Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls

In September 2007 I started a postgraduate diploma in magazine journalism at Cardiff University. After the first day’s induction, a welcome ceremony was held in one of the university’s grand function rooms, where there were a number of speakers and – crucially – as much free booze as you could shake a stick at.

I’d shuffled along with a group of people from the course, and as we all stood around making awkward small talk I drained my polystyrene cup of cheap fizz and mentally calculated the proper length of time to wait before going for a top-up. At that exact moment one of the girls I was with leaned over and said, “Well, it’s free, we might as well make the most of it, eh?” And in that moment, a glorious friendship was born.

Which was odd for me, because as a general rule my closest friends have always been blokes. There was a smattering of ladies in my life, all playing important roles in my social dynamic, but given the choice I’d usually spend my time with fellas. Why is this, I’ve often wondered? Some shrinks would no doubt trace it back to my (fairly horrendous) school days which saw me endue five years of social exclusion and taunting at the hands of a group of spiteful, catty girls. Others might suggest my military upbringing predisposes me to want to be around practical, ‘hands on’ people. Sensationalists, on the other hand, might speculate that I’m a wanton whore desperate for male attention. The first two probably hold some weight, the latter just seems ridiculous to me, and yet that does seem to be the general opinion of women that choose to spend most of their time with men.

I’m not particularly tomboyish, I don’t spend my free time pursuing any of the traditionally ‘male’ activities my bloke friends do (gaming, for example) and I’ll confess to the odd self-indulgent weep in front of Don’t Tell the Bride or whatever crappy reality TV show has sent my hormones into meltdown. And yet I’ve always been happy spending my time with men. This has caused problems in the past; light-heartedly in my inclusion on ‘boy’s nights out’ (which are just generally ‘nights out’ for me), and more seriously with boyfriends who, understandably, have felt threatened by the situation.

I enjoy the banter and that they don’t take themselves too seriously. That I can make a brilliant ‘your mum’ joke and get a high-five instead of a confused look, or that I can eat an entire pizza without remorse but palm the uneaten crusts off on someone else who’ll devour them without blinking an eye. Do I want to sleep with any of them? Hell no (sorry guys, nothing personal). On reflection, it’s for these reasons that I have such great relationships with the girls I am friends with; we all fit a similar mould. Yet one difference – one huge difference between my girl friends and boy mates – exists: I always know where I am with the blokes. (And I mean this metaphorically, not literally – none of them are very good at map-reading).

Until last year I’d lived with boys for my whole adult life, and day-to-day living went something like this:

Me: “[Boy], will you take out the rubbish please? You’ve not done it for ages.”
Boy: “Yeah, in a minute.”
[later]
Me: “Take out the damn rubbish! There’s a goat in the kitchen FFS.”
Boy: “Your Mum’s a goat” [Takes out the rubbish].

And life would pootle on as normal. Now, re-imagine that situation with two girls, and it goes something like this.

Me: Hmm, the rubbish needs to be taken out and I’ve done it for the last few weeks. Should I ask someone else to do it? I don’t want to cause a drama. Maybe I should just do it myself, again. No, I’ll leave it. No, I’ll just do it. Fine, I’ll do it again [seethe].

Or in the event of some kind of argument:

Me: “£$*&@!!”
Boy: “%^!!@$”
Me: “Pub?”
Boy: “Cool.”

But then with a girl we’d use phrases like ‘Well I just feel like…’ and ‘I would appreciate it if…’ all the while dancing around the subject, never tackling it head-on and both inevitably being angry and annoyed and then wondering if the other person is holding a grudge or is pissed off with you and then being torn between wanting to make it right and holding the high ground and on and on and on [continues forever]. It can be exhausting.

So with all this in mind, it was weird for me to not only become super awesome BFFs with this girl, but through her meet other girls who have also turned out to be super awesome BFFs. I will concede there are times I wish I could just shout ‘LET’S JUST ALL GO TO THE PUB AND INSULT EACH OTHER IN A LIGHT-HEARTED WAY, EH?’ when there’s some kind of group turmoil bubbling softly under the surface, but with them I get to spanner around with exciting tights and hair dye, fill the bin to the brim with wine bottles, bemoan our increasingly synching cycles and sing Aretha Franklin songs. Basically, live a massive cliché. It’s brilliant, and they’re worth the afore-mentioned effort because, complicated as they can be, they all smell nice and let me borrow their stuff (there are other reasons too I guess).

