what I can tell this is an hour of me crying while someone looks on sympathetically.

I missed an appointment. One measly appointment because, dullard that I am, I plain old forgot to go.

I haven't been back since. Why? Quite simply I'm terrified of the phone. I hate making calls, I hate answering calls. I have no reason, I just do. So I never made another appointment. The medical centre never made another appointment. The doctor never asked about it. Anybody else - friends for example - I've told that I didn't think it was up to much, that CBT. But now you all know the truth: I was too bloody chicken to pick up a phone and say 'sorry, can I make another appointment.'

Cautionary Tale Two:
A few short months ago, newly diagnosed with bipolar, the consultant psychologist upped my dose of Duloxetine - that's the stuff that stops me going proper insane. So I got the lovely new dose, started taking it and, my wasn't everything rose tinted?

On schedule I returned to the chemist for my re-fill. Except there's no repeat prescription. They're confused because they know I need one, I'm confused because I definitely had a new prescription and...arrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhh no drugs! no drugs! no drugs!

Now lovely chemist does her best but, as it turns out the GP knows nothing of this new prescription. So I go to the GP, wringing my cap in my hand to ask the always cheerful receptionist (please note sarcasm) for 'some more drugs please m'am'. She rolls her eyes and says, 'name?'

I tell her and she rattles about on her PC before dead-eyeing me, 'Duloxetine?'

'yes.'

'60mg?'

'No, the psychiatrist upped the dose to 90.'

'It says 60 here.'

'Oh. Ok.'

It was at that moment that, without the medication already in my system making me 'normal' I'd have walked away and never taken any more pills ever again.

'Have you had a letter from Dr V?'

'Well no, if we had we'd have updated the system wouldn't we?'

Here a nice receptionist trained in understanding the nuances in mental illnesses might have kindly sat me down (with a cuppa?) and called the specialist's secretary to chase said letter confirming the new prescription.

But no, instead after some huffing and puffing (her, not me) she presented me with a scrap of paper with her fax number on it.

'Get them to fax us the letter and we'll issue the prescription.'

'Ok, do you have the number for Dr V?'

'No.'

At home I found the number, steeled myself and made the call. The rather more kindly receptionist promised to find the letter and fax it to the GP's surgery.

Days passed and nothing happened. Eventually some, or at least part, of the sorry tale emerged to the husband, AKA Mr H, who immediately burst in to action. He likes the phone, nobody spawned of my mother in law's loins could fail to like that amazing piece of communicative technology.

And BOOM! I get my meds.

I'm lucky. I have a supportive network of family and friends. I have the endlessly patient Mr H. I have my best friend Mrs T who also happens to be a professional psychologist. I have parents and a sister and parents-in-law who just take my general nuttiness in their stride and who I know I can call on when things go wrong. I have a friend called Big Mad Rich who is my guru of nuttiness because he was maaaaaad a long time before I was.

In short, I have people around me who notice when things aren't right. People I can turn to. But still I need help from the professionals, from the people who KNOW about my condition, who have some idea of the things that aren't going right in my head.

When Ellie was taken to hospital she didn't seem to know who to turn to. She was reduced to begging on Twitter, in front of hundreds, possibly thousands, for help because she was afraid of what was going to happen to her. She was afraid because she wasn't given the information she needed. The nurses and doctors first at Kettering and now at the Brandon Unit didn't have time or perhaps patience. She needed to be reassured and she wasn't.

The point of this post? I've nearly forgotten, it's ended up such a lengthy one full of admissions and truths and sheer mentalness.

The point is this, NHS staff, from consultants right down to receptionists need to learn to treat people with mental health disorders differently. Because we ARE different. Things that normal people take in their stride can be like climbing Everest to us. NHS staff need to be aware of that fact, they need to find a way to ensure that they recognise when we need to be given a little extra understanding. They need to make sure letters and appointments and prescriptions don't go awry, falling down the back of Anuerin's sofa. They need to make sure that in patients are informed of every single aspect of treatment, that promises made are kept or not promised at all, that we're seen in a timely manner.

In 2008 the female suicide rate was 5.4 per 100,000 people. Perhaps some of those women died because they didn't get their prescription filled on time. Perhaps they felt ashamed by their inability to deal with a simple task. Whatever the reason it's got to be accepted that with better understanding of mental illness throughout the NHS and beyond, with more careful treatment of patients on a case by case basis some tragedies could almost certainly be avoided.

