Tuesday 2 October 2012

Weird Florida

Florida is the weirdest place on the planet. All of those crazy stories of cannibals in the road or people making homemade ass implants out of Fix-a-Flat that make international news? Florida. It's always Florida.

Here's a quick roundup of some of my recent favorites:

The post office faces a more pressing problem than budget cuts. Dunt dun duuun. OLD PEOPLE. They keep crashing their cars into post offices throughout the state.

A schoolteacher tried to hire a hitman to kill another teacher who barely knew him.

A crazed pet monkey bites some guy on the leg and is put on house arrest.

A serial pooper in Port St Lucie.

It's so weird here that even the local paper has a section devoted to the bizarre shit that occurs here. And I thought commuters were odd...

Sunday 16 September 2012

A Whole New World...

I'm not a commuter anymore, so it's time for the blog to have a fresh focus. Drawing from my current situation, it's about starting over and making a home from very little. Or, more concisely, trying to make frayed ends meet without it being too ugly. So, I'll be blathering on about furniture makeovers, bargain hunting, and the strange shit I observe being a stranger back in my own land.

It's now been just shy of 4 months since I've had to take the train journey from hell. It took an international move and total life upheaval to rid myself of the accursed trains, but it was worth it. We now live in a sunny place where weird stuff happens regularly.

Here's the quick and dirty version: After living in England for the last decade, I moved with my young daughter and 2 suitcases each to start a new job. It's probably no coincidence that we did so without any savings, considering that between trains and buses, the commute was costing over £5000/year for the last 4 years. The transition hasn't been easy. We've temporarily left behind Mr Commuter, the dog, our friends and family, and all of our stuff. It hasn't been easy, but the two of us are lucky to have a pair of amazing friends who have taken us into their family. We stayed with them for months while I tried to sock away enough cash to get us started and they have been unbelievable in helping us to start from scratch.

Even when eschewing "things", there's a lot of crap that we all take for granted until it's not laying around the house anymore. In addition to the things that you might think of right away like beds, sheets, plates, and towels, there are lots of small things too. Dishtowels. Toilet paper. Screwdrivers. Scissors. Sponges. Toilet brushes. Pantry food. I could go on, but will spare you. Trust me though, this junk adds up. Throw a kid in the mix, and it's never ending. Over the last few months, I've been squirelling away various necessities and bargain hunting like mad.

Our friends here and their family have been incredibly patient and generous. In addition to letting us stay in their lovely, previously kid-free home for three months, they thought of all kinds of things that we would need. They set the midget up with lots of books and craft supplies so that she would have some things of her own when she arrived. They even knew that the school systems were slightly different, so they got her lots of ready-for-school activity books. We take a lot of cultural knowledge for granted - she struggled with math problems that involved money, because it's hard to add a nickel and a quarted when you have no idea what the hell that means or what they look like. How do you sort which object doesn't fit when you see an American football, a baseball bat, and a catcher's mitt? She's never seen those sports before. They got us a membership to the science museum and set her up with a week of summer camp there, plus so many other fantastic things, it is impossible to name them all.

 There were lots of things to sort out to get started. I saved up the down payment for a 14-year-old car. I am paying over the odds since I have no credit history in this country anymore, with the exception of student loan payments that are in default because I owe a third of my salary every month just to meet the interest payments. But, providing that the duct tape holding the car together works for at least the next 2 years, it should be okay. It will be paid off in about 15 months and then I can save the car payment money from my salary for the inevitable down payment on the next one.

Then, I had to find a place to live that was zoned for a decent school. If I was on my own, I could stay in a smaller and cheaper place, but I had to consider schools. We also need a place that is big enough to accomodate Mr Commuter working from home if his visa ever comes through, as well as the inevitable influx of welcome visitors from across the pond. Rental places mean rental deposits, so that was another thing to save for. There have been car repairs, a computer destroyed by milk, a smashed window, summer child care, and loads of other financial setbacks that seemed to suck up money at an alarming pace, but we have managed to get into a cute little townhouse and are making what started out as an empty place into a home.

