Reading Festival 2010 & the Songs we sing together…

Summer 2010 the Libertines have just announced their comeback tour and that they will be the headline act at Reading Festival. I’m 16 and this year is my first time at a music festival and like every other 16 year old in 2010 I only listen to Indie Music, wear a stupid flower headband in my hair and am obsessed with Pete Doherty and Alex Turner. 

It’s the Saturday of the festival and Dizzie Rascal is on before the libertines. My sister and friends are eager to get to the front to get a good spot for our favourite band so we’re pushing and shoving our way through. All I can see is heads, elbows and armpits before I jump on my friend’s shoulders for ‘Fix Up Look Sharp’. We’re just on the outside of a mosh pit, dangerous territory, especially on someone’s shoulders and Fuck someone throws a full pint at me, easy target I suppose, luckily it’s cold and not warm… After Dizzie finishes there is a huge clash of fans, people trying to get in front for the libs and Dizzie fans trying to get out. I’m gripping onto my friend’s hands but they’re slipping in the scramble, the emergency gates open, we lose sight of each other and one man is even punching his way through. Bad luck for me I’m right in his direction and get an elbow to the head as he punches with force, down I go. I get pulled up and out by someone through the gates and taken to the hospital tent. I feel a bit dizzy but I’m okay. I thank the girls that helped me and wait in the queue to be seen. And Shit… that’s the sound of Libertines starting. I ran out of the queue back through the gate to watch them on my own. My phone is out of battery so there’s no way of contacting anyone and there’s also no way I’m charging through that crowd again to find them. I’ve lost everyone I was with but I’m not really watching them alone. I’m screaming along to ‘Don’t Look Back Into the Sun’ with thousands of sweaty drunk people like me. I make friends with a man who has also lost his mates. We share cigarettes, debate who’s better out of Pete and Carl and he agrees to put me on his shoulders for the last song. The intro of ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’ starts people roar and scream and the bloke says to me give me sec as he pisses in a cup then throws it into the crowd-right here we go he says puts me on his shoulders and we all sing in Unison IF YOU WANT TO TRY, THERE’S NO WORSE YOU CAN DO!!! OH OH OHH! I KNOW YOU LIE!

 

I realise in our current world this story sounds particularly harrowing on a germ level and I did get hit in the head but even still nothing quite beats the happiness you experience singing along to lyrics in a crowd with loved ones or strangers.

 It’s the one thing we know will not happen for some time and the one thing I miss the most. Whether that’s belting ‘Sweet Caroline’ on Karaoke with My Family, the end of the night ‘Hey Jude’ on a sticky floor of a pub in a huddle of your best mates, shoeless at a wedding for the final song of the night or sun burnt and tired on the last day of a festival with only the music getting you through. 

The songs we sing together the most don’t work as well on their own, they need a crowd to bring them alive. It will be a while but when the time comes let’s be ready beer in hand to belt out your Come on Eileen, Wonderwall, Build Me Up Buttercup and god even Mr Brightside. (And all the others).

Hustlers to Animals: Female Friendships on Screen in 2019

On my Piczo Website in 2006 (for those of you who don’t know what Piczo is- it was a website builder used mainly by 13 year olds to write a list of your best friends, post mini square pictures of the OC, Mary Kate and Ashley and Starbucks Cups and the occasional anonymous made site dedicated to the top five fittest girls in your school year). On my Piczo website I had a best friend page with a picture of me and my friend pouting with the caption “We ride together, We die together, Bad Boyz for Lyf”.

Slightly embarrassing anecdote but comparing myself and my best friend to Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is a good example of how a younger me was always looking to find the adventurous, exciting and intense friendships I saw on screen. Friendships like the boys in Stand By Me, the quick witted banter between Marcus and Michael in Bad Boys 1 and 2 (so excited for the 3rd movie) and the roller coaster chemistry between Keauno Reeves and Patrick Swayze in Point Break. Also, not forgetting the loyalty seen with Frodo and Sam from Lord of the Rings.