#7 *whisper it* I Don't Care About The UKFC

The world of middle class arty farties is busy wringing hands just now. Why? Because the new Con-Dem government (remember them?) have decided to abolish the UK Film Council.

And while I've no doubt that in many ways the loss of the UKFC will have a substantial negative effect on the British film industry I can't help but...well, not really care all that much.

Let's be honest, the UKFC is a huge quango costing the taxpayer far too much money - as Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, the man who made the decision to chuck the UKFC, explained when justifying the cut eight of the top executives employed by the council are paid more than £100,000 per annum. That's more than five times what I paid for my house. In a year.

Not only this but those who have had dealings with the UKFC, in particular those seeking funding for small, low budget film projects, have found themselves entangled in endless red tape, form filling and question answering only to be unceremoniously snubbed. Of course, there's no proof that these filmmakers weren't, for want of a better word, crap. Even so, the fact that so much time has been spent in clerical hell by those who were never funded suggests a vast waste of money.

And while it cannot be argued that the UKFC has been instrumental in ensuring that talents such as Shane Meadows and Gurinder Chada (actually, I thought Bend It Like Beckham was rubbish but most of Britain disagrees so let's leave it at that) see the light of day they've also wasted a phenomenal amount of money on some really poor movies too.

Remember Sex Lives of the Potato Men? If not, you're luckier than I. The UKFC spent £1m on that piece of utter toss.

The new St Trinians movie? Yup, they threw some money at that too. Real creativity there.

Not only that but the UKFC seem to willingly throw money at films which surely - surely - don't need it. See, for example the Harry Potter franchise or any of the (actually not as fantastic as everyone makes out) Richard Curtis films which have received a fair chunk of funding.

And I wonder whether, when desperately seeking cash, the makers of Gosford Park or The Constant Gardener considered asking the likes of Ralph Fiennes or Ryan Phillippe if they really needed such a hefty pay packet, what with being massively overpaid Hollywood actors.

What seems not to have been considered is that the abolition of the UKFC could actually breed creativity, encouraging filmmakers to broaden their horizons, sending the bigger budget movies to look for funding outside of the UK leaving room for emerging artists who have something new and different to offer cinema.

Do Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle really need help from a government fund? Can they not dig in to their own pockets and those of their producers to make films which will doubtless much, much more than double their outlay. I've no doubt that they can, and when they do perhaps there will be more opportunities out there for that new breed of moviemakers to find investment.

In times of recession the needs of people, real people, need to be considered. People in factories and shops, people with kids and people with disabilities. These people need to come before pretty films and creative freedom. And, lest we forget, recession breeds great creativity - just look at the Thatcher years, the years which bred such incredible art from the most unlikely of corners. Think Leigh Bowery, Vivienne Westwood and Judy Blame in fashion, street art flourishing and informing the art we now enjoy.

The end of the UK Film Council could herald a whole new era of new and exciting creativity in our film industry. A change is as good as a rest from cigar chewing fat cats.

#6 Will Paywall Pay Off? And WHERE'S MY HASH?

I logged on to Blogger just now full of ire, ready to throw my tuppence in to the ring (mixed metaphor? Why the blazes not?) on this whole Times paywall, 'isn't Murdoch evil?' debate, but then something happened. Something that made me angrier even than the thought of my profession being taken over by ill-informed freebie blogs like, well, this one.

You see up there, there in the big bold bit we shall henceforth refer to as the 'Title' or 'Headline'? Yup, the one that says 'Will Paywall Pay Off?' Right. Well at the start there is a symbol widely known as the 'hash'. I use one of these at the start of each of my 'Titles' or 'Headlines' to make it obvious to the four people reading this blog that I am producing something of a list, a list of things which make me blood boilingly grumpy, things which make me clench my teeth and grind while muttering like a Surrey raised Foghorn Leghorn.

So anyway this 'hash' thing... it's a widely used symbol is it not? Indeed that well known social networking site with the cute picture of the bird and loads of people on it talking about some ten year old with hair like a lego man even has a thing called hashtagging which allows one to label one's post specifically or, conversely, search for lego-hair related posts.

Which suggests that a hash key is a fairly useful thing to have on one's keyboard.

So where, dear friends, WHERE ON GOD'S WHITE SHINY LAPTOP IS MY HASH KEY?