Come visit the progress on junkjedis.blogspot.com

Monday 23 July 2012

Blogging Anonymously

I've taken the liberty of reposting a blog post from the extremely sagacious Dr Brooke Magnanti. Even if you don't need any MI6-level secrecy, she gives some great advice on anonymous web presence that is useful for any average Jolene wishing to maintain a semblance of web privacy (even if most of us ignore it out of sheer laziness). 

I've cut and pasted the text below rather than linking so that any future changes to her blog don't make it disappear, but please do seek out her interesting "Sex Myth" blog with a friendly search. 

How To Blog Anonymously (and how not to)

Further to yesterday's post, this is a list of thoughts prompted by a request from Linkmachinego on the topic of being an anonymous writer and blogger. Maybe not exactly a how-to (since the outcome is not guaranteed) as a post on things I did, things I should have done, and things I learned.

It's not up to me to decide if you "deserve" to be anonymous. My feeling is, if you're starting out as a writer and do not yet feel comfortable writing under your own name, that is your business and not mine. I also think sex workers should consider starting from a position of anonymity and decide later if they want to be out, please don't be naive. Statistics I made up right now show 99 out of 100 people who claim 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear' are talking out of their arses.

The items in the list fall into three general categories: internet-based, legal and real-world tips, and interpersonal. Many straddle more than one of these categories. All three are important.

This is written for a general audience because most people who blog now do not have extensive technical knowledge, they just want to write and be read. That's a good thing by the way. If you already know all of this, then great, but many people won't. Don't be sneery about their lack of prior knowledge. Bringing everyone up to speed on the technology is not the goal: clear steps you can use to help protect your identity from being discovered are.

Disclaimer: I'm no longer anonymous so these steps are clearly not airtight. Also there are other sources of information on the Web, some of which are more comprehensive and more current than my advice. I accept no responsibility for any outcome of following this advice. Please don't use it to do illegal or highly sensitive things. Also please don't use pseudonyms to be a dick.
This is also a work in progress. As I remember things or particular details, I'll amend this post. If you have suggestions of things that should be added, let me know.

1. Don't use Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail et al. for your mail.

You will need an email address to do things like register for blog accounts, Facebook, Twitter, and more. This email will have to be something entirely separate from your "real" email addresses. There are a lot of free options out there, but be aware that sending an email from many of them also sends information in the headers that could help identify you.

When I started blogging, I set up an email address for the blog with Hotmail. Don't do this. Someone quickly pointed out the headers revealed where I worked (a very large place with lots of people and even more computers, but still more information than I was comfortable with). They suggested I use Hushmailinstead, which I still use. Hushmail has a free option (though the inbox allocation is modest), strips out headers, and worked for me.

A caveat with this: if you are, say, a sex worker working in a place where that is not legal and using Hushmail, you could be vulnerable to them handing over your details to a third party investigating crimes. If you're handling information some governments might consider embarrassing or sensitive, same. Google some alternatives: you're looking for something secure and encrypted.

There are a few common-sense tips you can follow to make it even safer. If you have to bring people you know in real life in on the secret, don't use this email address for communicating with them even if only about matters related to your secret (and don't use your existing addresses for that either). Example: I have one address for press and general interactions, one for things related to my accountant and money, and one for communicating with my agent, publisher, and solicitor. I've also closed and opened new accounts over the years when it seems "too many" people are getting hold of a particular address. Use different passwords for each, don't make these passwords related to your personal information, and so on.

I unwisely left the Hotmail address going, and while I did not use it to send mail, I continued to read things that arrived there. That led to this failed attempt by the Sunday Times to out me. It was an easily dodged attempt but something I would have preferred to avoid.