Even after watching the 2007 film Son of Rambow in the cinema I asked one of my friends if she wanted to film a knock off version of Rambo in the woods near my house. Just like a young cheeky and now really successful Will Poulter and now the not so famous Bill Miner did. There is a certain Romanisation in films around young lads that I wanted to be a part of. Once I noticed it I saw it everywhere it’s even in Persil adverts, it’s all about boys playing out in the woods, in the mud, getting in fights, it’s one big adventure where “Boys will be Boys”.- By the way my friend said no to the Rambo remake in Canley Woods and didn’t speak to me much after that…

I’m not saying there aren’t any great films about Female Friendships but the ones that dominated my screen at home were always boys coming of age with their gang of best mates or male double act/Cop duo. Yes, yes I did eventually come across Thelma and Louise one rainy day on a camping holiday in Cornwall. Straight after me and my friend posed with sunglasses and head scarves and I still call my cousin Louise and she calls me Thelma in attempt to compare ourselves to the intense friendship they had. But let’s face it the stakes are bloody high in Thelma and Louise, it’s not just about girls mucking about on a road trip and the intricacies of friendship. Thelma is running away from her abusive husband and spoiler alert they drive off a cliff and die.

However, this year there have been a few films I have watched that have really made me think that’s us. That’s me and my best mates. And sorry for sounding overly cheesy here but I’ve come out of the cinema feeling on the top of the world. Here is the “jumping out of the tree in the mud” moment I was waiting for.

3. Animals

A cigarette in one hand and glass in the other: “There way I see it, girls are tied to beds for two reasons: sex and exorcisms. So, which is it with you?” This film is about the crazy and impassioned friendships that make us who we are in our early twenties before we all become boring, talking about houses and getting married. It brought back my own memories the feeling of waking up with a furry layer of alcohol on your teeth having only got into your flat together at half past five in the morning, waking up trying to work out how you got from Dalston to a dingy club in Elephant and Castle, then home and who the hell was that person on the night bus you got sick on. The writing is witty and raw from Emma Jane Unsworth and brilliant performances by Halliday Granger and Ali Shakat.

2. Booksmart

The premise of Booksmart is simple, two girls try to do everything they missed out on in one night before they graduate, the details between the lines however about female friendship are anything but. Many critics and people I have spoken to about Booksmart have compared this film to Superbad and I do see the similarities but director Olivia Wilde adds her own distinctive style to a high school teen comedy and depicts the silliness and importance of young female friendship we all needed to see on screen. I fell in love with the two-lead character’s friendship from the beginning as soon as they greet each other with dance moves and don’t know when to stop. Straight away the goofiness of teen girl best friends which we know but is rarely acted out in films is established. Another detail in Amy and Molly’s friendship that stood out for me was as soon as either one of them senses any doubt about themselves, the other one will shower them with compliments. This I know to be true. We are all cheerleaders for our best friends no matter how big or small. Whether it’s a new job, overly waxed eyebrows or if they’ve managed to get out of bed today, we are always there to cheer them along.

1. Hustlers

Now this film, is what I had been waiting for, a Martin Scorsese esque storytelling but with glamorous slow mo walks, a true story about women and the best entrance to a film I have ever seen. My chin was literally on the floor and the whole cinema were whooping and hollering as Romana (JLO) entered in a glittery Borat style thong thing. Despite this jaw dropping entrance let’s not let the snobs believe this is the female version of Magic Mike. It’s about the financial crash of 2007 and how group of women stole from the most powerful men in New York, who had already stolen so much from the rest of the world. But at its core it’s about the rollercoaster of female friendship. And if it couldn’t get any better they’ve thrown in 90s Icon Julia Stiles.

What hit me when watching these films is that they don’t try to be exactly like the male friendships I grew up idolising. These films are proof that we don’t have to have that all female reboot of that originally all male casted film. (Oceans 8 I still love you) They are our stories, unique to our experiences. Yes, it might help that these three films have all been written and directed by women but they aren’t all that different to the Stand By Me’s or Bad Boys One and Two’s. We can have that mad night out on our last day of school and jump in the pool, drink champagne from the bottle, punch someone in the face, travel to Mordor and back again for a friend and even trick the most powerful men in the world and rob them for all their worth.