Let me take you back in time, back to Thursday July 8th, a more innocent time, a simpler time... *wiggly hands demonstrating going back in time*. There beside my bed, gleaming like a beacon of wonderful pinkness, pinkness which cost me an extra hundred quid because, in my infinite wisdom, I believed - yes, foolishly - that a pink laptop might encourage me to work more and harder (in fact it has only encouraged me to bounce off of the settee in glee and yell 'look! Donna on Neighbours has the same pink laptop as me!'), is my beloved Sony Vaio laptop.

This laptop is efficient, it's simple, it bears a Percy the Green Engine sticker, it has a whole new LCD screen since I chose to stick my tongue out behind my husband's back when he advised me to 'pick it up by the body, not by the screen', it has all of my stuff on it - links to my favourite cake recipes, some random lists for holidays I've already been on, my sister's CV, some of that aforementioned 'work' stuff.

The one thing that this laptop does not like (apart from big clumsy thumbs being shoved through its screen) is water. This fact has apparently passed by my nearly three year old son, AKA Hurricane Ted who, it appears, thinks that pink Sony Vaio laptops need to drink pints of water.

Back to the present and I am sharing my loving husband's Mac. This Mac, for the uninitiated, was rather a bone of contention on its purchase. Long story short, I wanted a Mac ('writers ALL have Macs, I'd probably write a bestselling novel if I had one'). Husband advised against a Mac ('it's too difficult for you Techno-bimb, and we can't afford it seeing as you spent all of our hard earned on shoes'). I sulked ('Fine I'll get a Sony but it WILL be PINK'). He bought himself a Mac ('cos I'm cleverer at computers and that').

Now, I have an iPhone which I know and love. In fact I have loved it so hard I have given myself RSI (this is nothing to do with it's vibrate function you sickos). So please know that I am not anti-Apple, quite to the contrary, anyone who makes a bigger version of their small thingummy under the guise of usefulness whilst in fact knowing full well that people are only buying it in order that they can pretend to be a midget OR to have accidently stumbled in to the Land of the Giants, is alright with me.

But here's the thing Jobs, Jobsy, Jobby (yes, Jobby as in a big steamy POO), I NEED a hash key. There's nothing cool and shiny and Apple-y about leaving a key off and making one do alt-3 - eventually, after much 'it must be here somewhere'-ing and plenty of 'come the fuck on now!'-ing - to get a hash.

Nor is this whole pressing-command-instead-of-shift malarkey.

And no, don't think that I'm laughing at the @ hiding over there above the 2 while it should be somewhere over, ''''''', yep, here.

As for the no right click...AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Therefore I conclude the following:

Jobs and his Apple cronies are more evil than Murdoch. Murdoch's trying to make some dosh he doesn't need, Jobs is just fucking with me. And laughing in to his iCoffee while he does it. That's not nice.

I do not like change. Especially not on my keyboard.

Which leaves me with just enough space to mention another change, a change which should, by rights, be more pertinent to me but which was overshadowed by what we shall, in Heat-esque journalistic laziness, henceforth call 'hashgate'.

The Times has stuck a bloomin' great pay wall on their website. The Guardian are all over it like a snobby ol' holier-than-thou rash.

In short I understand the decision to make users pay for online news, we happily pay for papers, iPhone apps and so on, why should we not be expected to pay for online news? Will this push readers to find their news from other sources? Perhaps. Do journalists, as news increasingly finds itself pushed online, deserve to be paid for their work regardless of whether it's online or in print? As a web journalist I believe so - the service I and my cohorts provide is (or at least should be) of a higher quality, impartial where needs be, well researched and reliable.

It's not often that I'll support a Murdoch decision and disagree with my old pal the Graun all on the same day but today is that day.

If the pay wall works and the Guardian implement it (which, if it is they will) they're going to look utter buffoons. If it doesn't work, on the other slightly shaking hand, does it not suggest that traditional journalism is very much on the first bus outta Dodge? Eek.

#5 Uncool Britannia

I love Britain.

There I said it.



Barely a week goes by without someone - a friend, a colleague, a random passer - muttering the immortal words 'this bloody country!' in my earshot.

Usually I'll give a sympathetic smile and roll my eyes at the rain/late bus/graffiti but other times, when I'm feeling feisty, I'll question why then, if this country is so very, very awful, they don't just...well, pack up their gear and emigrate?

Don't get me wrong, I quite agree that there are a lot of things that are eminently shit about the old green, green grass of home. Our trains are always late, our Prime Minister (at least for the next week) looks like a St Bernard who's just been picked up off the roadside by the RSPCA (and his main competitor like a suspiciously smooth buttock), we consider Bruce Forsyth to be the height of showbiz talent, our estate agents are pushy gits with over large tie-knots.