Over the years I have had about two email account changes every year and have changed my mobile number five times (eventually, I just stopped having one). If you change email addresses it's a good idea to send people you need to stay in contact with a mail from the old and the new address so they know it's not someone else trying to impersonate you. And to have a password so you know the response is from the right person - a password you did not exchange via an email conversation, of course. Example: you might send an email to your editor from old_address@somedomain.com and from new_address@somedomain.com at the same time, and the one from new_address contains Codeword1. They respond with Codeword2, indicating they acknowledge the change.

It sounds silly, but people can and doscam personal info all the time. Often they do so by pretending to be in on a secret so someone reveals something they did not mean to say. Play it safe. It can feel a stupidly cloak-and-dagger at first, but you soon get over it.

You can register internet domains while staying anonymous but I never did. Some people registered domains for me (people I didn't know in person). This led to a couple of instances of them receiving harassment when the press suspected they were me. In particular Ian Shircore got a bit of unwanted attention this way. 

Because all I was ever doing was a straight-up blog, not having a registered domain that I had control over was fine. Your needs may be different. I am not a good source for advice on how to do that. But just in case you might be thinking "who would bother looking there?" read about how faux escort Alexa DiCarlo was unmasked. This is what happens when you don't cover your tracks.

2. Don't use a home internet connection, work internet connection, etc.

Email won't be the only way you might want to communicate with people. You may also want to leave comments on other blogs and so forth. Doing this and other ways of using the Web potentially exposes your IP address, which could be unique and be used to locate you.

Even if you don't leave comments just visiting a site can leave traces behind.Tim Ireland recently used a simple method to confirm his suspicion of who the "Tabloid Troll" twitter account belonged to. By comparing the IP address of someone who clicked on to a link going to the Bloggerheads site with the IP address of an email Dennis Rice sent, a link was made. If you go to the trouble of not using your own connection, also make sure you're not using the same connection for different identities just minutes apart. Don't mix the streams.

The timing of everything as it happened was key to why the papers did not immediately find out who I was. The old blog started in 2003, when most press still had to explain to their audience what a blog actually was. It took a while for people to notice the writing, so the mistakes I made early on (blogging from home and work, using Hotmail) had long been corrected by the time the press became interested.

Today, no writer who aims to stay anonymous should ever assume a grace period like that. It also helped that once the press did become interested, they were so convinced not only that Belle was not really a hooker but also that she was one of their own - a previously published author or even journalist - that they never looked in the right place. If they'd just gone to a London blogmeet and asked a few questions about who had pissed off a lot of people and was fairly promiscuous, they'd have had a plausible shortlist in minutes.

After I moved from Kilburn to Putney, I was no longer using a home internet connection - something I should have done right from the beginning. I started to use internet cafes for posting and other activities as Belle. This offers some security... but be wary of using these places too often if there is a reason to think someone is actively looking for you. It's not perfect.

Also be wary if you are using a laptop or other machine provided by your workplace, or use your own laptop to log in to work servers ("work remotely"). I've not been in that situation and am not in any way an expert on VPNs, but you may want tostart reading about it here and do some googling for starters. As a general principle, it's probably wise not to do anything on a work laptop that could get you fired, and don't do anything that could get you fired while also connected to work remotely on your own machine.

3. There is software available that can mask your IP address. There are helpful add-ons that can block tracking software.

I didn't use this when I was anonymous, but if I was starting as an anonymous blogger now, I woulddownload Tor and browse the Web and check email through their tools.

If you do use Tor or other software to mask your IP address, don't then go on tweeting about where your IP address is coming from today! I've seen people do this. Discretion fail.

I also use Ghostery now to block certain tracking scripts from web pages. You will want to look into something similar. Also useful areAdblocker, pop-up blockers, things like that. They are simple to download and use and you might like to use them anyway even if you're not an anonymous blogger. A lot of sites track your movements and you clearly don't want that.