To bring in the new year, instead of trying to be one of the lads as I have previously done, look to your gang or right-hand woman, grab your best friend at 12, if she’s not with you send a drunk text but whatever you do make sure you dance on those tables and down that champagne because as JLO rightly says in Hustlers together we are “the untouchables”.

 

My Year in Books

Me, my sister, my mum and my Nan used to go on holidays to Ireland when I was around nine to ten years old. We would stay in my Nan’s old family home that used to be a farm. My favourite thing to do on these holidays was to jump on hay bales, there wasn’t an awful lot to do in the West of Ireland in the early 2000s, jumping on hay was the best fun a kid could have. But before being allowed to go wild in the hay with my cousins, my Nan would force me to read a chapter of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire out loud to her. (Not sure why we started on the fourth book, think my Nan saw it as the biggest challenge as it was the largest one so far). A lot of people my age probably have fond memories of reading the Harry Potter books but for me this was torture, I wanted to go out and push my cousins off some hay not stay in and read a stupid book!

I didn’t have the attention span for reading. I was the type of child who would wait for my sister to read the Harry Potter books to tell me what happened, or a boy in our year would read it before everyone else and inevitably shout out DUMBLEDOOR DIES! Causing outrage for teachers and students alike but not for me, I wasn’t going to read it anyway and I could just wait for the film to come out.

I would have never described myself as “reader”, I wasn’t always completely against reading like I was when I was being forced, I did read the odd Roald Dahl book and as a teenager I read and enjoyed Russell Brand’s Booky Wook and half of his Booky Wook two.

But the end of last year I decided to have one new year resolution for 2018 and for a change it wasn’t my usual picks of either becoming incredibly fit, gaining abs, winning an Oscar, quitting smoking or starting yoga. No, as achievable as all of them are I chose something much much harder for me- I chose to read, I chose to read a lot.

As someone who loves film, theatre and storytelling I started to think that maybe I was missing out on the most imaginative, intimate and unrestrictive way of experiencing a story. Plus, I wanted to get involved in those debates in whether the book is really better than the film, so here I am a year later having kept my one resolution, with a new-found love for reading and a second love of recommending books.

For my second last day of 2018 I’ve decided to stay in my pyjamas all day and write a list of a few books that I have enjoyed and have kept me reading throughout 2018.

 

High Fidelity – Nick Hornby

I have watched this film tonnes of times and it is still one my favourite performances by Jack Black. (The scene where he blasts ‘Walking on Sunshine’ in the record store has me in stitches every time I watch it).  But the book, although quite dated in some parts, carries the same feeling in the film that I love, the frustration and heartbreak you have at the same time for its central character, if not more in the book. I also enjoyed it being based in London Islington and not in Chicago.

Everything I know about Love – Dolly Alderton

I don’t think I would have carried on reading if it wasn’t for this book. I read it on the tube, I read it on my break at work, before I went to bed and when I finished reading it- I searched for anything she had ever made, podcasts and articles so I could carry on listening and reading her writing.

Date with Death – Julia Chapman

This is a great cosy crime novel and is the first of Julia’s Yorkshire Dales Detectives series. It’s an easy read and although there may be a murderer on the horizon Julia’s beautiful writing of landscapes and a little cake shop makes me want to pack my bags and move to the Dales. Can’t wait to get started on the others in the new year.

The Good Immigrant – A collection of Essays of what it means to be black, Asian, and minority ethnic in Britain Today.

 I only bought this a book a couple of days ago. But I wish had bought it as soon as it came out. An important and beautiful read that I urge everyone to go out and buy.

Jon Ronson – So you’ve been publicly Shamed

I think this is the scariest book I will ever read. Even though it was written four years ago it is even more relevant today than it was then! I deleted twitter for a day after finishing it.

Normal People – Sally Rooney

This book definitely lived up to the hype for me. I stayed up till 4am reading and it now all seems a blur. I can’t even recall what happened but it was brilliant.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman

Is one of my favourite books this year. The characters are brilliant, I found Eleanor incredibly relatable but also alien. She is awkward, blunt, sometimes quite mean and not very charming at all- but for this reason I kept turning the page, she isn’t like any female character I have ever read about before.

