Sunday, 10 October 2010
Moving
BTW, this blog now mostly lives at www.voicefromthebelow.com. Read it there, it will make life simpler for me! :)
Synchronicity
On the 20th October last year I fell apart. There’s no need for detail here but I was devastated by something of my own making and quickly I unfurled, lowest ebb after lowest ebb, rock bottom constantly redefining.
On the 20th October this year I will be at the Manchester Blog Awards, short listed for the blog I write about the place where I live.
It’s too easy to say there’s synchronicity to this. After all I didn’t plan for the dates to be the same, nor did I plan to fall apart (although, trust me, it was a long time owing), but there is something there…something I need to acknowledge about what the last year has given me.
Like I say the mental fallout was long overdue. Again, no need for details but I was profoundly unhappy and mentally self-medicating in ways that were destroying things that I held very dear. Coming apart at the seams was ugly, brutal and exhausting but it also presented me with an opportunity, albeit one that I’ve only started to see with the last few months’ hindsight. In living my life the wrong way for so long, being taken to the point of no return and spat out unceremoniously on the kerb-side it was clear that something had to change. Therapy did that. Or at least it helped. A lot. I could go on for ages about how therapy is right for some people and not for others and I know enough practicing psychologists to realise how entirely un-fallible they really are but for me it works. It undid the unbelievable mess of knots in my mind and allowed me to finally start dealing with what lay underneath.
But I digress. Opportunities. Potential.
Trust me, I didn’t always see it this way. The things I lost were mourned at great and undignified length but somehow, eventually, they became…of the past. I miss them, but only in so much in as I miss the ignorance of how damaging they were to me. I sometimes miss a person but I no longer believe I need that person. At the heart of it all, over time, came the realisation that I needed to start living this life, not just hoping for it to happen if only “someone” would "make" me "happy". Reading that back, I am astounded by how closely the literal interpretation of that matches what happened next. Clearly I needed to start loving where I lived figuratively – my own mental health issues, the things I had lost, the things I had left – and then one day an opportunity presented itself for me to do that in actuality.
LoveLevenshulme is a community grassroots project started a few years ago by Matt Clements, a resident who wanted to encourage the people of Levenshulme to see the beauty around them. Matt and his family were up and leaving Levy for the West Midlands and he put a shout out for someone to take over. Without much of a backwards glance I signed up. I don’t know why. All of the above would indicate a deeply perceptive sense of kismet but, frankly, I’m not that clever, nor was I “ready” at the time. I just did it.
And here I am. Three months later LoveLevenshulme has opened up so many doors for me. My fellow LoveLev-er Tim Simmonds and I went on the radio last week to talk about the project and I was asked what my favourite thing about Levenshulme was. I shamefacedly gave the predictable “the people” response, but it’s true – working on the blog has brought me into contact with so many good, good people who are using their creativity and enthusiasm to brighten their corner of the world. I’ve discovered a community spirit I didn’t know existed in an urban, economically disparate landscape and, quite simply, in telling people why they should love the place where they live, I’ve learned to love it myself.
Now I’m not saying that means we deserve to win any awards. After all, it’s a pretty selfish reason to be emotionally tied to blog which is supposed to be about community and I really don’t think the whole “this blog saved my life” angle is a dignified one for the author to be working. That’s why this goes here and not on LoveLevenshulme. The blog in itself is good I think, I’m proud of it and I enjoy working with Tim on it. I think we serve our central aim well and, although I don’t make any grand claims*, I like to think that it is contributing in a small way to some of the changes that are happening around Levenshulme. If those are compelling enough reasons for us to win then so be it, if not then it will continue to serve its purpose for the people of Levenshulme and that’s plenty to be pleased about.
So why am I writing this? Because I’m proud, I guess. Because there I people I hope will read it as a thank you. Because I think there’s a strange kind of beauty in what’s happened and for the first time in my life I can see it. Because I am happy.
*When I first moved to Levenshulme around 8 years ago I was told it was “the new Chorlton”. I have been told this many times since (mostly by estate agents). It is not true, in case you were wondering. We’re cooler.