4. Take the usual at-home precautions.

Is your computer password-protected with a password only you know? Do you clear your browser history regularly? Use different passwords for different accounts? Threats to anonymity can come from people close to you. Log out of your blog and email accounts when you're finished using them, every time. Have a secure and remote backup of your writing. Buy a shredder and use it. Standard stuff.

Sometimes the files you send can reveal things about yourself, your computer, and so on. When sending manuscripts to my agent and editor, they were usually sent chapter by chapter as flat text files - not Word documents - with identifying data stripped. The usual method I used to get things to them was to upload to a free service that didn't require a login, such as Sendspace. When writing articles for magaznes and papers, the text was typically appended straight into the body of the email, again avoiding attachments with potentially identifying information. This can be a little irritating... having to archive your writing separately, not altogether convenient to work on. But for the way I worked, usually not sharing content with editors until it was close to the final draft, it was fine.

When exchanging emails with my agent and editor, we never talked about actual meeting times and locations and threw a few decoy statements in, just in case. Since it has been recently revealed that Timesjournalists were trying to hack bloggers' email addresses after all, in retrospect, this seems to have been a good thing.

Another thing I would do is install akeystroke logger on your own machine. By doing this I found out in 2004 that someone close to me was spying on me when they were left alone with my computer. In retrospect what I did about it was not the right approach. See also item 7.

5. Be careful what you post. 

Are you posting photos? Exif data can tell people, among other things, where and when a picture was taken, what it was taken with, and more. I never had call to use it because I never posted photos or sound, but am told there are loads of tools that can wipe this Exif data from your pictures (here's one).

The content of what you post can be a giveaway as well. Are you linking to people you know in real life? Are you making in-jokes or references to things only a small group of people will know about? Don't do that.

If possible, cover your tracks. Do you have a previous blog under a known name? Are you a contributor to forums where your preferred content and writing style are well-known? Can you edit or delete these things? Good, do that.

Personally, I did not delete everything. Partly this was because the world of British weblogging was so small at the time - a few hundred popular users, maybe a couple thousand people blogging tops? - that I thought the sudden disappearance of my old blog coinciding with the appearance of an unrelated new one might be too much of a coincidence. But I did let the old site go quiet for a bit before deleting it, and edited archived entries.

Keep in mind however that The Wayback Machine means everything you have written on the web that has been indexed still exists. And it's searchable. Someone who already has half an idea where to start looking for you won't have too much trouble finding your writing history. (UPDATE: someone alerted me that it's possible to get your own sites off Wayback by altering the robots.txt file - and even prevent them appearing there in the first place - and to make a formal request for removal using reasons listed here. This does not seem to apply to sites you personally have no control over unless copyright issues are involved.) If you can put one more step between them and you... do it.

6. Resist temptation to let too many people in.

If your writing goes well, people may want to meet you. They could want to buy you drinks, give you free tickets to an opening. Don't say yes. While most people are honest in their intentions, some are not. And even the ones who are may not have taken the security you have to keep your details safe. Remember, no one is as interested in protecting your anonymity as you will be.

Friends and family were almost all unaware of my secret - both the sex work and the writing. Even my best friend (A4 from the books) didn't know. 

I met very few people "as" Belle. There were some who had to meet me: agent, accountant, editor. I never went to the Orion offices until after my identity became known. I met Billie Piper, Lucy Prebble, and a couple of writers during the pre-production ofSecret Diary at someone's house, but met almost no one else involved with the show. Paul Duane and Avril MacRory met me and were absolutely discreet. I went to the agent's office a few times but never made an appointment as Belle or in my real name. Most of the staff there had no idea who I was. Of these people who did meet me almost none knew my real name, where I lived, where I was from, my occupation. Only one (the accountant) knew all of that - explained below under point 9. And if I could have gotten away with him never seeing a copy of my passport, I damn well would have done.

The idea was that if people don't know anything they can't inadvertently give it away. I know that all of the people listed above were absolutely trustworthy. I still didn't tell them anything a journalist would have considered useful.