Lily Allen My Thoughts Exactly        

I initially chose to read Lilly Allen’s autobiography for the nostalgia of being in school when every girl was wearing trainers with dresses, big gold hoop earring and having ‘Smile’ as my personal Myspace song. But what really hooked me was her message about family. If something goes wrong in your life if and you don’t have a strong network behind you, it will always spiral out of control as there is nothing for you to grab hold of, no one there to pull you back up.

There are few more books I could write about but these were my favourite. I’m also not claiming to be well read as these are just books I have enjoyed and not all of them are necessary highbrow reading material.  As for the books that you should read the Jane Austen’s, the Ernest Hemmingway’s, Dicken’s and my copy Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the road’, that I bought to look cool when I was fourteen, those books will firmly remain on my shelf- because similar to what James Joyce once said, “Life is too short to read a bad book” but in my case life is too short to read a book you can’t get into. I don’t think it has the same ring to it but you get the gist don’t you?

 

 

 

I ran once it was awful: Half Marathon Chronicles

 

Last week I signed up to do a half marathon.  For some reason, this decision has sent anyone close to me into hysterics of laughter. I was asked by my fellow work colleagues if I wanted to join them in doing 21k for the Royal Parks Half Marathon. Me who in primary school walked the sprint on sports day rather than sprinting. I realised I was going to lose anyway so I decided to stop running within the first 30 seconds and calmly strolled the rest. I don’t do running, I never have done. But when asked if I want to run 14 miles in October, yeah sod it why not! I blame this partly on my fear of saying no to anyone, my capability of always getting myself into situations where I am completely out of my depth and I did think this could be a really extreme way of forcing myself to quit smoking. No need for nicotine patches just do a half marathon. Great logic, right? It also came to me that I could write about my lifestyle change and it would be another way to laugh at myself and record some of the stupid things I do.

And the most important reason, I will be raising money for a charity called Tommy’s who support women who are depressed and traumatised when a pregnancy fails or if they lose a child.

To start this half marathon diary off here are some of the reactions from my family and close friends:

Boyfriend: “You do realise how long a half marathon is? It is four times as long as the fun run and have you ever even done the fun run?”

Me: “Yeah… Once but when I was 13 and I walked”

Mum: “You! Doing a half marathon! HAHAHAHA! Martin! You won’t believe this Laura is doing a half marathon!”

Best friend: “LOL that is stupid! You’re mental those things are fucking awful”

Nan: (In Irish accent) “I told the cousins you were training for a half marathon. I don’t think they believed me.”

To expand on these reactions is like I said earlier. I don’t run. I hated sports day at school with an ultimate passion. It wasn’t the sport part I hated it was the running and always losing part that did it. In secondary school, I managed to miss out on a few because of an “ingrowing toe nail” letter I had forged and reused a couple of times. In year 9 I signed up to do the summer school play of high school musical and to my joy found out that the rehearsals clashed with sports day! In year eleven I hid under my friend’s school blazers where they were sat watching the races. As names were being called out for the 500 metres I remained hiding under there until they gave up on shouting my name. The race went on without me.

I did once sign up to a really expensive gym with my ex work colleagues but I only went three times. This decision eventually bit me in the back.  When I stopped working there I didn’t receive an email to my old work address telling me that said I still owed one month’s fee before I could cancel my membership. I just received the 200 pounds fine from the debt collectors because of an outstanding payment I had missed. Anyway, that’s a different story but it is safe to say I will be training in the park where it is free.

I intend to post some regular blogs to incite you all on how terrible I am doing at training for this half marathon and who knows maybe I might be posting selfies of toned abs and healthy brunches rather than pictures of me with a pint and fag in hand. But who knows!

I’ve managed two runs so far using the couch to 5k app a total 16-minutes.

Ps. I’m currently sat on my boyfriend’s sofa eating dominos.