Ok, it's not a fashionable thing to say but I like Britain - a lot. I'm proud to be British and although I would happily live elsewhere to experience another lifestyle and culture for a bit after a few months I'd probably run screaming back in to Queenie's arms begging for a decent sausage.

Here then are my very bestest British things:

Queues
It's not that I enjoy queuing per se, that would be a stupid statement to make. It's more to do with what the queuing represents. It's the apotheosis of the British obsession with manners. We're a nation of people who say sorry when somebody else bumps in to us.

But the best, the absolute best thing about our obsession with queuing is that not one of us actually wants to do it, we're just being terribly British about the whole thing. I love watching the queues in Sainsburys - the shifty sideways glances, the odd rebel attempting to insert themselves midway along the self checkout line, somebody breathing down your neck as they shuffle as close as humanly possible to ensure that even a Kate Moss sized malcontent can't challenge their position.

Next time you're in a very British queue, pull on a bowler and enjoy.

Eccentrics
A few weeks ago a force was unleashed on the UK, a force which stunned even that paragon of unflustered common sense, Jeremy Paxman. That force was Alex Guttenplan, the team captain of the 2010 University Challenge winning team: Emmanuel College, Cambridge. I was not alone in developing a passion for the 'plan. Why? Because (despite having an American father, himself a renowned Pulitzer nominated journalist) he was the epitome of our very favourite type of Brit - the intelligent eccentric.



From Stephen Fry to Boris Johnson, Isabella Blow to Malcolm McLaren to Janet Street Porter and Quentin Crisp, Britain does a great line in those eccentrics who walk the fine line between madness, stupidity and downright genius. Guttenplan, though probably not set to become a TV icon a la Fry or Dr Brian Cox (he was in D:Ream, now he fiddles about with the Large Hadron Collider and knows everything there is to know about Sat-URn), made me smile with his Paxman-baffling knowledge of just about everything, and I wasn't alone in doing jumpy claps every time he was on screen. He was a wee Monday evening celebration of the Best of British and we couldn't help but love his serious little face for it.

The NHS
This week, due to some kind of idiotic clerical error, I was left without the regular medication which prevents me from losing my mind and rampaging naked up and down the streets of Market Harborough with an axe in one hand and the head of a goat in the other. I went cold turkey for a couple of days. I felt queasy and headachey, my hands and feet tingled and I was really, REALLY grumpy. Like, scratch your eyes out and put them in my blender grumpy.

Why didn't the medication get to me? Because the computer system for the UK's hospitals don't link with the computer systems which our GPs use. So there has to be letters, through the postal service. Or it may be that the specialist carves his recommendations in to a stone using his fingernails and has it paraded to the doc by seventeen naked virgins. One or the other.

Devastatingly flawed it may be but we seem so often to forget how extremely lucky we are to live in a country where we don't have to scrimp and save to afford a life saving operation, where our doctors and nurses and midwives though dangerously overworked have a high level of training and decent equipment to work with.

Our life expectancy is high, infant mortality is low, we have more doctors per 1000 people than the USA and around the same number of nurses. We give birth to our children in relative comfort and choose how and where we do so. If we're injured an equipped ambulance and trained professionals are sent to help us. And we don't have to pay.

It could be better, but it could be a hell of a lot worse.

The Countryside
Travelling by train from Nottingham to Manchester (it was only four minutes late!) I passed through the Peak District.

This was just as the snow was starting to melt.

Watching the snow tipped peaks, the clusters of daffodils, the streams cutting through valleys, the abandoned mines (Ok, ignore those) passing by me in a blur. I teared up a bit.



In fairness I was hungover and somebody had just inserted a large Pizza Hut Meatfest in to the luggage rack above me but still, the British countryside...it's beautiful and varied and ever so slightly tear jerking when you've had one too many very delicious British ales.

Diversity
Since when was immigration a bad thing?

Without immigration our music would be interminably dull - no grime, no garage, no Specials. We'd have to rely on Simply Red for 'soul'. Brrr. Our fashion world would be an unexciting landscape of Pringle knits and Burberry coats with no Chalayans or Ozbeks or Gallianos. Art would be free of Emin and Ofili and Chapmans Jake and Dinos, Gilbert would have to do his thing free of George.

Most importantly, if there was no immigration, the Daily Mail would be have to become a weekly and my amazing cleaner would have to go home (selfish, moi?).