When I started blogging someone once commented that my blog was a "missed opportunity" because it didn't link to an agency website or any way of booking my services. Well, duh. I didn't want clients to meet me through the blog! If you are a sex worker who wants to preserve a level of pseudonymity and link your public profile to your work, Amanda Brookshas the advice you need. Not me.

Other sources like JJ Luna write about how to do things like get and use credit cards not tied to your name and address. I've heard Entropay offer 'virtual' credit cards that are not tied to your credit history, although they can't be used with any system that requires address verification. This could be useful even for people who are not involved in sex work.

Resisting temptation sometimes means turning down something you'd really like to do. The short-term gain of giving up details for a writing prize or some immediate work may not be worth the long-term loss of privacy. I heard about one formerly anonymous blogger who was outed after giving their full name and address to a journalist who asked for it when they entered a competition. File under: how not to stay anonymous.

7. Trust your intuition.

I have to be careful what I say here. In short, my identity became known to a tabloid paper and someone whom I had good reason not to trust (see item 4) gave them a lot of information about me. 

When your intuition tells you not to trust someone, LISTEN TO IT. The best security in the world fails if someone props open a door, leaves a letter on the table, or mentally overrides the concern that someone who betrayed you before could do so again. People you don't trust should be ejected from your life firmly and without compromise. A "let them down easy" approach only prolongs any revenge they might carry out and probably makes it worse. The irony is that as a call girl I relied on intuition and having strong personal boundaries all the time... but failed to carry that ability over into my private life. If there is one thing in my life I regret, the failure to act on my intuition is it. 

As an aside if you have not read The Gift of Fear already, get it and read it.

See also point 9: if and when you need people to help you keep the secret don't make it people already involved in your private life. Relationships can cloud good judgement in business decisions.

There is a very droll saying "Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead." It's not wrong. I know, I know. Paranoid. Hard not to be when journos a few years later are digging through the rubbish of folks who met you exactly once when you were sixteen. Them's the breaks.

8. Consider the consequences of success.

If you find yourself being offered book deals or similar, think it through. Simply by publishing anonymously you will become a target. Some people assume all anonymous writers "want" to be found, and the media in particular will jump through some very interesting hurdles to "prove" anything they write about you is in the public interest.

In particular, if you are a sex worker, and especially if you are a sex worker who is visible/bookable through your site, please give careful consideration to moving out of that sphere. Even where sex for money is legal it is still a very stigmatised activity. There are a number of people who do not seem to have realised this, and the loss of a career when they left the "sex-pos" bubble was probably something of a shock. I'm not saying don't do it - but please think long and hard about the potential this has to change your life and whether you are fully prepared to be identified this way forever. For every Diablo Cody there are probably dozens of Melissa Petros. For every Melissa Petro there are probably hundreds more people with a sex industry past who get quietly fired and we don't ever hear from them.

If I knew going in to the first book deal what would happen, I probably would have said no. I'm glad I didn't by the way - but realistically, my life was stressful enough at that point and I did not fully understand what publishing would add to that. Not many bloggers had mainstream books at that point (arguably none in the UK) so I didn't have anyone else's experience to rely on. I really had no idea about what was going to happen. The things people wrote about me then were mainly untrue and usually horrendous. Not a lot has changed even now. I'd be lying if I said that didn't have an emotional effect.

Writing anonymously and being outed has happened often enough that people going into it should consider the consequences. I'm not saying don't do it if you risk something, but be honest with yourself about the worst possible outcome and whether you would be okay with that.

9.  Enlist professional help to get paid and sign contracts.

Having decided to write a book, I needed an agent. The irony of being anonymous was that while I let as few people in on it as possible, at some point I was going to have to take a leap of faith and let in more. Mil Millingtonemailed me to recommend Patrick Walsh, saying he was one of the few people in London who can be trusted. Mil was right.