Exactly the same but completely different

I have never written a blog post and I don’t really intend in writing any more after this. It is my twin sister’s thing and I didn’t want to take it away from her. I have also never had the urge to post one. But after recent incidents in her life, I wanted to write about being a twin and our relationship. First however I would like to bust some “twin myths”. No, if you punch me she won’t feel it, I can’t read her mind, no we don’t have any telepathic powers, whatsoever, I don’t wear the same clothes as her and I find it particularly annoying when you say we look and sound exactly the same, whist staring at us intently from one to the other! A distant relative or a new friend might say to us “There is not one difference between you!” To this I would normally respond with a scowl and “Yes there is” under my breath and Josephine with a smile who never particularly minded such comments.

Growing up I never thought as being a twin as something special but more of a burden. At childhood parties people would stare at us and say, “awwww aren’t they cute”. At birthday’s when we were teenagers, girls would point and shout “Oh my god, look they’re twins!” I hated it, I felt like an alien, I wanted the ground to swallow me up in those moments, I wanted to be an individual and most of all I didn’t want to be a twin. We made rules or should I say I made rules. She had her things I had mine. I played rugby and she read books. We did different GCSE’s, I went to Drama School and she went to sixth form. And of course, naturally we were different anyway, different interests, different personalities, we didn’t need rules.

After finishing University, I landed a job at a TV company that I loved, I couldn’t believe it. Not only had I got a job straight out of Uni, that was full time, it was in bloody TV and in my favourite genre Comedy! In the midst of getting used to the excitement of my new job, going to work parties, screenings and living with my best friend in a crappy flat in Deptford, I failed to understand what was going on in my sister’s life.

This time last year when my sister finished her Master’s degree she experienced an episode of Mania a symptom of Bipolar. Something I knew nothing about. I knew my sister better than anyone but I didn’t know anything about this. At the time when it happened I wasn’t at home with my parents where she was living, I never really experienced what it was like when she was ill and I refused in my head to believe she was sick. I ignorantly thought she was playing up or just thought she was down like everyone else who had finished university and moved back home. I was too involved in my own world in London and work to grasp what actually was going on. Maybe I was ignorant because the truth was a lot harder. She was my twin we couldn’t be that different.

A year later I’m at home in Coventry looking for jobs, out of work after completing a few contracts with the same company. My sister also came home that same week, from her job in London which she had recently moved down for. That week she experienced another period of mania. I never believed my sister was ill until I seen her like this. Her illness had made her hyperactive, she spoke fast and she didn’t make any sense. The mania would make her blame people for the way she was feeling and in this period, she was blaming me. But it would be someone else’s fault the next day. People kept saying to me it’s not her, it’s not Josephine who is saying these things and I had to believe this. Not an easy thing to convince yourself about a person who you have nearly spent every day of your life with.

When someone is having a manic episode, they can be like an excitable child without any awareness of social conventions. I wanted to protect her from the outside world that would call her mentally ill, when she didn’t believe anything was wrong with her, in fact she believed she was great. The following weekend I had to return to London when I tried to say bye to her she didn’t respond and started talking about something else. When I arrived in London my mum called me, my sister had asked her why she wasn’t returning to London with me. I started crying and couldn’t stop. I couldn’t do anything to help her. Why couldn’t this be something that we both had. At least if it was happening to me and her she wouldn’t be alone. For the first time, I wished we could be exactly the same.

 

Eventually her mania reached to a state of equilibrium and the crisis team were called out. There had been a miscommunication after her last episode, she should have been on medication every day for a whole year, but her doctor only prescribed her for three months! I think me and the health service could learn a bit more about how mental health works. No one teaches you how to act when someone you love is mentally unwell. Like an ill heart or liver, it’s not going to get better over-night. But unlike any other organ the brain effects the way you behave. The things they say that are irrational and cruel aren’t intentional, they are frustrated and unsettled in their own mind. They need help, support, patience and they need someone to listen to them.

Now I cherish the things we have in common.

 

Blogging…

So here it goes…

Actually I can’t think of anything that will entertain you all (all being the one person who clicks on this link). So here’s a picture.

This me and my twin sister at disney land.

Till next time when I can think of something amazing to talk about which will make my life seem interesting.

Laura