On the 20th October this year I will be at the Manchester Blog Awards, short listed for the blog I write about the place where I live.
It’s too easy to say there’s synchronicity to this. After all I didn’t plan for the dates to be the same, nor did I plan to fall apart (although, trust me, it was a long time owing), but there is something there…something I need to acknowledge about what the last year has given me.
Like I say the mental fallout was long overdue. Again, no need for details but I was profoundly unhappy and mentally self-medicating in ways that were destroying things that I held very dear. Coming apart at the seams was ugly, brutal and exhausting but it also presented me with an opportunity, albeit one that I’ve only started to see with the last few months’ hindsight. In living my life the wrong way for so long, being taken to the point of no return and spat out unceremoniously on the kerb-side it was clear that something had to change. Therapy did that. Or at least it helped. A lot. I could go on for ages about how therapy is right for some people and not for others and I know enough practicing psychologists to realise how entirely un-fallible they really are but for me it works. It undid the unbelievable mess of knots in my mind and allowed me to finally start dealing with what lay underneath.
But I digress. Opportunities. Potential.
Trust me, I didn’t always see it this way. The things I lost were mourned at great and undignified length but somehow, eventually, they became…of the past. I miss them, but only in so much in as I miss the ignorance of how damaging they were to me. I sometimes miss a person but I no longer believe I need that person. At the heart of it all, over time, came the realisation that I needed to start living this life, not just hoping for it to happen if only “someone” would "make" me "happy". Reading that back, I am astounded by how closely the literal interpretation of that matches what happened next. Clearly I needed to start loving where I lived figuratively – my own mental health issues, the things I had lost, the things I had left – and then one day an opportunity presented itself for me to do that in actuality.
LoveLevenshulme is a community grassroots project started a few years ago by Matt Clements, a resident who wanted to encourage the people of Levenshulme to see the beauty around them. Matt and his family were up and leaving Levy for the West Midlands and he put a shout out for someone to take over. Without much of a backwards glance I signed up. I don’t know why. All of the above would indicate a deeply perceptive sense of kismet but, frankly, I’m not that clever, nor was I “ready” at the time. I just did it.
And here I am. Three months later LoveLevenshulme has opened up so many doors for me. My fellow LoveLev-er Tim Simmonds and I went on the radio last week to talk about the project and I was asked what my favourite thing about Levenshulme was. I shamefacedly gave the predictable “the people” response, but it’s true – working on the blog has brought me into contact with so many good, good people who are using their creativity and enthusiasm to brighten their corner of the world. I’ve discovered a community spirit I didn’t know existed in an urban, economically disparate landscape and, quite simply, in telling people why they should love the place where they live, I’ve learned to love it myself.
Now I’m not saying that means we deserve to win any awards. After all, it’s a pretty selfish reason to be emotionally tied to blog which is supposed to be about community and I really don’t think the whole “this blog saved my life” angle is a dignified one for the author to be working. That’s why this goes here and not on LoveLevenshulme. The blog in itself is good I think, I’m proud of it and I enjoy working with Tim on it. I think we serve our central aim well and, although I don’t make any grand claims*, I like to think that it is contributing in a small way to some of the changes that are happening around Levenshulme. If those are compelling enough reasons for us to win then so be it, if not then it will continue to serve its purpose for the people of Levenshulme and that’s plenty to be pleased about.
So why am I writing this? Because I’m proud, I guess. Because there I people I hope will read it as a thank you. Because I think there’s a strange kind of beauty in what’s happened and for the first time in my life I can see it. Because I am happy.
*When I first moved to Levenshulme around 8 years ago I was told it was “the new Chorlton”. I have been told this many times since (mostly by estate agents). It is not true, in case you were wondering. We’re cooler.
Friday, 17 September 2010
I...Don't Like Cupcakes. There. I said it.
A disclaimer, first of all. People I know and like very much have made cupcakes which I have eaten and enjoyed. They are fun food; sweet and silly snacks - the effort that goes into making them for friends is a gesture, for me at least, more touching than the food produced. The objections I outline below are more about the elevation of the cupcake to (faux) cuisine and its incumbent - to my mind, false - symbolism of a food-loving culture. To those of you who make cupcakes for fun times, please don't be hurt, this isn't about you. You all exude Nigella Lawson-esque sexpottyness without having to try one iota.