Patrick put me on to my accountant(who had experience of clients with, shall we say, unusual sources of income). From there we cooked up a plan so that contracts could be signed without my name ever gracing a piece of paper. Asking someone to keep a secret when there's a paper trail sounds like it should be possible but rarely is. Don't kid yourself, there is no such thing as a unbreakable confidentiality agreement. Asking journalists and reviewers to sign one about your book is like waving a red rag to a bull. What we needed was a few buffers between me and the press.

With Patrick and Michael acting as directors, a company was set up - Bizrealm. I was not on the paperwork as a director so my name never went on file with Companies House. Rather, with the others acting as directors, signing necessary paperwork, etc., Patrick held a share in trust for me off of which dividends were drawn and this is how I got paid. I may have got some of these details wrong, by the way - keep in mind, I don't deal with Bizrealm's day-to-day at all.

There are drawbacks to doing things this way: you pay for someone's time, in this case the accountant, to create and administer the company. You can not avoid tax and lots of it. (Granted, drawing dividends is more tax-efficient, but still.) You have to trust a couple of people ABSOLUTELY. I'd underline this a thousand times if I could. Michael for instance is the one person who always knew, and continues to know, everything about my financial and personal affairs. Even Patrick doesn't know everything.

There are benefits though, as well. Because the money stays mainly in the company and is not paid to me, it gets eked out over time, making tax bills manageable, investment more constant, and keeping me from the temptation to go mad and spend it.

I can't stress enough that you might trust your friends and family to the ends of the earth, but they should not be the people who do this for you. Firstly, because they can be traced to you (they know you in a non-professional way). Secondly, because this is a very stressful setup and you need the people handling it to be on the ball. As great as friends and family are that is probably not the kind of stress you want to add to your relationship. I have heard far too many stories of sex workers and others being betrayed by ex-partners who knew the details of their business dealings to ever think that's a good idea.

So how do you know you can trust these people? We've all heard stories of musicians and other artists getting ripped off by management, right? All I can say is instinct. It would not have been in Patrick's interest to grass me, since as my agent he took a portion of my earnings anyway, and therefore had financial as well as personal interest in protecting that. If he betrayed me he would also have suffered a loss of reputation that potentially outweighed any gain. Also, as most people who know him will agree, he's a really nice and sane human being. Same with Michael.

If this setup sounds weirdly paranoid, let me assure you that journalists absolutely did go to Michael's office and ask to see the Bizrealm paperwork, and Patrick absolutely did have people going through his bins, trying to infiltrate his office as interns, and so on. Without the protection of being a silent partner in the company those attempts to uncover me might have worked.

I communicate with some writers and would-be writers who do not seem to have agents. If you are serious about writing, and if you are serious about staying anonymous, get an agent. Shop around, follow your instinct, and make sure it's someone you can trust. Don't be afraid to dump an agent, lawyer, or anyone else if you don't trust them utterly. They're professionals and shouldn't take it personally.

10. Don't break the (tax) law.

Journalists being interested in your identity is one thing. What you really don't want is the police or worse, the tax man, after you. Pay your taxes and try not to break the law if it can be helped. If you're a sex worker blogging about it, get an accountant who has worked with sex workers before - this is applicable even if you live somewhere sex work is not strictly legal. Remember, Al Capone went down for tax evasion. Don't be like Al. If you are a non-sex-work blogger who is earning money from clickthroughs and affiliates on your site, declare this income.

In summer 2010 the HMRC started a serious fraud investigation of me. It has been almost two years and is only just wrapping up, with the Revenue finally satisfied that not only did I declare (and possibly overdeclare) my income as a call girl, but that there were no other sources of income hidden from them. They have turned my life and financial history upside down to discover next to nothing new about me. This has been an expensive and tedious process. I can't even imagine what it would have been like had I not filed the relevant forms, paid the appropriate taxes, and most of all had an accountant to deal with them!

Bottom line, you may be smart - I'm pretty good with numbers myself - but people whose job it is to know about tax law, negotiating contracts, and so on will be better at that than you are. Let them do it. They are worth every penny.