It is then, with a big sad, that I say goodbye to co-conspirator and confidant Laura – the girl with whom I drank JOMEC out of free booze all those years ago. She’s embarking on a year-long African adventure and will almost surely be eaten by a lion since she certainly can’t empty a bin. Godspeed Smurph x

On the roof

I live in an attic. This means I am at the mercy of hot and cold weather, and that I am only separated from my housemate by a thin strip of plasterboard. But it does afford me the opportunity – on particularly introspective nights – the freedom to climb out onto the roof and smoke a cigarette in relative (freezing) solitude.

Tonight, in a sombre mood, I clambered out and the driving wind almost turned me right around, until I heard a voice.

‘Hello. Out for a crafty fag?’

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could make out a figure sat in the exact same position as I was, on the roof of the house opposite mine. I couldn’t give an age, or much of a description, but I could make out a man with dark hair, wearing a Parka, sat like me, cross-legged, on the eaves of the terraced house in front of mine.

‘Something like that,’ I replied, irked that my much-revered solitary time had been intruded upon by a stranger.

‘Don’t mind me,’ he said. ‘I’m just out here for some peace and quiet. Isn’t it funny how life will drive you to a rooftop?’

I wasn’t sure what he meant, so I joked: ‘Well, as long as you’re not about to throw yourself off, eh?’

And there was a long silence.

‘You lot have been living here for a while now, haven’t you?’ he said.

‘Yeah, just over a year,’ I said. ‘What about you?’

Another long pause.

‘Too long’, he mumbled, inhaling on his cigarette, and after a long while: ‘Do you remember what you were doing this time last year?’

‘I do, but only because this time last year I was pretty unhappy. Isn’t it funny how you only remember periods of contrast?’

‘It is,’ he replied. ‘But that’s my problem. All these years blend into one and there’s nothing to tell them apart. I’m neither happy nor unhappy. I’m just here.’

And as I saw the blazing light of his dying cigarette float down into the street I went to reply, ‘Well that’s better than not being here at all, surely?’, but before I could catch the words his legs had folded inside the Velux window and the lock had clinked and he was gone, and I stared after his cigarette embers for a long while, until the wind blew them into a drain.

Back to basics

I have put my back out. Again.

This has been an ongoing but infrequent issue throughout my adult life – I guess I just have a piss-weak spine. The last time this happened, November-ish last year, I ended up lying on the floor waiting for my housemate to come home and scrape me onto the sofa. Luckily it’s not quite as bad this time, but it nonetheless sees me hobbling around and sucking air through my teeth every time I sit down, or stand up, or stretch. If I move, basically.

Of course, this wouldn’t be such a big deal if I didn’t have a bloody race to run in six weeks, and this afternoon saw my last personal training session at The Stupid Gym, where I had intended to smash through the end of the second week of the much-touted Couch 2 5k programme.

No such luck. They wouldn’t let me run, and instead put me on the cross trainer for half an hour where despite my best efforts I failed to reach the same level of sweating, heart-thumping, air-gasping exhaustion as I do when running, but did manage to increase the stiffness and pain in my back. So I didn’t get to do my desperately-required run, and I just made my back worse. Fail.

And then, to rub salt in the proverbial wound, they took my measurements again and we discovered that my stupid mismatching thighs are still just that: mismatching. ‘Oh well’, laughed Dave, the Ironic Weights Trainer, ‘I guess there are just some things you can’t change.’ And his words were like tiny daggers in my heart, because I am actually trying really blinking hard to change these things.

Gah.

Rachel and Becky’s dos and don’ts for newbie runners

Where things are looking better, but also much worse

I have made no secret of the appalling state of my fitness, which was confirmed to me last week when I ventured into a gym for the first time in some years. As previously noted, my overall lifestyle is pretty crap, and the most exercise I usually get is running up and down two flights of stairs to answer the door to housemates who have forgotten their keys.

However. It would seem that things are not as bad as I’d thought, while simultaneously being much worse. As far as resistance training is concerned, I’m top of the class. Even lanky Dave, the ironic weights trainer, says so. Give me a jar and I’ll smash the lid into the sun. A bus has fallen onto your baby? My mighty legs will kick it right off. Weights. No problem.

Even general cardio is looking okay. Put me on the cross-trainer, exercise bike or rowing machine and I’ll spanner around quite happily for miles and miles. I’ll huff and puff and get red in the face and my hair will cling to my forehead in a hugely unattractive many, but I’m pretty sure I could cover a substantial distance in an acceptable time.