Well of course I don’t hate cupcakes. They are, after all, cake. The delicate combination of a wodge of carbohydrate and a dollop of fat melts on my tongue the same way as it does for any human being. It tastes nice. It tastes good, even, but - and here’s the key - it rarely tastes interesting.
I like food. I don’t count myself as a trailblazer in any way (my offal curiosity blanches somewhat at anything that handles bodily waste), or even a particularly engaged foody but I do prefer the food I put in my mouth to taste of food. Fresh vegetables, juicy fruit, rich meat, creamy dairy; they’re all flavours that can be combined to the limits of your creativity to engender sensations that teeter at the edge of your imagination but still surprise and delight in actuality. And what is the cupcake? Well it’s sponge. Plain sponge. It is sweet and carby and fatty but it’s not exciting. And buttercream. Buttercream is sugar and fat. Our cave-man brains like sugar and fat and so our taste buds like them too, but is there any complexity or depth of flavour in refined sugar? Does a glug of vegetable oil burst on your tongue like a just-picked raspberry? No.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that many cup-cake bakers go to great lengths to source good quality ingredients and make interesting additions to their cupcakes but the formula is there and so rarely diverted from that cupcakes essentially come in three forms:
If you’re lucky you might get all three but underneath the window dressing (the equivalent of making your dog wear a tutu and tiara) you’ll still be left with the same basic sponge and butter cream that couldn’t hold a candle to a strawberry and dark chocolate torte or a pistachio and apricot roulade.
Then there is the culture of the cupcake. The wave of sprinkles and red velvet (an elaborately evocative name for what is essentially sponge with red food colouring) that has swept through the UK has left a wake of press releases citing “Emily’s love of baking” and “Susie’s passion for all things sweet”. Have you been to a launch or opening recently? The canapes have let themselves go and bloated to tooth-achingly sweet concoctions of infinite colour and self-proclaimed grandeur but only one flavour. Sweet.
I’m blogging about this mainly because I’m shocked to find myself one of only a very few dissenting voices, and the only woman I know of. It seems that cupcakes are universally liked, and the love of cupcakes has become as much a by-word for “I’m a girl, me” as the near-compulsory shoes’n’bags obsession. Somehow “i love cupcakes” appears to have become shorthand for “i love food, no really i do” as if by loving something so safe, so anodyne as an unexceptional bit of flavourless cake imbues you with the same sexual gluttony as Nigella Lawson fellating a cream-covered whisk. It doesn’t. As a woman, saying you love food and using cupcakes as proof is like saying you love film and citing the Sex and The City movies as your touchstone influence. Maybe that’s true, maybe it is, but if that’s you, really, I beg of you, watch Magnolia and revel in a full-blooded taste sensation.
It’s about that cupcake shop in New York. Honest.
Well of course I don’t hate cupcakes. They are, after all, cake. The delicate combination of a wodge of carbohydrate and a dollop of fat melts on my tongue the same way as it does for any human being. It tastes nice. It tastes good, even, but - and here’s the key - it rarely tastes interesting.
I like food. I don’t count myself as a trailblazer in any way (my offal curiosity blanches somewhat at anything that handles bodily waste), or even a particularly engaged foody but I do prefer the food I put in my mouth to taste of food. Fresh vegetables, juicy fruit, rich meat, creamy dairy; they’re all flavours that can be combined to the limits of your creativity to engender sensations that teeter at the edge of your imagination but still surprise and delight in actuality. And what is the cupcake? Well it’s sponge. Plain sponge. It is sweet and carby and fatty but it’s not exciting. And buttercream. Buttercream is sugar and fat. Our cave-man brains like sugar and fat and so our taste buds like them too, but is there any complexity or depth of flavour in refined sugar? Does a glug of vegetable oil burst on your tongue like a just-picked raspberry? No.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that many cup-cake bakers go to great lengths to source good quality ingredients and make interesting additions to their cupcakes but the formula is there and so rarely diverted from that cupcakes essentially come in three forms:
- Cupcake
- Cupcake with added (usually artificial and lacklustre) flavourings
- Cupcake with pathalogically pretty decorations
If you’re lucky you might get all three but underneath the window dressing (the equivalent of making your dog wear a tutu and tiara) you’ll still be left with the same basic sponge and butter cream that couldn’t hold a candle to a strawberry and dark chocolate torte or a pistachio and apricot roulade.