11. Do interviews with care.

Early interviews were all conducted one of two ways: over email (encrypted) or over an IRC chatroom from an anonymising server (I used xs4all). This was not ideal from their point of view, and I had to coach a lot of people in IRC which most of them had never heard of. But again, it's worth it, since no one in the press will be as interested in protecting your identity as you are. I hope it goes without saying, don't give out your phone number. 

12. Know when les jeux sont faits.

In November 2009 - 6 years after I first started blogging anonymously - my identity was revealed. 

As has been documented elsewhere, I had a few heads-ups that something was coming, that it was not going to be nice, and that it was not going to go away. We did what we could to put off the inevitable but it became clear I only had one of two choices: let the Mail on Sunday have first crack at running their sordid little tales, or pre-empt them. 

While going to the Sunday Times - the same paper that had forcibly outedZoe Margolis a few years earlier, tried to get my details through that old Hotmail address, and incorrectly fingered Sarah Champion as me - was perhaps not the most sensitive choice, it was for me the right move. Patrick recommended that we contact an interviewer who had not been a Belle-believer: if things were going to be hard, best get that out of the way up front.



So that is that. It's a bit odd how quickly things have changed. When I started blogging I little imagined I would be writing books, much less something like this. Being a kind of elder statesman of blogging (or cantankerous old grump if you prefer) is not an entirely comfortable position and one that is still new to me. But it is also interesting to note how little has changed: things that worked in the early 2000s have value today. The field expanded rapidly but the technology has not yet changed all that much.

As before, these ideas do not constitute a foolproof way to protect your identity. All writers - whether writing under their own names or not - should be aware of the risks they may incur by hitting 'publish'. I hope this post at least goes some way to making people think about how they might be identified, and starts them on a path of taking necessary (and in many cases straightforward) precautions, should they choose to be anonymous.

Tuesday 17 April 2012

Travelling douchebag

This guy has sat near me before. Immaculate sweatsuit and trainers, tatted neck, and UNBELIEVABLY loud and shit pop/dance music.

He was pleasant enough when I asked him to turn it down. He turned it down a fraction. From across the aisle, I can now only make out every third word of his crappy track - While he sleeps. Train Buddy 2.0 looks like he may combust any second.

Thursday 8 March 2012

The little princess

Sometimes life is so hard. Take the poor little thing over there. She looks about 18. She is going on a spring holiday to Egypt. With her, she's taking her Louis Vuitton bag, her diamanté sandals, and her Ralph Lauren-encased boyfriend. Little Princess spent 30 minutes sharing headphones and listening to the wailing thump of Bollywood, smacking her gum, giggling down her phone and delicately placing her perfectly manicured feet all over the seats.

She just relayed a story to her boyfriend about seeing an old man fall over in the road. It was apparently so tragic, that she had to cry pretty little tears. For 10 minutes. Designer boyfriend dutifully comforted her while she wept, but somehow she did it without smudging her mascara.

It's all better now. Don't you worry. As long as daddy's credit card still works, she will be fine.

Wednesday 7 March 2012

The Mystery of the Unintentional Hipster

I am, as usual, on a delayed train. My normal train was so delayed that it still hadn't shown up by the time the Piccadilly dash train left 30 minutes later. That one had signal failure, so I missed my connection and ended up connecting on the slightly delayed one that went directly from my starting point. I left 90 minutes earlier than usual and am getting back an hour late. My day thus far has been 14 hours away from home and counting. None of that was even a little bit interesting, so apologies for the diversion.

What is really interesting is the guy sitting next to me. I've been trying to decide whether he is a hipster, or the guy that hipsters try to emulate in an ironic fashion. He's sporting a bushy prof beard with large, round tortoiseshell glasses. He's wearing a tweed jacket paired with stripy suit trousers and carrying a battered leather satchel.