BUT. Put me on the treadmill, and it just all goes to shit. My body, it seems, it actually allergic to the physical act of running. And this is why I’m feeling hugely disheartened and irritated today, having just come back from the gym with another failed attempt to run one single kilometre in one go. Infuriatingly, I feel like I could run much further than I do, but am constantly thwarted by a stitch in my right side.

I’ve tried eating smaller meals and indeed no meals prior to the gym. I’ve tried limiting my water intake. I’ve tried holding my arms in different ways, and running at different speeds, and doing different warm ups, and yet at about 0.5km the bastard creeps up and renders me completely unable to walk, never mind run. WHY IS THIS?

Someone has suggested that it may well be linked to irregular breathing, and if this is the case, I am utterly screwed. I’ve had an ongoing nose complaint for many, many years, where the stupidly thin bridge of my nose makes nasal breathing a right ball-ache. I’ve got it under control on a day-to-day basis, but evidently doing so during strenuous exercise is proving more of a problem. Short of smashing my face up with a hammer I’m not sure what I can do to rectify the issue in an exercising context. Dear Internet, can you help me?

Gym gymany gym gym gyroo

I have done the gym.

After battling through hurricane-like gales to sign up this morning (see? COMMITMENT) I have just now returned from my induction.

This entirely hideous experience saw ‘fitness manager’ Jamie – who appeared to be sculpted entirely out of rock – grunt incoherently at me while taking my measurements, before announcing that one of my thighs is bigger than the other, and that this is probably down to my ‘stride’, prompting an emotionally devastating flashback to the time my mother announced that I walk like a sailor in front of my then-boyfriend. Hurrah.

Jamie ‘Just Call Me Jay’ then asked if I had any goals I’d like to achieve, so I rattled off my spiel about the run in March. “I’d like to complete that without dying,” I quipped, to which he sternly replied, “Why? Are you ill?” prompting a flashback to the time I made a joke about stabbing my boyfriend to a knife saleswoman and subsequently having a security guard follow me around the department store.

I then ran ONE ENTIRE KILOMETRE on the treadmill before mashing wildly at the big red stop button and breathlessly panting “I think that’s enough for now,” much to the disgust of the die-hard gym-goers either side of me stomping furiously on their machines like drones.

Back on Thursday for resistance training and, as Jamie so hilariously added, to see ‘if we can sort out those mismatching thighs, eh?’ Great.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em (reluctantly)

I have agreed to do something unthinkable. Something at which those who know me personally will laugh heartily and snort with humour. They will slap their thighs and tears of mirth will spring forth from their disbelieving eyes and they will convulse in a fit of rapturous indignation. And then they will look at my terrified face and the blood will drain from their cheeks for they will know that the ungodly fate I present before them may well see the very Earth spin off its axis.

I am going to run a race.

The latter half of last year saw Himself, my housemate and my sister take part in half marathons, during which periods I nodded approvingly and gave the encouraging talks and became accustomed to being addressed with breathless grunts and of course, was on the finish lines screaming hysterically like a proud mother. I sat through entire conversations about blisters, hydration drinks and knee strength, and am now privy to an impressive knowledge of Tooting Bec Common despite having been there twice in my life.

Fine. That’s all fine. And – as was the case this Christmas – when the runners’ chat starts up and everyone waxes lyrical about how wonderful running makes them feel and they use words like ‘free’ and ‘rush’ and ‘relaxed’, I excuse myself and get my own relaxing rush from a fag and a glass of wine. And a biscuit. “Oh but Rach, you should really try it,” they beam. “If I can do it, anyone can!” And then they all mentally hi-five each other using special superpowers that you can only get if you’re really awesome at personal fitness.

You see, the amount of interest I do not have in running can be seen from space. This is due in part to my terrible lifestyle, which sees me inhale about 15 fags a day into my tiny, acorn-sized lungs and consume far more units of alcohol a week than you can declare on a GP registration form without fear of reprisal. Also, the biscuits. But mainly, for God’s sake, it hurts. “Oh yes, it will do to begin with,” nod the runners with irritating wisdom. “But once you’ve pushed passed that it becomes much easier.” Annoyingly, though, I am not a fan of doing things that I don’t like, so this idea of punishing myself in order to continue punishing myself in an albeit lesser way is not so appealing.