I like the fact of being a mongrel - a little bit Irish, a little bit Welsh with a lapsed Catholic father and a not-at-all-Jewish Jew mother, educated at CofE schools despite being an atheist. I like that I look different to my friends and that they speak different languages and have different life experiences I can learn from and be entertained by.

The diversity of Britain makes it an exciting place to live, always on the cutting edge of fashion, science and education. Our food has been turned from dull grey slop to vibrant, delicious variety, we embrace religions of all sorts and nobody, in theory at least, is penalised or judged for their belief or their race or their class.

Screw you guys, Britannia rules.

#4 The Daily Fail

So there I am, sat at my in laws' kitchen table, idly flicking through their copy of The Daily Mail. I should know better. I should expect the stomach churning anger and the teeth gritting frustration that comes with this very same activity, that has come with it many, many times before. But I continue on, flicking from the sports pages backwards past the adverts for slankets and plates emblazoned with wrinkled royal faces, through a middle page spread featuring a former weather girl's/daytime TV presenter's/little known author's heartache and pain on finding that they were adopted/they had a long lost brother/their husband was a cross dresser. And there it was. The big story of the day, right there on page three.

"She fancied a fried egg sandwich. But Ann Hordon didn't get any further than breaking the egg into the pan.

For there, sizzling away, were four golden yellow yolks. All from a single shell."

I can imagine the excitement in the Mail offices when the photo of Mrs Hordon and her incredible egg hit the shiny mahogany desk of the lucky hack she had contacted. He no doubt threw open his door screaming 'STOP THE PRESSES! Bump the Haiti quake! Forget those thousands of dodgy Toyotas! Who even CARES about bombings in Pakistan...hell, today we're not even going to talk about immigration and those poor soldiers in Afghanistan because we've got the biggest story of the week, the month, probably the year!' That's when he slapped the picture of Hordon, ready in her big clip on earrings and golden bangles, a freshly ironed cardi pulled around her ample bosom smilingly showing off her ready cracked eggs.

I'm not even going to mention the fact that next week I'm going to send a picture of a fluffy yellow chick in my frying pan to the Mail. How could they question it? There it is a chick, in the pan. How could they consider the possibility that I simply put a chick...well, in a pan, and snapped a picture of it? I can prove it! Look HERE'S THE SHELL.

No, the fact that The Daily Mail have given space to a story which couldn't even possibly be verified, a story which really isn't even a story, is not my point. My point it this: The Daily Mail is not a newspaper.

Or rather, its a newspaper in the way that The News of the World or The National Enquirer is a newspaper. But the difference is that the Screws knows what it is, the journalists who work on the Screws knows what it is and so do the people who buy it and read it - it's a cheap thrill which might be honest or might not. The reason the Mail is so dangerous (and it is dangerous)is that it considers itself an equal to The Times or The Guardian and so do those who read it.

There are those of us who sneer at The Mail and all it stands for, who laugh in the face of another story about how buying a house can give you cancer or how immigrants can...er, give you cancer. But there are even more who buy it religiously, that suck up its drivel like its the Holy Scriptures. And then these people spout the same 'good sense' nonsense to their friends and family. There's no such thing as global warming, 99.9% of crime is committed by non-whites, all children are essentially 54% more evil than they were forty years ago. As far as the Mail's readers are concerned if it proves the prejudices which make them feel slightly uncomfortable now that they're in their middle age and their children can give them the 'I'm not sure that's appropriate Dad' look, it's something to be quoted.

Proof of how the Mail is, at best out of touch, at worse malicious came late last year in the form of that Jan Moir opinion piece. While Moir got the brunt of the anger over her spiteful claims that Stephen Gateley's death was caused by (to paraphrase) being gay, it appeared to be overlooked that Moir's editors allowed the story to be published. At the very least three editors would have signed off on the story (in print and online including at least one sub) before it was read by the outraged public.

Interesting that it was The Daily Mail who began the witch hunt against Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand for an ill advised and stupid prank call on Brand's Radio 2 show. This over reaction (only a handful of people complained before The Daily Mail splashed what was very much a non news story all over its pages in an attempt to prove that Ross and Brand were bullies of the very worst kind, picking on a poor defenseless old man) resulted in the sacking of the DJ's producer and suspension for both Ross and Brand who have both since quit the BBC. Even more interesting that Jan Moir - who made disgusting, homophobic comments about a man barely cold after his death (her speculation that it was not possible for Gateley to have died of natural causes were quickly proved wrong) - has kept her job along with those who published her piece.



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