For those unfamiliar with the term, hipsters are people - generally massive D-bags - who are trying to be deeply uncool to show how cool they really are, if you're cool enough to get it.

The first give away when trying to distinguish hipsters from actually deeply uncool people is age. Hipsters tend to be in their mid-twenties. Our mystery passenger was hard to gauge while hiding behind his bushy, ginger beard but appeared to be in his mid- to late 30's.

He was carrying a battered, leather satchel that was nearly empty and reading a paperback. I didn't see any technology of any kind. Hmm. The leather bag could have been an expensive pre-distressed designer thing or a vintage store find. No clue there, but the lack of an android phone or giant retro headphones made me suspicious. The paperback was just a paperback. Not something poncy like Sartre or obscure in an attention-seeking way...just a paperback.

The outfit had to be the key. We're the glasses prescription or American Apparel with plain lenses? No way to tell. The shoes! The shoes would be the decider. Holmes would be impressed with my powers of deduction. They weren't vegan earth-friendly pull-ons. They weren't Converse. They were just mildly scuffed, black dress shoes from any old department store. This man was not a hipster! He just didn't give a damn about any conventions, and thus was the truly cool.

Wednesday 22 February 2012

Accidentally awesome

Last week was half term. My small person decided that she would love to "help" mommy in the lab on Valentine's day. It was the one day in my week that was relatively quiet, so I agreed. We packed a bag full of books, games, and snacks and set off for the station. I decided that it would be better to take an hour later train than normal, so that she didn't have to be bundled out of the house in the dark. When we arrived at the station, all of the electronic departure boards were on the blink. We had a hot cocoa while we waited and then made our way to the platform indicated by the man at the information desk.

When we got to the platform, the conductor was motioning for us to run, even though we still had 4 minutes until departure. I commented about it to him and he just said that my watch must be wrong. A few minutes later, he checked my season ticket and we settled in to read some Dr Seuss books and the Velveteen Rabbit.

About an hour later, as we were approaching the halfway point in our journey, I looked up and realised that we were not in the right city. Instead of Manchester, we were in Nottingham. Turns out that the info guy had told us the right train, but the WRONG direction. The conductor had failed to notice that I was obviously talking about a different train and that my season ticket was not actually valid in this direction. And me, well I'm just an idiot.

Since it would have been 1pm by the time we got to the right city and we needed to leave at 4:30 just to be home for bedtime, we decided to make the best of it. There are far worse places for two adventurous ladies to be than Nottingham. We walked along the canals and to Nottingham castle. Midget's knowledge of the Robin Hood story is purely from the Disney cartoon with the fox and the bear, but it was enough. The museum was rather less than I had hoped for, but the surroundings were great. We dropped approximately £4 million in the gift shop, but it was worth it. She was not interested in the Maid Marion lady costumes, and instead asked for a Robin Hood hat that was the same green as her trainers and a plastic horse wearing chain mail. I was happy to oblige, and convinced her that the perfect way to accessorise the hat was with a bow and arrow set. She was dubious, until we went into the castle grounds and started firing. We weren't bad, but I knew we could do better.

I asked the old man at the ticket window in the castle walls if there were any knights about that would give a fair maiden archery lessons, and he looked at me as though he was certain that I was insane. We had a fit of giggles and then set off exploring the city. We ran across another of the merry men, who was slightly older than my Robin Hood. He appeared to be about 7 and had several more arrows in his quiver. He was gracious enough to give us a lesson, and the two kids fired suction cup arrows into the walls of a medieval pedestrian alleyway for about 10 minutes, gaining coos from passersby about how cute they were.

After some more exploring, we stopped for a late lunch. Midget's stuffed chicken was given a Robin Hood hat made from a napkin, and he had exciting adventures with the knight's horse. We whiled away the rest of the afternoon by making our way slowly back to our home city, with Robin protecting me the whole way. We may have also consumed most of a bag of chocolate hearts, making it the best accidentally awesome Valentine's day ever.