Nonetheless, I appreciate that some people are better than me, and so my housemate has signed up for another run in March. Good for her, I thought. And then Himself declared that he was going to sign up for another run. Good for him, too, I thought. And then my other housemate, Becky, announced she was going to do the March run, as well.

NO. NOT COOL.

You see, all of that blurb I said above about being supportive and encouraging… well. Yes, of course I care and want them to do well and yes, the day they manage a full circumference of the Earth I’ll be there at the finish line shrieking Charlie Sheen quotes to spur them on, but that’s a limited pot of encouragement there, because as soon as everyone is indoctrinated into the cult of running it becomes very difficult to ignore my own glaringly obvious shortcomings, and then the only words to pass in this house will be about running and supportive trainers, and they’ll all go out for ‘training sessions’ and return glowing with health and vitality and drink vitamin juice while I stand huddled in the porch with a packet of biscuits and a cigarette. And then it’ll start raining – a perfect metaphor for the cruel effect this bloody running phenomenon has had on my life, without me being directly involved with it in any way at all.

So I’m just going to run a sodding race. In part to see if I actually can (acorn lungs an’ all), in part to see what the fuss is about. And as ammunition for the future, for in the hugely likely event that I don’t ‘take’ to the sport, when runners tell me to “just give it a go” and that “I might enjoy it”, I can shake my token 5km medal at them and say “I did and I don’t. Pass the biscuits, please,” without any guilt.

So to surmise, in March I will be running this race, with these people. Watch this for Becky’s less cynical take on the issue, and stand by for updates.

300 Days of Freelancing

Happy National Freelancers’ Day! I hope that like me, you all awoke to a stack of presents and lovingly crafted banners brandishing messages of appreciation and gratitude, and that when you logged on to your Internet banking this morning everything was paid and up to date. No? No, me neither.

Luckily, when I signed up to this freelance lark just under a year ago, I was under no illusions about how tough a gig it can be – and to be honest, having one ‘National Day’ a year dedicated to the job does little to ease the daily grind (unless the presents and banners are coming later?). Still, there are some very good snippets of advice and knowledge filtering through on Twitter under the hashtag #freelanceday.

Given my fledging status in the biz, I am unable to offer any blinding wisdom on the topic. However, I can provide a crushingly honest account of my year to date, surmised with a few self-reflective one-liners and concluded with a positive nod toward future endeavours. A Zach Braff homage, if you will. Behold.

• I started freelancing in January. The same time I moved to London. I had a trace amount of contacts and no regular work of any kind. On paper, this was the stupidest thing I could have done, financially speaking, and in my first month I made £600. My rent is £600. You see the problem there. I am happy to report that 11 months later, I’m by no means rich, but I am getting by. Granted, I am unmarried and childless, but Jesus Christ, if I can somehow bumble my way through to financial solvency, it’s not an impossible task.

• The isolation can be crushing if, like me, you thrive on social interactions. I know a few people that genuinely enjoy working on their own and could happily do so without speaking to another human person for days on end, but alas, not I. I am talking to myself more than I ever have, and while I am not yet having conversations with make-believe colleagues, I will tell an empty room that I am going to make a cup of tea. I don’t think it cares.

• Every freelancer will tell you that procrastination is an issue. Some believe that procrastination consists of 15 minutes on BBC News at a non-scheduled time; others say that three hours spent mindlessly surfing 9GAG and Tumblr is just a ‘warm up’ exercise. Guess which category I… OMG check this out: http://9gag.com/gag/109669

• I rarely get dressed before midday. There. I said it. My biggest freelance shame. This is because I frequently make the mistake of checking my emails while I’m still in bed in the morning, and then naturally progress onto researching the daily articles I write for one of my clients, and then writing them, filing them, going back to my emails, and so on. My working day has a natural ebb and flow which renders my routine incomprehensible to many nine-to-fivers, but it works for me and doesn’t compromise my ability to do my job. PERK!
• My dependency on technology is frightening. My phone is permanently attached to my person, and if my laptop shows even the slightest hint of a 404 I will SHOUT THE HOUSE DOWN. Without these two lumps of metal and motherboards I am literally unable to do my job.

• I’m not a fan of the word ‘diversify’, mainly because it sounds like PR bollocks, or the name of a really questionable hip hop act that gets shipped into schools to ‘rap’ about bullying and other youth issues, but it’s how I get by. Under the umbrella term ‘journalism’ I do news and feature writing, subbing, editing, (paid) blogging and community management. For the latter, I look after forums and help to drive traffic to pages through Facebook and Twitter. Is that journalism? Personally, I don’t think it is, but it’s an integral part of the online content landscape and it’s an inevitability that journalists that aren’t on board will get left behind.