Then there is the culture of the cupcake. The wave of sprinkles and red velvet (an elaborately evocative name for what is essentially sponge with red food colouring) that has swept through the UK has left a wake of press releases citing “Emily’s love of baking” and “Susie’s passion for all things sweet”. Have you been to a launch or opening recently? The canapes have let themselves go and bloated to tooth-achingly sweet concoctions of infinite colour and self-proclaimed grandeur but only one flavour. Sweet.
I’m blogging about this mainly because I’m shocked to find myself one of only a very few dissenting voices, and the only woman I know of. It seems that cupcakes are universally liked, and the love of cupcakes has become as much a by-word for “I’m a girl, me” as the near-compulsory shoes’n’bags obsession. Somehow “i love cupcakes” appears to have become shorthand for “i love food, no really i do” as if by loving something so safe, so anodyne as an unexceptional bit of flavourless cake imbues you with the same sexual gluttony as Nigella Lawson fellating a cream-covered whisk. It doesn’t. As a woman, saying you love food and using cupcakes as proof is like saying you love film and citing the Sex and The City movies as your touchstone influence. Maybe that’s true, maybe it is, but if that’s you, really, I beg of you, watch Magnolia and revel in a full-blooded taste sensation.
It’s about that cupcake shop in New York. Honest.
Saturday, 16 January 2010
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Eating Animals
Jonathan Safran Foer?s Eating Animals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_animals) is being published in the UK in March. Pretty timely for me; the arguments for turning vegetarian are stacking up at the moment and I suspect by March I won?t need much pushing.
I?ve never been a vegetarian, which I think surprises some people. I?m a girl, I love animals, I?m fairly left-leaning and I had a troubled adolescence ? classic ingredients really. I have played with the idea on several occasions but always fallen short of making that step. I?d like to say that I had really justified my omnivourousness to myself but in recent years I?ve realised that my half-hearted arguments about the incompleteness of the vegetarian diet were just that. Laziness and a lack of willingness to submit to inconvenience have taken me so far, not because the arguments for vegetarianism have been (for me) compelling, but because I was unwilling to research them properly.
A friend once pointedly told me that for every gram of cocaine sold in the UK someone in the developing nations involved in it?s production died. I doubt the exactitude of this fact but the fact remains ? non-medicinal drugs are totally unnecceasry luxury of those who can afford to subsidise the killing of other human beings for their pleasure. Meat is a totally unnecceasry luxury for those who can afford it. I suspect that when the cost is laid out for me my conclusions will be inevitable?
More to follow, I guess?
I?ve never been a vegetarian, which I think surprises some people. I?m a girl, I love animals, I?m fairly left-leaning and I had a troubled adolescence ? classic ingredients really. I have played with the idea on several occasions but always fallen short of making that step. I?d like to say that I had really justified my omnivourousness to myself but in recent years I?ve realised that my half-hearted arguments about the incompleteness of the vegetarian diet were just that. Laziness and a lack of willingness to submit to inconvenience have taken me so far, not because the arguments for vegetarianism have been (for me) compelling, but because I was unwilling to research them properly.
A friend once pointedly told me that for every gram of cocaine sold in the UK someone in the developing nations involved in it?s production died. I doubt the exactitude of this fact but the fact remains ? non-medicinal drugs are totally unnecceasry luxury of those who can afford to subsidise the killing of other human beings for their pleasure. Meat is a totally unnecceasry luxury for those who can afford it. I suspect that when the cost is laid out for me my conclusions will be inevitable?
More to follow, I guess?
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