• The only real value I’ve found in attending networking events is meeting like-minded freelancers. They are easily identified as the slightly scruffy-looking folk necking the complimentary cocktails and fending off the hoards of PRs that dominate the guestlists of such occasions. At the last event I went to, I was cornered by a guy who did PR for an MRI machine company. ‘Would you like my card?’ he asked, after I told him that I predominantly worked an environmental beat. Eh?

• I am constantly worrying that I’m ‘not doing it right’. This is often compounded by the successes of my freelance allies: ‘They’ve got so much more work than me!’ ‘I’ll never get a byline in X!’ ‘They’re so successful!’ ‘Why don’t PRs offer me bloody skiing press trips?’ and so on. I’ve been doing this for nearly a year and I’ve filed my tax return and everything and still I find myself wondering when I’ll be a ‘real’ freelancer, Gepetto.

HOWEVER KLAXON.

• Making a living this way is very fulfilling. I know a lot of people that shuffle in to an office every day, churn out the expected work, and shuffle home to a pay check that’s delivered regardless of the effort, love, blood, sweat or tears put into the tasks at hand. As a freelancer, I feel like I’ve really earned my money and each achievement I make resonates really strongly on a personal level. PRIDE, etc.
• I don’t have to sacrifice lunch hours and weekends to the malevolent retail and banking overlords.
• I am the boss of me. Truly, no price can be put on that.

Great customer blervice from Vodafone

Thanks to the amazing technological developments our parents’ generation could only have dreamed of, we’re now able to interact with brands and large organisations instantly, and in real time. Like this!

The marvels of technology, eh?

In da house

As a relatively new and penniless freelancer, I’ve been lucky enough to pick up a few in-house gigs across the capital. Some involve writing news articles, some are focused on copy-writing, some demand unending hours in front of InDesign, making tiny page tweaks over and over again until my eyes bleed. But I’m thankful for them. They instil in me a sense of gratitude that I don’t have to suffer a daily Tube commute, and of course they help to put a rat-infested roof over my head.

But there are rules. There are unspoken rules to working in-house. And here they are:

1) Every day is like the first day of a new job
It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been there, or how many shifts you’ve done. The security guard will eye you suspiciously as you smack your head against the revolving door for the third time that week, because you don’t have a special swipey pass. You know who you need to report to, but not where you’re sitting, so if your contact person for the day is absent when you arrive you’ve no choice but to float around with a false air of purpose. This may involve ‘hanging out’ in the kitchen until they arrive. But this is not without its own problems. See #3. Nine times out of ten you’ll have to sidle up to the desk of Simon in IT and ask for help logging on to the system because they won’t give you a password that lasts for more than two days, and despite having this conversation with alarming regularity and consistently coming in with the same face, Simon will always ask you if you’re new.

2) Your name is irrelevant
Now, this is not the case at all companies, granted, but at least one of my gigs involves members of staff repeatedly shouting ‘PAGE SIX IS READY TO GO’ into the ether of the open-plan office until I turn around and realise they’re talking to me. You will be introduced to new starters as ‘the freelancer for the day’. You will hear ‘Pass it to the sub’ at least once a day, from one production editor to another, who are sat on either side of you.

3) The kitchen is a potential minefield
What’s the deal with the mugs? Does everyone have their own mug? Do I need to be assigned a special ‘freelancer’s mug’? I’d use this one but it looks someone might have paid money for it. I’ll just use the one covered in chips and advertising a van hire company instead. But I did see it on Dave’s desk yesterday – maybe it’s his? Should I just ask? Would that seem mental? ‘Hi Dave, I’m the freelancer. I know you’re very busy but I was just wondering if you would claim the regular use of this particular mug?’ Then there’s municipal cake. Someone’s leaving or had a baby or whatever and you don’t know them and they couldn’t care less who you are but damn it there’s a cake in the kitchen.
Minefield.

4) Your face will be ridiculous
Someone gets in the lift with you = slightly strained, lippy smile. Sign in at reception for the fourth time that week = lippy smile. See someone from the office while out on lunch = lippy smile. Encounter group of girls in toilets getting ready for after-work drinks = lippy smile. Practice lippy smile in mirror of elevator and be horrified at your gormless, vacant expression, until someone gets in. Lippy frickin’ smile.